weinraub’s words

Thailand is known as the Land of Smiles. And for good reason: historically, the smiles were everywhere. The default face brought to nearly every encounter was a smile. That appearance of friendliness gave this country a feeling a welcoming warmth that hooked many of us foreigners, encouraging us to return time and again for vacations or to settle here.

Of course, it became clear over time that at least some of the time, and perhaps even most of the time, the smile is not genuine, Sometimes it hides mere neutrality and ennui, sometimes sadness and stress, sometimes anger and outright contempt. But, in general, a foreigner here could really bask in a general ambient feeling of warmth and pleasantness.

But lately, the smiles have been fewer.

Random interaction with strangers, walking in opposite direction on the sidewalk, exchanging looks with someone at the post office or at the phone company. While these situations do not usually warrant a smile back home in the USA, all these had typically been smile situations here in Thailand, especially if I offer the smile first. But not so much anymore. I get left hanging on the smile quite often these days. Paying the cashier at the market. Nope. Heck, I’m not even getting the perfunctory acknowledgment from workers like gas station attendants to whom I have just given a tip for service.

Where have all the smiles gone? Sigh…

How can that boy be so dense and so smart all at the same time?

Benjamin (2y7m) comes to me and asks me to get him something on the table that he can’t reach. I look to see that he is asking me for toilet paper. After handing over a few sheets, my curiosity piqued, I follow him into the other room to see what’s up.

Turns out he has taken a dump right in the middle of the floor. We’ve discussed it a million times. We ask him “Where are you supposed to make poopie?” and every time he correctly responds “Bathroom”, even pointing his finger there for good measure. Just being lazy about it, I imagine.

Tissue in hand, he uses it to cleanly pick up his creation and dumps it in the toilet. He then brings me the bottled soap we use for washing his bottom, removes the water sprayer from its wall holder next to the toilet and lays it on floor, pulls up his shirt, and squats in the shower area, exactly as expected, waiting for me to get on with the business of cleaning.

What a great kid!

Man, can that Garrison Keillor turn a phrase.

Consider his piece in today’s NY Times Op-Ed containing the following:

Here are mobs of flannel-mouthed robots denouncing Socialist Gummint Takeover as Medicare goes rolling along rather tidily and the private schemes resemble railroads of the early 19th century, when each line decided its own gauge and each stationmaster decided what time it is. Anyone who has tried to coax authorization for payment from Federated Amalgamated Health knows that, for incomprehensible standards and voluminous rules and implacable bureaucrats, the health insurance industry carries on where the Italian postal service left off.

“Flannel-mouthed robots denouncing Soclialist Gummint Takeover”. LOL…

Looking through some old mail and found a link I had sent around. It was a NY Times Op-Ed piece about the troubling use of illegal as a noun.

Every last bit of the article is right on, and despite being nearly two years old, it’s is still just as relevant today. For example:

Since the word modifies not the crime but the whole person, it goes too far. It spreads, like a stain that cannot wash out. It leaves its target diminished as a human, a lifetime member of a presumptive criminal class. People are often surprised to learn that illegal immigrants have rights. Really? Constitutional rights? But aren’t they illegal? Of course they have rights: they have the presumption of innocence and the civil liberties that the Constitution wisely bestows on all people, not just citizens.

Right on.

Read the whole article.