RIP George. Punch Jesus in the Nose for Me.
Today is a sad day for people who like to laugh. George Carlin, the legendary comedian and one of my favourite all-time performers, has died at 71, from heart failure. When I was growing up, I listened to Bill Cosby non-stop; my Mom had a ton of his records. They really helped to shape my sense of humour and got me interested in how to entertain a crowd with simply the power of words. As I grew older, my tastes broadened, and I got into Carlin, whose counter-culture rants really hit a chord with me. I identified with his ‘don’t like what I have to say? Fine, fuck you!’ way of looking at things, and - again - my sense of humour and outlook on life was shaped in a small way by his tapes. He wasn’t only anti-authority, he was intelligent, a combination that has for centuries been terrifying those who use fear to retain power (religion, repressive governments, etc). He eloquently spoke the truth, in all its painful glory, and didn’t give a shit what you thought. He was the first person I knew of to take what I felt about religion and put is as eloquently as anyone ever has, in his tour-de-force HBO special You Are All Diseased, which I count as one of my favorite stand up specials of all time. Rest In Peace, you miserable old bastard. And thanks for the laughs.
How to Mangle the Thai Language
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve left Thailand for a vacation back home, only to have someone ask me, “So how much Taiwanese do you speak?” When I tell them that I don’t speak a single word, the quizzical look I get is almost worth the explanation I have to give. Thais, of course, speak Thai, of which the spoken part is a branch of the Tai-Kadai language, which originated in Southern China. The written part of Thai is based on Khmer, which is based on Indic, which is based on ancient Sanskrit. So, as you can see, it’s quite confusing - and we haven’t even talked about writing or speaking yet. To many foreigners, speaking Thai is hugely challenging to do - even more difficult to do well (unless you’re a super-talented polyglot freak like Andrew Biggs, well known in Thailand for his ease with speaking Thai). This is mainly because Thai is tonal, which means that the same word means different things depending on how you say it. I want to go over a few instances and examples that will give you an idea of how much trouble you can get into if you say PEee (older person, used with respect) instead of peEE (ghost).
My first experience with the foibles of Thai came when I was teaching at an all-girl’s high school (in and of itself an interesting experience). Being teenagers, they were of course obsessed with their looks, and often asked me, “Teacher, am I beautiful?“ Whenever a woman asks you this, there’s only one answer - yes. I tried to fit in by saying the Thai word for beautiful - suay - but was often met by horrified stares. It was only later that I learned I was saying SUay (falling tone) instead of suAY (rising tone). How it sounded - Student: Teacher, am I beautiful? Me: Yes, you are cursed.
Below are a few more situations that I’ve experienced, and some words that, if said incorrectly, could land you in either a world of trouble or embarrassment, so be careful.
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Elephants in the Big Mango
For many visitors, walking around Bangkok will allow them a glimpse of many things they would never see at home, some awful, some amazing. Dudes selling fried bugs, beggars with awful diseases, bike paths that end at brick walls and an alarming cross section of social strata that would make a New York subway station seem like a Ku Klux Klan rally (I’m not even sure if that makes sense). Anyway, anything that can seem a bit odd is desirable - there are so many tourists walking around that to stand out from the crowd will guarantee you a better chance of attracting a bit more attention. One of the strangest sites that visitors can see in the steamy, crowded streets of the Big Mango (lovingly copied in reverence to the Big Apple, but with a decidedly more Asian flavour) is an elephant. A huge, lumbering, real life elephant. In Thai culture, they’re highly revered animals, praised for their strength, loyalty and intelligence - one of Thailand’s most popular beers is even named after them (see left) - ‘Chang’ is ‘Elephant’ in Thai. To see one of these magnificent creatures walking down the sidewalk next to motorcycles, taxis and Starbucks is indeed odd. Their handlers - mahouts - carry little bags of sugarcane or fruit, which they sell to tourists for 20 baht per bag, which you can then feed to the elephant. It’s neat and interesting and very, very cool - but please - don’t do it.
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Thailand’s Computer Paradise
Last time I was in Canada, I was - somewhat futilely, I admit - searching for those little keychain license plates with names on them, but with Thai names like Tin, Pik, Nok and so forth. It’s no surprise that I couldn’t find any. The clerk asked me what I was looking for and I told her, mentioning that I live here, which she was pretty impressed with. I had to stifle a laugh, though, when she asked me very seriously, “So, is Thailand like… civilized?” For many, Thailand is a jungled land, where elephants traipse through the cities and natives sleep on moss. Many would be surprised that Thailand actually has access to cutting edge stuff, and most of the time, the best place to go to get it is Pantip Plaza, a Mecca for computer geeks everywhere. Just don’t expect everything to be 100% legit…
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Getting a Thai Driver’s License the Hard Way - Taking the Test
After living here for over 7 years now, I’m familiar enough with the rules and nuances of Bangkok traffic to know that I never, ever want to drive in it. It’s not so much that it’s bad - traffic in India or Vietnam makes Bangkok traffic look like a driver’s ed training course - but rather that my skill sets aren’t useful here. I’m Canadian, so if you want me drive at 80km/h on an icy road with well-defined traffic rules that are strictly enforced and adhered to - no problem. But driving through go-kart-style traffic dodging tuk-tuk’s, bug vendors, stray dogs, motorcycles and pedestrians - and with the wheel on the wrong (right) side - well, maybe I better take a taxi. Bangkok has several million of them anyway - if I think of them as my own personal limo service, it’s not so bad at all. But despite this, I recently had to get a Thai driver’s license. This is normally accomplished by showing your license from your own country to the Department of Land Transport, at which point they’ll just transfer it over. But due to an unfortunate case of stupidity, I let my Canadian license lapse, which means it’s even less useful than the fake ones you can buy on Khao San Road. The only option I had was to go through the rigmarole as if I was a 16-year old Thai teenager.
So - what does it take to be allowed to legally drive on Thai roads?
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Which Island Should You Hit First?
This is a question that, without fail, I’m asked every time a friend visits: which island do I recommend? That’s a bit like answering which type of soda I prefer - it will usually vary greatly depending on the mood I’m in. Usually it’s Coke, but sometimes I dig a Sprite. Sometimes I want a Diet Pepsi, and other times I’ll walk to the corner store just to suck down an Orange Fanta. Thailand’s islands are much the same - each offers many of the same things, but also differ greatly depending on where you go. Some have parties, some are nearly deserted; some are little more than miles of beach, others have a few rocky shoals but fantastic hiking in the interior. There are a lot of logistical factors to consider too, such as - can you fly there? If you can, do you have the money to spare? Does the train go there? If it does, do you have the time to spare? Despite not being a beach guy (I get bored after a day or two), I’ve been to quite a few islands in Thailand - Samet, Chang, Samui, Pha Ngan, Lippe, Lao Liang, Kut, Phuket, Taruato, etc, so I have some basis for arguing. Below, I’m going to talk about which island is my favourite and why. There might even be some math involved.
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Thailand’s Version of Workplace Safety
One of the first things many visitors notice about Thailand is that all the construction workers - putting in ten hour days in 38 degree heat - wear long-sleeve shirts, gloves, full-face masks and wide brimmed hats. It often confuses the pasty tourist, already dripping with sweat after strolling a few hundred feet out of their air-conned hotel lobby. The reason: dark skin is considered ugly here in Asia, and therefore, white skin is very desirable, like in this ridiculous ad that sees a girl using light reflecting off her skin to signal a boat at sea. The reasoning behind the parka-clad construction workers is that working in the sun is a sure sign to get uglier - better to sweat than get a tan (this is likely a holdover from days of yore, when the aristocratic class did no menial labour, and therefore were never outside in the sun). But the other thing that many people notice is the apparent disregard for workplace safety on nearly every construction site. Construction work - at least on major hotels and by large, reputable companies - is usually carried out with the same amount of OHSO concern that you’d find in any western country… but not always. Walking around Bangkok, you’re likely to see guys who are welding rebar wearing two pairs of sunglasses, hammering away at a cement block without any goggles, standing barefoot and knee-deep in sewage while fixing a manhole, operating a huge cement cutter while wearing flip-flops… things like that. A few days ago I looked out my apartment window and couldn’t believe what I saw, so I took the photo below.
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Got Lots of Music? You Can’t Beat MediaMonkey for Your Jukebox
Like a lot of people, I find it hard to escape the pull of the ubiquitous Apple Computer and their wonderful little gadgets. iPhones, iMacs, iPods and the super sexy Macbook Air all get my inner geek salivating. On a related note, I have a lot of music - 24,188 songs as of today, to be precise, most of it - nay, all of it - in MP3 format (the scary part is that I have friends who make my collection look like a few random tracks ripped from some forgotten Mini-Pops CDs). I’m also the kind of guy that likes to have music in the background at all times, and these two things combined mean that I have to have a good way to organize the ridiculous amount of songs I have stashed in the dark and dingy corners of my hard drives. For the longest time, I was using iTunes, which did just fine - for a while. I’ve asked around a lot, and while most people use iTunes, not a lot of them can tell me why they use it. “Because everyone else does” seems to be the most common answer. But once my music library started to get larger and larger, and Apple started to release newer and more complex versions of iTunes, I noticed that it was slowing down… taking longer to load and run, having compatibility issues with other programs and devices, etc, etc. So I did some searching around and tried a few other programs, and have settled on what I think is the best one around - MediaMonkey.
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How A Burmese Election Works
A friend of a friend, who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons, has just returned from Burma. She was sent by one of the media outlets she works for, who told her to head up for a few days, pose as a tourist, and very gingerly snoop around to see if she could learn anything about the election and how it was playing out. Despite the fact that up to (and possibly more than) 100,000 people have just been killed by cyclone Nargis, and many thousands more are slowly dying due to lack of water, food and medicine (which is sitting at airports around the world on airplanes that the generals refuse allow in), the military geniuses in charge of running the country into the ground have decided to go ahead with a referendum that will allow people to vote for a new charter. A yes vote means the military will retain its enormous power; a no vote would send a clear sign that people are unhappy and would either a) force the government to relax its power; or b) completely ignore the results; guess which is most likely. Without even getting into the insanity of holding an election (and using up precious resources) in the midst of cleaning up after one of Asia’s worst natural disasters, here’s what my friend found out about how elections work in Burma.
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My Favourite Poem
I’ve always been a ‘distance fan’ of poetry - that is, I admire the stuff that grabs me, but often don’t have the experience or (let’s face it) literary intelligence, to really get it. Some poems totally wow me, others just seem like forced and unrelated lines of words. I was at a friend’s birthday party recently - he’s a fan of poetry - and some of his assembled friends recited, from memory, some of their favourite poems. One of his friends, a particularly well-read woman who is also a friend of mine, recited a poem in… Arabic? Hindi? Greek? I can’t remember, but it impressed the hell out of me. I had no idea what she was saying, but it sounded pretty cool. My favourite poem has always been ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ by Canadian poet Robert Service. I first heard it when my grade 4 teacher read it to the class, and it has stuck with me ever since. For me, it very effectively gets across the stark, crisp loneliness of an Arctic night, the type of night that’s dark yet bright; silent yet deafening. The type of night that you have to experience to understand. It also touches on friendship, loyalty, comedy and even a bit of the supernatural. Here it is below:
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