Month: March 2006

– A Thai who can’t eat spicy food.
– A diabetic Thai.
– A Thai with a peanut allergy.
Any of the conditions listed above will ensure that the unfortunate party will almost never eat food outside their homes. In Thailand, the land of delicious food aplenty, that is just bad luck, and bad karma.

No, not User Interface. Nor Ugly Imperialist. (for the purposes of this post, anyway.)
PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS:
Simply put, “ui!” is the sound of a Thai person in distress. Variations on this include, “uuui!,” “uuii!,” and “uuuuuuui!” (can you see my linguistics major paying off now?)
If I unprovokedly poke my wife in the side, she might exclaim, “uui!” (she might just as soon sock me in the stomach and then demand to know what the hell I’m doing, but I did say “might,” right?) [English equivalent in this example: “Hey!”]
If a Thai dude catches a whiff of (presumedly spicy) gas passed by his friend, he might say “ui!” and pinch his nose in the universal sign for “that’s stanky!” [English equivalent: “Jesus!”]
If a Thai hears something remarkable in a conversation, they might reply with a long “uuuuuii.” [“Ooooh,” or, “uh huh” – just a simple affirmation or acknowledgment of what previus speaker stated, mixed with real or exaggerated amazement or wonder]
The mighty ui is also used for oh shit moments. For instance, if The Sorcerer’s Apprentice had ever been subtitled in Thai, it would have looked something like this:

BACKGROUND
A couple weeks ago, T and I were sitting in a taxi, stuck in that good old Bangkok traffic (for perhaps the 47th time in one week). Conversation turned to the subject of bar fights in Thailand. T has seen many since he is a professional lounge lizard; I have seen only a few, all in Patong Beach. One curious observation we both had is that when a farang (gaijin) gets into an actual fight with a Thai, the place usually explodes with hordes of angry Thais swinging barstools, glass ashtrays, and beer bottles at the foreigner’s head. It’s really quite a trip to watch. They will fuck you up in defense of their Thai brethren, no bullshit on that count, man. Which bring us to the point of this post…
If a foreigner of Asian descent is fighting with, say, a white guy in a Soi Cowboy bar fight, would he be helped out by the Thais? Would Powder be stomped into oblivion by angry bar girls in gogo boots?
THE UI THEORY
In such a situation, if the said Asian starts making loud “uuuuii!” noises when he gets hit, the fury of a thousand Suryothai cannon-bearing elephants will strike down upon the white man. There are at least three possible reasons for this:
1. The Asian man may have been mistaken for a Thai, hence kicking in the Thai Brethren Response
2. Even if he isn’t mistaken as Thai, he may receive enough Asian Sympathy Points to trigger a response
3. Regardless of looks, he may trigger an involuntary response with his tactical use of ui
Regarding that last point, we may need to run some field tests between two white guys to see if what we have coined the Thai Brethren Response is actually just a Pavlovian response to the utterance of ui (and hence must be renamed to the Ui Response).

(thx fish)

Oh my god, Jack Bauer is my hero.