December 27, 2009
Parties
Thai people love parties. Me too.
On Christmas Eve, the president of the university invited everyone to a big party with a lot of great food and drinks. There were a concert and dancing. Today I am going to a wedding in Chiang Rai, and tomorrow one of our professors will have a barbecue party at a restaurant in Chiang Rai.
I was also invited to a Christmas party in Chiang Mai, a city of 300 thousand people at a 3-hour drive from Chiang Rai. The party was at the Christian Village, which happens to be in the central part of the city.
A street in the village at Christmas time.
I was frequently asked by Thai people and children how is the snow and how people feel it.
At the Christian Village live Christians, the majority of them Westerners or women married to Westerner Buddhists. They have two Christian churches. The professor who invited me is a Buddhist, but he graduated from a Catholic School. There are many Catholic Schools in Thailand. The schools are organized by the US missionaries and teaching is in English.
All the Village came to the party. The Christmas and New Year celebrations are organized by many families living in the village, one after another. So people keep partying for a few weeks.
Many villagers came to help to decorate and to organize the party.
The Christmas tree.
Here is written Happy New 2553 Year. The Thai calendar is calculating time from the Year of Buddha Birth.
But at the University, both calendars Thai and Christian (Gregorian) are used.
There was very tasty food as usual and karaoke. Everyone was singing. So the party ended late. I like karaoke very much. It is one of the greatest Thai traditions.
Monks before starting the service.
In the left corner of this picture is food prepared for the monks to take with them to the monastery..
After the monks' service, we continued our party.
At Christmas, I invited instructors, professors, and students that I work with to my apartment.
For my party, I invited people to come at 5 pm. Around 8 pm, the majority left. Four instructors remained, all of them my neighbors. Three of them, all women, got their PhDs on our university’s money, two here in Thailand and one in the UK, while the man got his PhD on government money in the US, in Texas and Kansas. The law is that after graduation they have to work for their sponsors for twice as long as they spent studying. So the women have to work at our university for 7-8 years, and the man can work anywhere in Thailand since his money was from the government. All of them were in their middle twenties when they applied for the grants. It was a great opportunity, and in the first place, it meant job security and work at the Royal University, which is pretty selective. Now they are thirty-two or thirty-three. They have worked for the university for two years and have six years left. All three women had long-distance boyfriends. One’s is in Europe. She has visited him twice at his home, and he has come twice to Thailand. The rest is phone love. He does not want to come to Thailand, she cannot go to Europe for six more years. Will he wait for six years? The other two women’s boyfriends are here in Thailand, but also at a big distance and in the same situation. The boyfriends also got their PhDs on their universities’ money and have to work there. Phone love and big phone bills.
These three women, beautiful and smart, have a slim chance of getting married. Thailand is a male-dominated society, and a man will not marry a woman with a PhD, unless he also has a PhD. But the number of women with PhDs is larger than that of men. Here at the university, the number of female students is much larger than the number of male students, maybe because English is the language of the university. But I was told that at other universities the situation is the same. Another problem is that men in their thirties look for younger women in their twenties. So the train was lost.
After I remained with my neighbors, one of them brought a guitar, and all three young women sang Thai modern love songs. Maybe some of the songs were translated from English. The songs were beautiful. I remembered once again about the Russian custom of singing at parties and the Russian lack of fear of opening the soul. This I have seen only in Russia and Thailand.
At one of the parties, I met a retired American diplomat. He and his Thai wife live after retirement in Chiang Rai. The wife is a Chula University graduate. That means she is smart or rich or both. He worked for more than 20 years for the United Nations in a number of countries, typically for 5 years in each country. He told me: “In diplomacy and in politics, in general, it is not important what you do or what you do not do. What is important is how you dance, who your wife is, and how your wife dances. You know what dance I am talking about?” I think I understood. While he ate and talked, his wife “danced”. She went from one table to another to greet her friends, tell them sweet things and make new friends.
The diplomat's remark about dancing shed light for me on Obama's personality. Obama is a great dancer. He danced with us until he was elected. He promised to end war and restrict the power of lobbyists. He did nothing of that because he does not need us for his dance now. He employed a number of lobbyists for his office, because behind them are power and money. He started to dance with the American military establishment (the Pentagon and the military industry).
The American military establishment lived happily and spent up to 20% of taxpayers’ money during the Cold War. After the fall of the Communist world, there was no permanent enemy anymore, so the power and money of the American military started to decrease. Clinton reduced military spending by 5% per year. It permitted him to reduce the deficit. So the military needed a new permanent enemy to start to be sponsored again as in the time of the Cold War. Big dancers knew it. So W Bush declared before his election that he would be a war president. He was elected with the help of big money and great dancers. There was no communism anymore, but there are other religions. So Bush's rhetoric was religious at the beginning. Now America has a permanent enemy for many years ahead. The military establishment is strong and rich on taxpayers’ money and the growing deficit. And we have a great dancing president. I was ashamed of his dance at the Nobel Prize speech, ugly and cynical. I did not expect such a speech from him. My opinion about Obama was way to high before this speech. I predict that Obama will reduce troop levels before the 2010 elections, increase them after that, and reduce them once more before his re-election. He will not stop the war. Such a shame!
If you think that I am not right please write me your point of view. I would be happy to not be right.
Parties
Thai people love parties. Me too.
On Christmas Eve, the president of the university invited everyone to a big party with a lot of great food and drinks. There were a concert and dancing. Today I am going to a wedding in Chiang Rai, and tomorrow one of our professors will have a barbecue party at a restaurant in Chiang Rai.
I was also invited to a Christmas party in Chiang Mai, a city of 300 thousand people at a 3-hour drive from Chiang Rai. The party was at the Christian Village, which happens to be in the central part of the city.
I was frequently asked by Thai people and children how is the snow and how people feel it.
At the Christian Village live Christians, the majority of them Westerners or women married to Westerner Buddhists. They have two Christian churches. The professor who invited me is a Buddhist, but he graduated from a Catholic School. There are many Catholic Schools in Thailand. The schools are organized by the US missionaries and teaching is in English.
All the Village came to the party. The Christmas and New Year celebrations are organized by many families living in the village, one after another. So people keep partying for a few weeks.
Many villagers came to help to decorate and to organize the party.
Here is written Happy New 2553 Year. The Thai calendar is calculating time from the Year of Buddha Birth.
But at the University, both calendars Thai and Christian (Gregorian) are used.
There was very tasty food as usual and karaoke. Everyone was singing. So the party ended late. I like karaoke very much. It is one of the greatest Thai traditions.
The next day in the morning all the villagers came to continue the party. At the beginning was Buddhist monks' service for the New Year.
Monks before starting the service.
In the left corner of this picture is food prepared for the monks to take with them to the monastery..
After the monks' service, we continued our party.
At Christmas, I invited instructors, professors, and students that I work with to my apartment.
For my party, I invited people to come at 5 pm. Around 8 pm, the majority left. Four instructors remained, all of them my neighbors. Three of them, all women, got their PhDs on our university’s money, two here in Thailand and one in the UK, while the man got his PhD on government money in the US, in Texas and Kansas. The law is that after graduation they have to work for their sponsors for twice as long as they spent studying. So the women have to work at our university for 7-8 years, and the man can work anywhere in Thailand since his money was from the government. All of them were in their middle twenties when they applied for the grants. It was a great opportunity, and in the first place, it meant job security and work at the Royal University, which is pretty selective. Now they are thirty-two or thirty-three. They have worked for the university for two years and have six years left. All three women had long-distance boyfriends. One’s is in Europe. She has visited him twice at his home, and he has come twice to Thailand. The rest is phone love. He does not want to come to Thailand, she cannot go to Europe for six more years. Will he wait for six years? The other two women’s boyfriends are here in Thailand, but also at a big distance and in the same situation. The boyfriends also got their PhDs on their universities’ money and have to work there. Phone love and big phone bills.
These three women, beautiful and smart, have a slim chance of getting married. Thailand is a male-dominated society, and a man will not marry a woman with a PhD, unless he also has a PhD. But the number of women with PhDs is larger than that of men. Here at the university, the number of female students is much larger than the number of male students, maybe because English is the language of the university. But I was told that at other universities the situation is the same. Another problem is that men in their thirties look for younger women in their twenties. So the train was lost.
After I remained with my neighbors, one of them brought a guitar, and all three young women sang Thai modern love songs. Maybe some of the songs were translated from English. The songs were beautiful. I remembered once again about the Russian custom of singing at parties and the Russian lack of fear of opening the soul. This I have seen only in Russia and Thailand.
At one of the parties, I met a retired American diplomat. He and his Thai wife live after retirement in Chiang Rai. The wife is a Chula University graduate. That means she is smart or rich or both. He worked for more than 20 years for the United Nations in a number of countries, typically for 5 years in each country. He told me: “In diplomacy and in politics, in general, it is not important what you do or what you do not do. What is important is how you dance, who your wife is, and how your wife dances. You know what dance I am talking about?” I think I understood. While he ate and talked, his wife “danced”. She went from one table to another to greet her friends, tell them sweet things and make new friends.
The diplomat's remark about dancing shed light for me on Obama's personality. Obama is a great dancer. He danced with us until he was elected. He promised to end war and restrict the power of lobbyists. He did nothing of that because he does not need us for his dance now. He employed a number of lobbyists for his office, because behind them are power and money. He started to dance with the American military establishment (the Pentagon and the military industry).
The American military establishment lived happily and spent up to 20% of taxpayers’ money during the Cold War. After the fall of the Communist world, there was no permanent enemy anymore, so the power and money of the American military started to decrease. Clinton reduced military spending by 5% per year. It permitted him to reduce the deficit. So the military needed a new permanent enemy to start to be sponsored again as in the time of the Cold War. Big dancers knew it. So W Bush declared before his election that he would be a war president. He was elected with the help of big money and great dancers. There was no communism anymore, but there are other religions. So Bush's rhetoric was religious at the beginning. Now America has a permanent enemy for many years ahead. The military establishment is strong and rich on taxpayers’ money and the growing deficit. And we have a great dancing president. I was ashamed of his dance at the Nobel Prize speech, ugly and cynical. I did not expect such a speech from him. My opinion about Obama was way to high before this speech. I predict that Obama will reduce troop levels before the 2010 elections, increase them after that, and reduce them once more before his re-election. He will not stop the war. Such a shame!
If you think that I am not right please write me your point of view. I would be happy to not be right.
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