Salt, Coffee, Mercury and Gold

There is a Thai lady who owns and runs a typical Thai street food cart. She sets up about 9 am in the morning and works until about 9 pm for a 12 hour day. I consider her teh salt of teh earth. She works her butt off but is always in good humour and always has a smile for Thavorn, Jaidan and I. lately she has acquired a farang boyfriend who sits beside her cart for 3 hours for a lunch and to keep her company.

Here's a couple of pics of her. Please excuse the back lighting ... was not thinking when I took the shots. BTW, all pics are taken by my Note 3 and immediately transferred to my DropBox account (1 Terra byte) from where I choose to import to this blog. Quick and dirty but makes it easy for me.

Thavorn ,Jaidan and I like to frequent CoffeeBean because it is air conned and gives us a break from the heat when we are walking to somewhere. It is at the end of Soi 22 which is the street we live on so we have to pass it. Luckily they have many specials like buy one get one free. Jaidan likes the blueberry muffins and so do I.

Thavorn and Jaidan at CoffeeBean.

A couple of days ago I noticed Thavorn scooting along the bedroom floor chasing something. It turns out it was a little silver ball that she was trying to pick up but was being unsuccessful. She looked like a cat chasing a ball of yarn. I became intrigued and offered to help. It did not take me long to realize that it was a liquid and was mercury which is very dangerous. I asked her where it came from and one of her kids had broken a glass thermometer and the mercury had run out on to the floor. I showed Thavorn how to push it onto some cardboard and then into a plastic bag that we disposed of in the garbage which I know is bad. I then decided to open all the windows so that any vapor the mercury had let off coud escape to the great outdoors and not be inhaled by Jaidan.

I then explained to Thavorn the periodic table and how some of the elements were a little bit strange and some quite dangerous. I have fond memories of one of my ex student (let's refer to him as Pat as that is his name :-) stealing some potassium from the chem lab at St. Pius X in Ottawa, getting a little bit worried about it, and flushing it down the toilet which subsequently exploded. I found him in the office awaiting the vice principal and when he told me what he did I could not stop laughing, much to his consternation. Thavorn found the story quite funny as well.

Fast forward to yesterday and Thavorn is concerned that some of the gold jewelry we bought is fake, gold plated instead of 24 carat as advertised. It sure looked that way to me as tiny bits of silver were showing through. I told her that we would go see the gold shop tomorrow and see what gives or get our money back. So, thinking the worst, and loaded for Thai bear, off we went.

Turns out the gold smith was pretty savvy and said the gold had reacted with some chemical and that he would put it in a bath to clean the gold. He came back a while later with the gold all shiny and intact and told Thavorn to be careful if spraying with some perfumes or cleaning with some products. By this time, the light bulb was going off in my head and when I got home I did a little research on the net. This is what I found.

Mercury dissolves to form amalgams with gold, zinc, and many other metals.

Obvious, Thavorn had got some on her fingers and transferred it to her ring and necklace where it reacted and bonded to the gold forming a silver substance of some sort.

So what was the lesson I learned today. Some things you learn in school are useful and don't always assume the worst when dealing with Thais.

TTYL