Rogie

I would have thought the same, but as I live in Britain I have no evidence for thinking that. I haven't even glanced at the NY magazine article, so please forgive my impudence in commenting, what I say is purely off the top of my head. So lets go through that list of things the author of that article in the NYT seems to despise. (Looks to me like he has one mother of a chip on his shoulder, what with all the gratuitous f-words . . . ) filial piety. grade-grubbing. Ivy League mania. deference to authority. humility and hard work. harmonious relations. sacrificing for the future. earnest, striving middle-class servility. There's somethiong missing though. Hark back to the original topic of this thread, Jeremy Lin's Christian faith. That guy in the NY mag doesn't list religion amongst all those other things. He could have been brought up in a family of non-believers and obviously that's quite possible, but generally speaking I would argue religion ought to be added to the list, not necessarily as something the author despises, but certainly as one of their traditional strengths.(see my next para). http://en.wikipedia...._in_South_Korea That's great that Asians bring their traditional strengths, many of them listed above, with them to their new country and do their best to bring up their children in the way they themselves were brought up. So why the bullying? The usual reason as far as i am aware is difference. The bullied person is seen or suspected to be different. So when the article quoted above asks, Does this person really scare anyone? I guess anything different is potentially scary, but familiarity ought to erase that fear, shouldn't it, so as Asian-Americans are not exactly scarce that can't be the reason. Next most likely is the person being bullied has something you don't have. Maybe something as simple as confidence. If you come from a loving, stable family background, that stands to reason you'll feel that way. But it could be loads of other things, and a lot of the things on that list don't seem to apply to many American children from families on non-Asian descent. Are Asians visible? If there are over 1 m Asians of Korean descent, and presumably we can add to that those from other Asian countries, they are clearly very visible. What about politics? Are the numbers of Asians elected to the Senate and the House of Representatives, as state governors, as city mayors, etc., in fair proportion to the population? Is the American public familiar with them? If that is the case that's great but I suspect it's not. Obviously and quite rightly the election of the country's first black President was hailed as a landmark, but there is still a long way to go before black Americans make up the deficit. What about hispanics, are they fairly represented? I suspect not and I think I would be right in saying there is a lot of prejudice and resentment expressed towards them by white Americans, although there is the added problem many hispanics speak Spanish and that doesn't go down well in some circles. It seems to me, and apologies for intruding into American politics, an area I know little about and am hardly qualified to talk about, but wouldn't just a few politicians in positions of power with the attributes and background derived from an Asian-American upbringing be a breath of fresh air? Once they are in the public eye and open to scrutiny they can help heal the divisions that seem to have opened up between Asian-Americans and the rest of their countrymen. Hopefully that'll result in less bullying owing to Asian-American school kids being 'different' or scaring the other kids.

I am sure many of you, unlike me, can make yourselves understood in Thai. I would consider that quite an achievement. You can consider yourself a polyglot, if I have understood the meaning of the word correctly. However, like many aspects of life there's always someone better at things than us mere mortals. Enter the world of the hyperpolyglot! There is an interesting short video available on the BBC site listed below that shows Alex Rawlings, a 20-year-old Oxford University undergraduate who can speak 11 languages, being put through his paces. Quite entertaining if nothing else! Later: Apologies! The curse of the uneditable topic title strikes again. The word 'to' is of course quite superfluous. And here is an attempt at explaining how it's possible to become one: _____________________________________________________________ What's that you're saying? Up to 7,000 different languages are estimated to be spoken around the world Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French are world's most widely spoken languages, according to UNESCO Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry English is related to German and Dutch, and all are part of Indo-European family of languages Also includes French, Spanish and Italian, which come from Latin 2,200 of the world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260 Which words come easily? Usually easier when second language is close to learner's native tongue in terms of vocabulary, sounds or sentence structure So Polish speakers find it easier to learn Slavic languages like Czech rather than Asian ones And Japanese speakers will find it easier to learn Mandarin than Polish Easiest language for native English speakers to learn is said to be Dutch Five most difficult languages for native English speakers are Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean Source: BBC Languages http://www.bbc.co.uk...gazine-17101370

I just love these kind of reports. No cause for alarm though! This happened nearly four years ago and lasted just a few hours. A few hours visible with the naked eye here on earth from an object half way to the known edge of the universe. The object was 7,500,000,000 light years away yet the gamma ray burst was visible. I find that pretty amazing. Sadly I never got to see it but kept the report that came through on World Science. Here it is in its entirety. ______________________________________________________________ March 20, 2008 Courtesy NASA and World Science staff A gi­gantic stel­lar ex­plo­sion de­tected March 19 by has shat­tered the rec­ord for the fur­thest ob­ject vis­i­ble with the na­ked eye, sci­en­tists say—half­way across the known uni­verse. Sad­ly, the show lasted only hours. But “if some­one just hap­pened to be look­ing at the right place at the right time, they saw the most dis­tant ob­ject ev­er seen by hu­man eyes with­out op­ti­cal aid” on record, said Ste­phen Hol­land of NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter in Green­belt, Md. The af­ter­glow of GRB 080319B was im­aged by Swift's X-ray Tel­e­scope (left) and Op­ti­cal/Ul­tra&s Tel­e­scope (right). (Cred­it: NA­SA/Swift/Ste­fan Imm­ler, et al.) De­tected by the agen­cy’s Swift sat­el­lite, the ex­plo­sion was a gam­ma ray burst, a type of blast that usu­ally oc­curs when mas­sive stars run out of their nu­clear fu­el. Their cores col­lapse to form ex­tremely dense ob­jects known as black holes or neu­tron stars. In the pro­cess they re­lease a great burst of high-en­er­gy gam­ma rays and par­t­i­cle jets that rip through space at nearly light speed. As the jets plow in­to sur­round­ing interstel­lar clouds, they heat the gas, of­ten gen­er­at­ing bright af­ter­glows. Gam­ma ray bursts are be­lieved to be the most lu­mi­nous ex­plo­sions in the uni­ver­se, and this one “was a whop­per,” said Swift prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor Neil Gehrels of the God­dard cen­ter. “It blows away ev­ery gam­ma ray burst we’ve seen so far.” Swift’s Burst Alert Tel­e­scope pick­ed up the burst at 2:12 a.m. Eastern U.S. time and pin­pointed the co­or­di­nates in the con­stella­t­ion Boötes, re­search­ers said. Tel­e­scopes in space and on the ground quickly moved to catch the af­ter­glow. The burst is named GRB 080319B, be­cause it was the sec­ond gam­ma ray burst found that day. Two oth­er Swift in­stru­ments al­so ob­served af­ter­glows. Sev­eral ground-based tele­scopes saw the af­ter­glow bright­en to vis­u­al mag­ni­tudes be­tween 5 and 6, in the scale used by as­tro­no­mers. The brighter an ob­ject is, the low­er its mag­ni­tude num­ber. From a dark loca­t­ion in the coun­try­side, peo­ple with nor­mal vi­sion can see stars slightly faint­er than mag­ni­tude 6. Thus the af­ter­glow would have been dim, but vis­i­ble to the na­ked eye, said Hol­land, a mem­ber of the Swift sci­ence team. Lat­er, the Very Large Tel­e­scope in Chil­e and the Hobby-Eberly Tel­e­scope in Tex­as meas­ured the burst’s red­shift at 0.94. A red­shift is a meas­ure of the dis­tance to an ob­ject. A red­shift of 0.94 trans­lates in­to a dis­tance of 7.5 bil­lion light years, mean­ing the ex­plo­sion took place 7.5 bil­lion years ago, a time when the uni­ver­se was less than half its cur­rent age and Earth had yet to form. The burst was seen oc­cur­ring in the dis­tant past because its light takes so long to reach us. “No oth­er known ob­ject or type of ex­plo­sion could be seen by the na­ked eye at such an im­mense dis­tance,” said Hol­land. GRB 080319B’s op­ti­cal af­ter­glow was 2.5 mil­lion times more lu­mi­nous than the most lu­mi­nous su­per­no­va, or stel­lar ex­plo­sion, ev­er rec­orded, sci­en­tists said. That would make it the most in­trin­sic­ally bright ob­ject ev­er ob­served by hu­mans. The most dis­tant pre­vi­ous ob­ject that could have been seen by the na­ked eye is the near­by gal­axy M33, a rel­a­tively short 2.9 mil­lion light-years from Earth. Anal­y­sis of GRB 080319B is just get­ting un­der­way, so as­tro­no­mers don’t know why this burst and its af­ter­glow were so bright. One pos­si­bil­ity is the burst was more en­er­get­ic than oth­ers, per­haps be­cause of the mass, spin, or mag­net­ic field of the pro­gen­i­tor star or its jet, sci­ent­ists said. Or per­haps it con­cen­trat­ed its en­er­gy in a nar­row jet aimed di­rectly at Earth. GRB 080319B was one of four bursts that Swift de­tected, a Swift rec­ord for one day—as it hap­pened, the same day ac­claimed sci­ence-fiction writ­er Ar­thur C. Clarke died. “Co­in­ci­den­tally, [his death] seems to have set the uni­ver­se ablaze with gam­ma ray bursts,” said Swift sci­ence team mem­ber Ju­dith Ra­cu­sin of Penn State Uni­ver­s­ity. ___________________________________________________________________ Here's another supernova picked up last year in August: On Wednesday, August 24, using the 48 inch Palomar robotic telescope in southern California- which is designed to observe and uncover astronomical events as they happen- astronomers noticed a new star, dubbed SN 2011fe, in the relatively nearby spiral galaxy M 101 just off the handle of the Big Dipper. Located 21 million light years away, this is the closest Type 1a supernova seen in decades. a Type Ia supernova occurs when a white dwarf draws matter in from a companion star and dumps it on its surface until a runaway nuclear reaction ignites. While many such supernovae are discovered annually they tend to be much farther away at hundreds of millions or billions of light years away. http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/08/26/night-sky-news-new-supernova-blast-brightening-fast/

That's all well and good TakeMe, but if you are putting out feelers for other guys why restrict yourself to men the same colour as yourself? The vast majority of men come to Thailand to have a good time with very often the thought of having sex lurking at the back of their minds if they are perhaps a bit shy or inexperienced. Such men are in luck! Thailand is popular because it is very easy to hook up with others, and not necessarily only via commercial sex. The younger you are, on average, the better your chances of meeting other men in a non-commercial context such as discos (eg. DJ station in Bangkok) or saunas (eg. Babylon also in Bangkok). But, and it's a big but, such contact will usually be with local people, Thai people and they are not white. So my advice would be to forget about your obsession with white on white male to male sex and enjoy what Thailand has to offer. Otherwise stay at home or choose another country!

Here's another future black hole come to torment you FH! The article quoted below is badly written but recent developments in astronomy make fascinating reading. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2106904,00.html#ixzz1mx53Ufdj

That's one very good reason why message boards such as this play a vital role. The importance of hammering home the safe sex message cannot be emphasised enough.

I've seen a figure of 15 m visitors to Thailand:the top five account for about 7 m so that leaves 8 m 'other'. The British FCO says 847,198 Brits visited Thailand in 2010. Either their numbers fell last year to be under the Korean total of 805,445 for 2011 or the numbers given by the FCO are different to those compiled by Thailand, presumably collated by Thai immigration. It would seem logical the whatever the Thai number, it will be more accurate, assuming they are honest and resist the temptation to inflate the numbers.

Here is the latest news report I could find regarding gay men being executed in Iran. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-executes-three-men-for-sodomy-2350671.html As one might well imagine, this is just one aspect of discrimination and persecution in Iran. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/The+Iranian+Threat/Human+rights+violations/Iran_ethnic_and_religious_discrimination_and_persecution.htm The political and religious leaders in Iran are not representative of their country. I haven't visited Iran but a good female friend of mine, who is extremely well-travelled - has - a few years ago she told me the 'ordinary' people she had met were the friendliest she'd ever encountered. It's things like that make my blood boil when we hear about Iran being demonised for its aspirations to join the nuclear club. I believe the belligerent attitude of their political leaders is totally at odds with the wishes of Iran's ordinary citizens. You could draw a parallel with America's and Britain's leaders pronouncements before the Iraqi war.

Many thanks for that - you make it sound very interesting. I wonder if they got the idea for the airport theme from shopping malls in other cities in other countries - anyhow, whether it be a first or a copy hardly matters, I shall put it on my list of places to visit, especially if they are showing a film I'd like to watch and so can combine shopping and cinema.

I'm in the "so, what's the big deal?" camp here. Let people decide for themselves what they eat. However, and it's a big however, in order to try and succeed they've overstretched themselves. The place should succeed or fail on the quality of its food, not on gimmicks. How many of us reading this would be fooled into eating at that sort of place? Perhaps it had no friends in Chandler, Arizona and beached itself in LV - if that isn't just a bit suspicious. I'm 6'0" and weigh 168 pounds and have an average build, although more ectomorph than mesomorph - that's less than half that needed to qualify for a free lunch. I feel ill even thinking about that. That's around 182 pounds of extra fat he's carrying, and I'm not exactly skinny. Sorry, to go with the cardiac failure I'm guilty of sense-of-humour-failure.

That 20% figure is somewhat alarming - that would mean on an average 61/4 " erect specimen a whopping 11/4 " is exposed. Or more boringly, on a 33/4" flaccid organ only 3" remains. These figures are all averages taken from the literature.

The Alex cartoon strip in today's British Telegraph newpaper shows exactly the same thought has occurred to highly-paid financial executives in the City of London. The cartoon is too long to fit across the page, but in the right hand cartoon the Clive character is saying: "Would this have anything to do with the bank's new cost-cutting policy that we're only allowed to fly business class if we're accompanied by a client?" To which, Alex retorts: "The things I have to do for a tolerable existence". If you check the link after today, the one you want is dated February 17. http://www.telegraph...k/finance/alex/

'Your' site looks very tasteful FH. Whilst on the subject of dating sites, I wonder just how many there are? They seem to have really taken off. How many years ago would it have been, 5 or 10, when they first got going? Option #9 in the poll asks: Experiences of gay networking sites re Thailand – e.g. gayromeo So far only 3 out of 15 members have ticked that option. I don't want to start analysing the poll, that's best left to its setter, FH, but it is tempting to ask why such a low level of interest. Could it be everybody already knows everything there is to know about the subject, or are most members genuinely not that interested, or if they are don't particularly want to read about it?

Another good example is the Miss Blue Chilli International Queen 2011 this was posted on the Gay Cambodia sub-forum on 18/12/11 and has to date had 2 replies and 390 views. Again, referring back to the Beer Bar for a similar period, the middle of December, only The most expensive car crash in history has had more views (407) but that topic had 13 replies. Many other topics initiated mid-December have had less than 300 views and some less than 200. One topic (Our Local Black Hole ready for a Snack!) has had 10 replies and 277 views.

Not a problem this time, I thought I would mention a good feature! The topic Lost in Paradise, new gay Vietnamese film, has had over 270 views which is excellent for a topic in one of the less-frequented forums, in this case Gay Vietnam. I attribute this to it having featured prominently in the Recent Topics section on the right hand side of the main forum page. So, as a kind of positive discrimination, it seems to have encouraged far more views than would be normally expected. In order to compare I looked for a topic posted on or near to the 19/1/12 which had, like the Vietnamese film thread, received either no replies or at most one reply. The topic War Horse - the movie fitted the bill (sorry, couldn't resist!). To date it has received 129 views in the Beer Bar forum. That is a pretty clear demonstration of the utility of the Recent Topics column.

As it's a bit quiet in the Beer Bar today I thought a bit of light relief. The question as posed above in Christian's excellent joke (see post #20) is solved, so I read today, in Madagascar in the following way. Sorry, it's not a joke, it's really true (although one can never be 100% sure with these strange practices, the guy relating this could've been fooled). Source: Telegraph magazine 11/2/12 author: Richard Grant

Unless you are using an unusual browser, the edit button is located between the report and quote buttons, although it is not as prominent as the latter. Posts can be edited for up to an hour after posting.

Entertaining stuff! sweet (as in strawberry) mouth = hides the truth (the lying toad!) speaking or eating a strawberry = ....ditto ... sour (as in lemon?) mouth = an honest joe (I made that one up but why not?)

I quite like Polls, so that's why I ticked 'other'. Also photos, especially travel or festival-related in any of the following groups: General travel experiences (not necessarily gay-related) Interesting events, festivals, happenings etc. in Thailand Interesting events, festivals, happenings etc. in nearby countries

Thank you for clarifying that FH. I must have got out of the wrong side of bed this morning. Not only did I confuse Golden Globe with BAFTA, I didn't read the topic title properly and thought FH's post was telling us about the Academy Awards. He was too polite to point that out! So my comment about Stephen Fry presenting the show is a load of baloney. The 84th Academy Awards, honoring films in 2011, will be held at the Kodak Theatre on February 26, 2012. To make amends and just in case anybody else is confused here are the three relevant Wiki entries (with a nice bit of history attached):

I haven't seen the ceremony but it looks like Fry was on form. I didn't see the BAFTA one either but from reading about it I'm glad I didn't - sounds like the chap from The Office (you see, I can't even remember his name! if it comes to me in the next hour I'll edit this!) made a fool of himself and the awards because deliberately trying to court controversy smacks of desperation ....of what? to show they are more edgy, I dunno, anyway that gag of Fry's is a good one, I doubt if any of us reading this ever got to see Nijinsky (and we all know about him and Diaghilev..? spelling...don't we) 'perform', wow, maybe he could be persuaded to do a song and dance routine after a few drinks, and maybe a few of us have a scratched 78 with Caruso strutting his stuff. By the way why did they have Fry presenting, I would imagine they'd go for an American every time. Guaranteed not to inflict any too-subtle gags on the attendees.

Well done to Christian for identifying the mystery soi, and thanks for the additional photos. You are right, Stickman does have a similar photographic quiz. I have commented before that as well as the quiz he often has some good general captioned photos on his site, which is based in Bangkok. All being well, I will look out for another mystery location next time I am in Bangkok. In the meantime, if anyone else has any (anywhere in Thailand) why not post it and set us guessing? I understand your concern about the gate through the new residential block next to Babylon, and I would guess it will remain open to pedestrians to get from Suan Phlu to soi Nantha-Mozart. In my experience it has been possible to do that for many years previously, if as you say the occasion you refer to was during construction it must have been closed for safety reasons.

I know what you mean Christian, better to say I would (or I'd) rather regret what I did than regret what I didn't do.

Soccer has always, as far back as I remember anyway, been an alternative, but much less commonly used name, for (Association) football in Britain, but if a person uses the word football he almost always means soccer, not rugby. In America, you have your own game called football. Quite rightly you did not take too kindly to another game also called football coming on the scene in what to you was seen as a Johnny-come-lately, consequently the alternative, quite acceptable, word soccer became the norm in north America when referring to the game known in 95% (to use z's figure) of the rest of the world as football. I trust that's crystal clear!

1) I think the reason for this thread, The value - or otherwise - of Blogs is to point members and readers to those blogs the poster has himself found worth reading. It would appear there is a dearth of good blogs concerning Thailand from the perspective of gay or bisexual men. So when one that is recognised by many as a good one stops it is natural to look around for any up and coming ones. In order that a few survive, many must fall by the wayside, so just as a malignant cancer will kill many they afflict, those that survive will be all the stonger for the experience and able to adopt an attitude to life, a vitality, an extra dimension, lacking in most people. 2) The bangkokbois blog has had very mixed reviews on this and other gay message boards. It is to be read, if at all, by those prepared to be offended. That doesn't mean to say you will be, just be prepared for that possibility. ___________________________________________________________ I noticed next to the Quote, Multiquote and Report buttons (bottom right hand side of posts) a new one just now - 'Blog this' but when I clicked on it I got an error message. Could be an interesting development . . .