Beside a wall of white sandbags that has become a front line in Thailand's battle to prevent an epic season of monsoon floods from reaching Bangkok, needlefish swim through knee-high water inside Sawat Taengon's home.
On one side, a cloudy brown river pours through a canal diverting water around the Thai capital, just to the south. On the other side, homes just like his are unscathed.
Whether floodwaters breach fortified barriers like these this weekend will decide whether Bangkok will be swamped or spared.
As of late today at least, the alarmed metropolis of glass-walled homes and gilded Buddhist temples remained unscathed, and authorities were confident it would narrowly escape disaster.
"We just hope it doesn't go higher," said Sawat, a 38-year-old construction worker whose home had the misfortune of being inside the vast sandbag wall, which runs at least 2.5 miles along a canal in Rangsit, just north of Bangkok's city limits.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's government says most of Bangkok, which lies about six feet above sea level, sits safely behind an elaborate system of flood walls, canals, dykes and seven underground drainage tunnels that were completed over the last year.
The latest floods are posing the biggest test those defences have ever faced.
Adisak Kantee, deputy director of Bangkok's drainage department, reported encouraging signs today.
Runoff from the north had decreased slightly and high tides that could have impeded critical water flows to the Gulf of Thailand have not been severe as expected, he said.
Water levels along the main Chao Phraya River and key canals to the north in places like Rangsit are still manageable, he said. But he said there could be trouble if any critical barriers break.
On a bridge above a flooded canal in Rangsit, Army Col. Wirat Nakjoo echoed the need to be vigilant.
"The worst is not over," he said. "The dams are at near full capacity and there's still a lot of water that needs to be released."
Government workers there were taking no chances, stacking new sandbags atop a canal-side wall about 4.5 feet high (1.4 meters high).
The government says the floods, which have killed 297 people, are the worst to hit the Southeast Asian kingdom in half a century. In a radio address today, Yingluck called them "the worst in Thai history."
Monsoon deluges that have pounded Thailand since late July have affected eight million people and swept across two-thirds of the country, drowning agricultural land and swallowing low-lying villages along the way. More than 200 major highways and roads are impassable, and the main rail lines to the north have been shut down.