Pete 
Managing those Melting Moments
When life in Thailand becomes overwhelming, it's time to take a deep breath, then call in Uncle Smirnoff
http://www.bangkokpost.com/life/educati ... ng-moments
* Published: 12/09/2010 at 12:00 AM
* Newspaper section: Brunch
When I was a little boy growing up in Australia, my mother would often make these biscuits called Melting Moments. They were delicious buttery things with enough sugar to ensure I'd be one day stabbing insulin needles into my stomach on a daily basis.
It is a vivid memory - my mother dressed in one of her floral sunfrocks, working away in our space-age kitchen of the late 1960s, taking Melting Moments fresh out of the oven before setting out for her weekly jazz ballet classes. Life was truly idyllic in Sunnybank, Brisbane; one wonders why I ever left.
I'm all grown up now and living in the present in this glorious city called Bangkok. I still have Melting Moments ... though not the kind of my childhood.
A Melting Moment is the phrase I use to describe that moment which creeps up on us with such stealth we never even see it coming.
It is that precise moment when Thai life overwhelms you and you are paralysed, unable to function, a slave to your anger and frustration and a complete meltdown ensues.
If you have spent a lot of time in Thailand you know exactly what I'm talking about. The trigger usually takes the form of a shop assistant, or a civil servant, or even someone as innocuous as a security guard as we are about to see. The more trivial the person, the greater the meltdown. It is the straw that breaks the camel's back for any expat forced to cope with things the locals have managed to take in their stride since the Sukhothai era.
You are left standing on the spot, your Central Department shopping bags shaking by your sides, as your bottom lip quivers and your sensibility literally melts all around you.
Take when I bought my car, for example. The stress and hassle of filling out forms, transferring giant sums of money, filling out forms and getting insurance was enormous. But I managed to get through it with deep breathing, meditation and many visits from Uncle Smirnoff, sometimes knocking on my door as early as noontime with his friends Tonic and Lemon Wedge.
I survived it all; the Melting Moment took place days later when I nearly crashed head-on with a guy riding a bicycle down the wrong side of the road. The gentleman in question, dressed in pyjamas and possessing a visage that suggested he'd one day evolve into Cro-Magnon, was so busy staring into the space to the right (ie, the sidewalk) he was oblivious to the fact he was on the wrong side of the road - and that there may be cars, like mine, about to collide with him head on.
I lost it. I pulled over to the side of the road and shouted out to the guy from the confines of my brand new Teana, enquiring as to his location when God gave out the brains. Naturally he didn't hear a thing and pedalled on down that Samut Prakan road, continuing to keenly observe nothing. But there I was, head in hands, blood pulsating in my temples, wondering how I had ended up with such a cursed life, such a hideous set of circumstances, such a ...
Okay, calm down. It will pass.
Then there was this week. I had foolishly driven the very same car into Soi Sala Daeng to visit a distinguished fellow Australian friend. Thank goodness I had my illegally-downloaded American Top 40 radio show from 1979 to listen to - I can thank Casey Kasem for getting me through a two-hour traffic jam on Rama 4. He (my friend, not Casey) resides in one of those massive apartment blocks and as I pulled in it was raining heavily.
Luckily there was a parking space right near the entrance so, with two security guards and a man in a blue safari suit watching, I backed in, turned off the car, gathered my belongings, sprayed on a little duty-free Issey Miyake and opened the door. I dashed from the car into the foyer and made it without spoiling my urban chic appearance.
It was then one of the security guards said: "You can't park there. It belongs to someone else. Please move your car."
See how trivial this is, dear reader? See how utterly unworthy this episode is to be included in a prestigious supplement like Brunch? Okay, so it may warrant a few columns in Spectrum, or Letters From Soi Nana To The Editor, but Brunch? And yet the emotions swelled, adrenaline raced through my body and I suddenly felt I was going to cry. Cry!
"So why didn't you say something when I was in the car?" That final italicised adverbial clause was spoken at twice the decibels. I'd suffered the indignity of a two-hour traffic jam (during which I'd heard #40 right up to #9, including a Long Distance Dedication), not to mention the pouring rain, being hideously late and now - a felch of security guards who actually watched me park in the wrong spot.
I held back the tears, but I believe my bottom lip did quiver as I said: "So call the owner of the space. I want to talk to him."
"He's not here," the guy in the safari suit answered. "He's overseas." And that answer, dear reader, precipitated my first Melting Moment for 2010; being unable to park in a space for a man who wasn't even there.
Such are the topics of conversation at every Wednesday's two-for-one night at the Londoner, Thursday night at Coyote Bar, or Sunday night's Toss The Boss at the Bull's Head. You can spot the foreigner intently telling his or her Melting Moment story; at the punch-line the others sit back, laugh, shake their heads, then sip their watered-down freebie as if to ease the pain. If only things were like they were back home.
And that is where we are wrong. I think it's easy to pretend that life is rosy and idyllic back where we come from, when in reality there are just as many frustrating, idiotic aspects of our own societies. Life can be a hassle here in the City of Angels, but isn't it a hassle anywhere?
Sure, men in pyjamas with sloping foreheads may not pedal down the wrong side of the street in Sunnybank. But what about not being able to turn on your sprinkler on a Sunday unless you're over 70 years old? That's pretty stupid, too ... as are a number of rules and regulations which govern my home country that I've clearly forgotten to remember.
And just then I went onto Epicurious.com to find the recipe for Melting Moments, and it is nowhere to be found. You'd think on a website boasting 100,000 recipes that my childhood favourite would be there.
Alas, no. Which brings me to think - like the perfect society I come from, is it all a fantasy? Perhaps Melting Moments never existed. Perhaps my own society is as flawed and frustrating as the one I am living in now. And perhaps I had just better learn to live with it and love it, warts and all, because like yin and yang the very things that are special in this country must come with a downside as well.
And for sure - it's far easier to change my reaction rather than change the habits of a man in pyjamas. I can always just take a deep breath and smile. And fumble for Uncle Smirnoff's number on my easy dial.
