For the first time in a long time, I stayed up beyond midnight this week to watch the latest product launch from Apple. The item of interest was not the new iPhone; I have the 5s and plan on skipping a few generations before buying a new version (unless something really special comes along, in which case the 5s will be “stolen” if I can get a good price for it).

The sale of our previous abode, and a move into more modest accommodation, freed up some cash.

Being a fiscally cautious man, with a history in a profession that could loosely be called accounting, I was obviously keen to invest any surplus funds such that I would maximise returns whilst minimising risk; in order that the cash would appreciate and be available at a later date for… well I wasn’t really sure what for; but obviously it was sensible to invest it for the future (although I did plan to release some of it for a guilty pleasure which would probably be something with the word “Leica” embossed upon it).

The other option that hovered around the periphery of my tortured brain was the acquisition of a interesting car; with my definition of “interesting” being something fun to drive; with reasonable performance, road holding and handling, and with running costs that would not eliminate what would be a severely reduced bank balance.

The problem with this option was that all the cars that held any level of interest to me were either fully or partially imported and, thanks to Thailand’s duties and taxes, came in at a price at least double to what they would cost in Europe and with engines restricted in both cubic capacity and horsepower to avoid escalation of duty rates to levels that result in prices that move beyond obscene into the incomprehensible.

But it was an option that made zero economic sense, completely unjustifiable whichever way you looked at it. I decided to kill off the idea by talking to she who must be obeyed who would undoubtedly ridicule the idea of wasting a huge amount of cash on something so frivolous. Her response was unexpected.

“You are getting old. How many years do you think you have left where you could enjoy a performance car? You should get the car you want now and enjoy it, there are no pockets in a shroud.” As always, I had to agree with her.

So I got this and it is all her fault:

She who must be obeyed managed our house renovation by splitting the work into a number of phases. By the time we moved in we were up to phase 4, and already she had prepared a job list for future phases.

The main outstanding on the day we moved in was the store room, desperately required to house the mountains of crap that I refused to discard (compared to the even bigger mountains of crap that my wife refused to discard which emphatically had to be stored in the house). This took another week of construction and it was not until late on a Friday afternoon that I finally had access; and by nightfall I already had racks of shelves installed. By Saturday evening I had completed the transfer of junk from the back of the house to the store; and at some point in the future, probably February, I will attempt to sort out the pile of what currently looks like a feeble jumble sale.

For no particular reason, I take she who must be obeyed out for breakfast on a Sunday morning. We have our usual haunts, but yesterday morning we decided to try somewhere different. The outlet had popped up on Facebook, looked promising; and so off we went to Livv Bakery in Soi Kao Talo.

Initital impressions were favourable. The staff was welcoming, the decor was charming and there was reasonable music playing; bring on the breakfast!

In a previous life I played music almost constantly, and in support of this I had a rather fine hi-fi system built around Mission speakers and Audiolab amps. Over the years the need moved more towards video, and the amplifier became a Yamaha processor, and the number of speakers more than doubled to provide a surround sound experience. My last condo even had cables routed under the floor to feed the rear speakers and to minimise marital strife.

One of the obvious advantages of now having a garden is that there should be candidates for my macro lens within easy walking distance of the front door.

A quick walk around the property this afternoon revealed this:

The plan was simple enough. Move the remains of our possessions to the new home on Friday. On Saturday, arrange for various rejected items to be loaded onto a truck to be sent to the relatives. On Sunday, arrange for the condo to be cleaned. One day next week, go to the land office and transfer the condo. A lot to do, but manageable. Then the new owners called on Thursday and asked “can we do the transfer tomorrow?”

The current abode now contains a TV, two computers, a mattress, two pieces of furniture, a few clothes, and a cat. The future abode looks like a container storage park, if the containers were actually MamyPoko nappy boxes stuffed with irrelevant household shit.

On Friday a small truck will transport everything apart from the cat to the new abode; we will transport the cat; then we will finally be living in our new place.