Thread: Are there parts of Issan without arrows?

Bear with me on the title.

I live in Bangkok, in a medium size apartment block which is more or less identical to countless many other apartments blocks in Bangkok. The building has it's own resident handyman. He is hard working, generous, always smiling....... just a general all round good bloke.

Now, the handyman has become a tad tetchy of late and not without good reason. The reason for his latest tetchy mood is "Them on floor 7" (his words, only he says it in Thai of course).

"Them on floor 7" have just arrived from Issan and from my understanding this is there first trip outside of Issan, there are four of them (I think). It is now that I should point out that them being from Issan is not in itself a problem. The problem is that they are just crappy tennants and not in a noisy, rude bad way but...... Allow me to illustrate.

Last night at about eightish the Misses, the Brat and I where just chilling at home watching TV and stuff. For some reason the lights seemed to be playing up, and just as my misses stood up to call our mild mannered handyman, the fire alarm rang. It was a very good alarm as far as they go because it made absolutely sure that it got our undivided attention, it was LOUD.

Anyway. So everybody spills out from their rooms into the corridor. Much discussion is had and I am contemplating how to hide the rabbit (we are not allowed to keep pets really), when somebody suggest that we should stop faffing about and move as we could be in a life threatening situation. Smart decision, eh! Wish I had thought of it. So everybody is quickly grabbing shit from their rooms to leave and some are halfway down the stairs already when a figure looms from the end of the corridor, the figure is that of our mild mannered handyman.

It is now that we discover that said handyman has an alter ego for he has now become Groundsman Willie, and he is ready to fight wolves with his bear hands. Everybody took a step back to the side to allow for Willie to pass through the corridor unhindered, I could swear that the light dimmed significantly as he approached. As he passed us on his way to the stairs at the opposite end of the corridor, we could hear him mutter the words: "Them on floor 7", and he was not happy...........

So the alarm was, thankfully, a false one. What happened was this:

One of "them on floor 7" decided to go and get some food, this particular member of the group is a girl in her twenties, I am led to believe. As she reached the bottom floor she encouentered the obstacle of the doors being locked, and her needing a card key to get out. Bearing in mind that the simplest of instructions on how to get out are displayed clearly for all to see in Thai and English, I think that it might be fair to assume that she is illiterate as she when in desperate search for "that" button which would release her. At one point her search even lead her into the (then empty) managers office which happens to be where the main electrical switch board thingy bit is. This would explain my lights going because it seems that she was sure that amongst a whole grid of electriclal light switches, at least one of them must open her door. I like to think that from an outside observer, the light show inside the building made it appear as though it had a poltegeist, or something better that I can't think of now, perhaps.

She must have been a soulless figure when she didn't find her switch, perhaps she would be trapped behind those doors for up to as many as 15 minutes before another tennant would arrive and open the door. Until.......... YES, there it is, THE switch. It must be as it is the only not yet tried. And how did she not notice it before, sat there on the wall in its RED box and hard but breakable plastic cover.

Sorry, I am babbling a bit now but you get the point. The stupid bitch tried every switch or button she could find in hope of opening the door and one of those just happened to be the fire alarm. Groundsman Willie was not happy, and neither was he happy when on another occassion they left their taps on causing a flood which spread to the corridor, reached the lift shaft and shorted the lift, nope, Willie wasn't happy with that one little bit. They have also done a myriad of stupid other things but these two where biggies. Things like putting metal in the microwave and leaving it where smallies in relation.

So, back to the alarm girl. She can't read and has unlikely to have been in an environment with so many many eletrical switches before. I'd have thought that a big RED button would be warning enough but maybe she actually has no experience in such things, would not have known the relevance of RED and was therefore going through a logical process, sort of like the way that a rat would findits way out of a maze.

Which leads me to this........

On entering the lift once, a couple of weeks before the above events, I noticed something inside. The buttons marked "<--->" and ">---<" each had a sticker placed above them and each sticker had a word written on it in Thai. I can't read Thai, but that was no problem as they could have been written in any language in the world and I would (as could anybody) still have known that the words meant "Open" and "Close". I was intrigued as to this seemingly pointless exercise, and so we enquired.

This was the first time that we heard the "now mild mannered" handyman use the term "Them on floor 7", and he said it through gritted teeth. The reason for the stickers above "open" and "close", was because one day he was called to an emergency at the lift because somebody was stuck inside and couldn't get out. Need I go on???

So, if it is possible that a person simply had no experience with a board of switches or fire alarm, meaning that they had no clue as to what they where for and may do. Is it not also possible that the sticker thing occurred because they had no experience with arrows.

I have thought about the chances that they did not have the intelligence to understanding the meanings of the "open" and "close" arrows by way of considering a previously seen arrow and applying it to this scenario, and I have dismissed it. I have dismissed it on the basis such a creature would struggle immensely to even survive due to the complications of processes such as talking, walking, eating and breathing, all four of which, incidentally would surely not be achievable.

So therefore, the only other possible outcome is that they simply have no experience with arrows and had never seen a single arrow up until entering the lift in my apartment building. Meaning that the markings on the button simply had no meaning to them, as with the Klingon language to you and I.

And so to conclude, there must be parts of Isaan that simply have no arrows.

Originally Posted by Moonraker

would not have known the relevance of RED and was therefore going through a logical process, sort of like the way that a rat would findits way out of a maze.

Red=Emergency. To the Isaan lass, being locked in a confined space certainly constituted dire emergency. Seems logical to me.

Originally Posted by Moonraker

is a girl in her twenties

is she hot ?

Originally Posted by baldrick

Originally Posted by Moonraker

is a girl in her twenties

is she hot ?

Depends if there is a real fire...

i remember visiting a mate at a 'flash' hotel on the gold coast,[ all the names shall be unanomius, to protect the not so innocent], after a really good/late night out, we really needed some ice from reception as we were retireing to our room after tumbleing out the stretch, whilst i wondered the halls looking at the art work,me mate found the big RED button, and yep he broke and pushed it, yep fire trucks and all the bells and whistles.. so it s not just hillbillies who like to push RED buttons too,,was a bonza night though

After being trapped on a train from Amsterdam to Dordrecht because I didn't know there was a button push needed to open the train door, I shall refrain from any comment. Damn near ended up in Belgium.

Sonds a bit like an episode of "It's About Time"

Well, I've lived in apartments all over Bangkok and a common victim of " not reading instructions syndrome " is nearly always the washing machines. The powder gets poured into anything vaguely resembling an oriface as do the softener and bleach. I have seen university students force clothes into the tumbler right to the brim regardless of any weight limit. Whites are washed with coloureds and if they come out blotchy they get chucked.
However, the worst culprits were the Cambodians who worked on the nearby construction site. They were in a class of their own. They would stuff the machines full of their work clothes, without bothering to give them a rinse first. This meant that all the washing machines nearby were rapidly broken on account of all the mud , sand and cement clogging up the innards.

IMO this ' instructions ' phobia can strike just about anyone regardless of their origins or education. Some people are just dense .......full stop. Compounding this problem is a reluctance to ask someone in the know. The logic seems to be that if you need to ask someone else something that they know but you don't....then you are an idiot and have exposed yourself by asking ??????? My own girlfriend suffers a bit from this last peculiar trait. If we go shopping for something in a big mall and don't know where it is, my instinct is to ask an assistant. Hers is to wander around for half an hour trying to find it herself.......bless her little cotton socks.

There's nout so strange as folk !

Similar to a time in Chad - we had a small electric winch on our truck .
Our driver was totally confused by the Fast/Slow control buttons.
They had a rabbit and a tortoise on them.
He had never seen either before !!
He did see the funny side when we explained and drew a little donkey and a lizard with a felt tip pen above the buttons !!

I watched a program about the history of art; from prehistoric times to now. They explained the development on the symbol to, errr, symbolise stuff and how it is in fact a fairly recent development only five hundred years or so old.

With this in mind, it's no great surprise to place these Isaan monkeys as coming from somewhere in the dark ages.

Don't ya just love the country folk?

You've got to be patient, give them a couple of centuries to evolve..

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

With this in mind, it's no great surprise to place these Isaan monkeys as coming from somewhere in the dark ages.

You have to consider too that electricity is a quite new concept in large parts of Isaan. So the dark ages ended just 20 years ago.

Mine had never been on an escalator till she met me. Still a bit scared of them.

Originally Posted by Happyman

Similar to a time in Chad............

My condolences... What a shit hole...

Originally Posted by Muadib

Originally Posted by Happyman

Similar to a time in Chad............

My condolences... What a shit hole...

It was indeed 'different'!

No worries though - the month passed - just felt like a f*ckin year !!

Another anecdote about isaanites and arrows. My ex thought she had to press the down arrow if she want to take the elevator up.

Some are much more logical. If the lift is on higher floor than you are on must push down arrow to summon the lift. Otherwise up arrow.

Originally Posted by crippen

Mine had never been on an escalator till she met me. Still a bit scared of them.

Nothing wrong with the idea of mistrusting 20th century technology.....I'm still taken back my most of it.

RS, you don't need to remind us that you really went native in Nakhon Nowhere.

Originally Posted by Fabian

RS, you don't need to remind us that you really went native in Nakhon Nowhere.

The reminders do need to be set in motion, as most are terribly disconnected and unaware. Isn't obvious, is it? Or perhaps it is.

Originally Posted by Fabian

My ex thought she had to press the down arrow if she want to take the elevator up.

That is not illogical, though. She wanted it to come down and pick her up.

If she wasn't used to elevators if makes perfect sense.

This sounds similar to what the BBC recently did -- hand over a genuine tape-based walkman to a 13 year old, and have him write down his impressions - having never grown up on tapes, we get gems such as:

- it took him 3 days to figure out that tapes have TWO sides.
- he didn't realize that the 'Metal/Normal' switch on the walkman did NOT refer to genres of music, but rather to types of tapes.

Those of us old enough to have had walkman players might snicker at these 'revelations', but to someone completely unfamiliar with the technology, these are logical deductions.

In my part of Isaan the nearest sealed road and telephone line is around 3km, and the buffalo do roam (MIL gets the dogs to shoo them off our fledgling veggie patch). Very nice indeed.

The young 'uns are quite acquainted with such things as mobile phones, the internal combustion engine, arrows and traffic lights though. They'll have been to the 'big smoke' (Ubon) several times, maybe even Bangkok. To some of the oldies though, Ubon city is a nigtmare to be avoided. Sounds like these people must be from a very remote part of Isaan- maybe mountain country like Loei. If from Isaan at all- how do you know they are Isaan folk? They sound more like far north Hilltribers or even Burmese II's to me.