Bangkok Old Hand

by Collin Piprell

  If you don't already know a fingerbowl from miso soup,

  then you have three options.

  Stratagem I: You could go to a finishing school for the social graces.

  Stratagem II: You can effectively apprentice yourself to those you most want to emulate. This approach requires you to watch your social superiors like a hawk, committing yourself to no action in public till you first see how they do it. This is traditionally how one finds one's way around a formal table in the West, for example, negotiating the heap of assorted forks, spoons, knives, snail tongs, hacksaws, and other essential tools of refined dining, not to mention four different varieties of drinking vessel.

  Stratagem III: Most effective of all, you adopt a consistent manner of savoir-faire, one sufficiently practised to neutralise any outrage, however unconventional, you might commit. Whatever you do, as long as it's done with true panache, everybody will then feel obliged to follow suit. They will judge by your manner alone that you are a Real Person and hence this is now the correct thing to do. One measure of true panache would be, for instance, getting an entire tableful of socialites to take their cue from you and chug their fingerbowls.

  TIP: If you are applying Stratagem II, you must take care that the person you have selected as a role model is not merely another climber much like yourself, especially one who has perfected Stratagem III.

  A CASE HISTORY: Reliable sources report that once at a dinner party in Sukhumvit Soi 13 not only the entire guest list but the hosts as well, through some unkind twist of fate, consisted of nothing but aspiring parvenus. In consequence, everyone at the table was looking at everyone else, nobody daring to so much as pick up a fork till someone else made the first move. Eventually, several people got so hungry they fainted. Still others passed out as a result of taking too many aperitifs on an empty stomach. Finally, even those who hadn't yet fainted or passed out pretended to, since this was clearly The Thing to Do. Eventually they were all taken away in ambulances and the servants ate everything with dessert spoons.

  It has only been since the 1950s, with the rise of a significant middle class and the relative eclipse of an older, more rigid class structure, that social climbing in Thailand has become possible on a wide scale. Indeed, with the recent boom times it has become a national passion.

  And the rules and stratagems of climbing, wherever there's been the rise of this ever-more affluent bourgeoisie, are much the same around the world. To succeed at the game, little more is required than a slavish dedication to the creed of Consumerism.

  The rules are straightforward: you must constantly invest in new symbols of relative status — bigger and more expensive cars, more cars, membership in a golf club, more caddies, ever more strategically located city addresses, a country house, membership in a luxury fitness club, gold and then platinum American Express cards, a telephone in every pocket... You know the stuff. At the same time you mustn't forget that none of this has any value whatsoever unless the Right People get to see you with it.

  WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? This question suggests a reformulation of the old conundrum, "Does a tree fall in the forest if there is no one there to hear it?" The Consumerist version: "Are you anybody if you arrive in a Benz and the Right People aren't there to witness it?"

  'Thai society," suggests one anthropologist, "... tends to accept people at their face value, to recognise the wishes of role players who take their manners and self- presentation... seriously."

  This traditional attitude is not much different from the norm in most societies; and it is a positive boon to the new social climber in Thailand. Taken together with the crumbling of the constraints of the older class system, this is just like China announcing that Mount Everest is henceforth open to all climbers; you no longer need to apply for a licence to make your assault. As long as you say you're a world-class mountaineer and you dress appropriately, then so you are and welcome.

  Reactionaries grumble, mind you, and say that real class is more than surface presentation. They remind you that the phoo dee gao, the old-fashioned aristocratic class, have had more than money and power — they have developed among other things a genuine sense of humanity, including a sense of responsibility to others in the social hierarchy less fortunate.

  But surely this is mere elitism, an attempt to safeguard establishment interests resentful at the onslaught of the arriviste hordes. After all, the rush to ascend the social heap represents a democratic turn — the same routes to the summit are now open to virtually everybody in the society. No problem. All you need for free-climbing, if you play your cards right, is a mobile telephone and some well-tailored clothes. And a nice car, or at least some money to hire a limo now and then. Just a few basic necessities.

  Happy climbing.

  8 THE JOY OF TRAFFIC JAMS

  As Bangkok approaches traffic gridlock, pie-in-the-Skytrain remains just that, while as of early 1993 over 1100 new vehicles (only 400 of them private cars) are coming onto the roads every day. Some of the more creative solutions to the city's arterial sclerosis have included the proposal — this one from a perennial candidate for the governorship of Bangkok — that traffic lights in the city be kept green at all times.

  More realistic is the recurring suggestion that we simply abandon the city and move somewhere else.

  But are traffic and the associated pollution necessarily bad things? Read on, and learn to derive maximum benefit from the month and a half the average Bangkokian spends stuck every year in traffic.

  Time is subjective. Sometimes it seems to fly. Other times, you're caught in a traffic jam.

  If you're one of those favoured individuals with both

  a car and a driver, read no farther. You already know what to do: get out of your car, walk to the nearest boozer, and hunker down till the traffic thins enough that you can get a taxi home. It's simple. The advice that follows is for the less fortunate.

  The majority of people — the unenlightened hoi polloi — resent traffic jams. They feel that the time they spend sitting in traffic is nothing but a pain in the neck. They believe they would rather be almost anywhere else, doing almost anything else. This is a negative and unfulfilling attitude.

  Insight number one: time is subjective, and traffic jams are an invaluable way of extending your subjectively perceived life-span. We will refer to this as the Time Extension Effect.

  This first insight leads directly to a question, however: what's one to do with all of this extra time? Before this problem can be addressed, you must learn to slow down. Driving in heavy traffic, you will find that time has already slowed down; now all you have to do is slow down with it — learn to accept and enjoy it. One's frustration, even despair, is a consequence of frictions generated by being temporarily out of synch: the unenlightened driver frets and fumes within a little capsule of "real time" which is out of phase with "traffic-jam time". What you need is Temporal Phase Synchronisation. You can attempt to attain an enlightened standpoint all by yourself, or, more advisedly, you can seek the guidance of experienced professionals. I am currently working as a consultant to Alternative and Beneficial Solutions to Urban Dilemmas, Inc. (ABSURD).

  Although a detailed account is beyond the scope of this article, I will outline the kind of service our organisation provides.

  First, you must understand there are hierarchical stages of development in learning to appreciate traffic jams. For example, a client who is in the second-stage programme, Temporal Phase Synchronisation II (TPS II), might do an exercise such as the following. Clearing your mind and calming yourself as much as possible, imagine yourself pinned under an overturned bus. You take each part of your crushed body in turn and dwell upon the discomfort emanating from it. After five minutes, switch yourself back to where you sit in traffic. Open yourself to the flood of relative well-being which rushes through you. See? It could be worse.

  Another TPS II exercise is to project yourself mentally into a space capsule in which you are all alone and falling towards another galaxy
which you expect to reach in another 10,000 years, if all goes well. You were supposed to be in suspended animation, but there was an unfortunate equipment failure. Again, when you find yourself back in your car, heat shimmer and great belches of pollution all around you, you think, "Hey! This isn't bad at all."

  If you follow these and other exercises for eight or ten weeks (real time), you may find you're ready to move up to the third stage, TPS III. The difference between TPS II and TPS III is simply this: at the second level you're learning to accept your fate as better than it could be, and deriving some comfort from that. Furthermore you have begun to restructure the bit of "real time" you have habitually carried into traffic with you. At the third level, however, you begin to appreciate all this extra time the traffic jam affords as an intrinsically positive thing. It is at this stage that you begin to grow as a person, ABSURD claims.

  But what about the first level? TPS I is normally just for Type A personalities. The client is given exercises in basic self-control and relaxation. For example, we try to get him to stop biting the steering wheel and/or screaming obscenities. We also try to convince him of the futility of attempting to move whole lines of traffic by psychokinesis. One very effective way of stopping this kind of behaviour is to have the client strap on a blood-pressure apparatus and watch what happens to the little needles when he tries to move the traffic by mind control. This should scare him into calming down. Negative feedback conditioning, we call it.

  The first thing we do is screen our clients to find out which are Type A and which are Type B. Everything we are trying to do comes much more easily to B's than A's. Type B people can learn to get the most out of a traffic jam with very little training. This kind of person will quite naturally learn to catnap at traffic lights, daydream, fall in love with that gamine beauty over there in the red Toyota, invent a better hammock, etc.

  Nevertheless, whether the client is basically A or B, we can generally guide him through TPS II within a month or two. After that, we find it advisable to stream people into two different programmes. Type A clients respond best to activities that are challenging and that lead to a sense of real accomplishment. Once they've removed their teeth from the steering wheel and begun to open themselves to the possibilities of the Time Extension Effect, these overachievers can be encouraged to take up things such as Linguaphone courses in classical Sanskrit. Language studies are especially good for people who commute in groups — car pools and the like.

  We've had some signal successes in TPS IIIA. There's the financial analyst, for example, who has become a world authority in heroic Swahili epic verse. It took him only eight months (real time) from scratch, given the Time Extension Effect.

  Others have started sideline careers. One could, were one so inclined, sell mutual funds or Fuller brushes car-to- car (although the garland vendors might resent this encroachment on their turf).

  It's good to get out of your car and stretch your legs, even if you don't sell things. The Type B might simply make it an occasion to shoot the breeze with his fellow motorists, perhaps make some new friends. Yeah—why not go over there and chat up that gamine beauty in the red Toyota? ABSURD will even provide you with some good opening lines. (How about this one: "Excuse me, you ravishing thing, you; but have you ever stopped to think what wonderful things traffic jams are? How else would you have met me, for instance?")

  Collecting bumper-sticker sightings can be a rewarding pursuit for both TPS IIIA and TPS IIIB. It is likely that each personality type will proceed differently with this activity, however. The Type A will have in no time amassed thousands of sightings, and will most likely be using a computer programme to categorise them and then make projections as to which he's most probably going to spot next and so forth. The Type B, on the other hand, tends to drift off, musing on just one specimen, relishing its finer points and relating it to the various spheres and dimensions of temporal existence. One of our B students managed to while away an entire 45-minute jam, the other day, having gone into a trance over this bumper graffito: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." I guess he doesn't have to worry about traffic jams anymore; when last heard of, he had sold his car, quit his job. and gone to live in a Zen monastery in Japan.

  Some of our clients have taken advantage of the captive audience and taken up busking — strolling between lines of traffic strumming banjos and things. This is probably more a Type B recourse, but I suppose the Type A could always pass the hat after his performance. In any case, we suggest you reflect — maybe you'll discover you've always harboured a secret desire to perform in public. Once enough people start enjoying Temporal Phase Synchronisation in this way, it should become easy to form pickup bands right there in the road. Again, a fantastic way to meet new people.

  Finally, and still in the creative vein, some of you might find you have a literary bent. You see that guy approaching the lady in the red Toyota; she rolls down her window, and they begin to chat and you wonder: What if he were to say he was selling a course in Temporal Phase Synchronisation offered by an organisation that promises to help you come to terms with traffic jams? "Excuse me," he says, "you ravishing thing, you..."

  Traffic jams can provide both the time and the inspiration to pursue a whole second career as a writer. You get one guess as to where this story was written.

  9 ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE

  Chacun a son gout, and all that: Listen to what an Andromedan named Melrose has to say about pollution.

  As most of you already know, the city of Bangkok was last week honoured to receive a high-level delegation from the M31 Galaxy in Andromeda. This historic visit came as a complete surprise, there having been no earlier communication from the alien ambassadors.

  Today the whole world is full of wonder and hope at the thought of what these advanced beings from so far away might bring us — the new scientific and technical knowledge, the new insights into our own nature. We were fortunate enough to talk with one of the lesser members of the delegation. Communication was no problem, what with the universal translator-cum-intercom-cum-digital watch the alien wore on his... ah... appendage. He told us his name was Melrose.

  Melrose was preparing a field report on us Earthlings, with a view to making a few bucks back home on a TV series called 'Tell Us Another One". He asked us if we could

  clarify a few points.

  'Tell me," he said, "I have noticed a very strange thing: the people in this place you call 'Bangkok' get around by means of bipedal motion — 'walking', I believe you call it." The creature rolled to one side inquisitively as he asked this.

  "That's correct," we replied.

  "Okay, fine." he said. "That's if the person wants to go somewhere — to move from A to B, so to speak. He 'walks'. I see that. But there's something that puzzles me; I've noticed that when people don't want to go anywhere, they get into those four-wheeled devices you call 'cars'. This seems to me odd. If you want to stay in the same place, why don't you just stop walking? Why go to all the trouble and expense of making cars to accomplish something that can be done quite naturally? And if one is bored with simply standing there and not moving, then one can go into a bar or a restaurant and not move while being fed or entertained at the same time."

  We tried to explain to Melrose the rationale behind cars, but he merely looked at the traffic, rolled his eye, and blushed mauve with scepticism. Feeling that we were in danger of losing his trust, we decided to change the subject. We asked why they had chosen Bangkok as a landing site. Given the world-historical significance of this visit, after all, Washington and Moscow were bound to feel slighted. Bangkok was a colourful and exciting city, no doubt, but it was certainly not at the centre of the world stage. Our first thought, as we told him, was that the Tourism Authority of Thailand had found some way to tout the Decade of Tourism on a truly universal scale. This suspicion proved to be unfounded.

  "Actually," said Melrose, "we came across your planet quite by accident. Since it appeared to be a class D (habit
able) world, however, we used remote sensors to determine

  the most benign environment for an exploratory mission. And here we are."

  Melrose extended a breathing trumpet towards a clapped-out old Isuzu bus that had pulled up beside us, and then inhaled deeply as the bus belched and banged away from the stop. "Ahh," our extra-galactic visitor said, trumpet quivering appreciatively. "A little too much combustion, perhaps, but all in all a fine bouquet — subtle, yet substantial; proud, one might say, without being pretentious."

  Melrose explained to us that his home planet had a lovely hot climate and thick black clouds of hydrocarbons all year around. Over the centuries since his species had developed space travel, they had modified the atmospheres of other planets as well, and had established flourishing colonies throughout their galaxy.

  "For a small consulting fee," he told us, "we could do wonders for you here on Earth. For example, these things you call 'city buses' are remarkably efficient at producing a desirable atmosphere; but you waste much of it by not enclosing Bangkok under a dome. Just let us bring in the force-field generators, and you'd see a difference within hours. Really, this city has such potential."

  We were about to ask Melrose if the same force field that kept the hydrocarbons in would keep the rain out, when we were interrupted by the approach of a slick- looking fellow who exuded a positive excess of goodwill. Melrose and this chap both spoke at the same time and, remarkably, said exactly the same thing: "Where you come from? You want go snake farm? Buy sapphires? Rubies?"

  The man looked a little shaken, and backed off, turning to hurry away out of sight along Suriwongse Road. Melrose beamed (actually he turned bright green, which for Andromedans is the same thing). "I think I've finally got it right — it's such an involved greeting!"