An Era of Urban Impatience: the Elevator Syndrome
February 2nd, 2010Living in an age of over populating rapid urbanization that has seen many o’ wide open spaces replaced with the likes of slums and suburbia, the cities of the world continue to expand across horizons, expanding through the upper stretches of the biosphere. With longer horizontal and vertical distances to cover, we’ve come to be coerced in accommodating an increase in commute times coupled with a decrease in patience.
With such combustion of city congestion, essentially, everyone’s running to stand still.
Honking horns, red tail lights and roaring engines in rush hour are the norm of the streets. On the sidewalks, crosswalks, and within the buildings throughout the lego-land expanse, human herds stampede towards their destinations as if contestants in the latest reality game of survival of the fittest. Not surprisingly, redundant repetitions of modern lifestyles have implanted us with various new habits, soon to be on the verge of installation in to the human genome. Of these peculiar nervous-phenomenon is what one might refer to as the ‘elevator syndrome.’
Next time you’re in the elevator, observe that person next to the buttons. Nine times out of ten, he or she will be anxious to manually push the doors close as soon a person enters or exits, never mind that the elevator is automated to close on its own. Rather than take that millisecond opportunity to breath and let the machine do what it was programmed to do, this contagious syndrome has us anxious to speed up the process, saving us truly an insignificant amount of time, while probably even taking more time away from our ultimate life span as we let anxiety and anticipation control our lives.
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The other night, I was browsing my friend’s movie collection and came across one of the first Asian films I became fond of from a decade back: 12 Nights (2000). My initial viewing was at the Denver Asian Film Festival of 2000. At that particular time, I was preparing to travel to Southeast Asia for the first time on a journey to explore my Asian roots. This movie represented somewhat of a fertilizer for the seed of Asian passion and romance which was planted within back when.
Remember the good old days sitting in your lonely room with soothing Sam Cooke ballads, wishing you were out on a date with that special someone to share all that love you had stored inside, if not help you spend that hard earned dough?
Directed by Nithiwat Tharatorn starring Ray Macdonald (as Pisit) Chutima Theepanart (as Cherry), and Jarinporn Joonkiati (as Noon), Dear Galileo is a warm and modern Thai flick exploring the stretching bonds of friendship and love across the borders of 
Do you dream to work in your underwear but don’t possess the abs and buns of steel that any magazine would pay to snap pictures of? Lucky for you, your dream is not far fetched. Strip down and hang your modeling ambitions up and away. Become a writer!
All over the Thai media in recent times has been the colored shirt political rivalries infesting the Siamese political and public arenas. Initially headlined by the pro (current) government yellow shirts, known formerly as PAD (Peoples Alliance for Democracy), and their bitter opposition, pro ex-Thaksin-government red shirted rivals, or PAAD (Peoples Alliance Against Dictatorship).
Our processing machines aren’t the only ones in the dark–chances are if one isn’t following exotic health supplement fads, has never been to Asia or doesn’t frequent the local Asian fresh markets for that matter, then mangosteen is likely as alien to ones vocabulary as the name itself is to common name derivative logic. 
