In Reply To Frank Visakay’s “Leopard Spots”

Thanks Frank Visakay for inspiring me to write about this. Those where sad stories in your last posting and I am sure it happens a lot. I am also sure it happens much the same amount in our home countries. (I won’t go into the child maintenance issues here as there is not enough space, but bear in mind that you can double the men in trouble if you add this issue into the whole picture and most haven’t discovered LOS). However it is our friends and family that pay a large part in keeping our sanity and stop us necking ourselves at home when faced with the same issues of heart break (Most of the time). We tend to not have them around us in LOS. Well not our life long friends that we can have a beer with and cry on their shoulders so to speak, or if we have supporting family members. I am the oldest out of eight, seven from one family and one from another mother. Dad, bless him (Croaked it a few years ago) left mum when he was in his early forties and married a much younger bar girl from a mining town in outback Queensland Australia. (Sounds familiarly like what happens here but not little, brown and cute). No dad’s new wife was not a Coon or Spinifex Fairy! For you non Aussies a “Black Sheila”.

These situations happen all over the world and are really a point in our life where we can choose to grow or wallow in self pity and run the risk of loosing it and committing Hari Kari. By the way, there are plenty of Thai men
and women who neck there selves over the same issues, you just have to watch the Sophon cable TV and read the local papers here in Pattaya. I limit myself to how much of this negative crap that the local media reports as it starts to get to you
after a while and the questions of “What am I doing here?” start to appear in your thoughts. Every week there is some Farang that has (Supposedly) thrown himself from a high rise whilst his Thai wife or TGF was out shopping? Not
to mention the gangs of teenagers having weekly shoot outs with hand guns. Recently there was a hand grenade thrown through the roof into the men’s toilet of a new pub. Thank God it didn’t go off! It was discovered by the cleaner in the morning. Mind you the negative stories about the civil works or the community amenities that are not working or in disrepair tend to have a positive effect in getting things at least looked at. Thailand has a lot going for it and a great deal of opportunities if you can keep your sanity whilst dealing with the authorities here. If anything the 3rd world image is alive when it comes to the Thai authorities in general.

Too many men and women all over the world try to make themselves happy from outside through someone else or through material gains. While true happiness comes from within and when someone comes into your life that makes you happy, it is extra happiness and not just filling an emotional vacuum/hole. Being a bachelor all my life, I have had my fair share of heart ache and so have a lot of my friends and family. It is a fact of life. What you do with these experiences is a mater of choice and helps define were you are heading in your journey with life.

It went through many and I mean many heart aches that forced the penny to drop for me and I became aware of something inside/aside from me that was witnessing these events happening. It was the emotional pain that was the catalyst for this to happen. One day when in a great deal of pain, I asked myself – (What am I doing, to keep bringing these things that are hurting me, into my life?) and the awareness happened. Personal responsibility is the key. When you are happy, or when you are sad, “it is up to you” (Sorry about that one). Think about it, it is you that are either happy or sad, not what is being done to you by an outside influence. (Sticks and stones)! You make the choice!

A lot of work had been done in the past for this to happen to me and I don’t think this is the way it happens for everybody in fact we are all individuals and it is just as many possible ways that it may happen for you to be happy. At the time I had been meditating regularly for over 10 years and daily reflection was the norm. It is up to you if you choose to practise this, however I do recommend some sort of daily reflection and time alone at least. It was a gradual process and I wavered many a time. In fact I was somewhat of a contradiction. A typical Ozzie Yobbo and I was a practising Yogi at the same time. I drank heaps of beer (As you do in Oz) and shagged everything that would look at me, except woolly 4 legged creatures like Stickman’s fellow countrymen.

Come on readers, what is missing are the good stories! I know of many Farang Thai couples that are quite happy, some in Phuket and some here in Pattaya. I am with very proud and level headed women whom I admire heaps. I am 47 and she is 25 and quite beautiful. She grew up mainly with her uncles and this may explain her even keel. She is the matriarch of the family once here Grandmamma croaks it, she is 80 something. Her mother pissed off with a younger man and she is a construction worker on Koh Samui. Her dad is near the Cambodian border working and her 5 year old son is cared for by her ex, who is a druggy and drunk arse hole by what I have been told. She can see her son when her ex feels like it and she doesn’t see him much. I met her when she had been freelancing in BKK for about 6 weeks. She had left a factory job paying 8,000 baht monthly to learn hairdressing at 3,000 baht a month. Her reasoning was that long term it would be better, so she had to supplement her income somehow. She is a lucky one as I have supported her so she could go through a free hairdressing course here in Pattaya. She now has a job paying her 5,000 baht + commission and free living with me. She told me that all the others girls around her say, why do you work when you have a Farang boyfriend? (This is typical of a lot of the bitches here in Pattaya). Her response was – because I want to. She is proud and wants independence. Boy was I happy about this.

My whole point for this posting is that people can and do become better through hardship. My own mother is a saint through life’s hardship, bless her. This might be a little OUT THERE for some of you – "we bring into our lives what we most need to learn"

No Pain no gain, it is like shedding skin or busting the cocoon, it hurts like hell, but once you go through it, you become a little wiser and a new person/butterfly. Appropriate here in Pattaya (Hehe). (picture) It is sad fact that some people are stuck in their ways and by any means they will not change, not in this life anyway. I have seen my fair share here in Pattaya. That is why many of them (Not all) come here, as any decent girl back in their home places, won’t put up with them. That is not to say they are wrong in coming here, or mentally ill, everybody has the right to find happiness anyway they like. It is just some are looking in the wrong places, – OUT THERE AND NOT WITHIN. (Bagwain)

“May all people be free from suffering and the causes of suffering”- Sri Shanti Gowans

Stickman's thoughts:

I'm in Phuket for a few days so no comments….sorry!