Perhaps Robbie Burns came to Thailand. With a slight amendment, his poetry rings so true here:

The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft always awry.

Never mind the mice, whatever you try and undertake always gets screwed up at some point.

Take my condo reflooring project, currently on day two of an estimated four (probably five, maybe six). Having rejected the rather cheap offerings of an obvious alcoholic, we decided to go with Boonthavorn, probably the largest tile supplier in the country, with a monster outlet in Pattaya. They come and measure the rooms, we choose the tiles, they give us a price that is more than the alcoholic, but not too steep, and we say yes. Tiles are all paid for and on Monday at 0830 the Boonthavorn project manager arrives on site, complete with crisp shirt and clipboard. Confidence is inspired and the workers duly arrive and rip out the floors.

No sign of the manager this morning, but here come the workers and here come the tiles; similar but slightly different tiles for each of the rooms. They start work and before too long there are tiles on the floor in both rooms. This is all going rather well. Then the phone rings.

It is she who must be obeyed in a state of some panic. The salesgirl from Boonthavorn (not the manager), has noticed that only the tiles for the bedroom had been delivered to our condo. Which means that the tiles they were happily laying in the computer room onto quick-drying cement were the wrong tiles. Pass the phone to the chief worker who gives that “oh god I have fucked up but I am going to smile anyway” grin, and then rushes to lift up the tiles in the computer room and transfer them to the bedroom before they have to be chiseled off the floor.

So now the computer room looks like this:

P1010539

I think I will cancel the tiles that have not been delivered and go with the “hastily scraped away in a panic” concrete look.