Was given this book the other day by a friend - Funeral Casino, pretty crazy stuff. Talks about the previous massacres in Thailand, how politics and death relate and insight into how various leaders use death in their political careers to hold sway over the people. Hell - I am only on the first chapter but this is cool stuff. Books like this you just don’t run into - someone has to show them to you so I thought I would pass the title along.
People may find these images interesting. I will explain more about it later but I think it is funny shit:
Moving on.
Do you remember the first time you used SMS? If you come from America you probably started using SMS a lot later than folks from Asia or Europe. First time I used it was in Asia and now I can’t live without it. In Hong Kong I always had an SMS group or list on my phone. Party Posse. I would text around 10 or so on Sunday mornings alerting the crew that it was time to get to Laguna. All you HK’rs know what I am talking about. The group SMS meant I sent one text out but all the people in my group got it. SMS makes harem management possible.
America and Silicon Valley are wunderkids when it comes to scaling up the use of simple things and making it massively accepted on a wider scale. Tweeting is the newest thing to come along and it reminds me of when SMS first took off. The technology is called twitter. Twitter is essentially a hyper form of micro blogging. People can easily update their channel from their phone, web or even voice. Anyone can tune into their channel and receive channel updates via the web or their phone. At first at may seem pretty needless but I am seeing some interesting usages and combined with things like location based information - this type of technology will form a part of the new social web. No doubt about it.
Care to follow Obama? Hell - maybe even me?
Early usages of this stuff look like it is just a toy or fad but I think this stuff is pretty real but still sorting out for myself how it will be effectively used and implemented for real world stuff. I am trying to figure out how to apply it to the bargirl scene. 
Which brings up another important facet of technology that I was chatting with a longtime friend and reader of the blog about. Compartmentalizing. I used this term when I describe how people can separate their life into different compartments in order to keep things contained. Meaning - say you have a gf or are married and you come to Bkk to screw around. When you go home you have to contain that holiday in its place - not letting it come back to bite you or affect your life away from Bkk.
Technology is making this both harder and easier at the same time. Say you use Facebook and have connections with friends, your gf and so on. This is your social graph. Now you can’t use that same identity to connect or link with say girls you have interest in pursuing on the side. You have to compartmentalize by having different identities or by using different social networks for different purposes. I think over time technology may have to help sort this out for people. You would not write on your gik’s FB wall if your GF is also able to see it. Complicated stuff. Something similar to a phone with 2 SIM cards is needed.
They say technology is suppose to make life easier. Right.
ps. open plea to Mike of Mike’s Bar Guide. Write me back dude. 2 emails and no response. I am starting to think you don’t want to hook up with us lower suk scum. Or maybe your lame gMail account keeps flagging all my yahoo email as spam. Peace.
I understand that. I have to use Facebook for family and friends (especially as companies are prone to checking this stuff now) and Tagged for finding Giks from Uni. I wouldn’t want any cross-pollination. Actually there quite a friendly bunch on Tagged. The best result out of any Social / dating site for making contacts that actually lead to what you want.
Those photos are hilarious!
View all comments by Young Royal
Empower (the name mentioned on that pamphlet) has been around for a long time. I think Cleo Odzer was involved with them when she wrote that book almost 20 years ago called Patpong Sisters, but maybe my memory is fading on that one. Funeral Casino sounds like it could be interesting reading. Let us know more once you have gotten past the first chapter.
View all comments by Creepolay (formerly Cheapolay)
Mike of Mike’s Bar Guide, if you are reading this, is background music for your home page really necessary? C’mon dude.
View all comments by pmmp
Compartmentalizing is key. I am looking for some kind of device/tool/thing/widget that would let me easily keep track (and transfer from one medium to another) of tidbits such as frequent flier accounts, e-mail addresses, and especially phone numbers. The last is crucial: jotted down some digits on a napkin, then others, then this morning after some heavy SMS-ing sure enough I realized I’d had the owners of the digits mixed up.
View all comments by Julian
yr - so u are saying u uses tagged to hook up? I have never checked but maybe I need to. Lots of Thais on there?
jul - yes - tools are needed to manage this hectic lifestyle in bkk.
View all comments by smitty
Yeah theres lots of Uni girls on there and they actually contact you. I’ve tried all the rest and it just doesn’t work. If you say hi to a girl on facebook they think it’s kind of funny that your asking to be friends. As I said there a friendly bunch on tagged.
One funny thing I’ve noticed is that, I did a search for Caucasian (white) girls the other day just to say whats out there and low and behold a whole bunch of white skinned Thai chicks shows up. Unexpected.
I have worked with Indians before and we had this funny program you know the sort. It’s asks you a bunch of questions and it says it will make up a picture of you. It’s a joke thing and it’s always some animal pic or something. But I noticed all the Indians put white or light skinned and never tanned.
View all comments by Young Royal
@smitty - sunday mornings at laguna…must’ve been on the prowl for some indo DH tail.
View all comments by anon
Indeed Creepolay, Cleo Odzer was involved with Empower. But I believe that the book was published around 1995 or ‘96. If I remember good.
View all comments by hanuman
Thanks Hanu. Yes, you are right, somewhere between 95-97 I think it was. I am not sure if you read it, but ultimately she failed in a way at what she set forth to do with the study and the book ultimately by falling in love with a Patpong street boy and ultimately heading on a downward spiral down the rabbit hole and bringing out her own demons to a point where she almost couldn’t find her way back up to the top. It struck me as odd how things took that course when her intent was to study the social impacts of it all and failed in many ways. I guess looking at it from another perspective, the only way to really learn about something is to become one with your case study, which certainly she did.
View all comments by Creepolay (formerly Cheapolay)
Actually, I think it might have been the paperback that came out 95-97. I think I might have read it in hard copy as early as 93-94, but it doesn’t really matter. Just semantics.
View all comments by Creepolay (formerly Cheapolay)
yr - I have to check it out.
Not sure about empower of the past but they are going pretty strong right now with multiple outlets and mostly focusing on teaching english to bargirls. Japanese at some outlets as well.
View all comments by smitty
anon - u r correct sir.
View all comments by smitty
There is also an organizaiton called Goodwill Industries on Soi Ruam Rudee that does a similar thing to Empower. But Empower goes back 20+ years I think.
View all comments by Creepolay (formerly Cheapolay)
CC: Yeah, Goodwill does similar but they take a different approach I believe which is similar to a local Catholic group in that they try to get the girls out of the sex industry offering them English or Jobs. Not in a sinister way, they just try to show them there are other alternatives and help them pursue those alternatives.
The Empower approach is more about supporting the sexworker. It’s more like “Okay, your a sex worker, that’s fine. Here are some things we offer to assist you, like English, or Healthcare Awareness/Information or various support if you run into a problem.”.
View all comments by pmmp
Thanks pmmp. Interesting to know the difference between the two. I have heard arguments against these organizations in general in that the new skills are then exploited by the girls to be more affective in being hustlers of the night. That of course is one way of looking at it. Another perspective, and the one of these types of organizations is that the girls are being given the means to better themselves with more skills and education and it is up to them to have the right judgment on what to do with their newly learned skills. The sad reality is though a girl who has made in excess of 30-40K a month working in the sex industry for some time would be hard pressed to get a job answering telephones for 8,000 Baht a month once she can speak English and use the internet. Again, I guess it the few that really make something of it which are the focus of these organizations rather than the masses which can’t really be helped anyway.
View all comments by CheapCreep
Funeral Casino looks interesting. Is it available in Thailand? If not, I’ll get a copy next time I’m in the home country.
I thought Odzer’s book Patpong Sisters was a good read and made some interesting observations about the ladies who come to work in the farang bar business. She lost a lot of credibility when she fell for the Patpong ‘Hello Maengda’. I liked her 2nd book, ‘Goa Freaks’ better. She died in Goa at age 49.
View all comments by dj
Sad about Cleo. I didn’t know she passed away. Wikipedia reported the cause of death was either a stroke or brain tumor. I think very few women from the West have tried to study the side of it in the way she did. I agree, she fell down the rabbit hole as many do as I noted already, but I think she did add a at least a different perspective to it all.
View all comments by CheapCreep
ChCr: True enough. Two stories I heard recently from a friend teaching at Empower. One was about how one girl attributed a “big tip without boom boom” (he told me the Thai phrase the girls use for that but I forgot it) to something he taught in class. The phrase he taught was “You’re a very genuine person” and he also taught the context to use it in so they wouldn’t use it like “hi, handsome man”. It was apparently a big tip too from a farang customer who thought it was endearing or whatever. BTW, if you’re walking down Patpong I or II and you hear this phrase incorrectly being used it’s probably from one of the students that failed his class.
Just to digress for a moment about this story, it’s actually an example of how Empower differs from Goodwill. From my understanding , Goodwill would put emphasis on English used in places like an Airport or Bank to converse with an English speaking customer. Empower, as you can see from the example above talks about bar scenarios openly. If there are any Goodwill teachers out there please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. I know one of our regular contributors who is a teacher there but haven’t seen him comment in a while. Okay, I’ve beaten this one to death now.
The second story he told me was about how a regular and older ex-bargirl close acquaintance of his quit the business and joined this organization that pays her 7500/month to make jewelery, provided she attended certain religious classes. She is apparently very happy and appreciative to them for helping her live a safe and independent life outside the sex biz so doesn’t mind the religious angle.
Two tales that kinda match what your saying. No tales of girls using their teaching for evil, unless you consider it evil to hone tip-making skills. Probably not so evil but perhaps there are evil cases out there.
View all comments by pmmp
yes. this online issue needs a full report and analysis. so far we have tagged. never heard it before. will check it out. what has worked for anyone else?
View all comments by do not
pmmp - Good stuff. In general these two organizations, and the others like them, are all about empowering. And empowering people is always a good thing if the new power/knowledge they have acquired is used for good things and improving upon one’s life if it is in a way that is not at the expenses of others. But unfortunately, as you noted, that is not always the case. But these organizations primarily focus on the few success stories they have each year, like that girl you mentioned, rather than the masses which pass through their doors, which as I mentioned, normally can’t be helped anyway. My feeling is that they probably would see grater long term success with their students if they offered some sort of social integration which offered some job placement of some sort, even if menial, to give the people a sense of direction for their newly learned skills. I could see girls like this of any age who have learned good English and computer skills being employable in call centers around Thailand.
View all comments by CheapCreep
Sorry for off-topic. but is tomorrow (friday) a national holiday in thailand?
View all comments by random
As far as social networking sites go Facebook is the only professional looking one that I like. But there’s Bebo, Bahu, HI5, Tagged, Friendster to name some more but there all pretty crap IMHO. There too childish, covered in glitter and crap.
View all comments by Young Royal
random: I’m sure I’m too late, but friday is a holiday for some, but not a national holiday.
View all comments by werewolf
sorry mate, I should have mentioned the reason… it’s the Royal Plowing Ceremony at Sanam Luang. That’s why it shows in red on the calendar. Big deal in Thailand as the King attends personally for most of the past 50 years.
View all comments by werewolf
dj - not sure on the book. I got it from a friend who knows the author.
View all comments by smitty