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Tagged: Thailand Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  hardie karges 8:54 am on August 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: economy, Thailand   

  Thais are marketing maniacs. 

  
  If you don’t believe me, go look in the psychology department of a local bookstore. You might find Tony Robbins or some erroneous zones, but certainly no Skinner, maybe something old but definitely nothing Jung, maybe some Farang named Floyd, but definitely not Freud. It’s all marketing. The local supermarket raises and lowers prices constantly, obviously not in response to changing costs, but to see at what price they max out their profit, or else just to catch some customers off guard buying a product out of habit without checking the price. Or so I assume. Otherwise they’re just berserk. Welcome to Thailand. Given the average Thai person’s math skills, you could certainly trick a few, for example, by charging more per unit of measurement for a large package than a smaller one, simply because people would expect the opposite. That’s why they require prices to be displayed per unit in America. Thais do it because it works. Invariably, the waiters in the local pizza chain will recommend an unadvertised ‘special’ with hastily blurted details that can’t be confirmed until it’s on your plate. Thais will order it every time. The Asian economic miracle, capitalist or communist, is built on the quiescence of its labor force. There are no strikes here, never have been and never will be. Hell of a miracle. If that’s a miracle, then I’m a prophet, complete with profit. Maybe they’re better off in this trickle-down system, or maybe not. They’re probably better off as long as they specialize in it. If everybody specialized in it, then the competitive advantage wouldn’t be so special, and maybe nobody would be getting ahead, though guys might be getting more of it. Asia is the future, like it or not, human beans in little I-pods. Western individualism is a relic of a bygone era, cowboys and Indians with eyeliner and purple sunsets with orange highlights.

   

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  hardie karges 8:04 am on August 17, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: sex ( 39 ), Thailand   

  Sell your face to the highest bidder. 

  
  It’s easier than working. Only that would explain why prominent singers and songwriters and playwrights would give it up to play bit roles in Hollywood movies. The only requirement is that you look, uh, interesting. Not all that many actors are really good, anyway, so there’s not much of a standard to meet, just show up. We’re all whores at heart, so it’s just a matter of price. Evolution drives us prettier by sexual selection. That’s where Thailand comes in, the breeding ground between East and West. About the time Western women were saying, “we don’t want to be sex objects any more,” Thai women were saying, “we do!” The rest, of course, is history. Every half-breed Thai is an experiment in genetics and anthropology, living proof that opposites attract.
   
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  hardie karges 9:27 am on August 16, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thailand, TV ( 3 )   

  Thai TV is terrible, comparable to Bollywood movies, 

  
  full of bad acting and totally lacking in motivation and imagination. Thai commercials are great, something about ‘short-attention-span theater’ I guess. Thai TV is like Chinatown, logos hanging from every possible angle in every possible scene. When the interviewer wants to do somebody outside, they drag the signs along and prop them up against a tree or something. It’s all quite annoying, but entertaining in the kitschy sense. The TV commercials themselves are quite good, however, better than the shows. Thais specialize in the quick thrill, the brief sensation, the sound bite, the short-term encounter. TV shows consist of insipid variety or too-soapy operas filled with over-acting and generally limp plots. Typically somebody does something bad, so something bad happens to him. This is the predominant theme in most Thai literature and is, in fact, the prime message of Thai Buddhism, the Law of Karma, for beginners, typically illustrated by cartoon to streamline the message. It’s important to note that the law of Karma is not a law of physics. Something bad will not happen in direct immediate reaction to a bad initial action, but will happen nevertheless, however long and deviant the path. This allows for the universality necessary in religion. I figure bad actions are their own punishment, but that may apply only to me. The memories carry weapons, remember. Of course, I also figure that nothingness is its own punishment. Tang figures that it’s its own reward.

  hardie karges and lavandula are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    lavandula 11:39 pm on November 11, 2012 Permalink | Reply

    haaaa….. this is my favorite area…. i guess your words are right regarding Thai TV etc… but compared to Bollywood? i have to object the statement. Bollywood acting are full of ‘I am Diva’ or ‘I am Superstar’ even they are acting in sad lines. Over-acting (mostly) and empty… Bollywood storyline such as, A to B to C to A again then back to C then back to B again and at the end, nowhere. I guess Tamil movie is far more better than Bollywood.

    Thai are more to love-lakorn and horror movies… and i have no complain to their movies… refer to Malaysia movies… haiyo…. from the year 70’s until currently, the ‘mouth-language’ are still not tally with the VO recording….

    The Thai commercials are superb….!

    Anyway I do complain with Thai pop/ballad modern music…. Look-Thoong are still far more better than the moderns…. curious…

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      hardie karges 9:50 am on November 12, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Actually I’m a big fan of the films of Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul (Thai: อภิชาติพงศ์ วีระเศรษฐกุล). I like “maw lam” ໝໍລຳ/หมอลำ music, too…

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  hardie karges 8:50 am on August 14, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: language ( 145 ), sex ( 39 ), Thailand   

  Thai is the mother tongue; English is the father. 

  
  Thailand is pragmatic, hot molten pragma oozing from the pores of poster girls and wanna-be models. A million pragmatists walk the streets tonight, looking for succor from some sucker, sympathy for assorted devils. Millions of women are waiting there to smother you, love you to death, kill you with kisses. They smother you with the black hole of ignorance, so you stab them with a prick of your aggression. I think that maybe I’m sexually attracted to ignorance; I guess that’s Nature’s way of getting even. It all balances out. They’re a throwback to an earlier time when men were men and women were women and the twain only met undercover. The fruits of this labor might not even know the push and pull of history that led to such a consequence. They might not even care.

   
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  hardie karges 7:49 am on August 8, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: conception, love ( 49 ), Thailand   

  Immaculate Conception my ass; 

  
  more like Brilliant Idea on Mary’s part, I reckon. Joseph never went to Thailand, so he doesn’t know how this works. Somebody else has all the fun and he gets stuck with the bill. The poor guy didn’t even have money for a camel. I guess the Romans didn’t let much military technology get into the hands of Jews right about then. I guess they were still a novelty then, too. Camels were the last major animal to be domesticated. Ancient Egypt didn’t have them. Muhammad did. I digress. A massage girl did that to me once, a good girl mind you, not a prostitute. Well, she cozies up to me all of a sudden as if it were waiting to happen all along. For better or worse, I had to leave the country within the week, so no time to get serious (Th. see liat), put it in the oven and set the timer. Well, when I got back a couple months later, she was round as a beach ball. Judging the dates, I’d saw she definitely knew she was pregnant when she all of a sudden became attracted to me. What kind of protection do you wear against this?

   
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  hardie karges 7:45 am on August 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Family ( 6 ), history ( 42 ), Thailand   

  Asians love the past 

  and the things they have no control over, like family, DNA. Asia loves the past, and so tries to bury it under fresh concrete. The things you love are a heavy burden; they hold you back. Westerners love the future, freedom, and choice. So we preserve the past in art and architecture; otherwise we’d have none. Our families are scattered and strewn, battered and blown, by dare and design, by work and quirk. The reasons don’t always rhyme. My wife Tang doesn’t understand that we don’t have ‘homelands’, a place of birth with an extensive nuclear family radiating outward. Hell, we don’t even have a word for it. It took me ten minutes to think of ‘homeland’ and now I feel like an apartheid sympathizer. The only thing radiating outward from our nuclear families is fallout. The only part of the US that’s similar is the Deep South, with its second and third cousins twice removed. In Thailand it’s not just feudal; it’s Biblical. A few years ago before Thailand got fully off its butt and on to its computerized system, everyone had to go back ‘home’ to vote, that is, back to from where they came, like Joseph and Mary going home for Christmas, riding a donkey, carrying somebody else’s baby.

   
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  hardie karges 7:34 am on August 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: entertainment ( 3 ), Thailand   

  Thai waitresses will ask you if you want more beer 

  when the bottle’s empty, not the glass you’re drinking from. That’ll help you lose count, for sure. I still can’t figure out what that final cube of ice riding on top of the glass is for, I guess to clean your upper lip so that nothing suspicious drips into the glass. It’s hard to drink with an ice cube up your nostril, though there it is, every time. The East loves conformity and predictability every bit as much as the West loves diversity and individualism. In Thailand audiences clap when a performer begins a song, and usually know every word that comes out of the human jukebox’s mouth. Only in a large show would a performer be expected to do a set of his own choosing. Thai ‘artists’ delight in reproducing a picture in its exact detail as if a human camera, while most non-representational work looks stiff and forced, derivative, that is, copied. To copy from a photograph would evoke abject horror in any art class in the Western world. In the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai, they take center stage.

   
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  hardie karges 8:02 am on August 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thailand   

  In Thailand sheets go on top of the bed, 

  
  so you can find them, I guess. Or maybe they’re just proud of them, especially if there’s two. It’s hard to find a matching set. That’s no problem for hotels; they just use basic white and forego the contoured edges. For domestic use, the set is usually a contoured sheet and a matching blanket. The blanket usually gets folded on the end of the bed. Why do you need a blanket in Thailand in the first place? Hey, it gets cold up here in the Triangle! Actually it DOES get cool for a few months in the winter, cold enough that you’re glad to see it go. There’s no house heat, remember. Of course, if I turn on the fan at night, then Tang’s deep under the covers, while I’m on top of it all, crack to the breeze.

   
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  hardie karges 8:25 am on August 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thailand   

  In Thailand refrigerators are more like crispers, 

  
  coolers, or cupboards than food preservation devices. Potato chips go straight into the refrigerator, while fresh eggs might never. Tang and her son Jeng frequently eat something sweet before a meal, following up with potato chips afterward. Leftovers go straight into the pie-safe (remember those? Neither do I, but all my exes were antique buffs), never a fridge. Did I mention that Tang had TB when I met her? I’ve accused her of looking for a Farang to take care of her family after her imminent death, but she denies it. Fortunately, with Farangs come cures. I spent one hour on the Internet and correctly diagnosed what three Thai doctors had missed. She’s now had enough AIDS tests to last a lifetime, though. Thais like easy answers, magic pills that cure everything, at once and forever.

   
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  hardie karges 8:48 am on August 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thailand   

  Thai DJ’s play a song on the radio, and then repeat it. 

  Somehow that seems to ensure that you’ll not be able to get it out of your head, short of psychological or divine intervention. This is like subtle brainwashing, though for no apparent benefit nor reason, just an unwillingness to say, “it’s over”. My wife Tang will go to a party of her friends, mostly fellow ‘wives of foreigners’, and not only will it typically last at least half the day, but they’ll move it somewhere else the next day. Talk about a moveable feast! There’s just no proportion to much of their activities and little sense of partaking of diversity in little doses regularly. Tang’s father will stop at a soymilk stall on the way home and buy a liter or two for four people and it will be gone within hours if not minutes. If I do the same, it’ll last a week or so. Refrigeration is still a relatively new concept, and though appreciated for its chilling esthetic enhancement, is little thought of as a way to delay the spoilage of food. Don’t even think about putting a real dairy product in a Thai person’s coffee. ‘Cream’ is a white powder that comes in a can.