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Welcome to the Land of the sTHAImie.

Posted by Rick Salasar

Land of Smiles? Pshaw, this place is the Land of the 'Sthaimie'.

I can see the TAT ad campaign now...

"Thailand - we put the Thai back in stymie."

Thais are fiercely nationalistic and independent. Part of this comes from Thailand being the only country in the region never to have been colonised.

You want to know why Thailand has never been colonised?

Have you ever tried to get past just two or three Thais on the sidewalk? How do people who weigh about forty kilos and are about as wide as a signpost manage to take up so much space?

I'm not kidding. Need to control a crowd at a rock concert? Take four Thai girls, space them about two arms' length apart from each other and let them jabber away on their phones. Two thousand people won't be able to get through, or around, them.

I reckon as few as two Thais on the phone could block a six lane freeway. Now imagine a border lined with Thai villages, each one its own self-contained civil defence fast-reaction sthaime (FRS) squad. With elephants.

Thais have elevated getting in your way to an art form, nay, a martial art form, and the ultimate move - the move worth a million bonus points on Streetfighter 3 - is.....

"the sTHAIMie"

I'm pretty adept at threading through tight crowds. Even in Asia, where I'm bigger than most of the natives, I can often get through crowds faster and slicker than the locals - put it down to a rather dodgy, inner-city childhood of staying ahead of various long arms, combined with some study of softer forms of martial arts that put the accent on working with the energies around you.

But in Thailand, I have truly met my match. Bobby Fisher and Gary Kasparov would marvel at Thais' ability to work several moves ahead. Without even being conscious of what they're doing, they often leave me with no option for forward motion.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines stymie as "to prevent something from happening or someone from achieving a purpose". I have been blessed by God to witness the true beauty of an immaculately performed three-way sthaimie.

The "Standard-Issue Sthaimie" (SIS) is something to be marvelled at but this "Complete Shutdown by Complex Sthaimie" (CS2) must surely be up there with the birth of a star, the opening of King Tut's tomb or the discovery of a long-lost civilisation - like, say, Gary, Indiana.

To see three Thais, all on the phone and all apparently unaware of each other and me, manoeuvre themselves perfectly in time and space so as to completely thwart my ability to proceed straight-on or to either side is one of nature's truly wondrous events. It's impossible to wrong-step these masters, too.

Had Bruce Lee lived long enough to discover this lost art, I'm sure he would have integrated the Essence of SIS and CS2 into his Jeet Kune Do philosophy. Nothing would have stopped him, then, do you hear me? Nothing! Mur ha ha ha ha!

yr fthfl srvnt

Rick "Khun Founded" Salasar

Posted Apr 12, 2005 at 04:20 PM | Permalink |