dumbnewbie

"I am a virgin."

"Kool. Do you know the reverse cowgirl position?"

"Here let me try. Wow, I can do it touching my ankles at the same time"

True. Lee Kwan-Yew of Singapore has tried in vain to get highly educated people to have more babies.

Then there's the American movie "Idiotocracy", which portrays a nightmare society of total idiots that we may be evolving into due the phenomenon IanForbes touched on. It starts out with a narrative comparing a highly-educated Yuppie couple who keep putting off having kids until it's too late, while their low-life counterparts (white trash, in order to be politically correct) pump out baby after baby, for instance going ahead with unprotected sex in the pickup truck because neither of them have a condom in the heat of the moment. Oh well!

So the genes for intelligence, discipline and responsibility die out, while the genes for stupidity, impulsivity and irresponsibility multiply.

Excellent post, IanForbes. I'm still a bit new here, but after reading this thread, it seems to me that we could all be better off if we focus more on problems we have some control over rather than just venting about things we have no control over. This would involve sharing personal experiences and useful info with each other, especially on how we overcome whatever problems are common to expats in Thailand.

The first step is to recognize that if you're in Thailand, it's because Thailand is the best place you know of to be at the moment. If not, the solution is simple - go to that other place that you think would be a better overall fit for you at this time.

Once you accept that being in Thailand is your choice, both past and present, the next step is to focus on how to have the best life you can in Thailand, given the way Thailand is, because we can't change it, and even ordinary Thai people can't change it.

I don't know... I'm just trying to imagine how Japanese or Korean businessmen or Chinese or Indian immigrants relate to each other when in foreign countries. I doubt they bitch about things they have no control over, or bash the countries they've chosen to live in, or argue with each other for the sake of argument, or call each other "losers".

My guess is that they're always trying to get ahead, for their own sake and for their children:

"Where are the safest neighborhoods with the best schools?"

"What areas of the city are best avoided?"

"Where's the money? Where's are the business opportunities?"

"How can we get our kids into the best universities?"

"Where can we get the best medical/dental care, or the best legal advice, etc.?"

"Which are the best insurance companies/plans, and how much do they cost?"

"What are some pitfalls that have happened to others like us, and how can we avoid them?"

"What are some success stories by people like us, and what can we learn from them?"

I'm going to stop here because I suspect this whole post was a mistake and inappropriate to the thread. My apologies if it was.

dumbnewbie your ideas are good, but I think ugly should be declared a disease too, i'm sure my eyes became short sighted because they were tired of looking at ugly people all the time.

There is indeed an epidemic of ugliness, and it is of course a disease. Think about it - who would want to be ugly? Not only are you a pain to all those whose eyes fall upon you, but your self-esteem suffers in the process, no doubt leading to rejection, loneliness, depression, lower productivity in school and career, drug or alcohol abuse, food abuse and resulting obesity, lowered immunity, disease, and probably suicide or at least an early death.

The cure is obvious - the government should pay beautiful people for their sperm and eggs, and generously donate them to the ugly, so their children might at least be average looking, and so on, generation after generation. Eugenics is a great idea really - it has nothing to do with racism or murder, and its a real shame that the <deleted> Nazis had to burn that association into everyone's minds.

In the meantime, we could adopt and adapt a practice from our Muslim friends, the niqab/chador/burka or whatever you want to call it - the "black ghost outfit" - but only required for the ugly, of both genders - for the benefit of all concerned.

I think spending billions on "medical research" which never seems to go anywhere is the wrong way to go (any cure for cancer yet? or AIDS for that matter? heart disease? anything in sight? I didn't think so).

"Never seems to go anywhere"?

There have been giant strides in treating all of these diseases. They have not developed total cures yet, but, they have accomplished remarkable things compared to the past..

Sure... I didn't mean to suggest ending medical research - I'd actually like to see it stepped up big-time. What I meant to say was that progress has been terribly slow and very discouraging (to my mind, anyway), and while increasing our efforts to find cures for all these diseases, we should also be making every effort (as a society, because it's obviously impossible for most of us to go against the tide of the culture of toxic habits we've developed) to prevent diseases from developing (or spreading, in the case of contagious diseases) in the first place, especially as prevention would seem to be a much cheaper and more efficient way to go about it. dam_n, that sentence is messed up.

Also in poorer countries women are largely oppressed. The men go out a whoring and catch it from mostly female prostitutes, and then have sex with their wives, unprotected sex, whether the women want it or not. Then the women get it. Then the babies get it. And so it goes ...

Interesting. There's a pop economics book out called "More sex is safer sex". I think the argument is that if everyone slept around a bit more, we'd all be safer from STD's, because there'd be less need for prostitutes, and diseases would have a harder time spreading.

So basically, women should be a lot more promiscuous, like men.

I think in many cases these arguments are made not just to dismiss the problem, but to put things in perspective. In Thailand you have police taking "incentives" to not ticket you, which sucks but not near as much as Cambodia not letting you drive at all.

Do you mean that Cambodia doesn't let foreigners drive at all, or that it doesn't let people drive after they've been pulled over for reckless driving or whatever?

If the latter, then I'd greatly prefer Cambodia's system, as it should lead to fewer accidents, injuries and deaths.

Whatever the origin, it's a crime that the people who could've nipped this epidemic in the bud didn't do so.

When HIV/AIDS was first discovered 30 years ago, relatively few people had it. Just think - if we had quarantined those few people, even putting them up in a network of luxury resorts - some by the beach, some near ski slopes, whatever - how much suffering and death could've been avoided (and money saved) since that time?

And no, I don't mean to discriminate against gays, or drug users, or anyone else. Indeed, those very populations would've benefited the most during the last 30 years if we'd nipped this in the bud.

I think spending billions on "medical research" which never seems to go anywhere is the wrong way to go (any cure for cancer yet? or AIDS for that matter? heart disease? anything in sight? I didn't think so). Prevention is a much simpler, quicker, cheaper solution, but nobody wants to talk about that. Let's see - pharmaceutical companies and the entire medical industry would be opposed, because prevention would dramatically slash their profits. Religious groups are opposed, because they're freaks. Civil liberties groups are opposed, because they're misguided ideologues who can't think logically.

I don't know. If it were up to me, I'd have universal health care (doesn't mean government owned and run - it could mean a competitive, private system where everyone is required to have insurance, and government subsidizes insurance for those who can't afford it.) The required care would cover emergency room care and preventive care, but not the expensive end-of-life treatments that make up the major portion of expenses but do minimal good (extend an 80-year old's miserable life another 6 months or a year? Why?). If people want that kind of expensive end-of-life treatment, they can work harder in their youth and buy supplementary health insurance to cover that. Me? I'd rather have a fatal dose of opium or whatever can give one a pleasant death experience.

Instead, I'd have everyone checked for communicable diseases, and then cured, or if no cure exists, then quarantined until one does exist. And again, quarantine doesn't have to mean some dreary prison or insane asylum type situation. There's no reason there couldn't be a network of luxury resorts for these people to choose from, or move from one to another. The money we save on "treating" hundreds of millions of people after they contract easily preventable diseases could easily pay for such luxury quarantine.

Next, we should ban tobacco, hydrogenated oil, corn syrup and other poisonous substances, and declare fat a disease, and change the culture so that people don't get fat anymore. Because fat leads to just about every other disease: diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer, Alzheimers, etc. And it's apparently just about impossible to get back to a healthy bodyweight and maintain it once you've become fat. And we know how to prevent it! Give people incentives to get daily exercise, and also change the food culture. Soda should be banned, as should most desserts. Fruit would still be legal. Does anyone get fat from eating too much fruit? I never heard of it. Salt in our diet should be drastically reduced - maybe by putting a huge tax on it so it's very expensive. Grains and the flours made from them should probably also be banned, as they are little better than sugar.

Maybe rice and some other grains are OK - Asian peasants subsisting on rice don't seem to get fat, but Mexican peasants eating tons of corn tortillas do, and Europeans, northern Indians and northern Chinese get fat eating wheat based breads and noodles. Instead of giving billions of dollars to mega agricultural companies to produce harmful food (corn & soybeans which are fed to livestock instead of their natural food - grass for cows, worms & insects for chickens, algae for fish, etc.), this money should be used to produce more affordable organic healthy food. Ugh. It all seems so simple. Why is the world so messed up?

Are these such terrible ideas?

OK, so why is HIV prevalent among women in Africa and Asia, but not in Western countries? Is there a theory?

Mosquitoes kill more people than all other animals combined, via malaria, Dengue Fever, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile virus, and god knows what else.

Yet official word has long been that mosquitoes cannot transmit HIV from one person to another, but has anyone heard an official explanation? How come you can get HIV from a blood transfusion or even just an infected needle used for a vaccination or other shot, but not from a mosquito whose last victim was HIV positive?

And how come HIV in Western countries (and Thailand?) is supposedly confined to homosexuals and intravenous drug users whereas in Africa it affects men and women equally? What's the explanation for that?

Actually I'm pretty sure mosquitoes kill by far the most people, through malaria, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile virus, and god knows what else...

Hmm... gonna start a new topic about mosquitoes...

(Dang... I tried to post some pics of Jeannie from Yahoo images, but I guess I can't do it. Oh well.)

I watched a documentary recently, ...I can't remember the title.... (Hollywood And The Arabs????) It was all about how Hollywood has a history of villifying the Middle East: Arabs are always the bad guys, whether of old with flashing scimitars or in Saville Row suits with hidden uzis. The evil Persian djinn. Even cartoons (Alladin was cited).Sometimes the villification is subtle as with Jeannie because she was portrayed as not too smart, prone to sulking, and subservient.

Yeah, those evil Jews vilifying those poor Muslims.

C'mon - who else are you going to vilify? Does anyone on earth make better villains than Nazis and Muslims? You think you can make a movie where the bad guys are Buddhist or Baha'i? To be fair Hollywood has also vilified the KKK and other neo-Nazis. They haven't exactly been kind to America and Israel either. I only wish they did more to vilify Commies, who killed more people in the 20th century than everyone else put together, Americans, Israelis and Nazis included.

Barbara Eden (was it?)

Indeed it was!

I'd give my eye teeth for my very own Jeannie in a bottle. A beautiful woman who, in the blink of an eye, could produce a magnificent feast or transport me to a desert island for a day of fishing.

Dreams are free.

Yeah, dreams are free. But some people are actually living the dream (various dictators and oil sheikhs, and most probably The Man as well). You can imagine they don't have just one "Jeannie", but hundreds or even thousands. Who says harems are a thing of the past?

Marcia on the Brady Bunch

Oh yeah!

Snakes are often feared, hated, and randomly killed in the world. Most snakes are simply killed due to the fact that they are snakes.

Well yeah! Snakes are creepy, they bite, they kill. A world without snakes would be a better world. I'd add mosquitoes and other stinging insects, bedbugs, cockroaches and flies to the list. Do you feel sorry for them also?

I think humankind should set aside all of our petty differences until we've completely wiped out these common enemies of humanity, as well as all the viruses and bacteria that cause so much disease and suffering. Then we can get back to hating and killing each other, if we're still inclined.

If you get bit by a snake, it is likely because you did something stupid. Sometimes people are bitten by accident, but usually it is because they messed with the snake.

Maybe the snake did something stupid.

Bring a cawk. Oh wait - you can get one in Thailand. Never mind.

What I didn't say, but what is true, is that I had a nice cat with a senior guy in the Home Office when I wanted to bring a Thai lady to UK to get married,

Aha. So that's the way forward. Bribe the official with an attractive feline pet. Sneaky.

When Thai people see Thai girl with farang they suspect that the girl have relation with farang for money/living not genuine intimation. The Thai girl also know that being with farang can lead to such image. Normally my friend's appearance (fashion, confident move etc) show that she is a girl of rich high status Thai family but when she was with farang boyfriend she realised that she also assumed such image. It's the "socail cost" in Thai perception.

I should walk around with my pants unzipped so they really know why she stays with me.

ํYou should also tag it "For Thai only" otherwise some may think you date a Thai because you could not find partner in home country.

LaoPo

But surely you guys realize that this line of thought is demeaning to Thai girls - it implies that they are less desirable, or less valuable somehow than Western women. I don't think any of us believe that?

dumbnewbie,

"...nobody at all is checking who's walking across the US-Mexico border - anyone can and does just walk across, and everyone knows that the so-called efforts to patrol the border, or build a few miles of fence here or there are a total joke and just for show)..."

****

aha, this is too hard for the late Bill Jordan to swallow...

I believe that since January 2007, you are required to show a passport to enter the US from Mexico and Canada. That is not to say that many illegals manage to get accross by going around the POE's, but still sounds to me like you are engaging in a bit of hyperbole to support your political agenda.

The border patrol caught some 700,000 making illegal crossing in 2008. That is not exactly nobody checking.

Link

TH

I don't have a political agenda here. I'm really pretty ambivalent about the whole "illegal immigrant" situation in the US. I'm just making an observation that there are 10s of millions of illegal immigrants in the US who got there by merely walking across the border. Those 700,000 caught? They were instantly released back into Mexico. All they do is try again. Almost all of them make it in w/in 2 tries. Thus, the "enforcement effort" is a huge waste of money, a joke and just for show.

Especially to the Thais, old or young Thai women with Westerner is auto. being suspect of foul play. And especially when she has the look that Farang like.

It's the natural cost everybody know but not all speak out. My hiso-look friend made joke on other Thais eyes toward her when she went to pick up her farang BF at the airport.

Could you explain what you mean? I'm having a hard time understanding what you wrote. What foul play, and what natural cost? Also, what does "hiso" mean? Thanks.

Where else but Macau of course.....

You're a big gambler, I take it?

Borneo is another place I would consider.

What part of Borneo? Brunei, Malaysia or Indonesia?

Andorra: a mini landlocked state between France and Spain, the only two countries one can access Andorra from; both Schengen countries and there's NO airport in Andorra.

LaoPo

Haha - yeah I thought of that too! You don't need a visa to enter, but you need a Schengen visa to get there via France or Spain.

That question was asked in the UK some years ago, in a large survey/opinion-poll. Evidently the major (and perhaps only) benefit of MC at that time was considered to be chicken korma.