Kalina

Kalina

End 1999, while on my visit to Thailand and meet my new employers, I had a last meeting before returning to Belgium. The meeting place was at the Condominium of my new employers in Bangkok. We discussed the details of my job at the Petro-Chemical plant in Rayong, my salary for the job, etc.

Around 6 pm, we took a break to eat dinner.

The daughter of one of my future employers, Kalina, was also present at the meeting, but playing in the swimming pool. Kalina's father was divorced and his wife left him with their daughter.

As we were having a break, Kalina (about 9 years old), took the opportunity to have a chat with me and showing me the facilities she had at the Condominium.

She grabbed my hand and lead me to a hall full of music instruments. Proudly, she started to play on a piano. She was learning to play the piano by a teacher engaged by the Condominium. But she didn't know that I had several degrees in Music and had been teaching Music in a school in Belgium.

I spotted an organ and switched it on. Then I started to play the Toccata from the Toccata & Fuga in D minor, BWV565, by J. S. Bach.
Kalina stood there as if something extra-terrestrial was happening.

When I finished playing, about 5 minutes later, she ran to her father and screamed "Carlos can play music too". The rest of the evening, Kalina was sitting next to me and asking me about where I did learn music, etc.

The next day, I was leaving Thailand.
Ready to pack my bags in Belgium and start the new job.

Kalina's father was driving me to the airport. At the airport, Kalina gave me an envelope with a letter she had written last night.
The letter (written in German) said:

"Hello my best friend Carlos!
I hope you always stay happy and healthy.
I'm very glad that I met you, because it's very very rare to find a good, lovely, perfect, cheerful person like you.
I thank you for your kindness.
Lots of love and kind regards.
From your Kalina."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning Thai

Image
Learning the language The first years I was in Thailand, I was working full time and didn't had time to learn an other language. But I learned very fast the most words I needed for my daily life. Tell a taxi driver to turn left (leew sai), turn right (leew qua), etc. Also, I learned to order a few kind of food and drinks in Thai. When the work in Rayong was finished and we moved to Nakhon Ratchasima, alias "Korat" and I married my wife, I wanted to learn more Thai language. I spoke already 6 languages because of my work and learning a 7th language would be nice. One evening, as we were chatting with my friends about our new company at the "makeshift office", the local "Gayang shop" (Barbecue chicken). My wife was also there, chatting with the wife's of the members of our company. When I ordered food and a drink in Thai, my wife noticed this and looked at me as if I had crossed a line. Arrived back home, she told me that I didn't need to lea...
Read more

Leaving Thailand

Image
Leaving Thailand Living in Thailand was never my first choice, but Thailand was a nice country to live in. Everything was dirty cheap, unless you wanted to keep eating Western food and have a Western lifestyle. Eating a full "Pad Grapao lae Kai daew" in a roadside restaurant costed 20 Baht (0.60 Euro). But as I grew older and my Health started to go downhill, life in Thailand became less enjoyable. Also, the cost of living (or "Staying alive") became very expensive for me. I needed to go frequently to a doctor visit at the hospital and I was feed a lot of medication.  Daily tasks became a burden to me. What made me decide to leave Thailand? 1. In 2022, I got the message of my doctor at the hospital that my Kidney function was degradating very fast and that I would soon need to start to do a Kidney Dialysis. The cost of this would be a very big junk of my income. 2. The level of corruption at Immigration and other departments started to become a burden. At the ...
Read more

The start of my life in Thailand

Image
The start of my life in Thailand. On November 1, 1999, I was invited by a German group in Thailand to go work with them on a project for a multi-national Petro-Chemical industry in Rayong. I was working in Belgium for an Incinerator company and looking for new experiences. I was living alone in Belgium and spending most of my life in other countries, building and starting up the new installations. I accepted the invitation and started to work as a Project Manager in Thailand. My dream was never to stay in Thailand, but rather to work 5 or 10 years more, buy a Finca in Spain and spend my old days in my home country. During my work in Thailand, I meet a woman who liked me and was ready to start a relation with me. I told her that my plan was to return to Spain and she was OK with that. We talked about how we saw our future together and everything seemed to be fine. In one of our chats, she said that she was "CUT (Sterilized)" and could have not children anymore. I ...
Read more