African's swarming to hua hin?

[Frank Hovis]

Frank....................I think you're getting your knickers in a bunch for nothing. Over reacting in other words.

Me? I think you've read the wrong post somewhere - my 'overreaction' was to the Frog/NatureSavior/Nid/Jockey like post just above mine.

[MisterClean]

If you get my drift, the Africans would stand out like a sore thumb in Hua Hin.
On Soi 5 in Bangkok it is a very very busy Soi, but with their nefarious activities these people almost closed down the biggest bar in Bangkok, (Gullivers), well if not the biggest, one of.

Regarding the Indians, I expect Thailand to be more popular for these people now that Bangkok Airways plus some low costs now fly more regularly India to BKK.

Whilst many Indian couples are absolutely fine, the groups of guys who stroll around wanting something for nothing do Thailand no favours whatsoever.
FWIW I am so thick I cannot understand how all those (tailors?) can work quite openly yet a Farang nips behind a bar and BANG, he's busted.

Because the farang who gets busted is usually a little pussy boy and scared that he'll get kicked out of the country for anything and pays 50-100k for spitting out gum, whereas the Indians are street smart and when they get busted and the cops ask for money they treat it like any other transaction and negotiate the fine down from 20 to 10 to 5 to 2000 baht before they pay. OOOOHHHH MYYY GOOODNESSS tooo expensive!!! I pay 1000 baht only!!!

So the cops leave em alone and go for the westerner pussy boy whos pissing his pants with his ATM card out emptying their accounts to the fuzz.

[sateeb]

/\

[Pleng]

If you get my drift, the Africans would stand out like a sore thumb in Hua Hin.
On Soi 5 in Bangkok it is a very very busy Soi, but with their nefarious activities these people almost closed down the biggest bar in Bangkok, (Gullivers), well if not the biggest, one of.

Regarding the Indians, I expect Thailand to be more popular for these people now that Bangkok Airways plus some low costs now fly more regularly India to BKK.

Whilst many Indian couples are absolutely fine, the groups of guys who stroll around wanting something for nothing do Thailand no favours whatsoever.
FWIW I am so thick I cannot understand how all those (tailors?) can work quite openly yet a Farang nips behind a bar and BANG, he's busted.

Because the farang who gets busted is usually a little pussy boy and scared that he'll get kicked out of the country for anything and pays 50-100k for spitting out gum, whereas the Indians are street smart and when they get busted and the cops ask for money they treat it like any other transaction and negotiate the fine down from 20 to 10 to 5 to 2000 baht before they pay. OOOOHHHH MYYY GOOODNESSS tooo expensive!!! I pay 1000 baht only!!!

So the cops leave em alone and go for the westerner pussy boy whos pissing his pants with his ATM card out emptying their accounts to the fuzz.

Great comment.

Well worth resurrecting a 5 month old thread for.

[GLCQuantum]

Surely you are aware Pleng...

Mister Clean is our resident winder uppererer. 8am post... probably just stumbled in from the Karaoke with a chip on his shoulder.

[GLCQuantum]

The last post stirred my curiosity about the phrase 'A chip on one's shoulder'. "Where does that come from", I thought to myself.

Well...

Origin

The word chip has several meanings; the one that we are concerned with here is the earliest known of these, namely 'a small piece of wood, as might be chopped, or chipped, from a larger block'. The phrase 'a chip on one's shoulder' is reported as originating with the nineteenth century U.S. practice of spoiling for a fight by carrying a chip of wood on one's shoulder, daring others to knock it off. This suggested derivation has more than the whiff of folk-etymology about it. Anyone who might be inclined to doubt that origin can take heart from an alternative theory. This relates to working practices in the British Royal Dockyards in the 18th century. In Day and Lunn's The History of Work and Labour Relations in the Royal Dockyards, 1999, the authors report that the standing orders of the [Royal] Navy Board for August 1739 included this ruling:

"Shipwrights to be allowed to bring [chips] on their shoulders near to the dock gates, there to be inspected by officers".

The permission to remove surplus timber for firewood or building material was a substantial perk of the job for the dock workers. A subsequent standing order, in May 1753, ruled that only chips that could be carried under one arm were allowed to be removed. This limited the amount of timber that could be taken and the shipwrights were not best pleased about the revoking of their previous benefit. Three years later, for this and other reasons, they went on strike.

Hattendorf, Knight et al., in British Naval Documents, 1204 - 1960, record a letter which was sent by Chatham Dockyard officers to the Navy Board, relating to the 1756 dockyard workers' strike at Chatham. The letter records a comment made by a shipwright who was stopped at the yard's gates:

"Are not the chips mine? I will not lower them."

It goes on to report that "Immediately the main body pushed on with their chips on their shoulders."

That's a nice story and does connect an incident concerning chips and shoulders with a belligerent attitude. We need to be a little wary of swallowing that derivation whole however. The problem with it is that the phrase isn't known to be recorded in print in England with its figurative meaning anywhere near the 18th century. The first such record by an English author doesn't seem to be until the 1930s in fact, in Somerset Maugham's Gentleman in the Parlour:

"He was a man with a chip on his shoulder. Everyone seemed in a conspiracy to slight or injure him."

A gap of nearly 200 years between the use of a phrase and the incident that supposedly spawned it in the same country is hard to explain. In my humble opinion, the 'chips on shoulders' report dating from 1756 refer literally to just that, chips carried on shoulders. There's no evidence at all to suggest 'a chip on one's shoulder' existed as a figurative phrase until the 19th century.

The confrontational challenge to knock a chip of wood off someone's shoulder does after all appear to be the correct derivation. Circumstantial evidence is all we have to go on here, but that clearly points to a 19th century US coinage. The earliest printed citations that I can find that refer to chips on shoulders are all from America, which the OED states quite firmly to be the source of the phrase; for example:

The American writer and historian James Kirke Paulding's Letters from the South, 1817:

"A man rode furiously by on horseback, and swore he'd be d----d if he could not lick any man who dared to crook his elbow at him. This, it seems, is equivalent to throwing the glove in days of yore, or to the boyish custom of knocking a chip off the shoulder."

In 1830 the New York newspaper The Long Island Telegraph printed this:

"When two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other demanded to knock it off at his peril."

The actual phrase 'chip on his shoulder' appears a little later, in the Weekly Oregonian 1855:

"Leland, in his last issue, struts out with a chip on his shoulder, and dares Bush to knock it off."

There you are then... another useless bit of information.

[T.I.G.R.]

My, my, what a fascinating thread. At first glance I correctly assumed Africans meant people. Then, due to America's penchant for proper behavior I thought it might be they were talking about African bees, which are migrating to North America and near to where we come from. I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly that Thailand is certainly as racist as any place could be among it's own population but I'm surprised to see such an open discussion here not bothered by moderation in any way.

For my own part I'll confess to spending my entire life trying not to be judgmental, having lived in my early life as part of only two families in a black community, my father's family being Jews immigrated from Russia, one of my sisters marrying a Mexican, and myself a Chinese (divorced from a black Navy man with two children) and a Thai, and me in my later years living in a nearly entirely white rural community in Northern California where the word n....r was perfectly acceptable.

Seems to me that everyone dislikes some race or another, or some group or another.....it's the human condition.

[GLCQuantum]

Seems to me that everyone dislikes some race or another, or some group or another.....it's the human condition.

Well I must be the minority then as I forever question myself and my right to be here or anywhere.

Race, gender, nationality... we're all the same. If your looking for a fight throw religion into the mix...

[T.I.G.R.]

Hey, don't forget politics and religion.

[GLCQuantum]

Hey, don't forget politics and religion.

That one's even more bizarre for me. The rich people's minions don't actually have a say in anything yet they still believe to choose that they do. 4 years later they vote for the other guy with the same beliefs still intact. Funny old world.



Edit : A great world if you live within that 1%.

[T.I.G.R.]

Well it won't matter much anyway when either we screw up so badly we all kill each other........or we wait for the sun to blow up and us with it......just think, in a few million years it won't matter much either way.

[Lung Per]

"We are all equal". Perhaps, but there will always be those who believe they are more equal than others....

[mikepetersen]

Are they still there? Please give some clue to recognize them.

[bonnielass]

That's easy, they are the ones playing the vuvuzela!

[Lung Per]

That's easy, they are the ones playing the vuvuzela!

Great Scott. Those horns should be banned. They ruin the joy of watching a football game.