I consider myself fortunate to have met so many interesting people during my lifetime. And they keep coming, sometimes when I least expect it.
Last week I went cycling at Benjakitti Park to try out my "new" used bicycle. It was smooth riding for two rounds. Then there was a weird "fffttt" sound, and pedalling started to get heavy going.
I looked down. Sure enough, my back wheel was flat. It's not the first time this has happened to me with used bicycles, and I'm beginning to wonder if I am jinxed or if it something to do with bicycles hitting a certain age, much like old cars.
Or old people, for that matter.
Luckily, I live not too far from the park and I was bracing myself for the hapless task of wheeling the bicycle back home when I heard someone call out in a loud voice.
I had no idea who they were calling, so I didn't pay attention.
The voice then switched from Thai to English. "Hey! Come here!"
I turned around. Sure enough, there was a man by the bicycle rental booth waving at me. My first thought was that I wasn't allowed to take the bicycle down the jogging lane, so I obediently moved in his direction. "Come here!" he repeated.
"I'm Thai," I said.
"Then why in the world didn't you turn around when I called you at first?" he asked.
"How was I to know you were calling me?"
He had noticed my flat tyre, and waved me to the bicycle shed to pump it, which I thought was very nice of him. But before I reached the shed, he started going on about a customer who had crashed his rental bicycle and refused to pay for it.
"Look at that!" he said in a huff, pointing to a disastrously bent wheel. "I charged him 400 baht but he wouldn't have anything to do with it. He said it was an old bicycle anyway and just left. I almost punched him!"
At that point I was wondering whether this was a good idea after all, but it was too late. My bicycle was in the shed and he was checking the wick, then pumping the tyre.
"Don't mess with me. I can be bad when someone messes with me. I've killed someone before."
"You're joking!" I said.
In his chatty, almost ostentatious, way, he began to regale me with a story of how he used to supervise thousands of rai of sugar cane fields in Suphan Buri and Kanchanaburi for his "Pa", who was not his real dad. Sugar cane labourers can be sneaky, stealing cut sugar cane in the middle of the night before it can be trucked off. He had to deal with them firmly. There was no question about it. Pa was very close to local police chiefs and if he had known, he could have helped. But he didn't tell Pa, and was arrested and jailed for 10 years.
In a surreal moment, a middle-aged lady walked in and presented him with a Tupperware box of fried catfish and gourami, then left us to get on with business.
"That's my wife. Can you guess how many wives I've had?"
My mind was reeling. "Five?"
"No, six!" he announced, with a certain amount of triumph. "I haven't seen the first one for over 25 years! She lives in Krabi. Number Two lives in ... Number Four passed away ..."
"You mean they are all your wives at the same time?"
"There are still several young girls lining up to be my girlfriends, but I brushed them all off! They all want to be with Phi Happy!"
"Your name is Happy?"
He went on to say Number Six was well off, with hundreds of rai of rubber plantations in Kalasin.
"You have a way with words, perhaps that's how you charm the girls," I said. He seemed quite pleased with that.
Meanwhile, he had taken off the tyre, checked the outer tyre for splinters, then checked the inner tube for leaks. Finding a hole, he brought out his gear and patched it for me as I listened to his life story.
Within half an hour, my bicycle was ready. I asked how much I owed him, and he charged me 40 baht. I gave him a little extra, thanking him for the effort.
"At your service, every day until 7pm," he said, smiling.
"Thank you, Mr Happy! You're the man!" I thought, breathing a sigh of relief as I walked out of the shed, alive.
Usnisa Sukhsvasti is the features editor of the Bangkok Post.