Job Discussion Forums

[Boy Wonder]

Bangkok,Thailand....

Two months left and this is what'll stick in my mind long after I've left the departure lounge in Don Muang for the final time.

1. Seeing two rats fighting/a three legged dog and a youth cycling down an alleyway on a toddlers bicycle all in the space of 2 mins one Saturday afternoon!

2. The look of unbridled rage on a ya-ba addled shopkeeper as he flung the T-shirt I had tried and rejected on the floor of his shop(it was too small) and shouted at me to get out of his shop before he killed me .

3.Some bloke lying dead in the road on Phuket after a motorbike accident and 200 bystanders carrying on eating from the roadside foodstalls as if nothing had happened.

4.My building security guard fast asleep at his post with a nasal tube stuck up his nose one night.

5.A foodstall selling grilled fish tipping over and crashing onto one the busiest roads in Bangkok....amusement rather than concern by other stallholders shown.

6.Thousands of people doing Tai-chi and aerobics in Lumphini park at 5.30 am on a Sunday morning.

7. Hundreds of brown uniformed policemen out collecting bribes from motorists at traffic intersections at the end of every month.Mob handed is the word that springs to mind!!

8.Some guy one afternoon in the Chao Praya river swimming through a pile of scum/debris/garbage/motor oil.....all in the name of exercise and toxic poisoning.

9.The sight of many wheelchair bound s.e.x tourists pushing themselves around Pattaya stopping to talk business with some of the female entrepreneurs there!!

10.Old women doing their weekly shopping dressed in 1980's assorted football shirts from around the globe. Took me back to days spent watching the likes of Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Paolo Rossi on TV at the world cup finals.

[Sweetsee]

1. High school girl in uniform cycling down the street with a ciggy in one hand and cell phone in the other.

2. Old geezer attempting to hump his old lady from behind on the platform across the tracks fully clothed.

3. Hordes of motorists smoking with all windows rolled up.

4. Homeless geeza in an army green jumpsuit sitting up agains a wall in front of Shinjuku station sleeping and his bollocks hanging out of a tear in his pants.

5. Unrestrained children sitting on the dashboards of moving vehicles.

Sorry out of time...

[Glenski]

1. My son being born.
2. My wife as she came down the church aisle.
3. Her mother crying as I gave her and my father-in-law their traditional wedding thank you gift.
4. Heaps and heaps of papers piled on every teacher's desk (including mine).
5. The restaurant sign called "Chicken P e c k e r"
6. The live news footage of 9-11
7. The plastic covering my windows in winter, held in place with duct tape, as it bulged inward over a foot because it was so drafty.
8. Oodles and oodles of seafood in the supermarket, and no one thinking twice about buying gobs of fish egg sacs, intestines, and fish heads.
9. The temple room where my wife's grandfather's funeral was held, and its overflowing wealth of flower bouquets
10. The display we teachers put on for graduating seniors as Matsuken Samba dancers and singers

[Jizzo T. Clown]

[Ms. Atondo]

In Mexico in the course of about 1 month...

1. Man on bike pedaling while carrying a ladder under one arm.
2. Man in taxi with arm hanging out passenger window so that he could hold on to a ladder.
3. Pick-up truck marked "Emergency Services", lights and sirens on, with only a ladder in the back.

[tedkarma]

1. Walls Ice Cream guy on his Samlor (three wheeled bike) who wears a big furry lion head on the job.

2. Everyone with dogs along for the ride on their motorbikes.

3. Vegetarian Festival on Phuket - people with metal skewers stuck through their faces and bodies.

4. The beautiful sea . . .

[Joachim]

For Hong Kong:

1) The view of HK island while approaching from Kowloon on the Star ferry (cliche, but true)

2) The queues of people waiting for either egg tarts, or to sit at various well liked dai-pai-dongs, despite the fact that there are plenty of other good places nearby, empty.

3) The views from the 10,000 Buddha's monastery in Sha Tin. A monastery, green hills, and tower blocks.....Hong Kong.

4) The smells of incense and ya sei mei, combined with the gwah-gwah-gwah sound of people speaking Cantonese, while in the smaller side streets of Sheung Wan, where I live

5) Wan Chai on a Saturday night. Watching my fellow countrymen make complete *beep* out of themselves, dancing on a bar with the Filipina hookers...

FOR BANGKOK

1) Kids leaping off into the chao praya river for fun, while I was sailing down to Saphan Taksin worrying about Viles disease.

2) Stray dogs - fighting, sleeping, following me, ignoring me. Just EVERYWHERE. Especially around the motorbike taxi guys with their "London Underground" style flourescent waistcoats.

3) Eating the most delicious fried noodles ever, by the side of a busy main road.

4) My grossly obsese laundry women, smiling their toothless smile at me, then offering me ganja.

5) The sun setting over Ko Lanta....

[erinyes]

Some of these might be common place for China.

Mothers holding their little boys leg open so they can pee in the street right in front of the most prestigious shopping mall in town.

Old people cooking dinner in a small pot over a fire in the middle of the debris from a construction site next to the main road. Rubbish used for fuel.

Mothers grabbing their children and pointing out �the foreigners� as they walk past.

Live ducks tied to the handle-bars of bicycles by their feet and ridden through the city.

Police in police cars driving up the wrong side of the road and beeping at everyone while driving their children to school.

The main road of the town where we live being filled with people standing around watching a big screen TV that has been set up outside by a shop to attract attention.

An even bigger group of people completely blocking a road because of a huge performance being held outside a shopping centre and the police not doing anything to stop it.

The road outside our house becoming a total parking lot once a month when all the parents come with their cars to pick up their children from school.

Little girls barely able to see over the pile of text books sitting on their desks.

Little babies running around in crotchless pants to avoid the need for nappies. They are free to poo and pee anywhere and need to be picked up after like an un-house-trained puppy.

A grandmother running after a little child with bowl trying to feed it lunch.

The dog downstairs being fed rice for dinner.

[Gordon]

This is for where I live in Japan (outside a small city).

1. A lady coming out of a grocery store in kimono and riding home with her groceries on a bike.

2. Little kids riding with their moms on the back of a bike with no socks, hat or gloves and it is below 0C.

3. People burning their garbage everywhere and then having to pick ash off your wet laundry since there are practically no dryers in this country.

4. The sweet sweet smell of kerosene in the house.

5. Going to bed with a toque and scarf 4 months of the year.

6. Watching the farmers harvest the rice.

7. Sitting under a kotatsu (table with a heated element and a blanket draped over it) eating mikans (mandarin oranges).

8. Watching sumo on TV with my daughter and we bet (with kisses) who will win.

9. Watchin my son being born and cutting his umbilical cord.

10. Catching yourself bowing when talking on the phone.

[Hod]

Nine posts, and all but one include Asia, notably Thailand. Hardly surprising, just I'd love to read someone trying to sell us France or Germany or one of those vodka factories masquerading as a country.

I did a year in Morocco so here�s my contribution:

The Good

1. My TV
2. The ferry to Spain every weekend
3. My DVD player

The Other

1. My local bar with its diverse mix of men, men and more men
2. The ferry to Morocco every Sunday evening
3. My blood pressure after a year of Moroccan fare (red meat, chips/fries, red meat)

Three of each, fair�s fair.

[Fatcat]

"Mothers holding their little boys leg open so they can pee in the street right in front of the most prestigious shopping mall in town."

OH yeah...that reminds me, I remember quite vividly walking down the street in Sevilla, Spain watching a father let his toddler take a dump right in the middle of the sidewalk....and no one said a thing! I couldn't do anything but stand there and stare! Obviously a tourist I guess...

Also from Spain...
--countless couples making out and/or going all the way in public places, in broad daylight, mind you
--some guy masturbating outside my window, and when everyone saw him and started screaming at him he ran and got hit by a mercedez
--some naked chic swinging above the crowd in a swing in a nightclub
--sitting at a cafe with my friends on a dead street, then suddently a parade-like-thing coming out of nowhere----men holding up a woman playing, I guess, La Virgen and many trumpet players----they all entered the church across the street and were gone like that

[cartago]

In Costa Rica:

The cloudy green mountains coming into view pretty much everywhere in Costa Rica.

a boy sleeping in the street with his arm around a dog.

Holding onto the handlebars on the bus while it makes a near vertical drop.

Flocks of parakeets flying right in downtown San Jose.

A huge mob of people jumping up and down trying to catch boxes of colgate toothpaste being thrown from a promotional truck.

In Guatemala:

A lady putting her anklelength hair into a bun sitting in the bed of a truck in heavy traffic in Guatemala city.

A huge group of Mayan women with blue turbans gathering into the back of a truck at the end of the day in Antigua.

A truck driving down a mountainside at night with no headlights and two men hanging out each window with flashlights.

[biffinbridge]

1.Dancing Mohammad in the Oasis Chinese bar in Doha,Qatar.
2.The sight of total emptiness that is Marsah Al Brega,Libya.
3.Drunks wetting themselves all over Central Europe.
4.Honest John asleep and drunk in the car, in the carpark at Qatar Petroleum.
5.Me goose stepping around the staff party at my new school because someone had a Hitler moustache....turned out to be my new boss.
6.Swimming with dolphins in the Red Sea.
7.Desert sunsets.
8.Dennis the Welsh nutter nearly getting our plane grounded on the way to Doha because 'we all looked like we came from council estates and we didn't treat our women well'.
9.Dennis being deported 2 weeks later for being mad.
10.Pious Arabs not understanding why we slept with Oriental working girls and not lady boys.
I could go on....but

[Moore]

Ok Hod, have to admit that having lived in Asia I know there's a lot of visual goodness there, but feel honour bound to defend Paris:

1) Drinking champagne on Valentine's night with girlfriend on an small island in the middle of the Seine: chilly but supremely romantic
2) Seeing someone smoking whilst riding scooter wearing a full-face helmet (it's all in the angle)
3) The blokes who go around on scooters fitted with vacuum-cleaner type dog-poo suckers hoovering up after the poodles
4) My tiny but gorgeous one-bed appartment right in the centre with wooden floors, wood-beamed cielings and postcard view over the Paris skyline
5) The summer concerts sitting under the chestnut trees around the bandstand in the Jardins du Luxembourg
6) Dancing your socks of on the Seine on the Batofar (lightship converted into a club) while in the background someone plays Tetris via their mobile phone on a screen formed by the lights of an adjacent tower block
7) Driving your girlfriend around on a scooter on a warm summer evening up to the top of Sacre Coeur hill and then looking out at the lights of the city.

[guangho]

1. Two men playing badminton under a highway overpass on one of the busiest streets of Guangzhou.

2. The view from Kowloon piers.

3. Drunken businessman and his son simultenously urinating against the wall of their apartment building in Seoul.

4. The incredible winter flatness that is Wisconsin.

5. My erstwhile hakwon collegue vomiting all over the backseat of our cab after a night of clubbing. (Most of my Korean memories involve drugs or booze).

6. Here is one for the senses: a great facial massage by a lovely young lady in Beijing.

7. The view of palm trees as I exited Ben-Gurion Airport.

8. Japanese-American schoolteacher screaming and dissolving into tears as she pleaded with her inner-city charges in Harlem, in a classroom next to my spot (I didn't have a classroom) "If you be quiet I will give you a nice present!"

9. My first look at the rainforest-like Delta region of southern China as the tran came up to Shenzen from Hong Kong.

10. The scorpions in my shoes in Oklahoma.