Prubangboy

Nah, Pothead since age 14. The only thing I liked longer is James Brown.

I've got one friend left in the west. We email a bit and take a yearly vacation together. Maybe 2 more recall me at the level where they'd show up for a lunch. Got a couple of siblings with mental health/addiction issues who are still breathing. We don't communicate even every year. My wife is estranged from her family. Her friend quotient is about the same as mine. Guys (and gals, I suppose) who end up here tend to be free-floating atomic particles like myself. We're nucleus-resistant. I like being in a big soup of such people.

If they got bored and went back, the chances of them posting here are close to nil.

The China Grand at the edge of Chinatown has a revolving rooftop bar. It's a terrible hotel, but the drinks are cheap. The full rotation takes about an hour.

He's an old racist who mops floors. So no Mensa-women will be chatting him up.

Yes, once dirt is shoveled on top of the last lifeless, boomer face. And then, a massive wealth transfer to the Gen X'ers. Will they be any more generous/enlightened? Prob a bit. Like we are compared to our parents.

I arrived here via Appalachia where you see your no people reality playing out hard. The young rightfully flee, there's no one available to make your taco or mow your lawn. At any price. The only way a shop can make money is by selling pumpkin lattes to tourists -inside a "real" hardware store that used to be a real hardware store. Racism prevents Mexicans solving these problems, but honestly? They've left this area to paint houses up North already. Their illegal wages are no longer at a discount anyway. The hospital is a big employer, but no one wants the job in this Podunk that now all of the sudden it's a grand a month for rent. 'May as well live in a real place. In a decade, the average resident's age went from 56 to 68. This is a snapshot of the typical Post-Trump landscape across the USA. These people, these towns, are wholly obsolete. They need help, they're not going to get it.

"How to get a new model without disturbing the old model too much?" -Swissie's much younger girlfriend pondered this as she downloaded ThaiFriendly on to her phone. But only briefly.

Bought vodka by mistake, plopped a few stalks of lemongrass in it, very nice straight out of the freezer. But you have to let the lemongrass and vodka steep for a week. So not really a Bob-doable idea.

It costs about the same in Europe. But they have decent financial aid for college and some kind of medical care. Yelling at the young for noticing this is futile.

Denim, thanks for the attempt at elevation here. This guy is a poor speaker for his point that technology unduly concentrates wealth, resulting in social problems. If Grab takes 30% for the ride, that's a massive redistribution upwards to a tiny amount of people. (I tip my Grab driver 30% with this in mind). The flip side is that a lot of Grab delivery people now have a job. But then wealth again concentrates between the class of people who own a motorcycle and those who don't. These various dislocations are now so extreme that they cannot be sorted out by the invisible hand of capitalism -so what to do? I prefer the approach of the book, Capital In The 20th Century which more cuts directly to chase: When the rate of return for capital is greater than the overall rate of growth of the economy, money will only flow like gravity ever upwards. To change this, you need wealth taxes. You need to lower the rate of capital return so that all boats might rise. That's what rightward/centrist politics calls punishing wealth creators. It's not politically doable for at least the next 20 years.

In the 70's, in Manhattan, the dollar was cheap and the town was awash with middle class European tourists. The resentment was strong; it was from this time the term Euro-Trash was coined. Some benefitted from these new tourists, but there was the sense of getting priced out of "your" neighborhood. Now I live in Nimman, and I am the equivalent of Euro-Trash to them. I represent a little bit of money for laundry and takeaway coffees, but mostly, I am a rent-raising, $5 mango shake-buying, net-negative. They're outwardly nicer than I was due to various cultural norms. They're less educated and so less able to form opinions about gentrification etc. And they're more hierarchal so less inclined to even think much about it. But even being the culturally sensitive, good guy that I am, if they could waive a magic wand and make me disappear, they would.

As a former Sociology major, I can only guess how gratefully this advice was received. No, I never saw dime-one out of Sociology. But it did get me the stupid desk job at the bank.

They forget we ever existed whenever we leave the room.

You prob don't go much. Me neither. I have a proper balcony. But where's a memorable one you've been to either in Thailand or elsewhere? Do you prefer a nature view or a city view? Would you drink a craft cocktail involving dry ice and smoke? In Nimman Chiang Mai, I can just about hop on one foot to 3 of them. At the Maya Mall, it's more like a rooftop park WITH a bar. Here's the one I might pop into every other month: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g293917-d10556993-Reviews-The_Rooftop_Bar-Chiang_Mai.html

Uh, those Pattaya retirement plans? Can't get enough of The Temple of Awareness?

As a former Sociology major, I resemble that remark.

It's all Gen Z on the floor of my condo. My condo in Thailand, where you desperately want to be. They're such failures they've beaten your goal by decades -tho a full half century is prob not out of the question.

I'm super-supportive of your Pattaya lifestyle long range plan (apparently very, very long range). But I'd give away my own pile in a heartbeat to be 25 again. Wish the young well. Don't be like the mean college dean in Animal House.

You'd rather be an old guy dodging night shifts at the hospital? I must beg to differ. To be young, to have only known the internet life, would be great.

Your odds of having a conversation with an educated white woman are in the ballpark of mine of meeting Elvis.

They're young and can get laid for free. So success-wise, they've already run over you like a tank.

In the Theravada tradition, there is a kind of empathy called Sympathetic Joy; the enjoyment of enjoying people enjoying things. It's very strong here. When you're digging into that mango and sticky rice, they're really with you on it. In Thailand, you experience a lot of empathy that is very light-feeling, instead of just the heavy burden of sympathy-type empathy.

Vientiane wants to do it too. And they're much broker and more in the Chinese pocket. Went up to Boten, the northern border town there which was a ghost town except for the casino. It was def doing some biz.

I think those slatternly Pattaya harlots are finding better prospects on their phone then what's sitting in front of them at the bar. I have to believe that those glorious days when a hot-looking woman would play a game of Jenga with me in a bar, just on speculation, are gone and never to return. Who, who can I blame for this?