ohhh, I like that solution!!! It should be strictly enforced. :bravo: :bravo: :bravo:
That and of course, the ministry of funny walks.
[quote=“Loretta”][quote=“Muzha Man”]Okay, your post is ridiculous. You are a grown woman, what are you doing subjecting your fetus/baby to second-hand smoke? Go home when people smoke. Stay at home if you know they are going to smoke.
Sorry, but you can’t go around bashing others without taking a little responsibility for your own stupidity. And what the hell is wrong with the father? You have a baby. That trumps both your idiotic needs to save face with the business partners.
Sitting with a 3 month old baby in a smokey room full of drunks. Great. I suppose when they ask you to let them toss the baby in the air you hand him over? 
[/quote]
Bollocks!
Non-smokers are perfectly entitled to go out and have a good time too…They don’t have a right to insist that you choose between sharing their disgusting habit and giving up a social life.
[/quote]Bollocks! There are many non-smoking activities you can do without subjecting your child to second-hand smoke. And without expecting smokers to butt it for you.
When they stop selling the cigarettes, I’ll go with that Loretta. Until then, if you don’t want to inhale smoke, stay away from smokers. Don’t expect them to bend over backward for you.
T.
I think the OP’s complaint was that her social life is restricted to being with smokers, and my reply was to the person who seems to think that ‘social’ and smoking go together by some kind of divine order. This is bollocks. Why should smokers be the only ones to have a social life? Why can’t smokers be allowed to enjoy restaurants and bars too?
Millions of people in countries around the world are demonstrating, as legislations is being passed, that it is perfectly possible to ban smoking in places where people go to socialize. Smoking is not part of a healthy social life, it’s a barrier to many people.
Fortunately, most smokers I know are considerate in enjoying their pleasures and I try not to get on their case. They have rights too, and as long as we all recognise each other’s preferences and try to co-exist then life is hunky-dory. Co-exist. Respect. Don’t poison me or my baby. Don’t inflict your baby on me. Everyone’s happy.
As I said, the OP is asking a lot when she socializes with a pro-smoking crowd and expects something different. She’s in the wrong environment, but as she’s a newbie in Taiwan maybe it would be more productive to suggest alternatives instead of castigating her because she doesn’t like the only choice she has right now? Saying “this is how we live, now fuck off home,” is not an appropriate response to a fair complaint. Why don’t you offer her a list of the ‘many’ alternatives you believe exist, so that she feels like you actually care about other people and not just your own selfish right to do whatever you please regardless of the proven negative effects it has on anyone within spitting distance?
Until they do ban cigarettes, which should never happen in a fair world, I’ll continue to expect smokers to be reasonable and try to be reasonable towards them in return. Tell me that I can’t socialize unless I share your disgusting poisonous addiction and I’ll tell you you’re talking bollocks.
[quote=“Loretta”]Tell me that I can’t socialize unless I share your disgusting poisonous addiction and I’ll tell you you’re talking bollocks.[/quote]Fair enough but is that really what the poster Muzha Man wrote?
[quote]Okay, your post is ridiculous. You are a grown woman, what are you doing subjecting your fetus/baby to second-hand smoke? Go home when people smoke. Stay at home if you know they are going to smoke.
Sorry, but you can’t go around bashing others without taking a little responsibility for your own stupidity. And what the hell is wrong with the father? You have a baby. That trumps both your idiotic needs to save face with the business partners.
Sitting with a 3 month old baby in a smokey room full of drunks. Great. I suppose when they ask you to let them toss the baby in the air you hand him over? [/quote]
I think he said you shouldn’t take your child in a room full of drunk smokers. He did not say you can’t socialise.
Seemed fair to me.
T.
That’s pretty mean advice to give someone who has just arrived in Taiwan and seems to have few options for socializing. I just looked at the OP again, and she’s bitching that everyone she knows drinks and smokes like crazy. Sounds like she doesn’t have any other way to socialize right now. Accept the smoke or not socialize.
Actually, MM is a pretty level-headed guy and I shouldn’t react to him as badly as I did. But his response sounds a lot like the ‘justifications’ you hear from certain smokers - the few who are still in denial about how much their habit can piss people off. If you repeat the arguments of the militant minority then you get associated with them even if you don’t share all their views.
Got to agree with MM about the husband too. How about taking your girl and baby somewhere a bit more wholesome? Sounds like he’s being a dick, trying to bring two incompatible worlds together. If he made the effort to develop a more considerate social circle it would be a lot easier for her to leave the smokers to their pleasures and go do something else.
I have irritable bowel syndrome, which manifests in a constant virulent oily fecal discharge. Unlike smoke, however, it’s quite harmless although I have to admit it does stink a bit. But heaven forbid I should have to curtail my socializing just because some weak-stomached people don’t like the smell.
I have EVERY right, dammit! If you don’t like it, stay at home!
[quote=“sandman”]I have irritable bowel syndrome, which manifests in a constant virulent oily fecal discharge. Unlike smoke, however, it’s quite harmless although I have to admit it does stink a bit. But heaven forbid I should have to curtail my socializing just because some weak-stomached people don’t like the smell.
I have EVERY right, dammit! If you don’t like it, stay at home![/quote]
I should have known that scatology would have poked its brown little head out eventually… :s
I believe someone said that having a non-smoking section in a restaurant is like having a non-pissing section in a pool. No matter where you are, you have to inhale someone else’s poison. I believe people’s right to poison themselves ends when they begin to poison me. So you’re huddled at the bottom of a stairwell, leaving your cloud of stink right at the entrance for other people to have to walk through. Forgive me for not crying because I’m tired of smelling like the bottom of an ashtray for your addiction.
Why haven’t they created a smoke-hood yet? I mean, if the non-smokers complaints about second-hand smoke are unjustified, then you shouldn’t mind having to breathe it in in your own personal smoking section, right?
[quote=“sandman”]I have irritable bowel syndrome, which manifests in a constant virulent oily fecal discharge. Unlike smoke, however, it’s quite harmless although I have to admit it does stink a bit. But heaven forbid I should have to curtail my socializing just because some weak-stomached people don’t like the smell.
I have EVERY right, dammit! If you don’t like it, stay at home![/quote]Can’t blame you, if you stay confined at home and light one up you just might blow up in smoke. The great outdoors is your only option.
T.
i like the analogy :bravo:
You could always try Japan. 
We are reminders of a golden age, an age when a gentleman could stand at the rear of a plane, a G&T in one hand, a cig in another and prattle forth his knowledge on the benighted subjects he flew over. Where a trip to the cinema was enhanced by a smoky haze and didn’t require a fervent apologetic crab walk to the toilet like some sissy school boy. When a man could pay a gleefull coolie by tossing a bumper at his feet, or maintain a smoke-filled decorum and diginity around the dinner table. A world where deals and trust were cemented over a shared smoke and a smile.
Now we’re huddled like whores around the stairwells and basements of piss-stinking concrete buildings shared with rats and roaches. Shunned from eateries, the public, warmth and air-conditioning. Death to you health conscious fascists and all your ilk. Are you sincerely happy now? What more do you want? Get out of my Asia . . . or at least away from my table, I want to smoke in peace!!
HG[/quote]
Do not dismay. You still have a few years to enjoy smoking incredibly cheap cigarettes in most public places without regard to the health or comfort of the people around you. When that time is up, which I suspect will be some time during President Ma’s tenure, I shall be at the tarmac (or at least the bus stop) waving goodbye as you leave your Asia in search of another smoker’s paradise.
Don’t be misled, though. The tears you may witness on the faces of the millions of people you’ve left behind will not be tears of sadness as you vanish in your cloud of gray, but tears of joy as we celebrate our Asia, free of your filthy pollution once and for all.
Clock’s ticking.
For the record, I do not believe smoking is a right. I believe it is an addiction that exists for the sole purpose of loading the pockets of tobacco companies. In that respect, I do not blame you for smoking. Rather, I see you as a victim in a disgusting centuries old corporate scam. For your sake and those of your loved ones, I’d like nothing more than for you to be rid of your habit, which I know is incredibly difficult to break.
[quote=“Jefferson”]as you vanish in your cloud of gray, but tears of joy as we celebrate our Asia, free of your filthy pollution once and for all.
[/quote]
It will be interesting to see which obscures him from sight first: his cigarette smoke, or our smog. 