By Steve Graham Magazine Issue 12 Jan-Mar 2010
I don’t believe I would be a million miles away in assuming that 99.9% of households in Udon Thani have a television set. A lot of households have at least one computer that is used for business, education and of course one of Thailand’s main pastimes, games.
Being stingy, when I buy an electrical appliance I expect it to outlive me. In my teenage years, this was a tall order; however, with advances in technology and the shortening of my lifespan, I would hope that even living here in Udon Thani that my electrical goods would have at least a 15 year lifetime.
For this to happen, there is a need for a local trader or repairman who can tempt me to part with large amounts of money to obtain the latest new gadgets and at the same time, be trusted to do the repairs needed to keep my old technology working.
As foreigners, we are used to a different timescale for those things that we think are important and that others may well deem trivial. It can sometimes be very frustrating when we need to have something attended to and find that our urgency is not felt by the people we are asking to help us.
It might be because there is an ever increasing population of foreigners living in this area, but I am finding more and more people who are prepared to meet the outrageous demands that foreigners make and work to timescales and standards that would even put our own countries to shame.
There are many local people who were working for big companies operating out of shopping centres like Central Plaza, who got tired of making money for other people and set out in business on their own. They offer all kinds of repairs and surprisingly, many of them can speak some English too.
As they say, it takes two to tango and if two people really want to communicate, you sing and dance in any language you have, making hand gestures and fools of yourselves until the job is done. This has been happening more and more recently (no, I don’t drink a lot), enabling my aging electrical appliances to get the attention they deserve.
An example of the sort of person I am referring to is Suthat Wannakij who has his own shop in Prachasanti Road. He was a manger of a large electrical shop in Charoensri Complex as it was called then and one day he wasn’t there any more. I found it a bit concerning as I had paid a lot of money for sexy home-theatres and sound systems and was worried that if anything was to go wrong, I would be left high and dry.
Believe it or not, when I was on the computer the other day, I received an MSN message telling me that he had moved to his own shop. He proceeded to give me directions so that I could find him and now we are in contact regularly as his business starts to flourish and he attempts to empty my wallet with tempting offers of the most recent technology. Yes, I have to admit, I am a bit of a gadget man.
- Suthat Wannakij decided that working for himself is better than working for a larger company.
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