Fuck it, i know its racist, and probably not even what i really think but anyway…
After another long evening in the fucking supermarket where teenagers lollygag and dawdle fecklessly, where old women push you with their trolleys, and adults stand mindlessly gawking at the top of the escalator deciding where to go first, I, Tom Hill am at the end of my fucking tether.
String em up.
:help:
Ain’t just Taiwan that’s like that old son. Weekly shopping trips back in NZ used to push me to the edge of a homicidal rage each and every time.
It’s the weekend…everybody and their ancestors come out on the weekend…Blow of that steam any ole way you like. :bravo:
I think it would be more accurate to say that there are a lot of gormless people in Taiwan rather than labeling all Taiwanese as gormless. Whether there are more gormless people here than elsewhere is hard to say, though sometimes it certainly seems to be true.
And “gormless” is a beautifully expressive word that I seldom get to hear or read these days.
aah, gormless! What a great word. Haven’t heard that one for years. Too much time in foreign lands where real English is too hard and we have to use that simplified version. Tom Hill just made my morning!
My usual gripe is that ‘they’ don’t sem to do any thinking in advance of anything. There’s no ‘what happens when I get to the end of the escalator’, no ‘if I try to scooter through that little gap at high speed and someone changes direction where do I go’, no ‘is there someone else trying to walk down this footpath’ kind of thought process. And let’s not even get started on how people run businesses.
They just bimble serenely along, Slow Moving Oblivious People. (With umbrellas.)
And the trouble is that when you’re here and confronted with it, it can easily become a case of ‘us’ and ‘them’. But is that fair? Sure, there are a lot of gormless people here. But there are a lot of gormless people everywhere, the difference is that here they are easily identifiable due to their ethnic background. We bignoses, on the other hand, are not representative of our home cultures because we are part of the small percentage that moves quickly and gets things done. That’s why we’re here instead of meandering through Wal-Mart or standing in someone’s way with thumbs up bums and mind in neutral like most of our countryfolk.
I used to have a favourite saying when I lived in the UK and was amazed at the people I was encountering. I would come across these cretins with nice cars and fancy business cards and be gobsmacked by how utterly stupid they were. How did idiots like this manage to get decent jobs and be in positions of responsibility? “Who employs these people?” What moron puts these buffoons into positions like this? Half of them don’t seem capable of getting out of bed in the morning and dressing themselves without an instructional video. You can see their lips move as they write their names. And here they are being allowed to make decisions that impact other people’s lives. What fuckhead hired someone like that instead of someone like me? (Not that I would have wanted the crappy job anyway.) Remember the phrase “couldn’t find his own arse with both hands and a map”?
The world is a strange and a fucked-up place. The buffons are in control, and the qualities we are told are desirable are actually unsettling to the status quo. Independence, energy, asking questions, thinking outside the box, will get you into trouble. They are not really ingredients for success. They are pleasant buzzwords bandied around to make people feel good, but most people can’t handle the reality of them.
Surely you must have heard people say “I wish I could travel the world and live in another country for a while, like you” when there’s really no reason why they can’t. But doing the same old crap without thinking about it is easier, safer, and doesn’t disrupt the stupid little world they prefer to live in.
If only they knew that they could come here and fit right in!
Gormless? The only “gorm” I’ve heard of is the first King of Denmark - Gorm den Gamle (Gorm the Old).
Ah yes Stragbasher… like this one manager I know who recently discovered big fancy management words like “core competency”, “resource analysis”, “stakeholders”. She started an EMBA class and which ironically has deflated her sense of ego just a tad now that she has some inkling of how little she knows compared to some of her international peers. Education it’s a wonderful thing.
I haven’t seen an MBA programme “from the inside” myself, but judging from the elephantine intellectual nimbleness and gobsmacking lack of ability to do anything else but regurgitate facts that surrounds me every day in the shape of countless proud titleholders, I very much doubt whether an MBA is the ultimate thing in business education it is made out to be. And this goes for my colleagues who went and got their MBAs in the US, Australia, the UK or wherever just as much as as its true for those who got theirs here …
That was a jolly thoughtful, perceptive and entertaining post, Straggers.
You should be writing for a larger audience than the few hundred at most who might read through a thread like this here.
If there’s a “gormless”, why is there no “gorm”, other than “Gorm the Old” we just learned about? :eh:
My father was fond of flinging accusations of gormlessness at me when I was a lad.
According to Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang, “gormless”, meaning “slow-witted and lacking in common sense”, was adopted around 1935 from dialect as an adaptation of the predominant dialect form “gaumless”.
[quote=“Omniloquacious”]My father was fond of flinging accusations of gormlessness at me when I was a lad.
According to Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang, “gormless”, meaning “slow-witted and lacking in common sense”, was adopted around 1935 from dialect as an adaptation of the predominant dialect form “gaumless”.[/quote] Oh yea, that fits the Taiwanese to a T
Mr. Hill=
Thanks. For “gorm” I found the meaning “to grease” as in an axle etc., for gaum I couldn’t find anything. It seems strange to me that for words that express a lack of a certain attribute ("…less"), the word describing this attribute would not exist …
Sorry, I’m not really a native speaker, I guess it shows …
[quote=“stragbasher”]
My usual gripe is that ‘they’ don’t sem to do any thinking in advance of anything. There’s no ‘what happens when I get to the end of the escalator’, no ‘if I try to scooter through that little gap at high speed and someone changes direction where do I go’, no ‘is there someone else trying to walk down this footpath’ kind of thought process. And let’s not even get started on how people run businesses.[/quote]
I am beginning to think that comes from the previous colonization of Japan…
[quote]
They just bimble serenely along, Slow Moving Oblivious People. (With umbrellas.)[/quote] The ONLY time I truly feel a sense of commonality with homocidal killers…
[quote]
And the trouble is that when you’re here and confronted with it, it can easily become a case of ‘us’ and ‘them’. But is that fair? Sure, there are a lot of gormless people here. But there are a lot of gormless people everywhere, the difference is that here they are easily identifiable due to their ethnic background. We bignoses, on the other hand, are not representative of our home cultures because we are part of the small percentage that moves quickly and gets things done. That’s why we’re here instead of meandering through Wal-Mart or standing in someone’s way with thumbs up bums and mind in neutral like most of our countryfolk.[/quote] Remember we are in the land of NO RESPONSIBLITY
[quote]
I used to have a favourite saying when I lived in the UK and was amazed at the people I was encountering. I would come across these cretins with nice cars and fancy business cards and be gobsmacked by how utterly stupid they were. How did idiots like this manage to get decent jobs and be in positions of responsibility? “Who employs these people?” What moron puts these buffoons into positions like this? Half of them don’t seem capable of getting out of bed in the morning and dressing themselves without an instructional video. You can see their lips move as they write their names. And here they are being allowed to make decisions that impact other people’s lives. What fuckhead hired someone like that instead of someone like me? (Not that I would have wanted the crappy job anyway.) Remember the phrase “couldn’t find his own arse with both hands and a map”?[/quote] Since SUV’s are the norm, and 24 hrs Super K’s opened in the US and it’s okay, to see 14 year old girls dress like the hooker downtown, and CEO’s can go to jail and still get their million dollar bonus, not much makes a difference any more…
[quote]
The world is a strange and a fucked-up place. The buffons are in control, and the qualities we are told are desirable are actually unsettling to the status quo. Independence, energy, asking questions, thinking outside the box, will get you into trouble. They are not really ingredients for success. They are pleasant buzzwords bandied around to make people feel good, but most people can’t handle the reality of them.
Surely you must have heard people say “I wish I could travel the world and live in another country for a while, like you” when there’s really no reason why they can’t. But doing the same old crap without thinking about it is easier, safer, and doesn’t disrupt the stupid little world they prefer to live in.
If only they knew that they could come here and fit right in![/quote]
I prefer to think the world isn’t as fucked up as CNN would like us to believe, but since people have laxed in their ethics then it’s slowly depreciating. I have heard people say a lot about ‘if i could…’ crap, but then they go out and buy that latest gaget they saw on tv cause instead of making a change thru time, they want the immediate instant gratifacation…I think the current course of economics has created this…Let’s hope that like nature, humanity can self-correct itself and soon…
[quote=“Omniloquacious”]My father was fond of flinging accusations of gormlessness at me when I was a lad.
According to Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang, “gormless”, meaning “slow-witted and lacking in common sense”, was adopted around 1935 from dialect as an adaptation of the predominant dialect form “gaumless”.[/quote]
In the US, people such as this are known as …dullards…sluggards…and sometimes…layabouts.
They seem to occur in every family with generational frequency.
I used to get called a “Gorm” at school. I’m sure it’s slang and was a fashionable saying/name at the time.
It implidied that you were ugly/stupid/slow/jerk-like.
I’m still a Gorm.
And then people would refer to someone as being “gormless” and I would get all confused becuase he wasn’t a gorm, but had the same qualities and yet the two meanings seem to oppose each other.
I had an epiphany one day driving down the number 3 from Taoyuan. At once I realized that people here drive (and walk and plan) as if they are the only ones in the game. All other motion around them is constant since it is controlled by non-sentient beings who do not ever vary. “If that space was open 5 seconds ago when I last looked, it must still be now. So why bother looking.”
Much of the problem here is that people do not play more sports. They don’t have any real experience with managing or responding to (with consequences if you get it wrong) an ever-changing environment.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”][quote=“Omniloquacious”]My father was fond of flinging accusations of gormlessness at me when I was a lad.
According to Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang, “gormless”, meaning “slow-witted and lacking in common sense”, was adopted around 1935 from dialect as an adaptation of the predominant dialect form “gaumless”.[/quote]
In the US, people such as this are known as …dullards…sluggards…and sometimes…layabouts.
They seem to occur in every family with generational frequency.[/quote]
My personal favourite is “lummox.”
In general, truer words were never spoken. My MBA taught me two or three things that were actually useful in the real world, and I went to a top-ranked school. Management talent generally comes down to common sense, analytical ability, personal organization, communication skill, and emotional strength.
The value of the MBA is primarily in the extra US$20,000 a year you’ll make from the outset. You could do just as much for yourself finanically by spending two years building your own business from the ground up. My brother and most of my relatives who do business earn as well or better than I do, and none of them ever went to college.
Tomas, MBA Class of 1993
Whe dealing with recalcitrant children one can call these behaviours “non-consequential”. It refers to a stage in psychological development. To become an adult one must move on to consider the consequences of your own behaviour.
You remain a psychological pygmy when you think that
‘wearing no seatbelt + speeding + car accident = injury is not my fault’.
In most (all?) cultures the proportion of “children” varies. It seems that they are were ALL at the Donxing lu Carrefour supermarket on Sunday…aaaargh!