Having escaped lunch with the project manager, with the excuse that I had not done any work all week so there was nothing to discuss, I thought I was set for one third brain power usage for the rest of the day.

Alas, this was not the case. I received a phone call, while I was on my way home, from a garage where my car is being quoted for some work. They said they wanted to overhaul the gearbox at a cost of Baht 86,000, which is about £1,200!!! At this point my brain was reluctantly forced into overdrive.

They wanted to send me the info on the quote, but I didn't have a fax machine, so I went to the garage myself. I had to wait for 2 bloody hours before I saw someone about the damned quote. I decided not to get the work done, since I wouldn't be able to afford it for the next 2 years and they were a bunch of idiots. This meant I had to call a towing service to take my car home - yet more hassle.

I can normally communicate in Thai fairly well, not brilliantly, but well enough to get by in daily life. Communicating with the driver of the tow truck was a different story. I think he had a really strong accent or was speaking in an up-country dialect, and he had trouble understanding what I was saying at first, which was quite worrying since I had to give directions to my house.

We managed it though, but the mental effort involved brought the Kraiklyn experiment to a premature end. To get back to an average of one third brain capacity usage before requiring sleep or losing my mind and other functions, I would have to be braindead for a couple of hours, which isn't practical.