I am so pissed off with 1and1 this week, on Monday and Tuesday my email was down, and now this morning its down again! I pay these wankers for a hosted Microsoft Exchange account because I need a robust mail solution for work, what’s the freaking point if its down for three days a bloody week?

On a slightly different note, it occurs to me that I meet more loonies here in Surin than I have ever met anywhere else. Let me briefly introduce a few of them.

• Ghost Butterfly Man – This Thai guy frequents the small cafe across the road from my apartment, he only knows two words of English, the word ghost and the word butterfly, and he insists on having a conversation with me based around those two words whenever I see him, gripping stuff!
• Idiot Samlo Man – Another Thai guy, he rides a samlo, which is similar to a rickshaw. He is a complete idiot, he see’s me pulling out of the apartment block on my motorcycle, so he stops to ask me if I need a ride, what the fuck?
• Dance Freak Woman – This Thai woman works in the local food market selling meat, but once a week she turns up in the restaurant across the road from me, dumps a ton of change into the juke box and stands there dancing in the middle of the restaurant for a few hours, really weird.
• Take My Dog Man – He lives in a wooden shack on the land next to my apartment block, every time I see him he tries to give me one of his dogs, horrible ugly things with an entire ecosystem going on under their fur.

This is just a handful of the wacky characters I deal with every day in this town, honestly its fruit cake central around here, so I fit in well!

Some really very annoying things happening here at the moment, firstly we have been without running water for two days now and it’s starting to get bloody awkward, in typical Thai fashion they are not able to keep the water pumping when it’s raining this hard, god knows why.

Then there is the electricity, it’s been off more than it has been on for the last 4 days and it’s causing me severe work problems, rumour has it that when there is a bad storm the under sea cables move so they switch the power off. Again, typically Thai, they don’t fix it properly they just keep patching it up.

And now lets talk about my once lovely garden, I went into town today as it had stopped raining finally and the sun was out. When I came home I discovered that the guy who owns the house had been working whilst I was out and has dug a damn great big ditch all around the house, presumably for drainage. Now my lawn is ruined, my garden looks like a freaking construction site and he has just piled the mud up on the sides of the ditch so you can’t even get into the house without walking through dirt. Bloody annoying.

Sometimes, just sometimes this place really pisses me off.

The insurance company that I used when I shipped my goods from the UK to Thailand have just contacted me. They sent me a list of what was covered and what was not covered. It seems that two little words have cost me a fortune. Why did I write ’sundry items’ on that bloody box? It turns out that unless the item was actually named (how the fuck can you name every item inside 4 tea chests on the single sheet of paper they supply you?) they will not pay out for it.

I think I am going to name this year ‘Bend me over’ year cos’ I seem to be getting shafted left right and center at the moment. Ahh well, never mind, no use getting upset as nothing can be done. Go with the flow and see where it takes us I guess.

On a higher note, myself and Nuth finally managed to agree on what we will grow on the farm in Surin, we have settled on flowers, mostly orchids. What a strange life, I would never have imagined that I would ever be an orchid farmer. Now all I need is the damn money to buy the land, well I have the money to buy the land, it’s the house that’s a problem, we can’t live in a tent!

So I’m starting the ‘Mac the farmer’ fund, target needed £10,000 current balance £0.00, please give generously! All donators will receive a personally signed orchid in a presentation box from our first crop. Of course it might not look too good after a 3 week journey on a boat but hey it’s the thought that counts right?

I woke up this morning, well actually this afternoon as I was working until 4am last night and wondered where the cat was? Then I remembered, he doesn’t live here anymore! That’s right, we only had him for one day.

The people who gave him to us have two cats, we took one of them, they failed to find a new owner for the second. They called me up yesterday afternoon and said the remaining cat was ‘depressed’ at being alone. I resisted the urge to tell them to feed it some Prozac with it’s next bowl of whiskers and politely indicated that I was sorry to hear it.

They then explained they wanted my cat back, and that they intended to leave the two cats living around the empty house fending for themselves in the hopes that the next people who rent it will take care of them. Personally I think they are bonkers, how can they be concerned that one cat is depressed on one hand and unconcerned that both will now have nobody to take care of them on the other? Then again they are these weird Yoga types (please note I’m not talking about the form of Yoga must people would recognise in the UK, this is the full on head fuck cult kinda thing), they tend to have some funny ideas about life, personally I always think these kind of people are just looking for a crutch or a safe place to hide. Thank god I grew up and put my ’spiritual’ phase of life behind me quite some time ago. I must have been so tedious to deal with in those days.

Nuth is quite upset, she says she doesn’t like cats very much but I kept catching her talking to it and playing games with it, all she had to say when they drove away with the cat again was ‘ting tong farang’ which means ‘crazy westerner’.

She’s now talking about going to find a kitten, so all is not lost, just a shame we had to say goodbye to such a great cat.

Now what am I going to do with all this cat food in the cupboard?