Thailand Important Quotes

Global women's issues like forced female circumcision, sex clubs in Thailand, the veiling of women in Africa, India, the Middle East, and Europe, the killing of female children in China, remain important concerns. However feminist women in the West are still struggling to decolonize feminist thinking and practice so that these issues can be addressed in a manner that does not reinscribe Western imperialism... A decolonized feminist perspective would first and foremost examine how sexist practices in relation to women's bodies globally are linked. For example: linking circumcision with life-threatening eating disorders (which are the direct consequence of a culture imposing thinness as a beauty ideal)...

Ordering online was all about ticking boxes. Species. Color. Size. Number. Grade of quality. Degree of openness. But there was something miraculous about seeing the flowers she'd imagined brought to life. Roses from Columbia. Chrysanthemums from Ecuador. Orchids from Thailand. Anemones and agapanthus from Spain. Stargazers and parrot tulips from the vast Dutch flower fields.

We hear all this talk about integrating the world economically, but there is an argument to be made for not integrating the world economically. Because what is corporate globalization? It isn't as if the entire world is intermeshed with each other. It's not like India and Thailand or India and Korea or India and Turkey are connected. It's more like America is the hub of this huge cultural and economic airline system. It's the nodal point. Everyone has to be connected through America, and to some extent Europe. When powers at the hub of the global economy decide that you have to be X or Y, then if you're part of that network, you have to do it. You don't have the independence of being nonaligned in some way, politically or culturally or economically. If America goes down, then everybody goes down. If tomorrow the United States decides that it wants these call center jobs back, then overnight this billion-dollar industry will collapse in India. It's important for countries to develop a certain degree of economic self-sufficiency. Just in a theoretical sense, it's important for everybody not to have their arms wrapped around each other or their fingers wrapped around each others' throats at all times, in all kinds of ways.

Page 16: …the character of the Chinese immigrant gradually changed from that of a simple Oriental trader or labourer to an essential middleman between Western importers and exporters on the one hand and the mass of the peasant population on the other. Chinese shopkeepers and itinerant traders funneled the manufactures of the West from European import houses in Bangkok to the indigenous population throughout the Kingdom, and at the same time acted as collection agencies for local products—tin, shellac, rubber—exported to the industries of the West.

Page 32: The phenomenal commercial success of the Chinese in Thailand, and indeed throughout Southeast Asia, has no single or simple explanation. Certainly this success is partly attributable to such personal qualities as perseverance, capacity for hard work, and business acumen, but one of the most important factors has been the tight social and economic organization developed by overseas Chinese communities. Such communities in Southeast Asia appear remarkable self-sufficient and to many observers seem to form alien societies within the host society. They have proved unusually effective, on the one hand, for encouraging mutual aid and co-operation among heterogeneous linguistic and socio-economic groups and, on the other, for providing protection from hostile or competitive individuals and governments. Better than most people the Chinese have learned the dictum that ‘in unity there is strength’. Their organizational cohesion furnishes much of the answer not only to the economic well-being of the Chinese as a group but also to the persistence of their cultural patterns and values in an alien and sometimes unfriendly social environment. This is a community of interest as well, for the wealth accumulated by the successful business man is used in part to support a multiplicity of ethnic organizations: trade guilds, a powerful Chinese Chamber of Commerce, dialect associations, benevolent and charitable organizations, surname associations, religious groups for both men and women, sports associations and social clubs.

Page 49-50: … more than 30 different trade guilds (kung-hui) flourish among Chinese merchants and professional men in Bangkok … Their importance lies in the assistance they render in the economic adjustment of the Chinese immigrants and in the continuing services of an economic nature they perform for members—circulating trade information, advising on economic trends and policies, hindering the development of unwanted competition. … Membership in these trade guilds is entirely Chinese, either immigrants or their immediate descendants. To become a member of a trade guild, one has first to be engaged in a particular type of business or profession; and secondly, one must be approved by the leaders of that particular guild. Both these provisions work to exclude Thai. An individual cannot ordinarily become a goldsmith, or vegetable merchant, or printer, or take up any of the other occupations represented by these guilds without first learning the trade. This apprenticeship system is controlled by Chinese organizations, open normally to other Chinese whatever their dialect group affiliation, but closed to outsiders, i.e., the Thai …

this week declines to deal with surrogacy, given that there is a current Supreme Court case involving that issue. More importantly, it is an ethical and social minefield. Remember recent cases such as that of baby Gammy in Thailand, left behind because he had Down syndrome

Marriage is an important step in a man's life, but I confess I don't understand why we have to spend'so much money in celebrating the perpetuation of our race. Ceremonies are only a show of wealth, at best a gesture of good will toward our friends, and I think perhaps it all goes too far. I wonder if you agree with me

After 1492 the world’s ecosystems collided and mixed as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans. The Columbian Exchange, as Crosby called it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in the United States, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. To ecologists, the Columbian Exchange is arguably the most important event since the death of the dinosaurs.

The tidy world of shops and malls is the quintessential middle-class environment, but at either the top or the bottom of the system, the world of financiers or of gangsters, deals are often made in ways not so completely different from ways that the Gunwinggu or Nambikwara make them—at least in that sex, drugs, music, extravagant displays of food, and the potential for violence do often play parts. Consider the case of Neil Bush (George W.’s brother), who, during divorce proceedings with his wife, admitted to multiple infidelities with women who, he claimed, would mysteriously appear at his hotel-room door after important business meetings in Thailand and Hong Kong. “You have to admit it’s pretty remarkable,” remarked one of his wife’s attorneys, “for a man to go to a hotel-room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her.” “It was very unusual,” Bush replied, admitting however that this had happened to him on numerous occasions. “Were they prostitutes?” “I don’t know.”1 In fact, such things seem almost par for the course when really big money comes into play.

Scott Andrew Alpaugh isn’t your quintessential tech guy. A Google search might reveal his accomplishments but also a long list of everywhere he has traveled. For Scott, traveling to Thailand with his wife, spending time with his family, exploring different art forms, and playing with his dogs is equally important. You can learn a lot about someone through their hobbies. Scott’s interests reveal his down-to-earth nature and simultaneously assure the world of his dedication to the world of tech.

My teacher in Thailand was not a great scholar. He was a Buddhist monk, a meditation master, a tremendously inspiring human being. And all of that [which] attracted me... had nothing to do with his intellectual, scholastic knowledge. He had never been to a university. But he obviously had a deep sense of wisdom about life that gave him... you know, a real peace, clarity and understanding of the human condition. To the extent that not only was he perfectly contented and peaceful but able to guide others and that's what drew me. And in his teaching he often discouraged people from reading a lot. He discouraged just study because study doesn't... it's just more knowing about stuff. It does not mean that we can live it or that we actually understand it, in a way that it's internalised. So I, yeah I don't have great... I mean I think learning is important. I think reading a map before you set off on the journey is very important. But if you all do is read the map its a waste of time.

Page 10-11: Because of America's vigorous growth, and because the dollar plays a special role in the international economy, foreigners have been willing to finance the nation's imports and consumption. The bad news is that America's trade and investment deficits with the rest of the world (i.e., the amounts by which it is spending more than it is producing and borrowing more than it is lending) are growing so fast that they threaten to place the United States in the position of Thailand in 1997. That is to say, America's debts to the rest of the world may soon become large enough that its creditors could start wondering about the nation's ability to repay. Should foreigners lose faith in America's creditworthiness, they may start dumping dollars the way they dumped Thai baht. In that case, the American consumer would face significant belt-tightening to enable to country to start paying the debt down. Alternatively, the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates very high. This step would aim at persuading foreigners to keep up their lending by offering them higher rates of return on their loans, but it would also slow down the domestic economy by making the cost of money much more expensive for businesses and consumers. It would also add greatly to the total debt that would have to be repaid. ... A significant U.S. slowdown, therefore, would most likely leave the Japanese and Europeans (plus the Chinese and the rest of Asia and Latin America) with ever greater stockpiles of goods that no one could or would buy. These products would either languish on the shelf, or global price wars would break out, with each country trying to undercut the other in a frantic attempt to trim losses. Nations would either offer their goods for sale for much less than their production costs, or they would devalue their currencies, making them cheaper relative to other currencies. Thus their goods would automatically sell for less in foreign markets, and foreign goods would automatically become more expensive in their market.

In Japan: The shortage of wives for farmers became a rural crisis. In one village in the late 1980s, of unmarried persons between ages 25 and 39, 120 were men and only 31 were women, a ratio of 4:1. Some Japanese villages organized to find wives for their bachelors. One mountain village placed newspaper ads, promising free winter skiing vacations to all young women who visited and agreed to meet its men. Over a fiveyear period, 300 women responded, but none became wives of a village man. In another mountain village of 7,000, there were three bachelors for every unmarried woman, so the local government became a marriage agent. It brought in 22 women from the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and other Asian countries to marry its men, many in their 40s and 50s. Some marriages endured, but others ended in divorce because of the labor demands of farm life, the burden wives bore in caring for their husband’s elderly parents, and cultural differences. Small businesses developed that offered counseling services for bicultural couples and served as marriage brokers to match Japanese men with foreign women. Even today, many Japanese farm men remain bachelors. Farming in Japan is now primarily a part-time occupation—farmers find off-season jobs in construction or other tasks, unable to make an acceptable living even with government subsidies. And farming is now largely performed by older persons. For example, in one important rice-growing area, between 1980 and 2003, the number of people making most of their money from farming fell by 56 percent, and the number of people between ages 15 and 59 fell by 83 percent. There was one increase, though: there were 600 more farmers older than 70 in 2003 than in 1980.