AFFORDABLE ACTS of KINDNESS

Having lived in Southeast Asia for most of my adult life, I can attest to the fact that there are many financial advantages in doing so. Food, shelter & clothing are considerably less expensive than they are in my home town of Chicago. It’s worth adding that I miss my beloved Cubbies but, in addition to that, I must add that $.50 store bought beers here in Phnom Penh go a long way in drowning that plaintive wistfulness and you can add this sentence up ad hoc however you like. Toss in the buck a pack for cigarettes and a guy can get dizzyingly titillated by alcohol plus tar & nicotine for less than $10.00 at a sitting. To my mind however, the most noteworthy benefit of living in this part of the world is the affordability of kindness. The pity and the sorrow is that so few relatively affluent foreigners take advantage of the opportunities.
Southeast Asia attracts an inordinate number of self-absorbed hedonists hell bent on pursuing the myriad assortment of carnal delights that are available and certainly available for a lot less money than where they come from. Admittedly, I rode that merry-go-round on many occasions myself and did so with a great deal of pleasure. Unlike a number of pleasure seekers I’ve met over the years, I’ve never sat around regaling pals about sexual escapades and passing around photos of girls I’ve been with to impress fellow bar-hoppers. What inane rubbish that is! But, I have no problem with guys who horse around with bar girls as long as they treat them decently. And, I don’t give a damn what crusading feminists have to say about sexual exploitation. The bar girls exploit the guys as well. Western feminists wash ashore over here trying to convert women of another culture to the western way of thought…men are animals & abuse children they say. Many of them are just jealous lesbians. Yet, the single achievement that these babes are most proud of is the legal right to kill their unborn children. How’s that for child abuse!
All that being said, there have also been occasions when I experienced satisfaction of a different ilk by helping those not as fortunate as myself. Rounding up 3 or 4 street kids and buying them lunch at a local market is an example. Am not sure if that is a consequence of nature or nurturing…most likely, a bit of both. I’m not boasting about this. In fact, I feel embarrassed about simply mentioning it. I’m just trying to make a point and the point is that acts of kindness are affordable here to people of modest financial means such as me. There are far too many left-leaning Liberals who “feel your pain” and their solution to relieve that pain is to enhance the power of government to tax people. Liberals want to solve society’s problem with other people’s money…not their own. Incidentally, I would never have met my wife, the most wonderful person on the face of the planet, were it not for a simple act of kindness 20 years ago.
I’m not proselytizing here. Just suggesting that affordable acts of kindness abound everywhere and one would do well to take advantage of the opportunities once in a while. They’re just as satisfying as booze & babes. I rarely drink anymore and the only babes that concern me are my wife & daughter. They’re a lot more gratifying than all the gals I’ve picked up in Bangkok go-go bars.

P.S. This piece rambles a bit but, it is a blog for christsake. It beats the hell out of one I read a few days ago: “Woke up this morning, had a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice and took Hillary for a walk”. Presumably, “Hillary” was the guy’s dog and not his pick for President of the United States although, they both deserve to be on a leash.