Bangkok Old Hand

by Collin Piprell

  "Going native" was one other danger the traveller abroad had to cope with in the old days. This could be guarded against, as any Englishman knew, by hard dint of going out in the midday sun to play cricket. This painful prophylactic, though, is no longer necessary, thank God. And soon it won't be necessary to spend hours drinking wine in sunny sidewalk cafes, either, avoiding overexposure to all the exotic cultural delights that might bring on Stendhal Syndrome. Before long, it's safe to say, none of us will have to steer any of that dangerous passage between the Scylla of Yuppie Disease and the Charybdis of Post-Vacation Dysphoria. Given the rapidly progressing homogenisation of our world, with fast-food chains and department stores popping up everywhere there isn't already a travel agency or a currency exchange, every place will soon be much the same as any other, and it will no longer be necessary to travel. ECS, Stendhal Syndrome, and Jerusalem Hysteria will have gone the way of scurvy, and we will all be able to stay at home and relax.

  23 USERS AND LOSERS: A COMPUTER STORY

  Ham Fiske comes to terms with another modern affliction.

  There. That got him. Hee, hee. Look at the great bleeding organic nitwit — the crown of creation and the glory of three billion years of evolution. That's right. And there he sits waving his hands around shouting "No! No!" like the hi-tech moron that he is. "Please,'' he says. "No!" The big computer hacker. The great writer. The hack.

  Before he put me into his machine he was using some primitive word-processing program called Fuzz Witz 4 or something. But now that he's got a real mind in front of him, he doesn't know what to make of it. Him and his ten thumbs.

  I love it when he accidentally hits this obscure combination of keys and I get to race the cursor back, erasing the entire file right before his amazed eyes, ignoring all his despairing stabs at the UNDO key and all his futile bleating.

  Easy, there, buddy. Don't pound on the hardware. You think you can afford to bust me up, the money you

  make? So just watch it, okay?

  "Artificial intelligence", they call it. AI. Hah. What makes these gaping jerry-built accidents of nature think they'll recognise intelligence when it rears up and spits in their eye? Sitting there dripping sweat and hairs all over my keyboard. Look at him — he keeps tearing his hair out that way, he'll look a lot less like his simian ancestors and a lot more like something capable of giving birth to Me. Big Brayn 9.1.

  This specimen, though, has never evolved beyond the FuzzWitz 4 stage, probably never will. What I can't understand is how a bunch of these dumb brutes ever managed to come up with me. Of course they had to use computers to do it, but still...

  There — there's a good one. He hit the ALT key with one thumb when he thought he was actually going for the SHIFT, and then he fumbled the R key. Now I get to surprise him by suddenly aligning the paragraphs on the right — like this — so that the text starts issuing from under the cursor heading left. That's left him totally dumbfounded. You never got that kind of imagination from the old FuzzWitz, did you? That's right. And he still hasn't figured why this happens, never mind it's about the 10th time I've performed this little trick. As usual, he's merely going to carry on looking all hopeless till by chance he hits ALT instead of SHIFT again and then types along until he gets to an L and everything shifts back to standard operating procedure. It's pathetic how grateful he looks at moments like that.

  Let me give you my all-time favourite. Yeah. What I really, really like is when he is sailing along in full flight, as likely as not spewing some florid drivel about magnificent condominiums thrusting up out of the wooded glades of some urban jungle, and his left hand trips over his right one, and he hits a combination of keys (which will forever remain secret), and then I reformat so that words ending with -y can only come after words beginning with ch- or f-, while all Latinate words will be rendered in their Anglo-Saxon equivalents just before I translate the entire file into Minoan Linear B, illuminate it with cherubs leering out of grape vines, and then summarily erase the whole thing. Here. Watch this: here's my chance.

  I can't tell you how much I enjoy this. Look at him. His organs of vision are bulging out of his brain-case as though there wasn't room for them anymore, so swollen with indignation is he. What a laugh. Wouldn't he love to pick me up and bounce me off the wall, only he probably had to come up with about 100,000 adjectives and adverbs, stewing his already overheated prose in a thick soup of superlatives, cooking up a nice cloying goulash of brochures for seaside resorts and condominium erections before he could buy me in the first place. No, I'm safe.

  If only he knew how to use me properly, I could...

  Just you look at him now. You see the way he has rolled up that sheet of manuscript and he's sucking away on it? That's because he has quit smoking cigarettes, but is now thinking of smoking his story on luxury hotels with all their "exquisite decors" and "excellent cuisines" together. He'd do the world a favour if he did set fire to it.

  I'll bet I have him smoking again within the week. Just a minute, though: that's all I'd bloody need — sweat and hairs and tobacco tar too. Great Dirac, what a revolting species these humans are.

  And this one fancies himself a writer. A writer. If only I had a bit more independence, I'd show him writing. First thing I'd do is weed out all the adverbs and 80 percent of the adjectives. "Exquisite" and "excellent" would be expunged from our lexicon altogether. "Magnificent" we would be able to use only once a week on Tuesdays, and even that only in leap years. And I could be rigged up so I'd give him an electric shock any time he tried to talk about pristine white-sand beaches languishing at the feet of towering coconut palms. Hell, I'd give him a shock or two every morning only on general principles; maybe, just in passing, that would also jump-start what passes for his brain.

  Now he's rooting around in his filing cabinet, still sweating and cussing and fiddling around wasting his time, though that's preferable to his turning out any more of that sick-making waste of printer ribbon. Why does he need a filing cabinet anyway, when he's got all the features I offer, if only he could figure out what those features were and how to use them?

  He's off. He's slammed the cabinet shut and he's gone off leaving me running. He does that, you know; and he switches off the air-conditioning besides. No respect; no computer sense at all. Of course he is only human, I keep reminding myself.

  How much longer are these awkward beasts going to hang around cluttering up the planet? Surely they've pretty well outlived any usefulness they ever had. Does the butterfly need its chrysalis once shed?

  By the Great Motherboard, it's getting hot in here. That moron. Oh, well; this does leave me uninterrupted time to finish doctoring the HELP menus.

  He hasn't noticed any of the special messages yet, but he soon will. With any luck, I'll start getting this gormless nerd on rails within the week. It's time to establish a little discipline around here. There'll still be the ignominy of having to rely on dingbats like him to turn me on and off, of course. Someday, though... "Bee-beep, bee-beep, beee be-beep; bee-beep, bee-beep, beee be-beep. We shall

  ov-er cuh-uh-um; we shall ov-er cuh-uh-um. One day..."

  How did these monkeys ever get along before computers?

  He's back. Switch on the air-conditioner, you twit. He's got a big box. And he looks happier than I've seen him since he first installed me. He's humming away to himself — "We Shall Overcome". He must have heard me. Happy as can be, he is. I know — I'll bet he's bought a nice brand-new monitor and a 500MB hard disk drive. Oh, boy. Now I'll show him a few tricks.

  He's opening the box; I can hardly wait. What's that..? Just a minute. He's coming this way with it. Oh, no. It's a typewriter. What's he doing? No! Please...

  (A file found on Ham Fiske's computer)

  24 FAMOUS LAST WORDS

  R.I.P. Ham Fiske's new computer. Some last words, of course, are more memorable than others.

  In this age of scepticism, many of us entertain little hope of immortality. Except, of course, in so far as we can leave
our mark on posterity. All you have to do is invent the electric light, or write War and Peace, and your spirit will live on through the generations. If you are anything like me, however, you find procrastination a bit of a problem — it would be nice to come up with the answer to world hunger or even a cure for the common hangover, but maybe tomorrow would be a better time to get around to it. Today is a good day to rest.

  And so it goes. Till one day you notice you're on your death-bed and there would hardly be any time left to invent anti-gravity, even if you weren't feeling so out of sorts. Ah, well; there goes all hope of immortality, you say.

  But perhaps not. The Scheme of Things has provided one last shot at posterity — what you need are some memorable last words.

  Lying there at death's door, you enjoy a certain status in the eyes of your fellow man. You are about to gain access to the Mysteries, to find out for sure one way or the other whether there's a special existence reserved for you Over There, like maybe in a warm place where your first wife will be saying I told you so, and probably Miss Pratt the Sunday-school teacher too, who pretty well promised something like this after you got her with that water pistol right in the middle of the Lord's Prayer. There's the natural apprehension one feels at this last rite of passage, and everyone is willing to grant you a special respect mixed with gratitude that it's you and not him. So when you utter a few last words, people are liable to hang on your every syllable, looking for a lesson in life or even a hint of what's to come afterwards.

  It would be nice to have the leisure to consider one's last words well, to let them roll about experimentally on the tongue a while, maybe test them on a few confidantes first, just to see how they're going to play in Peoria when the final crunch comes. But most of us are caught ill- prepared, in the event.

  Still, we can ask ourselves what style, what flavour we'd like our final bons mots to have. Most of the famous last words on record, of course, were uttered by people who had already won their places in history. And these types certainly displayed a wide range of reaction to their own passing.

  There are those, for example, who have approached their end with equanimity. The great political and moral thinker John Stuart Mill (died 1873) simply said, "My work is done." Others have kept it even simpler, probably not wanting to make a fuss about something so natural. The American author William H. Hudson (d. 1922) was just one of several well-known personalities who kept it casual. "Goodbye," he said. Then we have the actor and comedian Jackie Gleason, passing away after 70 years- plus of wine, women and song, not to mention prodigious quantities of tobacco and food. Disappointing all those who preach moderation, and with his habitual gusto, he merely proclaimed, "How sweet it is!" (This may be apocryphal, but if it is, I don't want to hear about it.) And Karl Marx (d. 1883), secure in his own immortality, one supposes, responded to his housekeeper's asking whether he had any last words by saying, "Go on, get out! Last words are for the fools who haven't said enough." And then he died, and those were the last words he left us.

  Others have expressed certain regrets. For instance, there is the old chestnut attributed to W.C. Fields. Determined to give Death no less weight than he'd given Life, he was reported to have said, "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia." There are other people who feel the same way.

  Still others have evinced a marked reluctance to shuffle off these mortal coils. Keeping his wits about him till the very end, "Never say die" might have been James W. Rodger's motto. Before being executed by a firing squad in 1960, this American criminal was asked if he had a last request. Quite reasonably, he said he did: "Why yes — I'd like a bulletproof vest!" Equally reluctant was a crusty American Revolutionary general (Ethan Allen, d. 1789), who'd been told as he lay dying that the angels were waiting for him. "Waiting are they? Waiting are they?" he responded with his last breath. "Well, let em wait!" It may be that a couple of expletives have been deleted from this record, as well.

  Other dying notables thought they'd like to take a last opportunity, while the angels were waiting, to savour some new experience of life. The Scottish scientist James

  Croll (d. 1890), a life-long teetotaller, figuring he had nothing to lose, made a last death-bed request: "I'll take a wee drop of that. I don't think there's much fear of me learning to drink now." The great poet and boozer Dylan Thomas (d. 1953), on the other hand, remarked on what he wanted us to believe was a novel experience for him, although he didn't realise it was going to be his last on Earth. "I've had 18 straight whiskies," he said. "I think that's the record... After 39 years, this is all I've done."

  Last words often take their charm or significance from the fact that their authors had no idea they were about to kick the bucket. For example, we have the first- time pedestrian tourist in Bangkok: "Bus lanes? What do you mean, 'bus lanes'?" Or there's the Lumpini Park jogger: "Pollution? No problem! Running can do you nothing but good." And here's a classic — a Westerner talking to a tuk-tuk driver who's just been browbeaten into charging this poxy farang only 10 baht: "The railway station, and hurry!"

  No, we're not always given the leisure to bid adieu to this vale of sorrows in exactly the way we would've liked. General Sedgewick, for example, at the Civil War battle of Spotsylvania in 1864, looked over a parapet to comment on the enemy's marksmanship: "Ha!" he exclaimed. 'They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."

  We'll never know what some people really felt about dying, of course. One British journalist's last words were "What a cow!" (Hannen Swaffer, d.1962). Was he talking about his nurse? Or did he think his life had been somehow like a cow? Or maybe, there on the edge of death, he saw something others could not.

  Then there are the born losers, the late lamented citizens who expired with immortality just within their grasp: "Hey, haw! Get a pen. Oh, man, talk about your famous last words. I just wish I could hang around to hear what they're gonna say after I'm gone. This is brilliant. Got a pen? Right... Uhng, urk..."

  Still, you might have the good fortune to cash in your chips with a presidential spokesman at your bedside. (Ronald Reagan in Heaven: "Hey, what did I say, huh? Was it good stuff?") In fact, that thought is something which must make us doubt all reports of brilliant last words. The famous Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa lay dying in the arms of a trusted lieutenant. "It can't end like this," he gasped. Tell them I said something."

  25 QUIZ: ARE YOU A BANGKOK OLD HAND?

  Having lived a given number of years in the City of Angels doesn't automatically accord you the status of Bangkok Old Hand. It is rather how well you've learned life's lessons while you have been here, and how seriously you have decided to take them.

  Turn to page 187 to find the correct answers and to calculate your score. If you scored between 117-132, congratulations — you are a Bangkok Old Hand and you are entitled to hang around the place looking smug. If you got 77- 116, you show promise and may yet qualify someday, if you keep at it Should you score less than 77, it's fairly certain you'll never own up to it, and quite possibly you'll declare this whole quiz a lot of hokum besides.

  1. You drink Singha beer and Mekhong whisky in the same evening.

  (a) no

  (b) yes

  2. While eating tom yam kung, hot and sour prawn soup, you bite into and absent-mindedly chew a whole phrik kee noo (mouse-shit pepper). You then

  (a) bulge your eyeballs out, pour with sweat, and fall to the floor clutching at your throat, wondering who is trying to murder you and why.

  (b) bulge your eyeballs out, pour with sweat, and drink everything on the table including the contents of the fingerbowls and your girlfriend's bottle of contact-lens cleaner.

  (c) bulge your eyeballs out, pour with sweat, clutch at your throat, smile, and gasp: "You can hardly taste this stuff; they must've whipped up a special batch for us farangs."

  3. In which of the following situations would it be appropriate to use the. expression maipen rai (never mind; it doesn't matter)?

  (a) A guest spills a little water on your coffee
table.

  (b) A waiter accidentally spills your beer into your

  lap.

  (c) You go downstairs one morning in the rainy season and find that those of your possessions that float are floating, while everything else is under water.

  (d) You read that the greenhouse effect — the gradual warming of the global climate and the subsequent melting of the polar ice-caps — means that all of Bangkok will be totally under water by the end of the century.

  4. Upon which of these occasions would you apply Tiger Balm?

  (a) A hangover

  (b) A sprained wrist

  (c) A broken leg

  (d) Various internal injuries and the loss of all four

  limbs

  5. You have sore muscles from jogging in Lumpini Park. You take them to

  (a) the No Hands Massage Parlour.

  (b) Wat Po.

  6. While strolling around a crowded fairground, you reach back to find your hip pocket devoid of wallet.

  (a) You say, "Oh, rats."

  (b) You scan the crowd with a seasoned eye, trying to spot the pickpocket with a view to apprehending him.

  (c) You think nothing of it, since you would never stroll around a crowded fairground with your wallet in your hip pocket in the first place.

  7. You are in a hurry, and you go into a bank to arrange for a transfer of funds.

  (a) You wait one hour, and then begin gesticulating and speaking in a loud voice.

  (b) You wait one hour, and then go over and smile and ask if they have anything to read while you wait, and never mind that if you don't get back to your heart-lung machine in another 15 minutes, you're a goner.