[provigil]

I have seen that clip Steve, and I agree with your post. When I first seen that clip I said to the person standing next to me 'Anyone can do those same interviews in any country in the world and once it is edited can have just as many dumb replies and clueless people'.

With enough searching one can find any group of people. With enough editing one can make a great video (and funny one at that). With enough imagination one can make a statistic say anything they like. To be honest I don't know anyone that naive, so I seriously doubt that the 1 in 5 number could in anyway be accurate. However in some parts of the country I am sure it could be possible. Really that would be unfair to use and twist statistics like that would it not?

Would it really be fair to interview 100 poor rice farmers from Udon Thani then publish a report saying that 98% of Thai people have never even heard of the internet? Or that only 25% of Thai people have finished High School? Just not fair use of numbers in my opinion.

[esconsise]

HEY VC!!!!!!
My wife has a globe too, she loves it! I am certain she is probably as good with geography as I am. You know one thing my wife likes is those little laptop computers (for school kids) called the leapfrog, she puts in all the cartridges and practices her math and geography all the time for entertainment. She knows all the US State capitals and I only remember about 2/3 of them! LOL

nam_phyyng I was by no means intending to be negative about your country, I think your country has some of the most gorgeous scenery form all the photos I have seen from it in the past. These are not my photos of NZ, they are from the link FiP posted, but they were labeled as NZ Desert Highway on FlickR. Besides your desert looks prettier than mine!

Hey buddy...how's it going? I need to get one of those leapfrog things for my wife too. It sounds like a good option since she is averse to formal classroom environments.

[ashleyjoseph]

anyone tried www.freerice.com , for games? interested in your vocabulary levels

got the link a few weeks ago from my mom... i made it to about 40, but the longer i play the lower i go... often i have no clue what the word means but get there by more or less "clever" guessing

by the way, that would be a very cool game to play in Thai!! anybody interested in writing a short program? or does something similar already exist??

[ireleda]

NP, it is nice that you can be proud of your country, So have we (all of the above). But lets get real, you really have no desert as such, When I say Desert I mean it, 130*F in the shade, if there was any, no water for many miles unless you have it with you, not much grows, only special cacti.
Your country is not much, if any bigger, that some of the desert areas in North America.
I have lived and worked in some of em, but will never do it again, altho some people would live nowhere else.

Check em out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen...7594356168327/

http://ceres.ca.gov/ceres/calweb/deserts.html

[rusculture]

.
admit your vocabulary level

47-that was the last figure i looked at-i was more interested in hitting 1000 grains.

OK-I got 3 or 4 wrong

[DoctorIrokezov]

Thanks for the links to the World Map game. Personally, i scored all correct in the Asia category, but i wouldn't dare take the one on say...Africa! And there's no way i would score all correct in the Europe. Funny to admit, but my geographic knowledge of Thailand is much much better than that of England!

[SeftyJokipl]

With so many Indians in Dubai, he was not too far away ... LoLz. Never been there myself ever...

[ireleda]

But they do have some beautiful rain forests in the PNW, they are not tropical but they do have giant trees, some of the largest and tallest trees in the world, giant ferns and wet.
Above Aberdeen WN. is such a rain forest on the Olympic peninsula, and down in Sequoia[Redwoods] national forest is wet and huge trees.
Out at Bishop in the edge of Death Valley Calif. they have the Bristlecone pines that are the oldest living trees on the planet, they predate Jesus Christ by a number of years.
And the Sinora Desert is much larger than Mojave, Death valley is names that for a reason and it is the lowest spot in the states at something like 300 feet below sea level I believe. When you live someplace you tend to pay little attn to it, at least I do.

[Wr8dIAUk]

Steve, I was channel hopping the other day (night), and there are a couple of channels that broadcast stupid educational programs at night, like a Thai analysing English sentence structures in Thai, or solving equations. now, this one was a geography lesson. the date in the corner said November, 2549 - ok, a rerun. a voice was talking about the map map of Europe, the countries and the rivers and lakes in particular. BUT it was a pre-1990 map, complete with Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and two Germany's. the voice said "and this is the Soviet Union" and there was a chorus of students voices repeating.

my only hope is that I misunderstood and it was actually a history class about post-WW2 Europe


I will try this "place Thailand" test with my colleagues

[provigil]

By the way, if my word "sucks"...sounds too offensive here, I am sorry. My comp might be too darn slow that's why even clicking on every damn country didn't show me any "correct!". Guess, it's my fault.

I don't think anyone took offense to using the slang, it was meant in a joking manner.

I am having major problems with my RAM right now and those two countries did also seem wrong here but I think it was my RAM's delayed reaction time too.

[rusculture]

a couple of million living in that region can surely do it. of course, it is a lot easier if you have been travelling all around for years and it's not just names on a map, but you know about the culture, people, history. and btw, you just wouldn't believe how different these countries and people are, and how and why they look down on each other or are friendly with each other. it's not a red communist monolith, never been same diversity as Western Europe.
Asia, Africa, South America,whatever looks like a mass of countries from far away, must be the same for those inside.

anyway....
anyone tried www.freerice.com , for games? interested in your vocabulary levels

I am intellectually aware there are great differences in that region because a lot of the area forms the boundary between Christian Europe and the largely Islamic Middle East-profound differences which of course run far deeper than the two religions or, in the case of Christianity, the various types.

Just as abutting geological tectonic plate collisions causes earthquakes, I see the same thing happening sociologically in the area.

I am also aware of the stresses present between those countries from History-after all, such led in part to WW1-although there were already great tensions elsewhere-for example, more westerly European powers of the time forming alliances with and against each other-UK, France, V Germany, Austro-Hungary-and the scramble for land in Africa and elsewhere.

I have never seen Communism as bringing uniformity, more of keeping the lid on an ever explosive situation-example: Tito's Yugoslavia-OK-he was a Dictator-but he was Moscow backed for much of his reign.

I like that "free rice" game-(because I can do it ! ) managed to knock up 1000 grains quite quickly!

[rusculture]

same as yours same problem too. I really enjoyed messing up the first few answers and starting at 1. you can learn a lot from that too. btw, just wondering how well educated native speakers can do

Thats amazing for a non-native speaker, as some of the words I had were on the border of dialect English-can't remember one of the words precisely-but thought at time it was more likely to be used in Scotland than England.

[Fvmfrctt]

Quite true about american ignorance. It's stunning that so many americans are cluless on issues of the map. Americans want to believe. They actually believe the bull on ads that say low rates for this or that. Benovlence..A kind of trust in the word. And yet, where did it all start? Why, the influence of the brits of course.

[MaigicyuNinia]

Well I find people with degrees have a lack of general knowledge, because they only have the ability and the time to learn about there studies, so if they know nothing about geography, they probably did economics.
The other thing is, The USA is such a great country, it is so huge and has such a diversity of things to see and do, many people who live there don't ever bother to travel out side the country in a life time.

[ireleda]

Pobly one reason that some Americans are quite ignorant about world geography is that most do not want to leave there, they have every kind of climate, topography, and weather conditions that you will find in every other country in the world.
They have high country, dry country, cold, hot wet, dry, humid, tropical and desert, glacerial and sand, 2 oceans come ashore there and some of the larger fresh water lakes, large rivers and most kinds of fish and wildlife that can be found anywhere, so why get a passport and leave,
they have a large Thai, Chinese, European, you name it, and they have em there populations, and kind of food in the world is available there just a short walk or drive from home.
My wife is a school teacher and has been for 25 years here with a Uni education and she does not know where anythng is on a world map, and I, a stupid American with an 8th grade edu have to tell her and eventually go to the map and put my finger on it for her.
But I am different than most Americans, I have to see where you live, what you eat and where you work, then I have to go look at what some one else is doing.
I am what is known in America as "Fiddlefooted". and as such am now a citizen of the world.

[timmybrown]

Watched one of the music video channels on cable this morning and the young Thai DJs were talking about New Year countdown events around Asia and the guy said something like "Dubai in India..... " Gees, I thought these people read from the scripts?

[Yswxomvy]

admit your vocabulary level

I got a 45 and a huge headache. LOL Why, some words looked like they were just concocted off the cuff and do not appear in any lexicon in the world! LOL Some of my right answers were wild shots, mainly based on root words or my scant familiarity with other foreign languages. Some on mere intuition.

But the warning is true--the test can expand your vocabulary. Thanks, Betti, for sharing this link. It's fun!

[Wr8dIAUk]

probably they did - so, not spur of the moment slip of the tongue, but something that had been written and proofread by someone

[SOgLak]

Actually we do have a desert in the Central Plateau of the North Island. But I admit it is only a small one and vegetation (tussock etc) does still grow there. Our particular claim to fame is that we have huge diversity of landscape for such a small country.

And although Igotnotime's picture of an NZ "desert" is pretty, it sure is not a desert.

[joulseenjoync]

Well..It's not just Americans..lol. I have to admit..I've lived in the US for almost over 8 years and I still can't list OR points to where some of the states are. I can't even name all the provinces or where they are either in Thailand. It's something that diminishes over time when you don't access that info regularly. As a kid, sure I could probably do a better job that I could now.