John Galt Presents: Gifts and Paul Owen/Stickman Update

There is one area of Thai culture that tends to be over-looked. The Thais enjoy giving gifts. That may seem like something very simple but I think it is important. For a little as some Thais have, they put a premium value on giving something of themselves to others. Gift giving is integrated into several parts of their lives. They provide Buddhists monks with food, they give money to their local temples, they will offer up small amount of food to the spirits and their deceased relatives, and of course, they give gifts to each other.

They give gifts for Birthdays and sometimes for the Chinese New Year. Sometimes they give just because they are thinking about you...

I have received a number of things over the years from friends, sometimes strangers and of course from the girls that I have been involved with.

Here are a few examples of the types of things you may receive. My shelf is very dirty. I haven't cleaned it in a year. I don't have a "house girl" here. The first two trinkets that I want to point out were from almost strangers. The smaller plastic silver "shovel" holds a satung. That is the Thai's smallest coin in circulation. It is glued on this plastic shovel. I met a small group of guys and gals who invited me to join them as they sat near the river bank of the

Mekhon river. (We have a number of cement embankment with a nice several pavilions along the river.) I sat with them for a while and this was their gift to me. I think is was around this time of year about 3 years ago (Chinese New Year). The other item is a model of a type of flute that is made from bamboo. The full sized version is a popular country musical instrument. I think I received this as a gift at a wedding I attended. (it is customary to offer a gift to the bride and groom upon arriving at the wedding and they typically offer something in return).

This next item is a liquid candle. A girl named Pla gave it to me. I met her almost 5 years ago here in Nakhon Phanom. She and her sister owned and small gift shop at the time. I spied the candle one day and she asked me if I like it. I think it was priced at 260 baht. About a year later she gave the candle to me. Pla mysteriously left here about 3 years ago and I have not seen her since. One of her friends said she met a farang and took up with him.

The smaller music box on the right was given to me by an old girlfriend. The interesting story behind this girl, is that her family tried to shake me down for money. That kind of put a damper on things. That is a story that I should tell you about. We stopped hanging out together, she subsequently ran away from home, later became pregnant, and from what I know, she is back at home now raising her child. I haven't seen her around town now in a year or two. If you click on this picture you'll see her face on the right side of that music box with the glass figurines on top.

This next gift is just simple Halloween gift. It's a plastic/rubberized skeleton. That girl who gave it to me was kind of strange. She met me at the local night market. I showed her where I lived and she could come to my house, but she would never allow herself to be seen with me in public. This had me kind of frustrated because this was limiting what we could do. It was silly, I reached

the point where sex was about all we could do. She was a very nice girl, she had a near perfect figure. I really liked her.

She would swear to me that she didn't have a husband. But, on her last visit to my house, she wore what looked like a nice engagement ring with a decent looking diamond in it. I pointed this out right away and she gave me this big song and dance about how she was selling jewelry and this ring was on consignment. What did I know? I just accepted her story. I didn't see her after that visit for a long time. I lost track of her - or I was distracted by another girl, I can't remember off hand. I do remember being sufficiently put off by the fact that we couldn't be seen together and typically I had no way to easily contact her. She was hiding something.

Then about 8 months ago, I saw her in our local Lotus Tesco. She was with a Thai man. I didn't approach her (this is the rule of thumb), I let her pass by and she did not acknowledge me. I knew she had seen me -- I thought this was her husband.

I selected a few items in the story and I just happened to check out at the same time she did. This was completely coincidental. It really was. I got right behind the two them in line. She saw me out of the corner of her eye, and kept her eyes down. The husband walked off to look at a nearby magazine rack. He walked behind the short rack, turned and was facing us at the checkout line. When her turn came, she off loaded her basket very slowly one item at a time, it was strange. I didn't say a word. She didn't turn to look at me. I was only an arm's reach away. She just moved very slowly and without expression on her face. I looked up at the husband once, he briefly looked up from a magazine to view her progress at the counter and looked back down again. I sensed a dark unhappiness from her. I said nothing. She said nothing. I watched her from my peripheral vision as the cashier packed up her bags and she carted them away.

I want to recount something personal about her that I think you will find interesting. She has something unique on her body that I want to mention. I didn't know what it was at first. I just know that it caught my attention. When we were in a more -- shall we say - personal mode, I had my hands around her back side and I felt something strangle. I felt two patches of skin that reminded me of leather. These two areas were kind of elliptical in shape and they were symmetrically placed with respect to her center line -- one spot on each "cheek". I later realized (with some other experiences with one or two other girls, that these "patches" on her back side were areas of thick skin that were produced by sitting with legs crossed on a hard floor.

If you come across a poor girl from the country - chances are she will have some form of this thickening of the skin in these area because these poor families don't have soft furniture to sit on. They many times prefer the floor and normally the floor is either cement tile or a mat on top of cement. In these cases a girl who sits in exactly the same way day to day will acquire this leathery ellipse on each "cheek". I came across a picture of this off the web. If you look at

the end of the yellow arrow you see a darkened patch. This is it. I would say this is a mild case.

Go ahead and click on the image for a closer look. And while you are at it -- see if you can find Stickman...

Many people saw Paul Owen right away. I was thinking that he and this girl's neither region would just blend together and you'd never see him. I thought he was perfectly camouflaged. You people are just too sharp. I'm proud of you.

All of Stickman's writings have up to now lead us to believe he is in his late 30's. The picture at his school's web site looks young - that is in agreement. But this image puts him much more in the range of his mid 40's. Have we uncovered yet another another Stickman lie? Is there any end in site for the Stickman propaganda machine?

Short Update Feb 18th....( Several readers are confirming that Paul is in his later 30's, so my guess about him being in his mid 40's is probably wrong.)

Hi John,

Firstly congratulations on the site. I actually had a very similar idea a few years ago. whoisstickman.com was my planned name.

I had the basic site ready to upload just had to purchase the domain.

In short I am an Aussie who spends my annual leave in LOS. 4-5 weeks per year. And whilst on a trip I came across some info which I supplied to the Great Stickman who published it in his weekly, But the way it was published was that HE supplied the facts not a reader. All I wanted was some reference that a reader supplied the subject info.

Anyway when I complained to him he offered to remove the material but as far as I was concerned the damage was done. I mean by this time most people had already read it so removing it was a waste of time.

It was then I worked out that this wasn't a once off. I wondered how much of his weekly was other people work that he ripped off the credit for???

I subsequently stopped looking at sites from Thailand and only just recently got back to it for a look and found your site.

Good to see that you are taking a stand. If you wish to publish any of this email feel free. ...

Best regards John. I look forward to your reply.

I have a number of email here from former Stickman supporters who have similar stories. One former reader claims that Stickman refused to remove his reader's submission because it was a "popular piece" and Stickman clearly didn't care about this author's rights to have it removed.

Now, you might say to me, "Keith, so Stickman claimed credit for a few pieces that was not his own work -- so what". To that I say, it should never have happened. If you have done it once, you have done it twice.

Stickman's has been walking tall and righteous and looking down on the pirate software market, the naughty night life, the questionable Visa services, and a host of other shady enterprises. And now, we are seeing that he in fact is a dirty dog himself by ripping people off and making money on it. He continues to make money on other people's efforts by inviting readers to submit articles for free to his web site and then Stickman take the money from Ads sales. Of course, the authors of those articles should expect that Stickman will never honor their request to remove their material from his web site.

I have other email that says Stickman agreed to meet people in person and then he backed out at the last minute. Once guys claims he flew here from England primarily to meet Stick to talk business. But, when he arrived Stickman turned off his cell phone so he didn't have to take the meeting. (I would have been pissed - that's means 'angry' to you Brits)

I even have a story that states Stickman accepted a gift of a bottle of wine at a hotel desk where he was staying and made no efforts to meet the sender who was a reader of his column. The email implies that he made sufficient efforts to get the gift, but no apparent effort to greet the sender. (What kind of guy is that? One who thinks everyone is a stalker?)

I'm saving these pieces for publishing later in the year when the Stickman weekly returns from hiatus.

At first glance you might be asking yourself "why would I make comment about a seemingly unrelated issue regarding the airport". That is very good question. Part of what I like to do is practice my skills on carving through the BS of a sitation and making a guess on the most likely outcome. I do this with business, I do this with girls and relationships -- I do this with the information that I read on the Internet. This is good practice. Let's take a look at a current issue, sniff out the facts if possible and predict an outcome.

A couple of years back when I read on the Internet that China had a small problem with SARS, I was e-chatting with my sister that day and I said to her "China has a big problem with SARS", she responded "How do you know that?", I said "Because it's the Asian way to BS people and lie and minimize a real problem to save face." And sure enough, a about a week later - the real story came out about China having a big problem with SARS and the international community was very angry with them for not be honest about it up front. If China had only a smaller problem they would have report "no problem", but if they were forced to admit anything at all -- then I knew it was more likely they had a big problem. I was right in this case but, I'm not always right, so it's good practice to take note of issues and run them through you BS meter to fine tune your powers of perception. It can pay off handsomely in Asia in money and/or booty.

If you haven't seen these articles from the BangkokPost.com yet, you make want to take a quick peek at them or accept my summary on them.

This article talks about the taxiways being soft. It alleges that water drainage may be poor and that some taxiways were built with substandard materials.

Bannawit Kengrian, chairman of the National Legislative Assembly's committee on Suvarnabhumi airport, said the airport should be completely closed for repairs. The acting prime minister Surayud Chulanont said he would prefer the airport to remain open while the problems were corrected.

This article says that ruts in the taxiways were found only 4 months after the airports opening. Claims that runways are safe.

"Judging from our two-week investigation, I'm confident that the runway is safe," said Tortrakul Yomnak, a chief engineer for the Airports of Thailand government agency, which led the inquiry.

Article says "But the investigation into the problem has revealed that the cracks are primarily on the surface and do not indicate a major problem with the engineering work below the tarmac, Tortrakul said." (this is the lead Engineer)

This article says, "Most of the damaged areas were on the taxi lanes and taxiways with the remaining small portion at the ends of both runways" it goes on to say, "The cracks were caused by underground water that had seeped up from the sand blanket, he said. The water naturally weakens the tarmac."

So, given all this information, I'm going to take a guess on the future of the Suvarnabhumi airport. This is just an exercise and I could be completely wrong about it, but here goes....

All agree that damage is present and could be caused by underground water. There is no dispute over the error in construction of limited water drainage at the runways.

Runways and taxiways accommodate aircraft that easily weigh 200 tons. That weight is distributed over a 14 to 22 tires at most so the surface area of those tires might be 20 square meters? That is a lot of weight over a small surface area. And let me also point out that 200 tons is light. The new Airbus 380 will have an operational weight of over 400 tones whereas the Boeing 747 is in the 300 ton range.

We are seeing trouble in only 3 months and it's not even raining yet! What will happen when the rainy season begins this year at an airport that is operational for the first time during this season??

If we make the assumption that all parties building the runways and taxiways took short cuts and rushed to finish the job, what is the likelihood that the runways were also built in a substandard way? If the taxiway company "cheated" on quality how likely was it that this same company OR another company "cheated" on the main runways??

Granted, the runways may be built stronger than the taxiways because they bear harder stresses from landings -- but if the whole project was built incorrectly -- how much longer before the main runways show weaknesses and degradation?

And to top this all off -- we have a lead Engineer who says "But the investigation into the problem has revealed that the cracks are primarily on the surface and do not indicate a major problem with the engineering work below the tarmac"

Now take a moment to think about this answer..... This is lead engineer saying that a surface condition did not indicate any problem below the surface. How did he figure that out in 2 weeks of investigation? Did he poke the ground with a long pop-sickle stick?

To recognize the full scope of this bull-shit -- please imagine yourself standing the a runway at the airport. Look around. You are looking a million or more square meters of paved surface. How do you know where to test? How do you know how many holes to open in the ground. How do you work around all that air traffic and gather enough information to statistically have enough data to support a blanket assessment?

My guess is that you would have the close the airport to traffic and it would take a dozen of teems with good equipment a full year to sample enough areas to make an accurate assessment. After all, these guys are trying to describe something they can't see.

It is possible that a surface condition had nothing to do with the underlying structure -- but in most cases this just would not be true. So, I naturally don't easily believe in this engineer's assessment. This was a statement bought and paid for to keep the tourists, Thailand, and the international aviation authorities pacified.

#1 First of all, domestic traffic has already be been moved back to Don Muang. This has happened. So, the problems are real and it does have an impact on the normal operation of the Suvarnabhumi airport.

#2 They will try to repair the taxiways without completely closing the airport. But, when the rainy seasons comes, there will be additional problems and at some point, the runways will also be affected.

#3 Then, I suspect at some point the FAA will step in a make Thailand move the remaining traffic back to the Don Muang air port until the new airport can be certified by an international team as safe.

#4 If the airport closes, it will be closed a minimum of one year while a mammoth effort affects extensive changes to the taxiways and possibly the runways as well.

Here is a question for you. How would you like to be aboard the first super-jumbo Airbus-380 when it comes in for a landing at Suvarnabhumi? If one mysterious pot hole appears your luxury transportation vehicle could turn into a rolling fire ball of debris. Oops!?!

A number of weeks ago, I was asked "Why didn't you write a article on the Bangkok bombings?" I responded and said, because I don't know anything new about those bombings. To publish an article on those incidents without real honest unique insight would be a scam to the readership and a make cheap ploy for web search ratings. I have written this before and I'll write this again -- I try to tie in my commentary with something real that happened to me or around me that had some impact on me.

Today, I have the unfortunate job of writing about someone who I do know who is now in trouble. I'm going to take some heat for this story but, I would rather tell it than let someone else sniff this out and accuse me of hiding my connection to this guy.

This is Sean McMahon. I never knew his last name until now. He arrived in Nakhon Phanom about a year ago. He came here with his long term girlfriend. Seems that she has family in the area. She is about 24.

Prior to his arrival here, he said that he spent a few years in Kanchanaburi and taught English there.

Here in Nakhon Phanom, he opened up a small Burger stand inside our Indo-China market that sits near the Mekong River. Sean set the shop up and his girl friend worked it while he taught English at the local university.

I have eaten lunch with Sean on a couple of occasions at his burger place. On one of those occasions I did look through a photo book of pictures that he took of his students. As is the norm, there were more girls in the picture than boys and all these students were about 17 years and up. I even knew a few of the girls in the photos.

After a handful of months last year, Sean stopped teaching in favor of opening up a small English Pub in a rented a vacant wooden house over looking the river. It was almost a shack, but it had character. He moved his burger operation there and I did eat there on a number of occasions (because when you're this far out a decent hamburger is hard to find). I also attended a couple of his parties there.

At some point he did stop teaching at the local university (I know nothing of the background on why that stopped). On top of that the Visa rules changed near that same time. I heard he was on the move trying to figure out what to do to maintain his residence. He told me that he had made a trip over to Vietnam to investigate teaching there but to no avail.

About 8 weeks ago, before he moved out of town, he was strapped for cash and said something about the ATMs and his bank accounts were not in working for him. I loaned him 1,000 baht. About 5 days later, I came back to my office from lunch and I found that he had indeed stopped by and returned the money and wrote a note inviting me to catch up to him and friends for a beer out on the town later that night. I did not attend that get-together. I never saw Sean after that point and I believe that was about 10 weeks ago near Christmas.

About 2 weeks ago, just after his arrest, (unbeknownst to me) I get a call from his cell phone. It was his girlfriend on the line. She said he had been picked up and was being held in the UK embassy. She couldn't explain to me what trouble Sean was in except to say she thought was related to his Visa. She asked for my email address so that an embassy representative could send me an email and help explain the help that Sean needed. I never did receive any email. I called her back about a week later asking what was going on. At that time, she knew he was being extradited back to England. It was a week after this call (about 8 days ago, that another local farang broke the news to me).

That is what I know about Sean. I have never seen him in any way look sideways at an under-age girl. We talked a little but about girls in general -- but then who doesn't? I have spoken to 2 other farangs in town about Sean. They both said that they would have never guessed Sean's past.

If you look at his picture, you see what looks like a smirk on his face. This is pretty much Sean's normal state. He is nearly always smiling in a happy mood. Sean was very hard working. He did not strike me as a shifty person and I generally liked him. But, I suppose if I were friends of the family of the 8 year old who alleges a crime against Sean, I would be more apprehensive towards him.

One thing is for sure, running from a criminal charge like this is going to be looked at as a confession of guilt. Whatever issues he had before are only going to be harder to work out.

What puzzles me is why the authorities did not pick him up here or in Kanchanaburi. The authorities know where we farangs are at all time through our Visas (if the the paper work is done honestly). Sean was not hiding (or did not appear to be hiding). He could have been found in this town at any time of the day so why wait until he was in Bangkok?

I was over at a friends' house (Thais). These are the two girls who's father died a couple months ago. (the younger one is very hot). I bought the whisky and food that night. Their mother wasn't around -- only their older brother, a male cousin and the brother's son (I think he is about 8 years old). The older sister loves to talk about sex (she is about 23). She has a hell of a fascination for it. She loves to embarrasses me -- I wrote an article a couple of months back and told a story of a girl who taught me to say bad words in Thai without me knowing what they were -- she was that girl.

Anyhow, she and her older brother had a very important question for me. They really wanted to know if farang girls really have their hi-healed shoes on during sex. I laughed a little bit.

The younger kids here (I'm talking late teens to early 20's) tend to enjoy watching farang adult movies. So, naturally when they see all the busty blondes and well endowed males in these flicks they think this is somewhat the normal scene in the US. So, I dispelled the myth this week about girls in high healed shoes. Yes, I did my part this week in exchanging cultural information with the Thais (without taking my clothes off - imagine that).

By the way, just to let you know -- the general conception among the younger crowd is that male farangs are well endowed. And of course this has something to do with the hard core movies. I suppose that ads to the mystique of being a farang, but believe it or not - I have seen girls who reacted with fear about the idea of sleeping with a farang for this very reason.

There is new word on the street now. It has been said that Stickman will finish out his contract at his school and not continue on for the next term. This terms end in a week or two. This may mean that he has accepted another position as a teacher somewhere else OR he is changing his work arrangements entirely.

Either way, once he is finished at his current school -- he will have a new opportunity to get back underground and resume his activities again as the 'Bangkok Commentator Extraordinaire' with the weekly column.

Just how long will his new location be kept a secret? Who knows. I say - let's encourage his full return so we can play with him again for a while (it's kind of like the cat and the mouse).

I also wanted to add.... Looks like "WhosYourDaddy" will be joining him in leaving the school. That's right, that is word on the street, and let me add to that .... "WhosYourDaddy" has got quite a reputation. People tell me he is more of an ass than Stickman. It has been said that "WhosYourDaddy" takes a particular pleasure at shouting down bible scriptures at people..... Could this be correct? Wow, we better upgrade him to "AP" status. "Advanced Preacher" Status. So, from now on, we'll call him "WhosYourDaddy-AP". I have no first hand knowledge of this myself but I would have to believe there are a few girls at Nana plaza who have heard his own unique rendition of "Serm0n on the M0unt". One good ass slap and one big belly belch of "WhosYourDaddy?" and away they go!

There was a report a while ago about Stickman and WYD-AP doing some video work with a partially concealed camera over at Nana when they were spotted by a couple of farangs who knew them -- they split after that, I am told. Well, maybe once you guys move to a new school, you can get back to filming bar girls for clients... Tell you what folks..... When I hear the Stick and WYD-AP are back in business full swing, we are going to get some pictures of them in action. Why not? I'd like to know if they are wear trench coats and sunglasses. How do they get the "hard evidence" on those bar girls? Do they take them back to a hotel room and examine their bodies for birthmarks and what-not? I bet the science on that is interesting......

By the way "WhosYourDaddy" is called Stickman's partner in crime and is mentioned in a couple of dozen weekly columns (which are now off-line). In one of these columns Stickman call him "the pride of Canada". Remember now people it's now "WhosYourDaddy-AP".

People, as a going away present at Stickman's School -- can everyone click on this link below one last time. This will register as a visit from us here at NotStickmanBangkok.com. WhosYourDaddy-AP is in there too - you might want to hunt around for him as well just for fun.

With more on Stickman news this week.... I received an email from a "Stickman Lover-Protector" who had contacted one of my eBay customers through the Internet. He asked my customer for my return address. Now, I don't hide my address - it's 2 Nittayo Rd, Nakon Phanom, but on my boxes I write "Mekong Technology Center" as we have dubbed our building with this grand appointment.....

The "Stick Lover" told me about how sad it was for my employees as they would loose their jobs, etc... I forwarded this email on to Stickman (as I sometimes do), and I made a snide remark about getting everyone together and airing out the whole issue...

Hello Paul,

One of your readers claims that I have "messed with the Thais" at your school. Maybe this is a good time for us all to get together with you at your school and sit down and have this out.

We can even invite Mr Steve here to join us and see just how this all works out.

I'll help you sort all this out -- not a problem. Just let me know when you are ready.

Keith

Stickman responds back by emailing me saying "I think we should talk / can I call you".

Stickman: We should have a chat on the phone. How is late afternoon / early evening?

MySelf: Early evening is ok. You have my number. K.

Stickman: 0XX-XXXX459 is my number. I will call you around 7, give or take.

MySelf: What do you want to talk about? Email is better because I work strange hours. K.

This time, he sends me his cell phone number -- like this was some kind of olive branch or something. Normally he calles me on a landline pay telephone. I had a couple of his cell phone numbers already -- I don't really care to talk to him. Email works for me. So, it ended up that we didn't talk. He never called and I didn't call him. I followed up a handful of days later with this email:

Subject: I think you missed a big opportunity

When TwoFatFarangs offered you an interview, you had a chance to clear the air and speak honestly about yourself. Clearly, many of those answers were only to help continue to mold the landscape for your continued web site operations. And the problem is that much of it was misleading and false just so you could spin public opinion in a direction that you preferred.

You had a chance to reduce the friction between us by saying - no Keith is not a stalker, but you didn't take that opportunity. You could have said -- No, I came here with other intensions outside of teaching and decided on to teach after the fact, but you allowed Will to present you as a teacher first which is not true. So, you gave me opportunity to hammer on you again.

And I'm basically obligated to do so until the myths surrounding me are dispelled and the truth about you comes revealed.

Do you follow me? When you called upon David to unleash against me at MangoSauce you cast a die that has now set into motion my efforts to dog you until I feel that I have sufficiently discouraged you from taking up the questionable activities.

Does that make some sense?

You talk so much bullshit to everyone that you're not respected by people who really know you. To people's faces you are nice and agreeable but when you think you are hidden (like when you called me on that first night after the banana article and when you emailed me anonymously), you talk big and bad and you threaten people.

How can anyone take you seriously?

What do you want to do? Do you want to freely run the investigations again? Do you want to get back into the night club and go-go ad sales again?

Just what do you want out of all this?

Keith

So, here I am, just looking for a reasonable response from Stickman. He had the opportunity to say anything he wanted. He could have said "F--- Off and get out of my face" or perhaps he might have said "I just want to get back to taking care of my faithful readership".

But he didn't respond at all. What a wimp. I guess he feels he fairs better on the telephone.

You know - I look for just anything by which I can respect him. But, I keep seeing him scurry around for cover like a rat when the lights are turned on.

It's surprising that he has amassed as large a readership. If suppose he weren't so flimsy as a person, he probably could have kept his "secret reporting staff" in-line and the integrity of the weekly column would have not faltered and I would have never started NotStickmanBangkok.com.

We skipped a week last week so the numbers look a little bit softer this week. Sorry about missing a week, work was heavy and I need to wrap a phase of a very important project.

Thais are generous with their giving. They also believe that in giving they received back good fortune for themselves. You will see them offer smaller money's to beggars in the streets. Friends treat less affluent friends to dinner. Working children will give money to their parents and grandparents. Stranger are happy to lend assistance when they can (I've seen this during several motorcycle accidents).

Giving is a pervasive part of the culture. I see it nearly everywhere. It's a good thing. Thai don't just give money, they give respect, they are giving of their time. This is a part of the culture I do like very much. It certainly has very large impact to the area of relationships and the naughty night life.