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Free Prozac for the almost unique
Here’s something to ponder, and that is whether a two hour stopover in Helsinki qualifies Finland as a country we have visited or whether it is just a place we have been. Maybe neither, as even as early at 9.00 at night the airport resembles New Zealand of another era; everything, aside from one duty free store, was locked up tight, even the coffee shop. There was at least some solace with free wireless internet access throughout the departure lounge. Perhaps thirteen hours flying Finnair and several hours more on the ground does qualify a sort of visit status, but we haven’t been confident enough to list Finland among our destinations on the blogsite. All we can say is that we’ve touched down.
Finland has a reputation for having the highest suicide and depression rates in the world, which might be the explanation for the graffiti in the toilet: Free Prozac for Finn’s (sic). The wrongly hyphenated plural may be a desperate plea for help from an attention-seeking Finn in itself; we don’t know any of these northern species ourselves to know what sort of behavioral characteristics they exhibit, but the late Richard King had a good friend Yussi from Finland who seemed quite jovial despite the long hours of winter darkness.
On the issue of grammar and we know this may invite attention to our own linguistic failings, but there are some instances when the misuse of language can be amusing but others when it is irritating. Or it could be that we are getting trivial? One of the latter that caught our attention has been the qualification of the word unique, firstly when a guide at the Irish Rock of Cashel was telling us why something was almost unique to Ireland and secondly when Alexandra, our very nice guide to Kephalonia in Greece, described something, we cannot remember what, as very unique. Now excuse us, but something is either unique or it is not. It is that simple if it is almost unique then it is not unique at all. The same goes for very unique, it’s a superfluous adjective. The word very is used to give effect to something, for example the difference between driving fast and driving very fast. However something cannot be more or less than unique because unique is the sole required descriptor. Perhaps it is us, rather than the Finns, who needs the Prozac.
It would be a fair question to ask why we were in Finland at all en route to Thailand. It was a consequence or benefit of travelling on Qantas air points, Finnair (thin air to eastenders?) is a partner One World airline and is the fifth airline we have travelled on while running down our air points tallies (Emirates, Jetstar, Qantas, British Airways and Finnair). In this instance we booked Qantas and travelled Finnair, it is as simple as that.
It is some 22 years since Kaelene first visited Bangkok on a Hotel Workers Union trip, a side journey after a conference in Penang, it is still the same city but seems less polluted, and less congested and has much better shopping. The street traders are here still hawking fruit and vegetables, copy brand clothes and jewelry and the usual array of DVDs, including the latest porno titles if the signs are to be believed. The bar girls are still there as are the white men who seem to quite like them, but best of all Bangkok smells and feels like Asia
Perhaps the shopping looked good because we were are staying in Sukhamvit which is adjacent to the Chid Lom district with its array of brand name stores and shopping malls which would rival the best anywhere, except perhaps the Middle East, there are no indoor ski slopes in the shopping malls here! We are staying in a place called the Omni Tower Syncate on Soi 4 in what appears to be an apartment with a kitchen, huge living area and a bedroom with a walk-in wardrobe. Not bad for $50 a night, even if the free internet doesn’t quite seem to work. The Chief Executive Officer of Omni Towers Syncate is “Paul” Pornthep SriNaralu who describes himself as a motivator and lifestyle philosopher as well as hospitality and realty master. He is a modest man, the founding coach of Life Changing Mission, the founding vice-president of the Real Estate Broker Association, guest faculty at the Thai Real Estate Business School, the founding president of Bangkok International Vegetarian and the president, in 2007 and 2008, of the Siam Toastmasters Club. With credentials like that it is amazing he was on hand personally to greet us and hour and a half late, as we checked in from our fight. But then, we have always been lucky.