alphaboy123

Give me the Chinese government over the murderous filthy

yankee dictatorship any day.

For China to stay together, & eventually neutralize the

hegemony of the yanks, a strong & intelligent government

is required.

Long live China!

& by the way, Chinese people tell me that the Tiananmen

demonstrations did not aim at establishing anything like an

american-style government, but rather at curbing corruption

within the Communist Party.

You guys go right ahead & keep on trusting your biased &

deceitful western media.

Karlitos:

A lot of sound advice has been given here already.

I'm quite moved by the thoughtfulness & care of the teachers who

have posted here, men & women obviously in love with what they do.

In the face of such a flood of well-meaning suggestions, very little is

left to add, i suppose.

Discipline is an issue you should consider from the very start.

How much are you going to allow them to get away with?

It's best to lay down the law at the very outset. It'd be a tough call to try

& tighten the reins later on when you've started off all soft & permissive.

In saying that though, even as you let them know of limits, punishments

and the like, a warm sincere smile is in order.

Make it fun, even if the topic is serious.

Stern faces will get you nowhere; in fact, they're totally counteractive!

You know when kids respond best? When they feel genuinely & individually

cared for.

It's a class of 50 ... you cannot love & guide every single student every time.

No worries, ... there will be a moment for every one of them, & he or she

will not easily forget the loving look in your eyes or your firm but sweet advice.

Please, do learn a little bit of the language.

Imagine the poor kids struggling, not having a clue of what you're saying!

This is enough to put anybody off.

Don't try to stuff too much into one lesson.

Make it one or two points only, & build your lesson around that.

Don't talk too much yourself. Say little, but say it with your heart.

Joke a lot.

Teach them respect. Wai at them at the start & end of the lesson; they should

all wai back at you (don't wai too high, roughly at chest level).

I expect you to be pleasantly surprised at how cute the little ones are, in

particular the little boys.

Boys are forward, very imaginative & witty, very sincere with their feelings,

boisterous, & on average, far more selfless & loyal than girls.

Personally, whenever i've needed help of some sort, it's always been a boy

who's come to the rescue.

Some well-meaning posters seem to claim that girls do better than boys in

general.

One person in particular goes as far as to say that 'few of the boys & Thai

teachers will give you any respect. Only the girls are the serious ones about

getting ahead in life. Boys will constantly give you the finger behind your

back'.

Do not be put off by these statements. They're largely untrue, & to the extent

they're authentic they have a great deal to do with the person who is making

them.

That some Thai teachers as well as some students may dislike you & disrespect

you merely because you happen to be a farang is, sadly, a possibility. Thailand

(for reasons that go beyond the scope of this thread) seems to be a magnet for

Western riff-raff, & i think has been so for decades passed. They've given the

farang a bad name & everyone pays the price.

A few teachers, while having no particular dislike for farangs, may happen to

dislike your personality, just as they may dislike some Thai teacher's personality.

This is pretty normal & never an issue as long as you remain self-possessed &

polite.

Many, if you're a cool & happy bloke, will like you DESPITE your being a farang.

I think that is key: show yourself a contented cheerful person & everyone will

want to be your friend.

As for academic performance, boys thrive wherever there are mental challenges,

competition & physical action. Do magic tricks, impossible feats, pose questions

that require logic, & you'll have your boys spontaneously come forth, with their

eyes fixed on you, & begging you for a chance to give the stuff a go himself.

Parrot-learning is not for boys.

Talk a lot, & you'll see the boys mentally drifting away into passive inattention or

downright disrupting your lesson.

Boys will be boys, & this is how we, boys & men, learn.

The traditional Thai classroom setting is the very opposite of all this, which explains

why oftentimes girls seem to do better than boys.

Present your point, give a few examples, drill the vocabulary, ask random questions

& have them all write the stuff down. Even better, throw in a song. This is exactly the

way girls learn. It leaves boys totally out as it offers no meaningful challenges.

To play safe, try & include lots of games & activities in your lesson, which will,

hopefully, appeal to both genders.

If you have troublemakers, trust them with special tasks ... write on the board, take

registration, see that his or her classmates are doing the assigned classwork, collect

worksheets, and so forth.

Trust a person freely & he will respond to your trust.

It is 37 in the shade where I live and 30.5 indoors with the fans on.

I don't normally start drinking alcohol until the evening and I gave up playing Songkran 2 years ago as I felt at 68 it was about time I quit that.

I am sweating a lot at the moment but I am also drinking 2 or 3 litres of cool water a day and keeping mostly out of the sun.

This works for me though about 3 years ago I was riding my motorbike and started feeling dizzy about 4 km from home. I stopped at a small oadside place and they helped me off my bike and took off my backpack and jacket and laid me down on one of the bamboo table/seats and gave me cool water. It took me about 10 minutes before I could call my wife to collect me and somebody rode the bike home for me.

I spent a couple of hours in bed with the a/c on and lots of cool water before I felt better. It was a lesson I have taken to heart and fortunately it has never happened to me again.

It is quite dangerous if you are not used to the heat and it still gets me at times though I have lived here more than 13 years.

It is 37 in the shade.

And how much in the sun?

As the women, emulating the feminist decadence that emanates from

UK & US TV, try & become increasingly venomous, confrontational &

overall unbearable, what bloke in his right mind is gonna put up with them?

They do as any normal man would & should do : dump the cow & move on.

That's one cool dad

Absolutely!

What a whole lot of <deleted>!

Every sane father on the face on the planet will want to teach his son

manhood. Naturally, having sex with women is a part of that upbringing,

& that's what whores are there for.

Dad did nothing wrong at all.

& it is no business of the mother anyway. She knows nothing about boys.

A boy will not learn manhood from a woman. She just wanted to create

trouble.

Unfortunately, in feminist-dominated Australia (and the UK & US), manly

behaviour is frowned upon, ridiculed, demonized & to be 'castrated'. In

such sickening societies, boys are to be brought up as if they were females, ...

& the gayer & the more moronic, the better

I have to agree ... totally inappropriate.

No planes ever hit the Twin Towers!

Why is it that the average farang looks so ugly

next to the average Thai/Asian? this holds true

both for men & women, to say nothing of children

... incredibly cute, especially the boys ... nothing

like in the west. where they look far older than their

age, & totally lack charm, joy & liveliness!

Thailand must be one of the few remaining nations for whom an impolite term for foreigners is the standard. It seems that you too can make huge generalisations about the unseemly blob of unspecified decadence known as the "farang". That kind of talk is more acceptable from an average Thai who is typically untravelled, indoctrinated, and pig-ignorant. From a Westerner, however, it usually indicates somebody who is "without a tiny speck of objectivity" and whom is in the midst of a pretty obvious misfit's tantrum. The individual nations which constitute "the West" contain some of the most beauti<deleted>l people on Earth, no question about it, but they are just unattainable for you to personally have cheap and easy sex with. Go to Vegas, plenty of hookers there for you (although you probably couldn't afford them), and tell me the talent there isn't better than anywhere in Thailand - by a mile. You live in a dream world.

Ha, ha, ha! Your hilarious post is heartily appreciated, & unfortunately you're right

on target in several of your points ... the kind of people i'm physically attracted to are

'just unattainable' to me, i guess you can say that again ... when it comes to sex, i'd

rather have something 'cheap & easy', again very true ... Vegas hookers, western

hookers are beyond my means, in all likelihood they are.

I did not mean to portray myself above anyone else.

I myself cannot claim good looks.

I wanted to express a genuine opinion, though ... & to further elaborate on it,

i'll venture to say that the most attractive people are South Americans & Asians

(particularly in the Philippines, perhaps owning to their mixed Spanish- Chinese-

local genes).

This is entirely subjective, as you correctly point out, without a speck of objectivity.

I've got friends where i come from that would not throw two glances at an Asian or a

black.

Like yourself, they reckon Caucasians to be the most physically desirable beings.

But as i look at the photograph above, & the westeners (you don't like the word 'farang')

that cruise the streets and alleys off Sukhumvit Road (to say nothing of the notorious

Kao San Road!), jeepers creepers ... Thais do look so much better!

& you can't deny that the little children are hopelessly adorable!

& at this point let me clarify that there is absolutely nothing wrong with generalizations,

for they are just that. I mean, granted, a generalization (call it 'stereotype' if you will) is

not true 100% of the time, but only about 96% of the time: the Japanese are polite (that's

right, just about all of them are), Brazilian men are football-crazy (again, yes, most are), the

Chinese are very hard-working (same story). How about a few words from your own post? :

'an average Thai who is typically untravelled, indoctrinated ...'.

So yes, I do generalize.

Now, when you say 'talent', we're taking off in an altogether different direction. & we'd

have to begin by defining the term 'talent'.

For example, if you mean intellectual mastery, i'd say China, Japan & the Jews. You see?

I'm generalizing again. One has to. When we talk about public health, when we discuss

disease prevention, when we look at morbidity & mortality rates, when we consider incidence

& prevalence for certain medical conditions, we're generalizing ... we've got to.

Finally, if i posted a negative, though authentic, opinion on the looks of a naked Canadian

bloke, i had another purpose in mind: to somehow counteract the enormous self-righteousness

that is so pathognomonic of TVF.. Maybe i would've been better off restraining the tantrum

'Hey, I am good natured', says the OP.

If you were good-natured you would have never posted what you have.

It never ceases to shock me how readily westeners advertise themselves

without a tiny speck of objectivity. & yet they're lightning-quick to find

fault with others who don't match their preconceptions ... & not just to

find fault, but to freely insult as well.

What ever names you may call others, that is surely what you yourself are.

'without a tiny spec of objectivity' - how is that possible? in trying to sound clever you look like a complete fool

he didnt insult anyone. he suggested that the act of reckless physical assault is cruel irresponsible and stupid. but obviously you think that to point this out is somehow a bad thing to do.

'oh don't be a kill joy, just because some idiot throughts a bucket of ice water in people faces whilst ridings motorbikes'

Jones:

I meant to address the OP.

I don't intend to sound clever; I'd rather BE clever, but i'm not.

What people see in others is almost always a mere reflection of themselves.

In calling people 'jerks', 'stupid' and so on, the OP is describing, inadvertedly,

his own self. If he wasn't himself a 'jerk' he would have no understanding of

what a 'jerk' is like.

In accusing me of trying to 'sound clever' you prove yourself guilty of that

very same offense (not all the time, of course, but under the 'proper'

circumstances).

The topic of the thread at hand is perfectly valid, but a genuinely 'good natured'

chap would have worded the OP quite differently ... perhaps as a warning; perhaps

telling newbies to watch out for malicious revellers during the upcoming festivities;

to be mindful of the fact that being farang might easily make them the target of

overly zealous little boys; advising them that if they wanted to take in the elderly,

gently pouring water over their shoulders is the way to do it; to keep an eye out

for 'projectiles' coming their way; above all, to be utterly respectful of the Thais &

keep in mind that Songkran is but a game, meant to be fun for all, not a competition

or an opportunity for freely assaulting people.

Why is it that one finds so little in the way of morally encouraging posts? and so

much, much too much, in the way of reproaching, name-calling, venting out pent

up frustrations, abusing, judging individuals while knowing nothing about the actual

facts (we've all grown up enough to know that pretty much 90% of what one reads or

hears on the news, TVF included, is false), disparaging, & the such?

On a final note, i don't quite understand what you say about 'not a speck of objectivity'.

What i meant to say is that the one person i am the least likely to judge correctly &

objectively is myself. When it comes to my own shortcomings, i am as blind as a bat.

When i claim that 'i am good', i am but lying (to myself & others).

Cheers

'Hey, I am good natured', says the OP.

If you were good-natured you would have never posted what you have.

It never ceases to shock me how readily westeners advertise themselves

without a tiny speck of objectivity. & yet they're lightning-quick to find

fault with others who don't match their preconceptions ... & not just to

find fault, but to freely insult as well.

What ever names you may call others, that is surely what you yourself are.

Why is it that the average farang looks so ugly

next to the average Thai/Asian? this holds true

both for men & women, to say nothing of children

... incredibly cute, especially the boys ... nothing

like in the west. where they look far older than their

age, & totally lack charm, joy & liveliness!

Ha, ha, ha! 90% are here for the women!

No way!

You mean to say that 90% are here for sex, which might be

accurate enough. But out of that number, i'd say (and this is

a very conservative estimate) that at least one third of foreign

men (other Asian nationals included) are here for the BOYS.

This, naturally, includes many 'straights', as pure homosexuality

is rather uncommon.

And the more you deny it, the more likely you're one of them.

Full stop.

If a child needs to be smacked to get her bad behaviour corrected, then

she must be smacked.

But for this to work (i.e., to guide her towards a morally acceptable pattern

of behaviour), it must be done in a completely controlled fashion & under

a carefully thought-out set of rules.

For starters, physical punishment is a last resort, to be used only after

other methods have failed.

Second, the child must be in full knowledge of what the consequences

will be (i.e., physical punishment) should her misdeed be repeated. And

she must herself agree to such a deal.

The guardian/educator will administer said punishment just as agreed, for

he is no liar ... & among other things, hopefully, she'll be able to pick up

honesty from him & trust in him as well.

The punishment can only target non vital areas of the body such as thighs,

calves or buttocks, never ever chest, tummy, abdomen, neck or face. Under

no circumstances can a fist be used; only an open palm or a stick are

acceptable.

The child, having been warned at least twice in the past, must be reminded

of the agreement previously made, must be brought to clearly understand

her wrong-doing & accept the consequences.

Then, the punishment is to be applied nonchalantly, with no drama at all;

whatever needs to be said is said in a calm, low voice. No black looks, no

sarcasm, no reproaches, no angry overtones. But it must hurt if you are

to eradicate the unwanted behaviour, or else the child will merely laugh at

you.

Once the punishment has been meted out, not a speck of resentment

will be allowed in the heart of the parent/teacher. On the contrary, he will

remain lovingly close to the child, watching over her, and will see to it that

she understands that she is loved, that a behavioural improvement is for

her own good, that one hopes never to have to resort to such punishment

ever again, & that one is hurt just as much as the child is by such methods.

"This is the consequences of getting your self into deeper love with a woman that does not value

what you worth to her, all you value is what you have and not your love to her"

godwish4love:

When everybody disagrees with you, you know that you're right on target.

This is why Oscar Wilde said, 'Don't say that you agree with me. When people agree with me

I always feel that I must be wrong'.

I'm sorry i agree with you.

Most Thai women will want you for a specific reason that serves her selfish interests. That's a

fact.

Who knows, this particular one may very well have been with Muhammad only to inflame the

other bloke.

But your case is hopeless here, as this is mostly an anglo-saxon community, and anglo-saxon

males are just that, mere males, not men, individuals hopelessly subservient to women &

intrinsically not different from them.

Have you noticed how afraid they are to call women women? They call them 'girls' or 'ladies',

even though many of the women they're referring to are not girls, & most are definitely not ladies!

Have you noticed how feminized they are? ... calling their pectoral muscles 'boobs' & their

private parts "junk" in this very forum! Did you ever hear a woman refer to her genitalia as

'junk'?!

Your idea(l)s show you're not one of them. So does your language. Stick to your guns.

This lot will be quick to label anything misogyny, for they've been trained to (read, brainwashed

to), but will never ask why misogyny exists at all.

Anyway, let me end by saying that nothing justifies murder, least of all a woman (or a man,

for that matter)

Jealousy springs out not from love but from selfishness ... you're mine, you belong to me alone.

This is the root-cause of situations such as the one at hand. And selfishness of course has its

source in low self-esteem ... you've got to get hold of something to fill the emptiness, don't you.

The average boy, however young, tends to think a lot more for himself

than the average female.

That explains the discrepancy you've so plainly witnessed.

Females are very easily manipulated, which is also why in time, they

become in turn expert manipulators themselves.

Gifts will be of no use at all in the long run; they will only foster the

perception the family may already have of you being there to supply

their material needs and nothing else.

My advice as an MD, though i'm not a parent: leave the daughters to

the care of their relations; you'll never be anything much to them all

taken into account.

Focus all your love & efforts on your only son, who has, to begin with,

a mental make-up very much unlike that of his sisters, who must & can

learn manhood only from you, & who one day may very well want to

emulate you & will likely be genuinely happy to call you his dad.

Itsrebel:

Make happiness a habit.

Little by little ... force yourself to be happy.

Look at children and see how they are happy without having a reason to be so.

When you force a trait upon yourself it becomes second nature in you after a time.

Practice makes perfect ... this is true for virtue as well.

As for achievements, how come you go through them year after year? Should you

not be reviewing them night after night?

Just what sort of 'achievement' do you refer to as being 'worthy'?

Anyway, whatever your definition, i seem to recall someone saying, 'you cannot be

happy with what you have until you are happy with what you are'.

Indeed, what value can there be in acquiring a nice property, buying some posh car,

making some useful little scientific discovery, setting up a charity, landing a prestigious

job, if you're unhappy with yourself? None of these will fill up the empty spaces in you,

will they ... not for long at any rate.

I do not know what a worthy achievement is to you, but let me point out a few i have

learnt of, which may just turn your life around:

1.- Be civil to folks you dislike; do not antagonize them, & quietly help them out if

they should happen to be in some sort of difficulty.

2.- Hold your tongue when you're insulted or criticized (when you refrain from arguing

your rights, life takes the helm, and within hours or days, it intervenes to save

your honour in very practical ways).

3.- Smile when you find it very difficult to do so (the more you're hurting, the higher

the value that that smile will carry with it).

4.- Don't let others know of your sorrows, but do tell them of your joys (this will train

you in fortitude and self-control, & may help who knows how many folks round

you who happen to be fighting a harder battle).

5.- Avoid people, comments & articles in the media and online forums designed to

bring you down. Remember Strawberry Fields: 'Let me take you down coz i'm

going too'. He who's got a flaw wants you to have it too.

People who tell you that death is the end of you & life has no purpose are merely

speculating, for they haven't got an iota of evidence to support their claims. They

also seem to take it for granted that whatever may be true for them has got to be

true for you as well. But this is not so.

Take advice from he who is light-hearted, for light-heartedness can accomplish

much. As for sarcasm, keep away from it.

6.- If you can love one-sidedly, then love when you cannot love (your parents? ...

imagine you set the example, regardless of response, and without taking the

slightest credit ... would that not be an achievement to be remembered at the

end of the day, and perhaps at the end of your life as well?)

7.- No self-pity. Whatever you do, do not admit self-pity into your heart.

Are you maimed? Are you without love? Smile and hold your head up high.

Life may be sending you these woes that you may sympathize and empathize

with those among us who indeed are physically maimed or without love, ... that

you may learn to unswervingly treat others exactly the way you wish to be treated,

in every particular.

If you can do that, that is the one and only achievement you really need ...

everything else merely follows by extension.

Besides, being without love (unloved) is not as bad as being unable to love,

and the latter can be learnt.

If you were to handle yourself with this sort of dignity, i am convinced that, all alone

and without the slightest effort, you would soon, quite soon, find out whether or not

there is a point to life.

Sincerity, Rebel, one needs to be sincere, one needs to be earnest.

Look at how much a man is willing to invest and sacrifice that the woman he desires

may finally be his. People who want a university degree spend a fortune in tuition fees

and the best years of their lives studying!

And yet, we demand to be told answers to life's most vital questions for free? without

lifting a finger? as if by magic?

I'm afraid life's secrets are not that cheap.

And he who fancies he can treat life like rubbish, will stink all the way to the grave.

'What do you live for?' is not an unanswerable question at all.

But it is both utterly useless and altogether hypocritical to expect to be able to crack

an answer to the most important question pertaining to oneself, when at any given

moment the most fleeting trifle seems to take priority over it!

Discriminate. Be selective. Choose whom you talk to and what you read and watch.

Above all, you cannot live for family, neighbours or country if you're not living well

with yourself first; ... much less will Burma, Sri Lanka or Vietnam be of any help to

you.

You've got to clean up your own home to begin with ... conscientiously.

That done, you'll find that, automatically, doors you didn't know were there will begin to

open up before you, and almost unwittingly, you'll find yourself living for others as well.

Guesthouse:

Your point being? ... to argue against 'confirmation bias' (CB)? or for it?

to warn us? perhaps merely to get off your chest something you wanted

to make a point of?

You certainly do not offer anything in the way of a 'cure'. What's more, you

show yourself as suffering from the very disease you took great pains to

point out in us.

Seems you did not take the trouble of digging deep into the subject before

posting.

You open up by stating the ubiquitousness of CB, yet not long down the line,

you indicate that 'most of us are a little more balanced', which means the exact

opposite, namely, that CB is a quirk of the minority.

Which is really the case then?

No matter.

There is no denying the joy of finding like-minded posters.

At other times we make little discoveries through the posts we read; we even

stand corrected now and then. And all of this is actually quite fun.

And i find that CB is a non-issue when topics are approached light-heartedly,

when i perused them as the outsider who is aware of his own ignorance.

That said, if a person happens to support a given poster's views, can you

always tell whether he does so out of purely instinctive CB or by means of

reasoning (whatever his CB, if any)?

There's a humungous difference there.

After all, when one has given a certain problem earnest consideration, to the

point of conviction, then one is bound to defend that post, not instinctively

but by means of reason.

Consequently, like all instinctive behaviour, CB per se is of limited or no value

at all, whereas rational like-mindedness is agreeable, commendable and

desirable.