MOICHENDIZING!

What with the sweatstains oozing off any cold bev and cold bevs being a nigh-necessity in the average workaday, I've been looking at double-walled or vacuum mugs.  So far, all I've found have been high-end luxury imports in uppity department stores, or those brought by farangs from America; no local equivalent of the Stanley-knockoff at the local equivalent of Wal-Mart.  

Were I to invest in such an item, it would increase my dish collection substantially.  For a while I had three bowls and a plate, but the plate was reinforced styrofoam that gave way once when my washing got overly vigorous, and one of the bowls was a reinforced cardboard jobbie with a packet of insta-noodles.  So now I have a two spoons, two knives, a rotating collection of chopsticks gathered from the supermarket sushi case, an uber-placisticized styrofoam mug, a ceramic bowl I bought from a potter on the coast, and a ceramic bowl that came as incentive to buy an about-to-expire jug of milk.  

For the record: at this point, when confronted with a plate, knife, and fork, I got confused and resorted to leaning close so I could bite off spoonfuls of noodles.  And I know that there was once a time, and likely will be again, that attacking fried chicken primarily with a spoon will seem odd.  Just like having two dishes in my "cupboard."

Half of my dishes, as I said, came as a buying incentive.  At the supermart, the day-end sale table is where the day's baked goods, sushi, and hot foods go to draw in a couple Baht before hitting the pig trough.  It's also where things that have been sitting on the clearance table for too long go to turn a few Baht before being passed to an even more backwater fashion culture (this is one of the first stops for the ships carrying dregs left by the Salvation Army).  

The funny thing is that the sale table works: cut-rate sushi? here? where there are no preservatives, little refrigeration, and leftovers are thrown out because they'll spoil before the next day? where food prices are carved more deeply than the stone characters that define the written language? where food is already dirt cheap and it's rare to find a food cart serving seafood that didn't hit the pan squirming? cut price sushi?  Cool!

Day old donuts taped to a bowl so plain in nature and dreary in decor that it couldn't bring in 20 TB on the clearance table?  

Six months later, it's half my dishware.

Still, I have to be careful to think about things.  

The setup is cool because it works: cheap food with free goodies?  

Bring it!

Well, okay, I don't like the rolls with sweetened mayo and ketchup drizzled over hotdogs, and I can't imagine how a 5 litre pink plastic tub with three sides and no bottom could possibly enrich my life, but LOOK!  It's so cheap!

So here I am, cruising the day-end table after it's been picked over: the first, burnt, deep fried fish of the morning, two packs of tamago (egg) sushi, and the lest appealing sorts of mashed-up donuts and hotdog rolls taped to the ugliest glasses and bowls and plastic do-hokeys imaginable.  

It's to the point the deli crew is untaping the shlotchkies to ship to Zanzibar (or maybe Sansibelt? wherever) when I see a sleeve of plain donuts--crushed--taped to a Mr Muscle, screaming orange, two-bit sort of craptastic double-walled cup that I would be appalled to see in an American store and would be inclined to ignore as too bizarre to consider here in Thailand.  

And now I am the punch-proud owner of a double-walled plastic Mr Muscle mug I would never be caught dead paying for except that it was free along with day old donuts.  

How's that for moichendizing?