No idea. Probably better that I don’t know.
I gave one of the scooters a kick out of frustration when I was angling my way through them. My wife claims she knew it was them because of the scowls on some of their faces :roflmao:
Especially moving them for a foreigner!!! 
[/quote]
I find when young people block the road with scooters and you drive up, they know they are wrong and will apologize without you asking and will move the scooters out of the way. The older ones, as you noticed, not so much.
It would have been funny to grab the scooters and forcibly move them in front of the obasans. Watch them shriek then.
edit: didnt notice GIT had the same idea. But his would be more funny. I can just picture HH with a Hulk look hauling scooters into the road.
haha … what’s the most accurate translation of “I’m getting angry, and you won’t like me when I’m angry” in Chinese, do you think?
Wo shengqi. Ni bu yao wo sheng ni de qi.
Or you could wear a vest rolled up over yer belly, fire a wad of beetlenut juice at the scooter and grunt. That wouldn’t need translation.
Especially moving them for a foreigner!!! [/quote]
I find when young people block the road with scooters and you drive up, they know they are wrong and will apologize without you asking and will move the scooters out of the way. The older ones, as you noticed, not so much.[/quote]
That said, I wonder how much of that is just to do with them being old. Old people everywhere tend to be bigger cunts, in my experience. They have no or fewer qualms about pushing in, walking across the road (not at an official crossing) without looking, annoying the shit out of random people minding their own business, calling up the cops to complain about people having fun (though they have no problem with singing karaoke at crazy volumes at odd times), etc. I don’t like old people. I know people will respond that I don’t like people, which is true, but I especially don’t like old people. Little kids are little fuckers too. I guess at least they have an excuse to some extent.
IMO old people are just exaggerated versions of the personalities they had when they were younger. That’s why you get such extremes with them - from cantankerous old fart to really nice cake-baking old lady. Few of them seem to occupy the middle ground as they did when young.
I know people will be all over me for this. With most old people I think what’s the fucking point?
Every time I go near a hospital, I see dozens and dozens of people who seem to be there for no other reason than to hang out. Few actually seem to be there to see doctors. Yet they don’t even talk to each other. It’s not a particularly sociable place, despite there being lots of people there. They sit there staring at the walls or the television. There are so many at the local hospital that they actually make it difficult to move around at times. Then there are the hordes of people who can barely move their heads or speak being wheeled around by Southeast Asian helpers. Christ, that’s no life. Hopefully, if/when I get to that point, I’ll have the good grace to off myself and not be a massive burden upon everyone around me from my family to society at large.
For some reason, old GiTs post reminds me of this:
At 3:05, that’s him, that is.
That’s my worst nightmare too. I’d rather be dead than locked in a body that doesn’t work and looks like it’s already dead anyway.
Everyone says that they’re going to do that, but the trouble is by the time they get round to actually doing it they’ve forgotten what they planned to do.
Everyone says that they’re going to do that, but the trouble is by the time they get round to actually doing it they’ve forgotten what they planned to do.[/quote]
Indeed! Obviously, we’re not going to start rounding geriatrics up and euthanising them, but I think that as societies we need to really reconsider this obsession we have of squeezing out another week, month, year or decade simply for the sake of it. My grandmother got dementia and when I was about 23, I think, she couldn’t even recognise me anymore. So, I stopped visiting her. What was the point? My father and mother persisted for years, even after she stopped being able to have any kind of intelligent conversation with them. I think I was about 32, living in Taiwan, when my father called me up to tell me she was dead. I felt absolutely nothing. She’d already been dead/a stranger for me for almost a decade by that point anyway. She was a terrible burden upon my parents. Fortunately, she wasn’t a burden upon the state because my grandfather had saved a lot in his lifetime. So, she was very well looked after, but I still think it’s a huge society-wide misallocation of resources.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]I know people will be all over me for this. With most old people I think what’s the fucking point?
Christ, that’s no life. Hopefully, if/when I get to that point, I’ll have the good grace to off myself and not be a massive burden upon everyone around me from my family to society at large.[/quote]
I don’t think it’ll be so bad in your case. Granted, you’ll have to increase the size and variety of your rant-palette as your current collection of chewing gums lose their flavor on the bedpost one by one, but I predict you’ll be able to make do just fine with the leavings. I can picture you now, in the year 2045, railing about the likes of red-headed left-handed Rosicrucians, bisexual pescetarian Trotskyists, Satanist Christian-Democrat janitors. . . .
I never even considered getting a scooter until I read this thread. Now I might get one just so I can park in front of doorways. Maybe that’ll give me something to live for in the sunset of my life. That and hanging out in the hospital.
Never seen those two words together before but they make a stunning image. Thanks for writing that CJ. I’ll be using that phrase a whole lot. 
How sad you felt nothing for a member of your family. A member of your family who suffered a traumatic brain degradation. Someone who lived and breathed and as a consequence you also live and breathe. However, serving no utilitarian purpose for you she became something you had to discard. I suggest you have some emotional attachment issues if you need to go around cutting members of your family out if they serve no perceivable function to you. It reminds me of a friend who has 2 beautiful sons, but often laments, “Yeah, but what do I get out of this? They just want to take stuff from me all the time.” I’ll also point out that dementia is highly heritable, so maybe you should consider being nicer to your family in case you find yourself alone and scared when you can’t even remember your loved ones. At least your parents show they are made of the right stuff.
Oh well, it takes all sorts to make a world. Some people don’t want to be shamed in public. Some people discard loved ones for appalling reasons.
I believe Chewy already has dibs on those. I wouldn’t mind if he didn’t though.
superking: When I was 23 she couldn’t even recognise me. I was already gone from her life. What should I have done, gone through the same absurd conversation twelve times in an hour that my father did? What, exactly, is the point of such exercises in futility?
I don’t recognise the fundamental basis of humanity as simply having a human body, which seems to be where you’re coming from with this. Conversely, my best friend died from cancer just under two years ago. He’s of no use to me now either, but I still think a lot about him, and I grieved terribly at the time. The difference is that he was cut down in his prime and still had consciousness, a mind, a soul or whatever you want to call it.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]superking: When I was 23 she couldn’t even recognise me. I was already gone from her life. What should I have done, gone through the same absurd conversation twelve times in an hour that my father did? What, exactly, is the point of such exercises in futility?
I don’t recognise the fundamental basis of humanity as simply having a human body, which seems to be where you’re coming from with this. Conversely, my best friend died from cancer just under two years ago. He’s of no use to me now either, but I still think a lot about him, and I grieved terribly at the time. The difference is that he was cut down in his prime and still had consciousness, a mind, a soul or whatever you want to call it.[/quote]
I’m coming from showing respect for your grandparent. Of showing some empathy with what your parent did for his parent. Of sadness that your parent could perhaps end up in the same boat and have you as his son. Of sadness/irony that this could also well be your fate.
People are slowly learning more about dementia and the terrible way it taunts the host and the suffering and stresses it causes to those who love them. I don’t see dementia as entirely either a family or a state concern, but as a partnership between the two. Cutting a person off because you gain no value from talking to them, leaving them alone locked in their suffering, and saying, ‘well it was all good because she was no financial drain,’ just seems utterly heartbreaking as an outsider, for your suffering grandparent, your stressed parent and for emotionless you.
Your feelings regarding your friends death are for his loss of life, or because you don’t want to die yet? We can easily remember people who have died, not necessarily for reasons rooted in human compassion for others.
superking: Do you eat meat? People have a terrible cultural aversion to what I posted about my grandmother, yet pigs (which are very intelligent animals) end up on the plates of many people who feel what I have written. We all turn a blind eye to the many terrible social injustices that occur around the world, especially if doing so would mean our iPhones might cost a bit more or not get to stores on time. I’m not saying I actually do care that much about such things, or at least not enough to really change my behaviour, I’m just saying we have a whole lot of mores about being nice that are often really hypocritical once we start looking at them more closely. I’m certainly guilty of that.
I understand why my father did what he did. It’s irrational though. I also realise that it may well be my fate too. That’s part of why I wish society didn’t go through this charade of clinging to life as absolutely sacred, even when it’s actually a shell of a human being. Rather than reduce suffering, as well-intentioned as it is, I think it actually increases suffering. I don’t think it’s even remotely compassionate or dignified to keep people clinging on.
Who knows why exactly I was so moved by my friend’s death. Maybe it was for selfish reasons. Yet a lot of people seemed to think the nature of the tragedy was that he was someone who lived life so fully and was cut down in his prime. If we want to be cynical about it though, then maybe everyone was selfish about it. Maybe that’s all empathy and compassion really are though, a displaced kind of selfishness and the terms are essentially meaningless. I think there’s a clear distinction between the two scenarios/people I’ve mentioned though.
A pig is not your grandma, guy. Your friend was not your grandma, guy. Neither of those two have resulted in you being alive. At the very least, unless your direct family member is actively trying to make your existence on this planet unbearable/ untenable, I feel it is just plain wrong to cut these people from your life, no matter their disease.
However, I take on board all your points and I am grateful for this conversation with you and for us engaging in it. I do see a distinction between people and animals, and between family members and all the other meat bags. And I know my ideas are not the greatest or the most objective. But for me family is family and I’d want to be able to say that at the very least my life has some meaning because I can show respect and kindness and give time and effort to those who gave me my life.
For sure you and I can not hope to come to an agreeable resolution as we are talking about changing each others feelings. Still, it’s good to have a yakka about such things. 
Of what use is respect to a corpse, even if it’s still breathing? Our culture has a really messed-up view of death; keeping someone alive long past the point where nature should have taken its course shows nothing but disregard for that person’s dignity. If that person is “locked in”, then it goes beyond disrespect: it is the ultimate cruelty, something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. If I ever end up slumped in the corner of a waiting-to-die ward with a machine filling in for my autonomic responses, I sincerely hope I do have someone who loves me enough to visit me: and to discreetly flip the ‘off’ switch. That, in my opinion, is the kindest thing someone could do for me if I am incapable of doing it myself. Hopefully, that person will then be able to remember me a living person, instead of being left only with a recurring vision in their minds of a slab of meat propped up in a hospital bed. Death is not a problem for the dead person: it’s those who are still alive who grieve.
[quote=“superking”]A pig is not your grandma, guy. Your friend was not your grandma, guy. Neither of those two have resulted in you being alive. At the very least, unless your direct family member is actively trying to make your existence on this planet unbearable/ untenable, I feel it is just plain wrong to cut these people from your life, no matter their disease.
However, I take on board all your points and I am grateful for this conversation with you and for us engaging in it. I do see a distinction between people and animals, and between family members and all the other meat bags. And I know my ideas are not the greatest or the most objective. But for me family is family and I’d want to be able to say that at the very least my life has some meaning because I can show respect and kindness and give time and effort to those who gave me my life.
For sure you and I can not hope to come to an agreeable resolution as we are talking about changing each others feelings. Still, it’s good to have a yakka about such things. [/quote]
Sure. It is good to talk about such things. Indeed, I think it’s good to discuss most things. Open discussion is good.
I guess you and I see things differently. I didn’t/don’t see my grandmother at that point as actually being my grandmother because I regard (changed/lack of) consciousness as the distinguishing characteristic.