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Vancouver Jay
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Kay, what "P" word? Prostitute? I like that word actually.
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 10:14 am on July 5, 2003
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aeroman
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Smegma,
yes I took your original post lightly. Anyone raving on about something you know little about or have no interest in becomes quite boring in record time. The fun is in finding similarities in view and diferences in perspective, in anyone you meet! Another thread that has led a merry trail.
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Bangkok Women : Meet Sensual Bangkok Women
Posted on: 3:10 pm on July 5, 2003
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haam sup
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Well,
So far we have 'smart', 'intelligent', 'streetsmart', 'intellectual', and maybe a few I missed.
For lack of a better definition, intelligence is defined as an ability to solve problems. This has nothing to do with memorizing world capitals, being well-read, or any suchlike nonsense.
Kaymanx hit it on the head when he said, "I have seen that Thais do bring a practical approach to their problems.", i.e., good problem solving. Let me hasten to point out that Thais' emphasis on the practical is distributed along the normal bell curve, just as our 'intelligence' is.
Why does this seem 'smart' or 'streetsmart' to us? Because our CULTURE doesn't often require it of us anymore. And when it does, people who can apply 'streetsmarts' are considered 'clever'. Ours is a much more formulaic society on SOME levels, particularly when it comes to commercial 'processes'. There is USUALLY one 'right' way to do something, which has often been learned by rote, and attempts to accomplish the same thing by other means are considered heresy and 'non-conformist'.
Note that MANY aspects of Thai, indeed ALL, cultures have similar areas of dogma.
100 - 200 years ago, when our culture was forming, the same 'cleverness' we ascribe to Thais could be used to describe countless eventual 'Captains of Industry', and zillions of pioneers who managed to 'tame the West'.
So, it seems natural for societies that are soft, and arguably in decline, to marvel at how families can make do on $150 per month, in a country with little real infrastructure, and no real educational incentive.
We call them 'clever', 'streetsmart', etc., but it's just because they do things that, because we are soft, and wasteful, we no longer HAVE to do.
As for whether this will lead to pre-eminent world-dominating power, in the long run, I doubt it. Culture plays a BIG part, and, at least in Thailand, there isn't much pressure to abandon sanuk in favor of industriousness. In China, the commies partly CONTROL culture, and so, to the extent they are able, control the push toward world power. My bet is on them, if the leadership stops continually stepping on its dick, a la, recent Hong Kong crackdowns...
BTW what IS the capital of Malaysia - nevermind I'll look it up with my zillion gigahertz, gigabyte, flat screen, advanced OS thingy, which I couldn't duplicate by my own efforts, if my life depended on it...at least from scratch.
haam sup
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 5:53 pm on July 5, 2003
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Arcadius
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Kaymanx
You are entirely right in your observations on the impact of culture on language and hence ways of thinking.
Unless they've been steeped in a Western education, Thais really don't have the conceptual equipment to grasp the Western view of the world. That this works both ways most of know full well. Wrapping a farang head around Thai ways of thinking is very far from easy, and for many people (however intelligent or well-educated they may be) practically impossible.
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Sexy Bangkok Girls
Posted on: 4:35 am on July 6, 2003
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The Machine
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Well some may consider Thais not too bright but when i see the number of farangs who are sending money to BG's and the many who have been ripped off in really pathetic transparent scams by Thais i have to wonder where the intelligence lies!!!!
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Thai Women : Meet Matured Thai Women
Posted on: 5:08 am on July 6, 2003
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ringthebells
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arcadius, I don't agree with you. have you had the chance to talk with overseas educated thais. they are no different from us.
I saw this last week when a friends girlfriend was watching a movie with her 12 year old son. they laughed at the exactly same jokes etc. well she probably had to stop school at 12 to work on the ricefield??
again I stick to my theory that it is all a matter of education.
but that is just MHO.
and guys imagine one more thing. you are owning your own business. doing your own hours and enjoying quite a bit of sex with females you like. and you get paid in for 2 hours work what your collegues in the factory are not making in a week??
sometimes even twice as much or the equivalent of a monthly salary. even at times you receive monthly donations double the average salary from a woman you hardly know. Of course it doesn't last forever, but enjoy the ride.
well just a thought....
rtb.
rtb
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Bangkok Women : Meet Beautiful Thai Girls
Posted on: 5:25 am on July 6, 2003
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JackRabbit
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JackRabbit present...
In my handbook it says : "Definition of nice person : One , that makes others feel comfortable without being phony."
JR
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Attractive Thai Girls
Posted on: 6:06 am on July 6, 2003
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Arcadius
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rtb
I don't count Western-educated Thais at all, as these obviously have the keys to Western ways of thinking. Doubtless, if we were Thai-educated, we would also have the keys to Thai ways of thinking. But we aren't, and don't, and I think most of us find that trying to grasp the various aspects of the Thai mindset is a very difficult slog. Many fundamental Western ideas simply have to be unplugged.
All I am saying is that this no doubt works both ways. I think most Thais have great difficulty understanding what makes Westerners tick.
Anyway, I certainly don't mean to imply that Thai ways of thinking are in any way inferior to Western ones, but I have no doubt at all that they are very different.
Good. I wouldn't be nearly as fascinated by Thailand as I am if it were just an Oriental-flavoured outpost of Western civilisation.
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Thai Girls : Meet Active Thai Girls
Posted on: 4:49 am on July 7, 2003
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Kaymanx
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Taking this discussion -- and Arcadius' post -- further, it is true that none of us can really judge another culture through our eyes alone. This is what every great culture teaches its followers. An American has to get out of his skin to understand the Chinese, the Chinese has to similarly get out to understand the west, and this I suppose applies to every other culture, whether Thai, Japanese, Indian, or Arab. Remember Lawrence of Arabia ? The Europeans have fewer problems understanding each other since the countries there have been historically and geographically -- and therefore sociologically -- in close proximity. The North Amercians and South Americans understand each other better than other cultures would them. Blacks were once slaves in the Americas but today they are excelling the whites in many departments in life. I cite this example because the blacks were once not considered "intellectual" enough. See what integration has done ? This is why I consider Minder's brief post in this thread very apt.
Smegma's original post keeps cropping up as a brilliant one. Look, how can we consider general knowledge of the world alone as a pointer of any one's intellect ? Or as even relevant at all to him / her ? We cannot evaluate a BG/TG's "intellect" on the basis of whether she knows who the 5th president of the USA was, or who the current president is for that matter. In this context Haam Sup's riposte on not knowing the capital of Malaysia is very humorous. How many westerners for that matter can name the curent Thai prime minister ? Or tell what form of government Thailand has ? It is just not relevant to their lives. Period. Ditto.
It is horrifying to see the western variations in spelling Gandhi, Ghandi, Ghandy, Ghandhi .... An American girl once told me she wanted to go to Sri Lanka to see the Taj Mahal.
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Thai Women : Meet Matured Thai Women
Posted on: 3:28 am on July 8, 2003
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Arcadius
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Kaymanx
Further to that, there is a passage in a book called "The Thai and I" or somesuch which makes the point very tellingly.
The author recalls an experience he had as a young EL teacher. His class consisisted of high-flyers at one of the big Thai banks - all highly intelligent, highly-educated young people with pretty good English skills already. To get a discussion going, he asked them what their opinion was of General de Gaulle, who was big in the news at that time.
As you would expect there was dead silence and the guy got frustrated, as farangs so often do in LOS. Finally, one of his charges answered; "But why SHOULD I have any opinion about General de Gaulle?"
Author then says something like: "That reply pulled me up short then, and it pulls me up short now. Why, indeed, MUST we have an opinion about de Gaulle? Or about the countless other things which clutter our minds and memories to no purpose?"
That passage is very important to me because it pulled me up short too. When I read it, just about my whole life (working life included) had been devoted to having opinions about de Gaulle and similar, and it had never even occurred to me that this was unreality on stilts. I think that's when I finally made up my mind to go and live in Thailand.
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Attractive Thai Girls
Posted on: 4:19 am on July 8, 2003
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