Fat bastard cuts in line when you’re buying movie tix. Do you:
a) Think “mai pen rai, he must be in a hurry”
b) Think “How rude, I hope a bird poops on his head”
c) Tap his shoulder and say “Hey Mister! Please don’t cut in front of me, it really makes me feel bad.”
d) Grab his collar, call him a pucking frick and pound him for five minutes. Look around and notice there’s now a line circumventing you. March to the front and claim your place.
Sales
a) Check out her merchandise
b) Check out her merchandise and cry internally
c) Tell her how unkind she is for hurting your delicate emotions by implying that you’re so large that your size isn’t standard
d) Chew her ear with big words like “human decency” and “injustice” while waving your arms around knocking over all the merchandise. Demand a discount then pound her. Then buy a smaller size just to show her you’re not that big.
Restaurant serves your food cold and half an hour late. Do you:
a) Eat it quickly before it gets any colder
b) Give the waitress a puppyface then eat it quick before it gets any colder
c) Tell the waitress how she hurt your sensitive feelings
d) Bust into the manager’s room, shove a fork up his rectum and then pound him. When he meekly explains that sushi is supposed to be cold and it’s only been six minutes, pound him some more and say “cold sushi my foot!”
See, back in the late 1960’s an old white guy named Geert Hofstede quizzed people in different countries and split them into different dimensions: Power Distance (PDI), Individualism/Collectivism (IDV), Masculinity/Femininity (MAS), and Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI). Indians, he found, had the highest Power Distance in the world—meaning my people like having everybody else wiggly wormy at our feet.
Indians also had the world’s 3rd highest Masculinity which means we’re rough’n’tough and even our women love a good catfight. Purr-purr!
But wait—there’s more! See, it takes a wicked Indian like me to figure out that the white guy wasn’t just talking about Indians. His Cultural Dimensions are bang-on about
Check this.
PDI, Problems with Democratic Implementation: we like the idea of democracy, hell we love it so much we complain about our governments, overthrow them, and draft new constitutions so often we’re pros at it (except when our Burmese neighbors defy their military rulers and take it to the streets, then we just ignore them, or maybe we’re jealous of their cool-but-inaccurate slogan “The Saffron Revolution”. It’s really more like crimson or cinnamon. Maybe brick.)
Accent Switching (ASW)
Our long lost friend comes home for the hols and busts out a swanky American accent and we instantly drop our “lor?” tinged Thindian accent for a chic Californian one. Week later a rel from
Food Mixing (FMX)
Cholay with som tum anybody? Khao-pad with achaar and yogurt? Our alu tikki spills into our kaeng thai sharing real estate with dhal and sen-mee-pad and somehow that’s perfectly fine? We Thai-Indians have mastered the science of matching the perfect Thai dish to its Indian soul mate. Of course it helps to Indianize the names of Thai dishes so khao-pad sounds more like cow fart.
Hangover Working (HWK)
Drink like Mr.Walker was our uncle and grunt our way through class/work the next day. But then. We're always grunting our way through class/work so nobody notices.
The ‘rents slap a 10 p.m. curfew and Taliban-style dress code? No sweat. The clever Thindian gurly gets her kicks before sunset. There’s always that friend with the dorm near the university because it’s just so unsafe to go home all the way from Srinakharain to Tha Pra (sounds like thappar) late night after class. She keeps a little black cardigan with her to cover up those sexy spag straps and comes home right on time like a perfectly well-mannered respectable Indian girl.
Just as all Chinese people are kung-fu experts, all Indians are secretly yoga masters. Mundane activities like cutting toenails activate our higher chakras and lotus flowers bloom atop our heads. Sipping a cup of tea lets us swim through the 11 dimensions of the universe and sprinkle fairy dust on all sentient beings. The unique properties of whiskey allow it to flow directly into the left side of our brain, leaving half our heads totally sober. Let old leftie enjoy the boozefest while we save the right brain for more important skills like flirting with the waitress and driving home.
Manboob Concealment (MBC)
There’s a disproportionately high number of Thai-Indian guys with funny lumps on their chests. Granted, men with titties account for only a small percentage of the Thai-Indian population. There are, for example, far more Thai men with titties (owing to the fact that there are no Thai-Indian ladyboys). I’m not talkin’ silicone here, these the Thai-Indian man-boobs have been nursed since childhood with milk and butter; supplemented with ice-cream, pizza, and instant noodles; enriched further with whisky and those addictively good moo pings on
You started a tale that started the whole world talking? Our love for drama makes us the world's number one talksters. Like that whisper game we played as kids, tell somebody that "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water" and pretty soon the whole town is on fire. Everybody's talking about how shameless Jack was for tricking innocent Jill by taking her all the way up that isolated hill and how they kept on and on fetching all these pails of goodness-knows-what. Just SEE how they walk around with those cheeky smiles as if it was perfectly normal my gawd these young people now days are just too much!
| Vikster's Vocab |
