mfd101

He is Thai Khmer ie he speaks Khmer in the home & throughout the village but has some poor Thai when necessary. This is normal throughout the southern 1/4 of Isaan. The 6 children of his current marriage (including my b/f) speak peasant Thai for preference but also Khmer when only they & their parents are around. The grandchildren speak only Thai (as drummed in to them endlessly at school) but understand Khmer to varying degrees. As to what ignorant peasants are entitled to and what they actually get, those are 2 rather separate items, as anyone who had the slightest concern for human rights and the egalitarianism of a modern democratic society would well understand.

Thank you for those kind and charitable thoughts. For your information my FIL is an old peasant, 100% illiterate, never been to school, he has no knowledge of the world outside his village (He was astonished to learn, when I arrived on the scene 11 years ago, that there are people in this world who don't eat rice with every meal), he has no visible income except what my b/f passes to him, he is a kind old man who knows nothing about insurance, savings, or investments. Satisfied?

My FIL (3 yrs older than me) is blind in 1 eye and nearly blind in the other. He refuses to do anything about it because of a bad experience at a big hospital in Khon Kaen where I sent him several years ago (I suspect that, after lining up for hours from 0500, he was treated as a stupid ignorant ol' man who barely speaks Thai ... ). I'll now try again with the nearest military hospital here in Surin ...

Are death sentences actually carried out in this country? or are they just symbolic? (You've been such a naughty boy we're just we're just so so angry with you we just we just dunno wot todo ...)

As usual, the headline writer doesn't know the difference between 'refute' and 'deny'.

Yes, people find it hard to differentiate between the biological (sex) and the social identity (gender). With few exceptions your sex is a given. You are born with it. A few people are born with physical characteristics of both sexes. Your gender identity was once thought of as being the same as your sex, but that was in smaller, less complex, more rigid societies than exist now almost anywhere in the world. In the modern world gigantism & complexity keep opening up freedoms of identity and action much greater than was available to, say, our parents or grandparents. Like many things in life, that has good and less than good consequences ...

Cats love to stray but only within their own territory (which may be 1km in any direction). And they're easily tempted by someone down the road offering food but they usually return after an extra feed. But only if they can.

As expected, the alphabet soup & gender identity issues get in the road of same-sex marriage ... which will keep moving to the right.

Further 'n further we trudge in search of bliss, bypassing the places we've already destroyed.

I think 6 of each would look lovely parked outside RTAF HQ or the nearest airbase.

Whatever the rights & wrongs in the details, the news merely confirms an increasing worldwide feeling that there are added risks of flying in a Boeing plane. Your average passenger isn't going to distinguish one old Boeing falling apart from a different new Boeing falling apart ...

Thank goodness no tourist worthy of the name would dream of coming to Surin.

"... couples grappling with conception challenges". This is known as 'having issues'.

Apart from 112, it would be interesting to know how 'political crime' is defined. Basically not a concept in Western democracies. Your acts as a government Minister are either criminal under the same criminal law that applies to everyone else or they're not. Perhaps Trump could advise.

Thai optimism at its best. My b/f burns his way thru my money at a similar pace.

Friendship is our strength in old age.

The essence of our modernity (Trump, Clarkson, and a million other 'entertainers' & 'influencers' ...) - loud, boorish and unapologetic. Wonder what their parents thought or think as they see their little ones grow ...

2 comments from my experience: (1) When we lived in The Trendy a few years ago, if there was a female of about 30 years up in the lift with me, I would politely gesture for her to walk out of the lift ahead of me. Almost invariably she would look surprised unless she was of similar age to me (then in my 60s). I think this was a 'males first' Thai issue, not a falang issue; (2) I notice with the slightly more 'outer' members of my b/f's extensive family that the women are always more approachable than the males. Women happy & cheerful, men serious & surly. One BIL is a retired police lieutenant so high in prestige in the village, nice guy, about 10 years younger than me. He will always avoid eye contact with me and won't wai me unless I wai him first (in which case he looks surprised). So issues of status plus the Thai habit of avoiding eye contact with strangers in case of inadvertent loss of face one way or the other.

Mmmmm, along with a 40-year program to restructure a feudal society and its apology for an 'education system' ...

Psychological prison, permanently. He might as well have stayed in Dubai.

Not sure that comes under the heading 'multiculti'. Perhaps more 'self-help'.

Multiculturalism has worked extremely well in Australia for many years. It's all about how you go about it ie carefully. Plus being an island helps (though not very well in the case of the UK).

Wow! The Rainmaking Department has clearly been at work.

We can all dream.

How sweet he looks. How touching.