yii sip sawng: the price of beerchang in sukathai

i can count from one to five, from ten to fifteen, from twenty to twenty five, from thirty to thirty five, fourty to fourty five, and from fifty to fifty five. and i think i know the word for "hundred" which would get me to five hundred.
things are looking up.
there are smiles all around when i bust it out.
except for the stern and focus-of-steel woman who just made me dinner at the night market. (and i'm pretty excited at the prospect of every town having a night market). she was young, in her late 30s, her husband assisting from a distance, and her son, sporting a radiohead shirt no less, serving. she never looked up. she was busy with orders (which suggests that the whole town knows she is the best).
she cracked a half dozen eggs, single-handed, over the handle of her spatula and into the wok in a few seconds. she added some dark tamarind paste (tablespoon), some peanut oil (two tablespoons), some water (one tablespoon) and sugar (tablespoon). added some chicken and scrambled it all in a wok over a propane burner, spinning the wok around with one hand. the wok never stopped moving, i noticed. she always had it tipping and turning. she guickly boiled some noodles and some cabbage and thin sliced green beans. mixed it together. the orders to-go were folded in a banana leaf, like a twisting pyramid, and pinned with toothpics. my order was lovingly layed on a clean white plate and served with some fresh bean sprouts, a mild green onion top, and some other leek-like vegetable. with a slice of lemon, too.
i thought about that job at the bangkok post all through my wonderful plate of steaming padthai.