A good post from Stickman

Stickman’s weekly column this week seems to be a better-than-average read and offers some basic but essential advice for dealing with bar girls.  Click Here to read his weekly column.

Embarrassment

Today’s blog is about the most embarrassing thing I ever remember happening to me.

Every story starts somewhere, and choosing the beginning is sometimes the most difficult part of telling a story. I think I’ll start mine on Saturday night to put it in context of a long and often unpleasant weekend.

On Saturday night I was in a bar drinking, and on the other side of the bar was a big bloke. His biceps were the size of my thighs, and his right shoulder was covered in a tattoo. He had a shaved head, a Hulk Hogan mustache and an Aussie accent. This was the kind of guy I think of when I hear the song from Men at Work, ‘the Land Downunder’. In short, he was hard to miss.

I was drinking beer steadily, and playing a dice game with one of the bartenders, steadily losing my money to her 40 baht at a time. Meanwhile, I was buying whiskeys for a service girl and trying to enjoy the sanuk atmosphere. I didn’t know it yet, but I was a few hours away from falling asleep in my room and having my money, digital camera and mobile phones stolen by a dishonest freelancer.

Meanwhile, in the bar, at some point, the massive Aussie said or did something more than just sit in his mountain-like fashion, which caused me to notice him specifically. I don’t remember what it was, but for some reason I decided to address him across the bar, calling across a space of perhaps six or seven meters. The question I asked him was this: “What do you do in Oz?”, which I felt was a friendly inquiry.

He shot back sharply, “I’m not gonna tell ya.”

end of conversation.

For MSB

Scientists Discover Inverse Relationship Between Expats’ Income and Thai Fluency

Poorest expats continue to lead community in diligent Thai-language studies, flirting

BANGKOK – Researchers have published the results of the first-ever study of the Thai-speaking habits of foreign expatriates in Thailand, which confirms the long-held belief that the more Thai a farang speaks, the less likely he is to have any money.

“The data are unambiguous,” declared Hitesh Murkh, the lead scientist on the project, which was sponsored by Thammasat University and surveyed over 2,000 permanent residents of foreign nationality in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Udon Thani, and Phuket. “There is a consistent and predictable inverse relationship between income and fluency that cuts across almost all age groups, education levels, and nationalities.”

According to the study’s executive summary, which was distributed to the press, the highest Thai-language fluency among expatriates was to be found among members of the lowest paying jobs in industries such as tourism, teaching, and small-scale NGO work. Whereas the least proficient Thai speakers were heavily concentrated in the high-paying professional sectors of business, finance, and regional marketing.

Reader’s Digest Life

I got an email from a girl I knew for a couple of years after I graduated from university. I haven’t seen her since 1983 or 84 if my memory serves. Her email was brief, but the when I saw the name in my in-box it brought an instant smile to my face, as I remembered her as a feisty New Yorker with a big smile and a bigger attitude. When she was 20 years old I had quite a crush on her.