THE WEEK THAT WAS Getting back to normal - not the New Normal just NORMAL!

[rooster59]

 

All of our lives have been so disrupted over the last couple of years that most of us are understandably desperate to get back to normal. Not the ghastly “New Normal” the authorities and us journos try to push down your throats. The old normal - our old 2019 lives - when little did we know, we were freer and happier than we thought. When we innocently couldn’t imagine what the next few years would hold in store. 

 

For this columnist getting back to normal is a subject of even greater poignancy following the near drowning of my eight year old daughter earlier this month. I was craving hearing the normality of two kids arguing, witnessing a mother scolding them for not doing this or that. Having something as simple as a bedtime hug or taking them out for a Happy Meal. 

 

Were I not a devout atheist my prayers would have been answered on Tuesday. After four days in ICU and eight on a communal ward my wife and child returned to my Ratchayothin roost. Within two days my daughter was jumping off a jetty into a lake, going off on a paddle board as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Mrs R brilliantly resisted the temptation to fuss. A close friend who has a precious daughter of his own struggled to hold back tears. Tears of joy this time. We all marvelled at the resilience of children. 

 

As my little one surfaced after diving into the depths, I returned her smile and kissed her on the forehead. Wondering how I would put my overwhelming feelings into words. 

 

I guess I just did.

 

Normal was starting to come back and that’s all we wanted.

 

Normal this week was Rooster back reading and translating the Thai news for ASEAN NOW. Normal was the usual array of characters that make up the motley crew of jokers otherwise known as politicians, tourism officials and doctors; Prayut, Anutin, Yutthasak and co. all vied for attention, clicks and laughs!

 

Most disconcerting given my recent experience was Prayut who gave what the press described as a “strange speech” in Krabi. Hesitant to click but feeling duty bound I did.

 

It was like a screen had appeared instead of a mirror in the bedroom wardrobe. Yikes! It was like Prayut was some Phee Chai (Big Brother) and I was Winston Smith. He seemed to know more about me than I did. 

 

(Well he did famously say years ago that he’d read Animal Farm, though he thought it was a manual about raising pigs).

 

“Kids must be able to swim”, he advised.

 

Er, yes General, I mean, sir. Swimming very important, sir, thought a flustered Rooster.

 

“Kids must be able to speak two languages”  another edict followed.

 

Yessir, English and Thai, reading and writing too, we’re doing our best.

 

“And you must exercise” boomed the all seeing PM from behind the monitor.

 

Yes indeed sir! I promise I’ll get back on the bike just as soon as I’ve had my bacon and eggs and three pieces of fried bread, oh master.

 

Seriously, the content of these messages didn’t seem weird to me. More like practical good sense. 

 

Though the PM’s claim that being able to swim means no danger from drowning should come with a Rooster caveat after recent events; my kid caught her long hair in a suction pipe.  

 

Health minister Anutin’s normal message was anything but. He sounded like a normal human being, itself very abnormal.

 

His measured and sensible interview with Daily News about the unvaccinated facing restrictions in everyday life and possibly not being able to do certain jobs smacked of thoughtfulness rather than his usual off-the-cuff bombast. 

 

As several posters on the forum pointed out, the anti-vaxxers who insisted on going out during the height of the pandemic may soon find that they are thoroughly restricted in post-lurgy times.

 

Quite frankly they should be. It is incumbent on everyone in a responsible society to act in a way for the greater good. If you are not medically exempt, get jabbed. Save yourself and help others. Arguments against vaccination are absurd, like climate change deniers. 

 

Renounce, renounce! It’s been proven that the earth is not flat, buddy!

 

Anutin spoke of human rights (no one is forced to have a vaccine of course), of the rights of employers to protect their staff and other customers. Of business owners to serve who they bloomin’ well please. 

 

He even compared his own difficulties in being effectively barred from Switzerland to make a valid point about being properly vaxxed - or else. 

 

Fair play to him this week. 

 

TAT chief Yutthasak’s appearance reminded me of Marlon Brando in The Godfather talking about reading the “Funny Papers”. After a break he was back spouting his crystal ballpark figures of 18 million tourists next year spending a trillion baht.

 

Here at ASEAN NOW we have to thank dear Khun Yutthasak. He’s given us more than our fair share of stories. I beg the powers that be not to replace him. We love him! Even though he is more barking than a Pit Bull tearing a three year old apart in the soi.

 

Maybe we should make ASEAN NOW t-shirts emblazoned with “We Love You Yutthasak” - they might replace the Singha singlets in Pattaya given time. 

 

In related news the BBC’s Thai team stated the BO (bleedin’ obvious) in a story about tourism recovery based on an HSBC report.

 

The sector will not recover without the Chinese.

 

As much as the central kingdom bashers want Europeans and Americans to reinhabit the Thai earth, it ain’t going to happen in sufficient numbers folks.

 

When Mr Xi says go, go they will. 

 

Bucking this nonsense was an extremely popular piece based on the comments of Thanet Supharothatrangsi, the chief of the Chonburi tourism business association. 

 

He slammed the government for their rhetoric, said the only visitors since November 1st were returning expats with families and condos in Thailand, screamed about the nonsensical booze ban and criticized the ridiculous hurdles and hoops that tourists have to go through before they feel free in Thailand. 

 

Restrictions that are making even hellholes like Cambodia look appealing. 

 

Of course all this was just what people on our forum have been saying for yonks. But Thanet - ably assisted by Rooster’s use of English to translate his words - got 120 “likes” - a large amount for a long story.

 

Posters cried “At last a man with sense,” “We’ve been saying it all along, thanks for listening” and the inevitable “He could be in line for some attitude adjustment”.

 

Yutthasak responded by saying that Emirates airbuses would be bringing in 500 baying tourists a time, “Test and Go” was really rather spiffing and quality tourists were the panacea Thailand needs to return to the normal of 2019.

 

To round it off he started musing about the cool season coming quickly this year being auspicious for tourism. Reminiscent of tourism minister Pipat who said early last year that the Songkran winds would blow Covid away by April. 

 

How these two jokers have kept their jobs would be baffling until one appreciates how many other incompetents have kept theirs. 

 

Meanwhile, the Department of Land Transport raised their heads above the parapet to announce that a demerit points system for public vehicles - not just buses, but taxis, tuk-tuks and motorcycle riders - would help make their drivers safer and more polite.

 

They will get 100 points and if they go through a red light ten, twenty or thirty points will be scrubbed off. It was impossible to find out precisely how much. 

 

The DLT also said that suspensions could effectively be avoided, if they go down to “nil point”, by passing a few hours of training and getting 50 points back!

 

I’ve seen this training while getting a licence. It involves sleeping while a carnage-cum-nasty video plays on an old TV. 

 

The DLT’s approach is pathetically inadequate and over lenient. Thailand needs stricter rules, more severe fines and punishment and far greater enforcement to reverse decades of laissez-faire on the roads.

 

And it needs to be brought to bear on the wider public, not just the drivers of public vehicles. 

 

At the moment all these points being handed out are of the face saving variety.

 

The alcohol ban found predictable support in the shape of teetotal Prayut and Dr Wattanayingcharoenchai who Rooster said came out with a longer list of reasons to keep the bars shut than his surname!

 

Apparently it was something to do with the pharynx. I had to check that it was not a new spelling of Farangs, but no, he was talking about Covid germs wantonly speeding down the gullet highway of drinkers and merrily parking in the lungs. 

 

It was another bad week for Ferrari Joe who must be wishing he’d scarpered like Red Bull Boss when he had the chance. The death penalty was mentioned. That’s not going to happen, of course, but the sheer mention of the ultimate sanction - if it is indeed worse than a life in Thai clink - indicates that  Suwat and his RTP cronies are hanging the former chief of the Nakhon Sawan nick and his associates out to dry.

 

In grisly crime news, a despicable nanny and two others were charged with murder after attacking three year old Bas in Bang Khun Thian and dumping him still alive into a klong in Samut Prakan. Then a so-called father who was criticized for drinking rather than getting a phone for his two year old, unloaded his 9mm at his wife but missed killing his child with a bullet to the face. 

 

He turned the gun on himself but even messed that up and unfortunately lived.

 

Moves were made by an OnlyFans star to legalize porn in Thailand. This caused the culture minister Itthiphol Khunpluem to say that “culture is more important than personal freedom”. 

 

Twaddle. Especially coming from the mouth of someone from a family whose father thought nothing of having a rival shot dead. 

 

Finally, I’ve been congratulating myself in lockdown saving heaps of Rooster readies by making my own pizzas for 18 months. 

 

Predictably, this now seems like a false economy after I bit one of my rock hard crusts, cracked a molar and am facing a 30,000 baht dental implant.

 

Yes, I need to get back to normal.

 

Back to Pizza Hut.

 

Rooster

 

-- © Copyright  ASEAN NOW 2021-11-21

 

- Whatever you're going through, the Samaritans are here for you

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[fangless]

15 minutes ago, rooster59 said:

Wondering how I would put my overwhelming feelings into words. 

 

I guess I just did.

You did indeed!

[George Aylesham]

Rooster, you're becoming one of Thailand's national treasures. Long may it last and thanks for yet another Sunday read full of good sense.

[BritManToo]

2 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Quite frankly they should be. It is incumbent on everyone in a responsible society to act in a way for the greater good. If you are not medically exempt, get jabbed. Save yourself and help others. Arguments against vaccination are absurd, like climate change deniers. 

If vaccination stopped you catching or transmitting COVID then I'd agree with you.

But it doesn't, so there's no point in hitting on the unvaccinated.

 

[SuwadeeS]

Sorry, I don't believe them,

because even after 2 Pfizer vaccinations, the school are still closed

[mommysboy]

Ok, maybe we'll get over covid19, but then we've got climate change to deal with. 

 

No, life has changed.

 

Some would say the last 30 years has been anything but normal anyway.

[mommysboy]

15 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

If vaccination stopped you catching or transmitting COVID then I'd agree with you.

But it doesn't, so there's no point in hitting on the unvaccinated.

 

It stops you getting badly ill- mostly anyway.

[BritManToo]

4 minutes ago, mommysboy said:

It stops you getting badly ill- mostly anyway.

Tell that to the dead 'hero doctor'.

Which isn't reason for you to force others to take it.

Their body, their risk, their personal freedom which is more important than culture.

[chilly07]

20 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

If vaccination stopped you catching or transmitting COVID then I'd agree with you.

But it doesn't, so there's no point in hitting on the unvaccinated.

 

There is because the unvaccinated clog up hospitals by dying

[BritManToo]

Just now, chilly07 said:

There is because the unvaccinated clog up hospitals by dying

So do fat people.

[gavlar]

One of your best ever Sunday morning pieces. Great on every human and political level...

[theequalizer]

49 minutes ago, chilly07 said:

"There is because the unvaccinated clog up hospitals by dying"

 

I am a volunteer nurse here in the Philippines. We are seeing many vaccinated persons becoming infected and admitted to the hospitals. The unvaccinared being admitted are 90% senior citizens and the 10% who are not seniors are those with existing comorbidities such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic respiratory syndrome, etc.  During the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 there were no vaccines available or even antibiotics to treat secondary infections, but after two years the epidemic subsided and eventually ceased. It's not the vaccines that are slowing down infection and death rates. It is time. We are following the same time line of the 1918 epidemic.

 

[amexpat]

52 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

So do fat people.

But But whatabout! 

[theequalizer]

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

If vaccination stopped you catching or transmitting COVID then I'd agree with you.

But it doesn't, so there's no point in hitting on the unvaccinated.

 

When you enter your workplace does anyone ask you if you have had tuberculosis or hepatitis A? Both of which are highly transmissible.

[vandeventer]

47 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Tell that to the dead 'hero doctor'.

Which isn't reason for you to force others to take it.

Their body, their risk, their personal freedom which is more important than culture.

In my area a man in his 40's just died from the AZ vaccine. None of this gets told. New and better vaccines are now coming soon and I will take them if they come to Thailand. They are made in India and called Novavax. Now if only Thailand will stop buying the Chinese vaccines and buy these instead. The faze 3 trials are over and they were in the 90% with little side effects.

[sandyf]

4 hours ago, rooster59 said:

The old normal - our old 2019 lives - when little did we know, we were freer and happier than we thought.

Consigned to the history books, there can only ever be a new normal which will mutate as each year passes.

[connda]

4 hours ago, rooster59 said:

For this columnist getting back to normal is a subject of even greater poignancy following the near drowning of my eight year old daughter earlier this month. I was craving hearing the normality of two kids arguing, witnessing a mother scolding them for not doing this or that. Having something as simple as a bedtime hug or taking them out for a Happy Meal. 

Having lost my only daughter, I can identify.  I'm happy that you did not have to suffer that particular Hell.  No parent should.

[spidermike007]

Am I the only one who utterly despises the term "new normal"? 

 

It makes we want to vomit. 

[Moonlover]

14 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

Am I the only one who utterly despises the term "new normal"? 

 

It makes we want to vomit. 

No you are not.

 

When I can walk around town freely without wearing a mask.

When I can see the the smile on the face of that oh so pretty teller at the bank.

When I can have a beer with my lunch in a restaurant.

When I don't have to have my temperature checked where ever I go.

When I can open the ASEAN NOW web site and not see the word COVID.

 

Then life will be normal. Not before.

 

[connda]

23 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

Am I the only one who utterly despises the term "new normal"? 

 

It makes we want to vomit. 

#MeToo.  And the fact that it is used world-wide by world leaders and corporate execs.  Yes, very organic.  Right up there with "safe and effective" and "build back better."  Just coincidence.  Now move along.  Nothing to see here.  Get that mask on, don't socialize, and get inside.  It's new normal.  Forever emergency.

[RichardColeman]

5 hours ago, rooster59 said:

After a break he was back spouting his crystal ballpark figures of 18 million tourists next year

actually I rather hope this is true - because to get to that figure they will have to have removed the thai farce pass and every other restriction other than a flashing of your vaccine card at the airport and your ticket

[Phredd]

2 hours ago, BritManToo said:

So do fat people.

That reminds me, have you ever seen a Fat Ethiopian? No, as they have nothing to eat. If you don't eat, you don't get fat.

[VBF]

3 hours ago, BritManToo said:

If vaccination stopped you catching or transmitting COVID then I'd agree with you.

But it doesn't, so there's no point in hitting on the unvaccinated.

 

As vaccination stopped  massively reduces the chance of you catching or transmitting COVID then I'd agree with you  now will you agree?

[MUSTYJACK]

For the Thai speakers/readers amongst us, links to the translated articles you use would be a helpful addition to your posts. Any chance of that?

[MUSTYJACK]

 

Quote

 

  3 hours ago, BritManToo said:

If vaccination stopped you catching or transmitting COVID then I'd agree with you.

But it doesn't, so there's no point in hitting on the unvaccinated.

 

The vaccination will not stop you catching or transmitting the virus, but it will go a long way in reducing the severity of the symptoms you would suffer, and hence the need for your hospitalisation. And the fewer people in hospital, then the more staff and beds become available to treat those either with severe Covid symptoms, or those needing treatment for other diseases.

 

So by taking the vaccination you reduce the chances of hospitals filling up with the unselfish and the thoughtless whose only considerations are their own needs.

 

[mommysboy]

3 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Tell that to the dead 'hero doctor'.

Which isn't reason for you to force others to take it.

Their body, their risk, their personal freedom which is more important than culture.

I said 'mostly'.  They reduce death rates dramatically, even the Chinese ones do that.

 

Yes, other than that I guess it's up to the individual what he does or does not do, but to most it seems like a no brainer.  

 

In the UK, the NHS is under terrific strain every time there is a surge- even now, and this has a knock on effect for all other diseases and operations.  A great many hospital beds are being taken up by unvaccinated individuals. 

 

I agree the vaccines aren't so great, but they definitely help. 

 

[Old Croc]

4 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Tell that to the dead 'hero doctor'.

Which isn't reason for you to force others to take it.

Their body, their risk, their personal freedom which is more important than culture.

Tell your tale to Herman Cain  Oops, too late.

You could end up receiving one of his awards.

[KhaoYai]

Now even this thread is turning into an argument about vaccines - I don't understand why so many men are scrared of having a little p rick.

[GarryP]

2 hours ago, VBF said:

As vaccination stopped  massively reduces the chance of you catching or transmitting COVID then I'd agree with you  now will you agree?

Germany.

[BritManToo]

1 hour ago, KhaoYai said:

Now even this thread is turning into an argument about vaccines - I don't understand why so many men are scrared of having a little p rick.

Well this thread is also about daughters ........

And mine is on her way to hospital after having COVID vaccine 1-2 days ago.

The misses just panicked and rushed off after getting a phone call an hour ago, don't know how serious it is. Not sure what's happening at the moment, but she was a completely healthy 23 year old before the vaccine.

 

I guess it's a coincidence that the only time she's ever been to hospital is a couple of days after having the COVID vaccine (probably AZ, but not sure).