Mrs. Boss’ Recovery and a Hotel Update
Well Mrs. Boss is back on the road to recovery — vis-Ã -vis full sightedness. Having undergone her much delayed eye surgery a couple of weeks ago, she spent the ensuing week sporting an eyepatch, thus resembling a beardless pirate. She has recently swapped her eyepatch for a pair of sunglasses, which are worn all day and night; although the pirates of Pattaya may have gone, the Chonburi mafia appear to have replaced them. I am advised that the eye will be all seeing very shortly. This is, of course, news to me in that, as far as I was concerned, even with only one good eye Mrs. Boss was all seeing — well certainly as regards anything I may have been up to. I now shudder at the thought of what my fate will be when she has two perfectly functioning organs of vision and, perhaps, it is I that should be keeping my eyes wide open!
The surgery, fortunately, went without a hitch and Mrs. Boss was allowed to leave hospital after only a couple of nights. She, as with the rest of our clan, decamped from home to hotel so she could be on hand for emergencies, or so I understood. The reality was that Mrs. Boss was able to direct operations from the hotel’s fourth floor and order people, when I say people I actually mean me, to bring her food on a regular basis. My exercise programme was put to one side as I spent a week trotting up and down to the fourth floor at least ten times a day tending to my dear wife’s requirements. I am certain that were it I in this position, Mrs. Boss would have insisted on me taking a first floor room, but perhaps I am just being churlish here.
I love my wife dearly as all of you who know me or have read my stories will readily acknowledge. Yes, I do make her out to be a tad tyrannical at times, but I only do this because she is! This woman truly puts the fear of whatever into me especially as she always seems to be one step ahead of my every move. She appears to know exactly what I am going to do before the thought has even permeated my brain. This talent of hers, of course, is only necessary at times when I am allowed to roam the streets as on my own — rare, very rare, occasions. I am quite certain Mrs. Boss is leading a movement to have electronic tagging made compulsory for men as part of the wedding ceremony. In future wedding ceremonies will see the woman getting a gold ring and the man an electronic ankle bracelet with the words “I know where you are” engraved thereon.
Fortunately for me Mrs. Boss is not an avid reader of instruction manuals. A few months ago she purchased the latest Nokia mobile phone which, among several thousand other features, includes some form of mobile number tracking system. Simply by entering another mobile number she can trace the exact whereabouts and movements of the owner of that particular phone. Now I know little about this technology and, in particular, its relation to privacy laws but I presume one has to give permission for a person to use your telephone number for such purposes. Assuming this is the case it provides little or no solace for me as I will hardly be in a position to refuse such a request. I know, eventually, she will learn how to operate this feature, probably the first time I take a few days trip away on my own. She will not only then be able to pinpoint my exact location but no doubt able to deliver a bloody print out proving it as well! So I am already, in all reality, electronically tagged.
Putting to one side my fears of virtual house arrest, I believe it is about time I updated you with the happenings at Jasmine Mansion. It has been another one of those rare, yet most welcome, periods of time when everything is all sweetness and light. Yes we are understaffed, but that is hardly ground breaking news. For this time of year, we have enough bodies to cope — even if it means this particular body doing more coping than it would care for. We have had an up and down Low Season thus far, May through October, with May and June being very busy months, July starting brightly and then tailing off and a dreadful August. September is heavily booked and we expect this to be easily the best September since fully opening back in 2004 (wow, that now seems decades ago!). October is already looking quite healthy and then we enter High Season and, hopefully, the chance to pocket some cash!
The staff we do have are all very capable, although I know one girl is on the verge of securing a visa to move to the UK with her husband and another is going to leave us in a few days time when her boyfriend is here. Despite this, I still remain relatively content with the situation. This is the time of year when we try to undertake most of our improvements and refurbishment works. The room decorating is underway, water pipes have been replaced to allow a better pressure throughout the hotel and air conditioners (and other equipment) are undergoing a full maintenance programme. The air-con situation, however, is something that did get me a little piqued, although these days nothing really surprises me to any great degree.
We employed a maintenance man on a full-time basis a few weeks ago. We had gradually been worn down by the failure to find anyone remotely competent, despite the multitude of contractors employed over the past three years. He is a very able young man, a qualified electrician, and has worked in Europe, so he knows and understands safety issues and the need for high standards of work. His first task was to inspect, maintain and, where necessary, repair all of the hotels air conditioning units. After inspecting six or seven of these units he came to see me to advise that all of the air conditioners would break down in the next few weeks. Now a psychic wife I can just about handle but, however helpful it may prove to be, a maintenance man who can also see into the future is rather too much for me to cope with. He dispelled my initial thoughts quite quickly though as he explained whoever we had been working with in the past had deliberately damaged the machinery to ensure a fault would occur. This would obviously necessitate us calling them back out again so they could collect another fee and, presumably, set up another problem to appear a month or so further down the line!
The concept of return customers or repeat business is something that appears totally lost of the Thai individuals or, for that matter, small-to-medium sized enterprises. The mentality is simply one of getting as much money as one can for doing as little as humanly possible here and now. The “tomorrow never comes” attitude is something that I still find difficult to grasp especially as, at the time of writing this, for me tomorrow has relentlessly arrived on no less than 19,774 occasions. You would really have thought once someone crashed through, say, the 5,000 barrier they would more or less be fully expecting tomorrow to turn up as normal. I try to imagine what it must be like inside a Thai mind every time they wake up. I can only surmise it is akin to a goldfish getting all exited about the new scenery outside of its bowl that magically appears every fifteen seconds.
