A new job, a new city, a new home, a new group of neighbours.

My landlady, in her late-twenties, is youthful, elegant and married. Her husband lives in Bangkok. Her “sister”, who is actually her sister-in-law, is a tall, peculiarly elongated woman who married my landlady’s brother. He, a chubby, bespectacled Thai man, is an agreeable character who is always happy.

An old British man and his Thai wife, of similar age, live upstairs. I have only seen them twice: once on the stairs, when they greeted me as if an old friend, and once in a restaurant that I think they manage together.

Robust in appearance, a stout young farang girl mooches about, driving off on her scooter from time to time. I greeted her with a casual “Hey” once but received nothing but coldness in return. Today she was overheard demanding 299 baht back because the wireless internet has not been working “because of the storm”, as my landlady informed me today.

There is a man, apparently my age, who somehow earns a living teaching at a university. He isn’t approachable, and his name is Patrick. He has short, curly, ginger hair and I’ve been told he’s German, though to look at him I would not have guessed so. He’s said to be quite the man about town, but I don’t intend to make his acquaintance.

Sometimes I see two young Thai girls, dressed up provocatively, sauntering off into the night, rapidly punching the buttons of their mobile phones as they go. They haven’t looked at me yet.

My next door neighbour, though almost 20 years old, still studies at high school. She has told of the reasons why, but I couldn’t quite comprehend them. Something to do with changing her mind about what she wanted to study. She isn’t dim, although she assures me that her university schooling will last just one year. It may be so.

Due to the slightly more expensive living quarters I now reside in, my neighbours are vastly different from the like I was accustomed to in Bangkok. Here, I have been told, there are mostly doctors and nurses who work at one of the two hospitals nearby. I am yet to see most of these individuals. Actually, I’m yet to see most of my neighbours, but gradually I am becoming accustomed with new faces and new curiosities.

There are a few other nondescript characters whom I have caught sight of, but they have been instantly forgotten; not for a lack of a desire to remember them, but because if you go about paying careful attention to every person you come across, you have little time for thought about anything else.

Techno’ tags: Neighbours