Category: Chillin’

More notes on emergence

Since quitting smoking is probably the most important decision I made this year, I might as well write about it some more.
Before I quit smoking, I was sure there were a few scenarios in which it would be near impossible to stand strong in the face of temptation after I quit. These situations included:

  1. A victory smoke while standing over the bloody corpses of my vanquished arch enemies
  2. Cognac in one hand, stogie in the other after a magnificent feast of roast swan and eel fingerlings
  3. During the time-honored tradition of smoking friends fucking with someone who’s trying to quit

Well, I haven’t vanquished anyone or eaten swan yet this year, but I did get fucked with pretty hard on Tuesday night. My pal Don called me out for a drink to a new bar about three minutes from the new house. The bartender had worked at the Sukhothai Hotel in Bangkok for 7 years and I went overboard playing cocktail trivia with her, ended up drinking nine drinks in 90 minutes. Went outside for some fresh air, forgetting that the front of non-smoking bars is strictly smoker territory. As mentioned above, I was fucked with.
“Here, just have one hit!”
“Just have one, you know you want it!”
“Here, can you hold this for me? I have to tie my shoe.”
Bastards. I deserved it, though, because I’ve done the exact same thing to friends trying to quit.
Funny thing is though, it wasn’t that hard. I had already stopped for about a week and I knew if I had one cigarette, it wouldn’t be just one, so… It wasn’t that hard.
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What I am finding hard, though, is not smoking in my dreams. I try to resist the temptation in my dreams, but it’s just too hard. And it’s so realistic that I wake up feeling guilty and looking at my wife’s sleeping face to see if she noticed!
Maybe I should just enjoy it… Is smoking in the dream world bad for your health?

Slow Emergence

So I have a big confession to make: I quit smoking on New Years Day.
It’s been a week, a busy week to be sure.
Getting up the nerve to quit was a very difficult thing to do, because I enjoyed smoking so much. I was addicted to the act of smoking more than I was to the nicotine. I pretty much proved this by quitting cold turkey with a pack of nicotine gum in my pocket – I never used it, but it was there in case the nicotine withdrawals got in my way at work or something. The physiological effects that nicotine withdrawal had on me were extreme exhaustion and lethargy. It was like coming down from a 20-year stimulant high, or emerging from a pool of slow-setting epoxy. So of course, I chose this time to move into the new house – in between fugue bouts of narcolepsy, that is.
I figured I could distract myself by keeping busy packing and moving boxes, and it worked very well for the most part. I explained to Nam ahead of time that I might be irritable or go kind of crazy about little things (more so than usual, that is, so we were prepared when that stuff inevitably happened. I experienced an out-of-body rage when I found that a stone lantern I had stored at my housing developer’s office had been broken. I used to experience this level of rage all the time: When it happens, I can actually see myself going berserk and feel regret for what’s about to happen, but usually do not bother trying to stop myself. So anyway, I completely lost it when I saw a stone leg had been broken off and proceeded to smash the lantern into little tiny bits on the concrete outside the office as the secretaries inside looked on in horror. Rage issues, man. I proceeded back home where I sat down on a new couch and immediately fell asleep.
But, you know, other than that, it’s been easier than I thought it would be. I guess it all comes down to having a good reason to quit. I mean, you would figure that decreasing your chances of DYING EARLY would be a really stupendous reason to quit, but it just is not for most smokers. There usually has to be a more immediate motivation. For me, it is the baby. I knew this was coming from five months ago. I knew the baby was coming, I knew we were moving to a new house. I promised Nam I would quit before we moved, and New Years came up at around just the same time, so…
It’s kind of strange. I thought I would have to swear off coffee and alcohol for a while, but I’ve had both this week and they didn’t affect my cravings that much… I think everything’s OK as long as I’m within proximity of Nam and the baby. As long as I avoid solo trips to pool halls, strip clubs, and crack dens for a while, I think everything may turn out just fine.

toluene dreams

So we spent all day cleaning up the new house, something I swore we wouldn’t have to do because labor is so cheap here. As it turns out, the problem isn’t getting people to do menial tasks cheaply (we borrowed some workers from our housing developer for free, even). The problem is getting people to do menial tasks with any degree of proficiency (none) or to the hirer’s satisfaction (ditto). So I spent the whole day painting over stains, removing sprayed furniture glue from our floor tiles with paint thinner, developing new and exciting ways of removing mysterious black stains from our bathroom wall tiles (nylon brush + concentrated dish soap + industrial strength elbow grease). I’d like to say I got really high off the paint thinner, but all I really got was a stinging, burning sensation.on my hands after a couple hours. It brought back memories of helping my parents remodel our Fountain Valley house.
Tomorrow, we pack up and start moving.

hello world

We are flat out at the moment. The week has been very, very busy as we rush to move into the new (98% complete) house during the four day vacation I have from tomorrow. I spent Christmas day waiting for delivery trucks. When they came three hours late, they didn’t have everything they were supposed to have so we had to wait for trucks the next day, too. So pretty much, I hated Christmas again, but in a different way this year.
My experiment living and raising a family overseas is off to a great start. When I can finally stop sinking money into curtains, screen doors, appliances, fixtures, repairs, tweaks, and all the trim needed by this new house, I am going to buy myself a water buffalo. Just for the hell of it. It can feed and water itself around my house, and I shall finally l have my Herd of Buffalo (although Herd of Cow sounds much cooler).
Although I will barely notice it coming and going, I wish you all a very happy new year.

kanebo

We took a trip to Khon Kaen today to hit HomePro (the local mega home center) for various items and made a stop by our favorite mall, Fairy Plaza, on the way back for some double cheeseburger eats, and for Nam to buy some foundation. The girls at the counter insisted on doing Nam’s make up since she’s a card-carrying Kanebo loyalist. It was amazing; just like a car being painted. They stripped off the existing layers of pigment, laid down a solid primer coat followed by 2 main coats and sealant – it was even metallic pearl, yo.
As I sat and watched, I wondered how to say, “Stop painting on my pregnant wife! Only cheap harlots paint their faces with ground fish scales!”, in Thai, but I guess that level of nuance is still a few years off.