Saturday Strip

The Winds of Change

So yesterday morning November 8, 2024, a call came in from Bangkok on the ghost phone. I was able to answer it.

I have never told the story of the ghost phone on substack, so I will now. As some of my readers know I was without a smartphone for a time. Although I would love to attribute this to some voluntary action on my part, I am not in an easy position right now for both me and my husband to be totally phoneless in Thailand. Instead this loss was due to what I thought was my second phone in a row being stolen from the camp charger which is only open from around 10:00 PM through 7:00 AM and is located next to the men’s public bathroom.

Now I am pretty sure that the first phone was indeed stolen and I even have a good idea of who might have done it, as the jackass answered the phone a few times later before presumably swapping out the SIM card phone number. There was a friend of the guitarist in the camp who knew the PIN unlock code on that phone and who left the camp perhaps one day after that phone was stolen. Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok supposedly called me on that now defunct phone number several times. All of those calls were obviously missed by me.

Due to my situation I bought a new phone and SIM card phone number in early September, a Yes Phone for 1800 baht or so. Me and Ka went to Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok where I informed them that the previous Thai phone numbers were no more for us and gave them the new number. I was waiting for results to finally clear for my husband on his maybe tuberculosis diagnosis which would supposedly take eight weeks from the original negative for TB tests taken September, 23, 24, and 25.

Then this second phone disappeared from the camp in Phuket in early October. I remember the morning well. I was charging my phone and laptop at the camp charger. I noticed in the morning that the phone had not charged at all. It would not even power up enough to give a reading. Weird. I thought I took them both off of the charger then and brought them back to our tent.

I noticed when I went to 7 Eleven later that morning that though my laptop was fine, my phone was not in the bag. Now I use the phone for my satellite internet connection at the camp among other things so this concerned me greatly. I tore through the bag, then later tore through the camp. I took everything apart around our tent (and the tent and all things in the area) and I asked other campers who said, perhaps as expected, that the camp charger was next to a public restroom so if somebody had stolen the phone, well, it wasn’t their fault.

I worked off of internet connections at both 7 Eleven and next to Phuket airport for a time. I ordered two new phones off of Lazada both of which were refused at our old address. I’d tried to call the delivery drivers both times to inform them of our new location but they didn’t answer or return my calls in time.

Then at the camp I lifted an old white box some days ago. And there the old Yes phone was, perhaps having sat in a puddle of mud for three weeks or so. I stared at it in amazement.

For one thing we’d moved our tent during the heavy rain at the campsite, but for another thing I am positive that I had checked this exact spot before for the phone. Had I not seen it before, perhaps because it was obscured by a leaf of something?

With no idea what the results would be I took it upon myself to rehabilitate this phone that had been sitting in standing water for three weeks, albeit powered off the whole time. I took it apart component by component. The weather agreed with me one day and after setting the phone pieces out on the blue tarp in the sun for hours and flipping every 20 minutes or so like I was baking something important the condensation on the camera lenses and the screen itself evaporated away. Would the phone ever work again? By that night I was ready to check.

The phone powered up with some charging and looked and acted perfectly for the first few days. Then it powered down and would not turn on. I put some baking soda paste near the connector to combat corrosion. Since then I have had what I have dubbed as ghost phone: it works exactly when it wants to work. This corresponds to the ghosts in the camp, but that is a story for another time.

But it was the correct phone number on file to Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok and it worked quite fine yesterday.

“Yes. Amy? Is this Amy?” The woman asked me on the phone. There’s a weird dichotomy developing between people who call me “Gen” and those who refer to me as “Amy". Mr. Anderson or Neo anyone?

“Yes.”

“I am from Bumrungrad Hospital. I am calling about your husband Wisuttipong. The results of his TB test are in. They are negative. He is okay ka.”

This is excellent news, in case you didn’t know, and was coming in almost two weeks before I expected any results whatsoever. I looked at Ka then. I didn’t know if they needed to speak to him directly.

“So what do we do now?” I asked the woman on the phone.

“Doctor Pinyo can clear your husband for his visa to come to America on Tuesday, November 12.” That’s the pulmonologist. He’s the one who initially cleared my husband in September. Obviously I have a good opinion of this doctor. I have a good opinion of people in positions of authority who say yes rather than making my life a living hell as is the norm. I figure that I had to have pissed off at least 4 or 5 seperate people to have this type of of chaos rain down in the past year or so.

“Can I confirm your husband for Tuesday, November 12? Morning or afternoon?”

”Morning is fine.” I looked at my husband. I’d already considered what to do if they didn’t call me back eventually. By Thanksgiving or so I definitely would have been contacting them to ask questions, and possibly updating them with contact information if ghost phone stopped working again.

Instead we’ve got a lot of packing to do.

Should I trust them this time? Perhaps it’s the Winds of Change. I can’t help but wonder if this is in some way related to the recent election.

I’m not sure you need to understand to much of the geography of the USA to grasp this map of where Trump won versus where Harris won:

All right enough stealing from Patrick.net memes. If I had a cat anymore they would surely be asking

On the other hand this looks like a cult. A suicidal cult to boot:

Meh. Let me drink to my pleasure. I will absolutely miss this place when I am gone. Some nights ago on elections eve I went to the Tops store, where they have both free electric chargers in front and also the most interesting people.

An Australian man named Shawn (unsure of the spelling) was asking who I really wanted for president of the USA. Somehow after he fed me God knows how many Jack Daniels that he couldn’t supposedly drink I produced this story.

“Yes, I prefer Trump.” I told him.

He nodded enthusiastically. He works in gold mining.

Because he was Aussie and he had literally given me Jack Daniels and a lot of it, I shared something I have never mentioned before. It’s completely retarded.

“I think I won a drinking contest when I was 22.”

“Really?” Shawn asked.

I laughed. “Well it went like this. So there were like 25 of us at this camp in Michigan. We’d already done this tubing thing earlier in the afternoon. Some of us had been drinking a bit even then but we put money in for the night drinking at the camp in Michigan.” Steve Swiatecki who had made the arrangements came back with cases upon cases of beer. “So some of us decided to enter a drinking contest.”
I laughed. “Now there were 15 or so of us in on this. The only other two women, they both dropped out by 12 beers in or so. We were left after that first 12 beers with only 4 or 5 heavy drinkers left.” Swiatecki, who had come up with this game, dropped out at 15 beers in or so. My ex Eddie dropped at 17, appropriate I suppose with his March 17 birthday.

“I was really proud that I got past my brother. I mean he’s four years older than me and he’s a guy! He dropped at 19 beers in.”

“So where were you?”

I sighed. “At the end of the night it was just me and a man nicknamed Grandma, an established alcoholic in his forties. Now he says he won the contest with 23 beers over my 22, but I think he was lying.” By that past midnight time there was nobody left to count.

“I think you won.” Shawn said with a twinkle in his eye.

“I think those 22 beers should have won. It’s funny when I think of how I did it. See back then I used to usually drank Natural Ice, which was a cheap beer but was like a 5.5% alcohol content. Swiatecki brought back mostly Natural Light, which was close, but only 4.3%. So I remember thinking at the time this is this piss water beer like drinking nothing at all!”

I realized then that I can almost certainly drink my husband under the table. Here’s to having talents I guess.

“Interesting.”

I laughed.

Hmmm. I have difficulty believing that this is true

So then the German couple came along last night, who were wringing their hands regarding the election.

“I read your government is shut down.” I remarked dryly.

“Well it’s not so bad,” The husband, Henri explained. Somehow Ka got into palm reading with them which forced me to acknowledge something else.

“No palm reader will read my right hand. They always tell me it’s no good and want to look at my left hand only. I have a scar.” I showed both of them.

“What do all these lines mean?” Yannah asked me.

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

I will miss this place dearly. Nai Yang Beach more than anything salvaged Thailand for me. I suppose we can return, of course. It’s just a tent!

Maybe I should update my profile about the drinking contest?

The song seemed appropriate:

I’m planning a deep dig soon enough on some biblical things. There’s been no sea urchins harvested yet which might be a good thing. Where do we go from here?

Buy me a ko-fi