HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-04-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2013. PAGE 5.
There are many excellent reasons to
visit Thailand. The scenery is
sublime, the beaches are a dream, the
food is ridiculously good (and cheap) and
the people are unfailingly kind and
gracious (and don't forget: beautiful). A
winter weary Canuck could use any of
these impulses as an excuse to hop a flight
to Bangkok.
Or you could just go to get the crap kicked
out of you.
No, I jest – but a lot of visitors to Thailand
do elect to be pummelled and prodded by a
stranger’s hands, elbows and knees – they even
pay for the privilege. It’s called a Thai
massage.
It’s kinder and gentler than your average
massage – someone described Thai massage
as yoga without the exercise. It’s administered
with a minimum of equipment –frequently just
a mat on the floor – and there’s often half a
dozen other customers getting massages in the
same room.
That’s a good thing. Because sometimes
the masseuses whisper back and forth to
each other and few sounds are more
musical and beguiling than the Thai tongue,
whispered.
Massages are easy to come by in most of
Thailand, but you have to know what you
want. I, for instance, could have had the Head
Massage. Or the Hand Massage. Or the Back,
Neck and Shoulder Massage. I might have
opted for the Four Hands Oil Massage or the
Eight Hands Oil Massage. Or I could have
tried the simple Body Oil Massage (comes
with your choice of jasmine, lemongrass or
lavender and, the brochure promises, “makes
your skin softy”.
All of this is offered in one of a succession
of small shops on the streets of Bangkok
by a bevy of smiling, gracious women
dressed in sarongs – and all dirt-cheap to a
Canadian used to wallet-gouging back-at-
home massage prices. The Eight Hand
Massage is the most expensive option. It goes
for $34 Cdn for one hour. Imagine: four
attendants kneading away your bodily woes
for a full sixty minutes.
Tempting, but I chose the (much) cheaper
Doctor Fish Massage.
Better than eight hands, I had several
hundred mouths nibbling my feet and ankles
for 20 minutes. Pure bliss.
Mind you I didn’t have smiling, gracious
sarong-clad attendants. I had fish. Tiny fish
in a large tank. I sat on the edge and
dangled my bare tootsies and let the fish do
their work.
Think of it as Piranha Lite. The fish swarm
your feet and nibble your calluses, flesh tags,
bunions, corns and blisters. It is almost
impossibly ticklish at the beginning, but if you
stick it out it becomes delightful.
Does it hurt? Not a bit. Although a hotel
guide tells the cautionary tale of a tourist who
insisted on a double session. “Forty-five
minutes – too long” warns the guide. “His feet
bleed.”
Three dollars buys you 20 minutes and that
felt just right.
The fish seemed pretty satisfied too.
There was another form of Thai massage I
heard about but never got to try. It’s called
Rassameesaitarn, which, I gather is Thai for
‘face-slapping’.
That’s right. You pay somebody to slap your
face – guaranteed to get rid of frown lines,
wrinkles and droopy skin.
I didn’t see any practitioners in Bangkok,
but I hear there's a place in San Francisco that
will give you the treatment: $350 for 10
minutes.
Talk about a slap in the face.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Getting rubbed the right way
Fans of the Toronto Blue Jays are in
imminent danger. They are on the verge
of big, big trouble, and I don’t even think
they know it yet. They are in danger of
becoming Toronto Maple Leafs fans.
On Sunday, the Blue Jays’ ace, newly-
acquired R.A. Dickey gave up a ton of runs,
eight to be exact, in his second start for the
team after a season for the New York Mets in
which he was named the league’s best pitcher.
After an underwhelming opening night
performance, which was not as bad as people
seem to think it was, he gave up a homerun to
Will Middlebrooks of the Boston Red Sox in
the first inning of his second start and the boos
started.
Dickey’s innings pitched were still in single
figures, and the reigning Cy Young Award
winner was getting booed. In Toronto it doesn’t
take much for everyone to hate you.
Dickey is truly one of the game’s “good
guys” and he was getting booed before most
fans had a chance to find their seats on Sunday.
In recent years, much has been made about
the “pressure cooker” environment that Leafs
players and coaches find themselves in. The
fans and media in Toronto create an unliveable
environment for many, and then those same
people lament the fact that athletes and
coaches don’t want to come to Toronto. These
fans play the victim, feeling wronged by those
who steer their life plans clear of The Big
Smoke, not realizing that they’re the reason
players don’t want to burn under their
magnifying glass.
And now we return to Dickey, who, in his
short time in Toronto, has embraced the city,
and the Canadian culture, with open arms.
Dickey, who will soon deliver the
convocation address to the University of
Toronto’s divinity students, recently praised
Toronto fans after the home opener, which he
lost, saying that despite his performance, he
was thrilled to be under the lights of the Rogers
Centre. I can’t imagine that feeling hung
around for too long.
Of course, on Sunday the Blue Jays lost by
an embarrassing score of 13-0, but when the
booing began, it was 5-0. The over 40,000 fans
at that game should be ashamed of the hair
trigger they employed in booing Dickey, but
they showed their true colours as the game
wore on as two different drunken fans ran out
onto the field and the game’s loudest cheers
were achieved when paper airplanes thrown by
fans reached the field.
Being a fan is a lot like being a parent. In
many ways, fans make a home for a sports
team; they create the environment and they
“raise” a team, choosing when to shower its
players with praise and when to let the players
know they’ve disappointed them.
With all of the off-season moves Blue Jays
GM Alex Anthopoulos made, fans were really
excited for this year’s season to start, but their
expectations are also out of this world and it
seems that, at least in the early going, Dickey
will be the whipping boy for the team’s
shortcomings.
Philadelphia sports fans have been famous
for their ruthless demeanour. They have booed
Santa Claus and they have cheered Michael
Irvin’s career-ending neck injury, but they at
least embrace their demeanour, realizing that
they’re hard to please.
Toronto fans still pretend to be lost when a
player says he’s not interested in playing in
Toronto and I think it’s time they either give
their players a chance to succeed, or smarten
up and not act so surprised when contracts are
up and players quickly escape.
The hand that feeds
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Earlier this week, news that The Iron
Lady, Margaret Thatcher had died,
made its way to my desktop.
Monday morning, shortly after Thatcher
died, I learned of it and I was left to consider
the successes of this foreign leader.
Aside from being an elected female leader,
which there aren’t a heck of a lot of in the
world, she had been an elected female leader
since 1979, a time when politics was
predominantly (if not solely) a man’s game.
She was also one of the few conservative
leaders from Britain to come from humble
beginnings.
Thatcher died at age 87, having suffered a
stroke, and a great many people will remember
her for forging a new path for the nation. A
great many others will remember how she
spoke to people as if they were just that;
people. She treated her nation as one of equals
and didn’t speak down to its people She saw
the nation’s political parties once again
invigored as they debated issues instead of
languishing in their chambers and mumbling
acceptance.
There were a great many things that The
Iron Lady will be known for, both good and
bad, as she was even eventually ousted from
her own party however, one of the things she
should not be remembered as is a pop
musician.
That, however, didn’t stop the users of
Twitter from throwing a tantrum when they
thought Cher had died.
Confused? Well let me explain it.
When using Twitter, or Tweeting, users
can append hashtags to phrases to help people
find Tweets that are informative or useful to
them.
For example, at the time I am writing this,
#FollowMeLuke is “trending”, meaning a lot
of people are using it. It referred to Luke
Bryan, an American country music singer who
was recently named the American Country
Music (ACM) Awards’ coveted Entertainer of
the Year award.
People could search for (or click on
#FollowMeLuke) to find out what people feel
about the issue. Whether they agreed or
disagreed, it was generating enough interest
that Twitter recognized it as ‘trending’.
Another popular hashtag is #TOpoli, as well
as #ONTpoli, which refer to Toronto and
Ontario politics respectively.
Whenever Toronto Mayor Rob Ford does
something or steps outside what people
consider good taste, his name shows up beside
#TOpoli and his name will become a “trending
subject.”
Back to Margaret Thatcher.
On Monday, shortly after Thatcher died,
#nowthatchersdead began trending.
Have you figured it out yet?
People read that as “Now that Cher’s dead”
instead of “Now Thatcher’s dead”.
It resulted in Twitter users having an
outpouring of sorrow for the loss of the pop
culture icon despite famous individuals like
comedian Ricky Gervais trying to tell people
what had really happened.
As someone who watches British television
shows and dreams of living out his golden
years on one of the UK islands, I can’t help but
feel sorry that people wouldn’t do the research
to figure out they were wrong. I also can’t help
but feel stunned that people would get their
news from Twitter when other sources are so
easily accessible online.
I like Twitter normally. I think that
anything that makes someone cut down
on their superfluous amount of words is
fantastic. I think Twitter should be a training
tool for anyone involved in any form of
writing.
Being forced to get your message
acrosss with a strict word limit is difficult,
granted, but it also drives people to find
better, more simplistic ways of saying what
they mean and, inevitably, meaning what they
say.
There are few times when I’m so struck by
the idiocy of the entire Twitter-verse as I was
the morning of Thatcher’s death.
I suppose it all goes back to laziness. Twitter
does create an environment where good
writers with quality vocabularies can become
fantastically appreciated due to their witty use
of their native languages, but it also breeds
another type of user; the one who is too lazy to
figure out what they’re reading and check their
sources.
Every other week there is another hoax
started on Twitter about a celebrity dying and
instead of checking to see if it’s true, people
fall all over each other trying to get the most
read “Tweet” about the death of this or that
iconic individual.
It just so happens that this wasn’t a hoax, it
was a mistake that was easily avoidable with a
little bit of research. Actually, I don’t like
saying ‘little bit,’ it requires the least amount
of research possible to see that it was Margaret
Thatcher who had passed away and not Cher.
All one would need to do is type either name
into a search engine.
I suppose this all goes back to the nature of
communication that I have written about
before. Teens, youths, even young
professionals these days are coming to a point
where they are no longer learning proper
sentence structure. They have come to the
point where proper sentence structure almost
looks alien to them.
Had people taken the time to write out “Now
Thatcher is dead,” this rumour would have
been easily avoided.
While I’m sure the issue passed as no
more than a minor blip on the radar for most
people, for me, it’s indicative of a scary future
where Orwell’s newspeak is the reality.
Then again, maybe I’m just old-fashioned
and too attached to my syllables and vowels to
progress into the world of tomorrow.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
A great life marred by pop culture
“Many of life's failures are people who did
not realize how close they were to success
when they gave up.”
– Thomas Edison
Final Thought