Buffalo Sheeat...
I wrote the title to this article phonetically
as the Thais like to say it. They are quick and comfortable with
these words and they seems to roll right offer their tongue with a smile.
Just ask any Thai who knows a little English to translate "Key Kwai" to English
for you and see if they don't smile when they say it.
The humble water buffalo seems to have had a solid
role the Thai society out in the country side. Today,
buffalo is slaughtered and their meat is harvested for food, their bones are
sold to noodle stands to help make soup broth and their hides are useful for
the soles of leather shoes (their skin is very thick and not suitable for
thinner leather goods). I would image that buffalo parts may also be
ground up and used
for pig, fish and chicken food as well.
However, a number
of years before, the buffalo was the top producer of a very important
product that today is just completely over-looked for it's natural value - Buffalo Shit.
Buffalo Shit was mixed with sand and sometime
egg to produce a building product that was used as the mortar to walls,
floors, and ceilings.
I hinted about this back on the second article
for Songkran when I asked if anyone knew what was previously mixed with sand
to help build the temples. The original binding material
mixed with sand was BS.
I am told they would lay out a layer of sliced
bamboo in one direction, then they would apply a layer of the BS mortar and
then lay another layer of sliced bamboo in the opposite direction.
This was repeated a couple of time until the thickness of the wall or
ceiling met their needs and then a final finishing layer of BS mortar was
applied as a finish coat.
(you didn't really want to see more than one
picture of this did you?)
Evidently this BS mortar would finish out very
smoothly and had fairly long lasting properties. They say it's
didn't have an odor and it could be painted.
One of the more popular uses was for making a
completely smooth floor. Smooth floors are not so important for
people to walk on but, they are rather important for the threshing of rice.
I am told that the reed of the rice plant was layered with BS and built a
few layers thick and then a top coating of the BS mortar was smoothed out on
top. Once they had a wide enough space that was completely smooth, the
rice farmer would swing the stalk of the rice down against a suspend strap
between to posts in
the middle of this floor and the rice would fly off the stalk.
They preferred the smooth floor so the rice could be easily picked up for
storage.
I would have to assume that this type of a floor was easier work than
gathering the rice over open ground or dirt.
I can only imagine there are some high-society
Bangkokeans today that must think it funny to confess that
their great great grandfather made a living by collecting/buying, mixing,
selling, or perhaps working with Buffalo shit.
I took a small trip to an area where I know
there are buffalo roaming freely everyday. My first encounter was
out in a dry rice field. This particular group were shy and would not
allow me to approach them to closely. Here you see one of the larger
members was giving me the "eye". He and the rest
of the gang moved
off when I walked within about 100 feet of them.
The following pictures were taken right on the
side of a highway road. I was still on my motorcycle. These buffalo
didn't ever seem to notice that I was pretty close.
Buffalo Parade...
I witnessed 3 of them making their way through
a mud hole in succession. They weren't going for the water.
There was a hole about 30 yards to the left that was mostly water.
This is hole was mostly mud, so they were going for a mud bath. And
they rolled both ways several times for maximum coverage. The
entire group made it through in about a total of about 5 minutes.
As you see in the pictures each buffalo wears
a bell and has an ear tag or two.
They are not very prone to looking both ways
when crossing the road, but for those of you already in the Kingdom that
probably doesn't come as too much of a shock to you.
Notice the mud on the road. This must be an active crossing point for muddy
buffalo.
They Tried To Hack The Great Galt
Too !!
MangoSquashDave was again this week crying like a little
girl and claiming censorship and hacking from Thai authorities, and I thought
well, there he goes again looking for a little sympathy traffic....
And
I would have not thought about it further except for the fact, that later
that same night around 4 am I was
awaken by sounds down stairs on my business floor. I thought, what the
hell is that scraping noise?
I jumped out of bed and I quickly crept
down the stairs very quietly like I was walking on rice paper, then in the
darkness, near my main office, a shadowy figure emerged and I felt the hair
raise up on the back of my neck. The other party saw me. Evidently they were startled by
my bleached while skin and blurted out a gasp as if they were frightened by
a ghost. It was a female voice, judging by the sound and her pear
shaped outline, I would say a middle aged woman. Quickly she made a
bee-line for the stairs and I gave pursuit, but tripped over a wooden bench
which seems to frequently jump in my way in the darkness down there.
Ouch, my shins took a beating but I brushed that aside and scurried down stairs
only to see her outline slip under my damn door; dropping something metal
onto the concrete on the way out. It made clanging sound.
When I made it to the front door, it seems like she was running down the
road to a parked car, and I didn't take out after her, she was way ahead of
me already and I didn't have my running shoes on (not much else for that
matter). Then when I saw what was the left behind, I knew
for sure that I had thwarted a serious attempt by some middle aged woman
(was she immigration?) who was trying to hack into my computer systems.
There was not a doubt in my mind about this. I had the hard and
irrefutable evidence.
Click on this link for the photo to see that
evidence.
(by the way people, this
article is just a joke -- I'm not being serious -- it's about on the same
level as MangoSquashDave, if you catch my drift)
By the way, MangoSquashDave is in a little
dream world of his own. He says on his site that,"Mango
Sauce does, after all, have over 100,000 unique visitors per month - many of
whom live in Thailand." I
have a distinct vantage point of knowing pretty well what size of readership MangoSquash generates because 3 or 4 times now he had make very scandalous
articles about me at this web site. Within these articles he has placed links to my web site and
based on visitors how have actually clicked on those links,
he is no way even close to this pie in the sky number of 100,000.
I would say based on the hits and referrals that I get from his site and
what Alexa.com shows in traffic that he would be very lucky to have 7,000 to
9,000 unique readers who frequent there each month. That is a far
far
cry from 100k. (And you thought that I was the only one
writing about Buffalo Shit this week.) BUT, hey
Dave - feel free to take a snapshot of your Google statistics report and
publish the photo on the web like I do.
Stickman Weekly on the Come
Back?
After reading the new weekly column the first
question that comes to mind is "Where is Stickman?". This "Mark II"
garden variety ghost writer is not the Stickman.
So, why the obvious indirection without a full
explanation? I'm mean, come on -- the readers deserve a
fair and reasonable explanation to what is going on. So, are we going
to be seeing writing from "Stick Mark II" every week or can we look forward to
seeing "Stick Dana" or "Stick Marc Holt" next week? Ok, so it's
not a just "one man's opinion anymore -- just fess up to it. I think
readers really respect full and honest disclosure.
Stickman was leaving posts on bulletin boards
(like PattayaSecrets)
in previous months promising some changes and some new features.
What's new about this weekly? Nothing that I can see off-hand.
The first week back was a nice story about a trip through Issan.
And I think it's funny that there are so many
picture of children in the "Mark II" column because the "Stickman Writer
Guild" has previously been pretty hard on me about writing about children in
my columns. Should I be pointing a finger at Stickman and asking
why he so prominently is displaying children in a weekly column that
dedicates it's focus quite directly at the Naught Night Life industry?
I would trust that Stickman is not trying to make any connections between the two.
Well, we are certainly going to have to adjust
our expectations lower to accommodate the new "Faux-Stickman".
Did Stickman sell out a hosting opportunity to
"Mark II" before this column moves to a new location?
I suppose that the real Stickman won't be
really getting back in the saddle at this time and the previous "Your
Bangkok Commentator" sign-off on the column will be noticeably missing.
The story line this week was actually very
nice. "Mark II" was right here on my home turf. He was getting a
taste of the "real" Thailand.
I almost have to laugh about his disgust with
his visit to the market. He writes he was "horrified" to see how they
handle the beef and pork out here. Typically hunks of meat are
sitting out open, non-refrigerated. They are cut with meat cleavers
that are wiped off by the same towel throughout the day and cut on top of
wooden cutting blocks that can't be cleaned all that well, day in and day
out (bleach is damn expensive). "Mark II" is going to have to increase his intestinal
fortitude if he is going to keep up with the "big dogs" in Issan. "Hey
Chief, if you don't can't handle a few flies on your meat then you better
keep you zipper in the up position."
Mark II should have been here about 7 months
ago when a large out-break of Pink Eye swept through the area. I
had 2 employees and about 5 friends with the infection in a single eye.
I was in 7/11 buying a soda and the cashier behind the counter was rubbing
his infected eye with his finger tips. I showed him how to use
his knuckle and wrist to avoid using his fingers, but I don't now if the
lesson took hold or not. Seems like there is always something to thank
a teacher for up here. (for you long time Stickman readers who may be a
little slow to catch on -- yes, I'm being
funny)
Now that the Stickman Weekly is
Back, So is some of the Propaganda...
Here you see "reporting" which is
leading you to believe that AngelWitch bar is solidly out performing all the
other bars. This is simply not true. There are a handful of bars
in Pattaya that are solid performers year round. I'm sure the same is
true in areas of Bangkok. Some bars have had a very bad year but
others have done reasonably well.
The truth is -- The AngelWitch people are
friends with Stickman and may even pay him to say write these comments about
those clubs to fool readers into thinking they are much better than they
really are.
By the way in fairness, I'll tell you that I
like AngelWitch in Pattaya myself. They normally have some
knockout girls in there. I have yet to bar-fine one of them but they
were very pleasant on the eye the last time I was there. I also like
their shows. I'm going to visit them again in the near future
and update you on this.
As you see above, Electric Blue is part of the
Stickman "friends and family" club and there is no propaganda in
the birthday announcement. But, let me tell you a little
interesting story about Electric Blue as it pertains to Stickman.
A guy named Andy owns the Electric Blue franchise.
I have met Andy and I like him. I have
visited his clubs a few times. We have other mutual friends.
Andy seems
like a decent guy. Andy and Stickman (Paul Owen) go back a few
years and Andy has always received nice plugs from Paul.
I believe Electric Blue was one of the first advertisers on the StickmanBangkok site. So, as you can imagine, Andy was probably
put-out a little when I dropped the ball on Paul last year and caused him to
pull the weekly column because at this point, Andy wasn't getting his weekly
press from Stickman.
So, last year, when things got a little heated
and just after Stickman "did a web runner" he and Andy were talking and
in the course of their conversation Paul gave Andy my phone number and Andy
called me directly. I believe this was on a Saturday morning.
Andy asked
me a very simple question, "What do you want"? My response
to him was very simple -- I said that Paul should run a more responsible
site and that he should make some efforts to do it legally. Andy
was very decent to me on the phone, and he explained that he believed that
Paul did a decent job and that he felt that Stickman was posting the truth
about Electric Blue. I agreed with Andy that Stickman probably was
publishing the truth about Electric Blue, but I explained to Andy that Stick
wasn't publishing responsible material about another club and was trying to
negatively affect that's club business. Andy did not press me to change my direction. He
sounded as if he wanted to put a good word in for Stickman yet, keep
independent. He was very fair minded in his conversation with
me. Andy never called me again. (I think he
did send me an SMS message telling me about the bad press I was getting on another web
site.)
He did not seem openly angry with me about my decision to post
my anit-Stickman column. I'm sure that I'm not his favorite person, but I
don't think Andy is "out to get me" or anything.
Anyhow, I have a point to make which I think
you'll find very interesting.
Part of the inspiration behind in taking the
"NotStickman" name and making use of the Stickman's name
popularity came
directly from Andy. That's right. I remember distinctly
hearing a story about Andy making some money from making use of another
company's name.
Seems that Andy set up a go go club in Pattaya a number of
years back. It was called "Hooters". Does anyone remember that?
This was about 8 or 10 years ago? Now normally that would not seem
like a big deal being that we are so far away from the original Hooters
chain in the US, but Andy, (being the shrewd business man that he is),
decided to promote his Thailand Naughty Night Life Hooters on the magazines
placed on airplanes that ran international flight routes around the world --
oh yea! So it was only a matter of time before Hooters in the US
caught wind of this and felt that Andy was reflecting poorly on Hooters' good
image inside the US. Andy had the right to use the Hooters name in
Thailand because Hooters US has not locked up that name inside this country.
And Hooters could not stop Andy from advertising his go-go club on international
flights. So, as you might have guessed, Andy had Hooters by the
balls and ultimately from what I am told, Hooters paid handsomely to buy
the rights to Hooters (Thailand) away from Andy.
However, from what I understand, Andy didn't really get the full amount that
he really wanted out of the deal..... so.....
... the story didn't end there -- .
I believe there was a second chapter when Andy then changed
the name of this go-go club from Hooters to Hooties -- and I think Andy
snatched
another opportunity to milk that cash cow a second time, but I would prefer that Andy really
tell the whole story in the correct detail because I heard the story second
hand.
Perhaps Stickman (or Faux Stickman) can get an
interview with "The Great Andy" of Electric Blue. I'm sure
he has some great stories to share with us.
I like Electric Blue myself. I think
Andy knows what he is doing. I
have not bar fined a girl from their yet, but I may certainly do so in the
future -- if Andy doesn't protest me coming through his clubs.
Oh, one last thing -- Andy from Electric
Blue has his hands in building go-go clubs. So, he may be a
respectable source of information about being in the go-go bar ownership
business. (But, as I preach on a regular basis - you should always gather
information from several directions before plunking down hard cash.
That is a rule of the road.)
Was Stickman here in Nakhon
Phanom or was
"Stick Mark II"?
I, The Great Galt (Keith Summers), run a
small factory here in Nakhon Phanom. Early this week, Stickman released his
new photo gallery. Low and behold there are 2 pictures that were
taken very close to my place. I don't who was here, but it
could have been Stickmen himself BUT I believe it was the "Stick Mark II"
(or some other imposter). Let me explain why....
Take a look at the 2 Nakhon Phanom photos:
I want you to go back to the Stickman photo
gallery and look at all the pictures and tell me what seems obviously
different or wrong
with these 2 photographs. How are the very much "Not" the
Stickman style? Can you tell?
Did you guess it? Did you notice
that Stickman is very keen on getting people's faces in his pictures?
The picture on the left is a pretty bad shot. It's poorly
composed and the subject is weak. The only reason that I believe
Stickman published this photo was to show me he (or someone else) has been
here on my door step. The photo on the right is not quite so bad, it
uses the technique of "leading lines" but typically, you would not normally
lead the line into the direct centers of the picture. You would take
the leading lines towards a corner of the photo for a better visual effect.
Stickman is better at taking pictures than this. I
would say that "Mark II" took these pictures and this adds evidence to the
fact that Stickman didn't write this week's article.
The picture on the left was taken right
outside my factory within about 200 feet of my door.
The picture on the right was taken about 1 kilometer south of my factory.
In fact, I run on this sidewalk the whole length that you see here and more about 4
or 5 times a week. Judging by the shadows in the pictures, these
were taken at about 3 or 4 pm. If he would have waited about
another hour, he could have been taking a picture of "The Galt" running down the
sidewalk.
Whoever was here, gave these pictures to
Stickman and I believe Stickman posted a comment on MangoSquash about having
evidence that someone had been here. This "Concerned for all" is
very likely to be Stickman's secret pen name at MangoSquash.
Certainly, the work comes from the Stickman camp. (of course Stickman
himself won't take any direct credit for it - the pussy) They certainly
drove a long way to get these pictures. I hope you guys are
excited about the having my tag number. And you came into my
building without my knowledge and took pictures? Careful guys -- this looks
like the work of a real stalker and you don't want people to think that - do
you? Of course I have a nice building with a river view. We are
first class here.
One last thing -- the description on the right
hand picture is not a monk. This may look like a monk and he may
walk like a monk but monks don't have this much hair and this boy looks
fairly young judging from his height in the picture. (That
yellow wall is about 3 feet high). I would say he is a Nane
(said with a long A in a very short burst). This is loosely translated
into "acolyte". He is basically in monk training.
Most Nanes will never become monks and you would be surprised how many are
sent into monk training because they are on the "outs" with the family.
Here is a general example; Young man in
his early 20's who is fully dependant on the family for support and works
for the family business. Their boy goes off and gets drunk on a wild
weekend and dumps his motorcycle on the way home and scraps himself up
pretty good, Mom put her foot down and demands a little "rehab" and sends
him off to the temple for 4 or 6 weeks. He shaves his head, he does
his time, and he is back in the families good graces. Not all boys go
the the Wats for the same reasons. Most boys do a stint there for
"good people" training before making the transition to adulthood.
I am told that the average good Buddhist
person has 5 precepts to live by. A Nane, must abide by 8 precepts and
the fully fledged Monk has 217 precepts that he must follow.
I'll try to come up with full lists someday in the future and publish them.
Looking at the Numbers
We saw a second bump in traffic this week as
Stickman brought back the Stickman weekly. Otherwise, we are seeing an
average week with no surprises.
Looking at the Pages /
Keywords
It think it's really interesting to see what
topics people are interested in. Here is top of the list that shows how many
articles were viewed just this month. These are only about the top 45
entries. I look at these numbers to determine how many people
have to come to the sight in any given month. I look at
the first article that I published in this case "Are You Stepping Up or
Stepping Back" and I see 2,500 page views. I reason that most people
won't look at that page more than once because nothing changes on that page.
Once you've read it -- you're read it. So, I'm guessing that
conservatively, I had 2,000 unique people look at that page this month.
I don't really see any other justification for a page being viewed so many
times. Remember, these number roll back to zero at the end of every
month.
I am also showing you what keyphrases which are
popular for the web searches that result in bringing people to my site. I have not shown this before. As you can see
"NotStickman" and "Stickman" are the most popular terms.
Our Sponsor
I introduced this briefly last week.
I run the company that pays for the web site. This week our business web site is up and running fully. We produce LED
lighting product and motorcycle turn signals. You may want
to take a quick look over there and see what we do. I won't miss-lead
you. Your visit over there helps Google recognize our value and send us
more web traffic. So, it helps our company if you go over for a
quick peek.
We do have Google Adsense ads running there at
our site.
Please don't go over there and click on the ads for no reason, just going
over there for a short peek would be enough to help telegraph to Google that
this site has some extra value. Google will respond by moving that
site up in the search engines and we'll likely win business from its
enhanced exposure. I don't even care about the Adsense money
really. My theory is that Google will also look out for itself
and move our AsianSignals site higher in the rankings because Google wants the
Adsense revenues primarily for themselves. We are just looking
for customers for our LED lighting and electronics products.
The Stickman Wrap Up
Quite a large community has been patiently
waiting for Stickman to return for a number of months. Stickman has
been boasting and bragging about how he would return with a much improved and
better than ever Stickman Weekly, but his showing out of the gate is weak.
He suffers from this haughty over-confidence that the readers are so stupid
they they will just accept anything that he gives them.
Somehow, I think his judgment is way off. His tendency to look
down his nose at people is coming back to bite him and he perhaps has now
just pushed his luck way too far. He has produced what is likely
to be looked at as a substandard weekly column and he has been
"cheeky" about who is exactly behind the pen (keyboard).
If this was truly to be the "Rocky" comeback as MangoSquash reported, I'm
sorry to say, but Stickman perhaps has hit himself with his own glove.
The readers have been wanting - perhaps expecting him to stand up for
himself and defend himself against my allegations here, but instead of
seeing the "eye of the tiger", we got the "eye of the mouse". If
Stickman doesn't have the nerve to get back in the saddle and ride, he
should just say so and take a bow and make a graceful exit from the weekly
commentary business. Maybe this is a wise choice for him because
the climate in Thailand is pretty harsh on school teachers right now and he
can ill afford any waves at his place of employment. The Galt
(I) run a manufacturing and export company in a fairly poor area of the
country and I don't work with kids. I am probably a bit more insulated from
scrutiny from Thai authorities. And there is one more vital
issue, I am not engaging in a secret money making enterprise. I have never been
mixed up in anything questionable like this. So, Stickman may be making the
right choice to stand down, but for God sakes, he should be a man about it
and just tell people what is going on, otherwise he'll just continue to lose
respect with the on-line community and his reputation will die a slow death.
I don't hate Stickman, what irks me is that Stickman has been trying to play
a leadership role without demonstrating real leadership qualities -- and on some
levels that were profitable to himself, he abused his position of
trust with the farangs and Stick, giving into temptation, was screwing them over
-- instead of helping them become better more informed for their own
personal benefit and the benefit of the entire farang community.
I may have been one of the first to call attention to him, but now that he
looks frail, others are also following suit. Lying to your
readership is probably the very worst thing you can do, and Stickman has
been in the Kingdom so long, that he must have finally decided to give up
that "all important" quality. So Stickman, get off your ass and
get back in the saddle and take a little ownership of your word if you want
to prove me wrong.
OH, one more thing. Stickman is
probably going to have to put the web site under some legal framework IF he
is going to collect money locally for the advertising. If not,
he is only going to put himself in trouble, his advertisers in trouble, and
embarrass his family. At some point, the Stickman website with
increasing advertising revenue will attract attention. At some
point he could become the next high profile John Karr type news story.
Stickman strikes me as the type who wants to cheat the system and therefore
he has no armor. It's people operating like Stickman who make
immigration officers take lectures on how to catch falangs breaking the rules.
If he continues to show this kind of leadership -- in openly breaking the rules, then
I guess he should be running a bit scared. Now, some of you are
saying to me --- Wait Galt, we all know that go-gos and beer bars are
illegal operations and Thailand knows about those. I say to you
-- the go go operators (and others in the related industries) are following
all the rules set forth to them by the cooperating authorities.
They are buying licenses. They are paying their taxes and they are
paying their "tea" money.
They make efforts to do their part in a way that is disclosed. Enterprises like Stickman's and MangoSquash's, are making efforts to hide and not do their part
to be legitimate. Thailand authorities are particularly worried
(scared) about business that they don't see. There
is a very big difference between these two groups. Being in Thailand
and being part of the community is about making cooperative efforts and
exchanging courtesies. My guess would be if a decree came out to enforce the laws against go-go
bars, none of the owner/mangers would go to jail, they would just simply be
asked to stop working and shut down. If illegal web sites and money
laundering through web sites became a focus for the Thailand authorities,
guys like Stickman and Dave would be more than likely to go to jail/deported
or be forced to payout some lumps of cash to police "absolve" themselves
from wrong doing. But, that is
just my opinion.
What dry topic..... I'd much rather be writing
about Virgin Hunting (see - I finally wrote this phrase for the first time
on my site) By the way, I have never written anything about
Virgin "Hunting" before. It is true that they have come looking for me on a
hand full of occasions. My detractors coined this phrase to slam me in
public on the Internet. However, I think this term is quite funny.
I get this image of Steve Irwin in khaki shorts and shirt peering around
corners with eyes wide open searching far and wide for elusive creatures.
I think it's funny as hell. I just might have to come up with
brown button down shirts with "VH" written on the pocket and sell them here on-line or something.
Thanks for a stopping by people,
John Galt (aka Keith Summers)
business strength. I can
work here and enjoy myself for less. I think people spend very
large amounts of money to be happy in the west and let's face it, this
burns up valuable capital. My lunch here is not complete without my
feline friends who I share the bones and skin with. They seem not
to mind and actually prefer my chicken parts to their normal fish and
rice mix that one of the local produce stands feeds them. They
seem to favor the skin and the chicken ribs the most, but they will eat
almost anything from the chicken including the cartilage and leg bones.
