Thais

It is virtually impossible to discuss the Thai Royal Family in English without offending native Thais: the special honorific forms of reference that exist in Thai simply have no counterparts in English.

Thais use mobile internet more than five hours a day, compared with more than four hours in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia, and three hours as the global average, according to the joint report released last week.

Back in 2002 and several years thereafter, I regularly attended meditation sessions at Wat Yanviriya Buddhist Temple in East Vancouver, BC. I came to know the Thai culture more because of it. Pāli chanting, moon festivals, relics viewing, et cetera were part of my life then. I remember a spacious hall with hardwood floors and a Buddha altar in front. In summers, the doors would be open to the sunny green outside. In the wetter seasons at night, candles would be lit in the silent darkness inside. (I wore a black Australian Outback jacket then.) Omnipresent was the Ajahn Bhoontam in orange robe, he conducting the rituals. Our saṅgha or congregation was medium-sized and multiethnic. A real saṅgha full of Thais allowed us to share the rustic building. The two groups met at different times.

Anātman (Sanskrit; Pāli Anattā) is the essential Not-self in Buddhism. Japanese and Thais try to reconcile their Buddhist beliefs with Animistic beliefs of having multiple souls or spirits. Somehow, they do manage to do it, and they have no religious conflict. Buddhists believe in the perpetually transforming fluidity of consciousness.

Thais has dark teeth, Laecania snow-white ones. What is the reason? The latter has bought ones, the former has her own.

Born in the Philippines, I had the nickname Nonong, as my family intuitively knew that Orientalism imbued me from childhood. I grew up with the official name Victor like an Occidental in Batangas, Quezon City, and Lulu Island. Though I was nominally a Roman Catholic at birth, Buddha statues and wild bison attracted me as a child. Today, I am a Syncretist, but chiefly a Buddhist-Animist, and I believe in Science. I know that Buddhism is an advanced psychology and that biology can explain Animism. Of Buddhist kinds, I have encountered Zen from Japanese, Theravāda from Thais, and Pure Land from Chinese. Red Indians, Shintoists, Daoists, Oz Aborigines, Eskimos, Pacific Islanders, and other indigenous peoples have imbued my Animistic thoughts.

It's a hot sunny blue-sky day with a little breeze so that I can flap my arms through it, this 1st day of July of 2025, Canada Day. Some people are wearing red. I ventured to Tim Hortons café for drinks and snacks. On my way, I saw Bob and George, the Greek-Cypriot brothers, as they just attended the festivities in Steveston Village, Lulu Island. There was salmon, they said. They bicycled. It was "fun," they said. Bob is visiting from "olde" England, where he now resides. A Thai neighbour with his Filipina wife hosted a nice Canada Day party in their cozy shady garden. People were sitting, enjoying food—Thais and Filipinos, probably. There was Mass in the morning at the "Clam Temple," where attendants even sang "O Canada"!