Ok, now that I am likely to have your undivided attention I can warm to my theme for this week.

People who only seem to read the headline then comment as though they know everything about the story.

I wouldn’t mind so much if I wasn’t writing the translations myself. Through my job at Thaivisa I try to put as much interest, detail – and yes, accuracy – into everything that I do for the readers on the site and on Facebook. (I myself read to the very end of the Thai stories that I translate – how else do you think the world was informed about the beach smoking ban being a jail-able offence – Rooster’s work on this led to the Thai media rethinking and realizing that that was a great angle!)

Despite my modicum of hard work much of that effort goes to waste with the comments of what might be described as “Generation Twitter” – people who even struggle with 140 characters and can’t even get beyond a few words in a headline. (Think about it- this one paragraph is nearly 200!)

Posters who DO bother to read the stories point out the idiocy of the comments of the lazy – but still the cretins challenged by clauses persist; this causes others to feed on their fake-ness compounding the problem.

Might I suggest a crash course at Somchai’s Siam School of Scanning is in order?

The Nation founder, the famed Suthichai Yoon, touched on a related issue in what was a busy and interesting week of Thai news. He bemoaned the passing of what he called “long form journalism”.

He referred to “magnifying glass reporters” obsessed and under pressure to put everything in an easy nutshell who are failing to give both sides to a story and thus causing issues to be misrepresented and unfair.

For my part when translating, I often include a detail or something fun at the end of a long piece – I want to know who really reads to the end and who has garnered my respect!

So read on today!  Who knows…when you have the best part of 2,000 words under your belt there may even have been a smidgen of something worthwhile.

Firstly, my thanks to the supportive posters last week who spotted that I was a tad miffed about the Thai bashers on Thaivisa forum…..it was not my intention to blow my own trumpet but to make a case for all the sane and pleasant people who I know have built successful lives in the Kingdom.

And I was glad that most who started reading seemed to have got to the end of a long rant and round-up!

This week once again saw tragedy, comedy and dramedy (yes, that is a valid Scrabble word) in equal proportions as the interaction of Thai people, the foreigners who call Thailand home and its multitude of tourist visitors made for an incredibly vibrant and varied selection of stories.

Stories of all kinds from the heartbreaking to those that are so funny that the Thais say “huaroh fan ruang” – laughing until your teeth fall out. Two, as we shall see later, even featured teeth…..

Top tale of tragedy this week had to be the four children who fell from a balcony in Ramkhamhaeng.

A five year old boy died as the marital issues of the estranged Swiss husband and father and the Thai mother were dragged unceremoniously through a baying Thai media.

Thankfully the case seems to have put in the Thai public eye the issue of who should have custody of children – in this case not just the mother or father but the Thai or the foreigner.

Some will claim such matters are always cut and dried – the kind of immensely tedious foreign posters who think that everything in Thailand is skewed to screw the foreigner. While everyone can point to injustice against non-Thais if they wish, the reality is that both the courts and the police can come down on the side of the foreigner.

After the best part of four decades in Thailand – much of it spent dealing with all strata of Thai and Western society – Rooster has a mountain of evidence that “proves” both standpoints equally. The only common theme is that someone will always think decisions are unfair!

In the case of the Thai/Swiss children grieving father Michel Borel has as many tears as the grandparents who locked the kids in and went to bed on another floor. There is no winner in such a tragedy – all that can be hoped is that the best is done for the children and their future.

And that some way to ensure court orders are enforced becomes a reality.

Tragedy of similar proportions struck a young American called Derrick Gibson who lost his beautiful Thai girlfriend to a drunk driver then went to the funeral that was designed as a wedding ceremony for the bride he would never have.

Such ceremonies may look strange to many who don’t understand Thailand. Just like the adverse comments that appear whenever twins get married. But what the Thais are trying to do here is make things feel right and move on.

In terms of bereavement they want people to face up to their loss and what they might have had as a means of coming to terms with its absence. While the twin marriages may seem frivolous in comparison, they come from deep seated feelings of unease that if ceremony is not performed bad luck will prevail and ruin lives.

I learnt some of this cultural sensitivity many years ago when my dear friend Mike Hamilton died in his thirties after five years with cancer.

One weekend we were watching Wimbledon together in his Bamrungrat Hospital room and the next I was kneeling beside him in a temple in Bang Mot.

He was incongruously dressed in a suit lying on a slab. His grieving but calm Thai wife was by my side as she implored me to take the lustral water and bathe his outstretched and lifeless hand – and apologize to him if I ever harbored bad thoughts towards him.

I don’t mind telling you I am in tears at my keyboard as I remember that scene, something that happened the best part of two decades ago, as if it was yesterday.

How it helped me to move on and how it compared starkly to the dreadful cremation of my own mother in England when the empty words of a religious person she’d never met and the sterile manner of the disappearance of the coffin led to no earthly closure.

It was twenty years later before I even cried for the woman we should all love most.

Derrick bathed the hands of Namwan in Ayuthaya and I hope he can move on as I did after Mike.

More dramedy than tragedy – at least for Rooster – concerned the stabbing of the British man in Koh Chang that was revealed this week. A Swedish man supposedly attacked the Brit in his sleep stabbing him 16 times.

The story – like the Brit – was so full of holes that I decided to contact the man from Stoke who has an online presence using both the names Mark and Dick. Seemingly living up to his second moniker, he refused to confirm anything about himself or the attack unless he was paid for his story!

Bless! I nearly said “You wanna see my Thaivisa salary mate!” but satisfied myself with keeping my counsel and not writing, on the news pages at least, that the Swedish man was actually a friend of his. A former friend that is!

Despite a Swede being the aggressor this all played into the hands of the Brit Bashing Brigade who jumped on the story that suggested that Blighty Bullies cause more trouble in Thailand than even Spain. Of course these surveys – rather like Suthichai’s ‘magnifying glass’ reports – cherry pick figures with little detail aforethought.

Still, I suppose if you only read the headline it doesn’t matter anyway!

Little detail was required in the news from England that the father of seven year old Thai/Brit Sophie will do at least 24 years for wringing her neck. Mum said it best when she said he should have killed himself.

He was said to love his child and maybe he did – how terribly tragic it is that so many murders are committed by those who claim to love their victims.

Stories that could have ended in tragedy frankly had more elements of comedy. Top billing here went to no less than two stories of women motorcyclists caught on CCTV who had failed to see level crossing barriers right in front of their faces.

While many suggested they must have been on the phone there is ample evidence to suggest that drivers the world over – not just in Thailand – have trouble comprehending anything further than the end of their nose.

A reason why – when out on the roads anywhere – the ability to anticipate what incredible stupidity your fellow motorist may perpetrate is of paramount importance.

Dramedy (are you getting used to that word now!?) and comedy were the order of the day in two stories about Bangkok cabbies – one a potential molester and the other a fortune teller who advertised his services with a sign draped over the passenger seat.

On the occasions when a fortune teller has propositioned me in Thailand I respond as quick as a flash – and in fluent Thai – that I have my own prediction to make: namely that within less than ten seconds they will be told by a sarcastic and mean Farang to bugger off.

Disarmed by the foreigner’s excellent use of Thai language they invariably laugh and their smiles prove it is never necessary to actually make the prediction come true!

The comedy in both cabby cases involved the 1,000 baht fines handed out – it really is time that Thailand moved on from the age of ticals and started to get realistic with fines that might hurt and actually deter.

Pure comedy – as mentioned earlier – revolved around the two cases involving Thai people’s teeth. In the first a woman who had lost her front ones went on Facebook, of all places, to order some cut price cash on delivery gnashers.

Not surprisingly they didn’t fit even after a good soaking in hot water leading to the Thai media’s brilliant picture of her new, eminently grumpy version of a smile!

The second case – that literally had my teeth jangling in their sockets – was of the quack dentist in the South. The humor was nothing to do with the crime but with the cops’ amusing choice of headgear to mask the identity of the rogue dentist at the press conference – a Star Wars Storm Trooper mask.

Bless Thailand and double bless!

It reminded me of my best teeth story in Thailand. Before I made the fateful decision to marry the first Mrs Rooster she was wont to visit me at my house. Being a dozen years older than me she had already lost a few top front teeth and wore a denture that she would habitually take out at night and place on the bedside table.

If that wasn’t bad enough, one morning she woke and the dentures were gone. I claimed innocence,  while she went home scowling and toothless.

It was some weeks later when they were found in the back of a cupboard among old condoms and half consumed food clearly dragged there by pesky rats we were having trouble with.

A no-nonsense woman, the Mrs Rooster-to-be gave them a quick wash, slipped them straight back in and prepared to tuck in to her daily diet of Som Tam.

Such practicality and frugality was always going to lead to marriage….

Finally, if you have managed to read this far I thank you for your perseverance and fortitude in bucking the trend of “Generation Twitter”.

As a reward just say “hi” the next time we meet and I will buy you a drink!

Rooster

PS. Only joking.