.. L i F e - i S - G o o D ..

I’ve found a lot of different feelings about dogs in the world: especially in people in different landscape, culture, and lifestyle. The thing is the expectation of dogs is not so similar.

Here, in NYC, people raise their dogs as friends. They pay big amount of money for particular food for dogs, and caring such as taking a shower in pet care center, hair cutting, and medicare. Then, they keep them in the houses to be friends and walk them for a while everyday in order to let them do their business, but people don’t let them bark.

In my hometown, Thailand, we also raise dogs as friends, but we treat them by ourselves. We bath dogs by ourselves as a nice activity together and feed them what we eat. Eventually, we have specific foods for dogs as well and we feed them in the same way that Americans do. Moreover, we have vets for taking care about dogs’ health, pet care center with bathroom, massage room, swimming pool, and dogs salon. The other difference is dogs are not just friends but house’s guard because they’ll bark when they see strangers.

If you see this kind of situation in person, I bet you’ll be surprised how different dogs are in both places. What I always keep in mind is differences are good things. How could you understand the word "exciting" if everything is the same around the world? And what if every single persons in the world are the same, what will challenge people to think apart, to develop things, to invent new technology, or else. There will be not interesting at all. Will it be the end of human beings that way?

An Americans said to me that "Americans treat their dogs so well, then their dogs have good manners (no barking)" I was wondering if he forgot about the different purpose to let dogs bark. Anyway, people can’t understand all behaviors in different cultures even though they move to and live in the place for more than 10 years. What about people who have been in some places for a while? Is it fair to judge people who are different from you in many many ways by your narrow vision?

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I do have a question in my mind which is "what will you do when you have to split 9 cents half and half?" It’s such a silly question, isn’t it? Yet, I never thought about this kind of question before I’ve faced this situation yesterday. Let’s talk about the choices.

Hmm.. Let’s start with take 4 cents immediately. In my viewpoint, this is fine because it show how nice you are, and that 1 cent is less significant than your relationship.

In contrast, what if one person is greedy enough to take 5 cents as fast as he/she can. In my opinion, it’s not such a good manner. The next question will be "How do you feel about such a person like that?"

Furthermore, the only alternative for me is let’s another person choose first. I think it’s the way to show how I respect him/her. And if he/she let me choose first, I’ll take 4 cents for sure. I won’t let this any kinds of bad feelings ruin the relationship.

Can you guess what I did? I did let her take all of them and said "it was OK, and you could take them all." Then, she took them all and didn’t say anything.

It’s so fun to learn about people from how they behave. Many times, I thought it was impossible to happen in real life, but it was surprised me that I was wrong. Maybe I believe in human beings too well to be true in every single one.

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I never thought that being a parent is so hard until I grew up. When you were young, have you ever imagined the time you become a parent? I did. But after I knew many people in different background, I’ve changed my vision a lot.

I’d like to mention about my friend’s story. She’s a girl who’s dreaming of her perfect future: living in foreign country, having luxury life style, dating a perfect man, and traveling around the world. It sounds alright. Yet she receives a bad news from her mom which is her dad has a heart attack. She doesn’t want to go back to her hometown because she still enjoys her life in New York. It doesn’t sound wrong, but what about her dad who’s looking forward to seeing her in every single breath. At first, she decided to ignore, then her sister called and said that her father needed her. She get confused. One of her friends said she didn’t have to go back just because her father needed her. She should do whatever she wanted in order to reach her dream!! This scares me a lot. Don’t people care about their parents anymore when they grow up? Do they forget the persons who take care of them all their lives? OMG!!

My friend told me a bit about this man. He is a nice guy and have a good education. Moreover, his family is rich. He said with pride that he paid all of the tuition for his master degree by himself. It’s so good that he could stand on his knees, but let’s think about it for a sec, he said he *only* asked his mom to send him $25,000 a year; just that! nothing else. Hmm..

If you couldn’t imagine how expensive it is in the civilized city like Manhattan, you won’t know that $25,000 could cover all tuition and the payment for standard living. In addition, he also works 6 days a week which earns at least $150 a day–in cash if you may want to know. How could you imagine if this guy has less than $2000 a month in his account. Furthermore, He has an older sister who’s living in Europe and doing nothing just because she doesn’t want to do.

In the long run, parents always love, care, and give their kids whatever their children want. Why do their kids ignore the persons who raise you when they get old? I think it’s about teaching moral when the kids are young. Parents have to show their kids how you behave with your mom and dad. I always saw my parents take care of grandpa and grandma until the end of their lives. I realize that my parents are very grateful, and I aim to do so. Anyway, it doesn’t mean that I have to leave my dreams behind because I can do them both at the same time. I just have to be concerned about the factors which come up at the time, then I can decide for the best solutions for everyone.

I don’t know if you guys have different opinions because the differences of society, but being grateful is very important in our culture. Therefore, I feel so sad about this story. Actually, I really don’t want my friend to regret if she won’t have any chance to be a good girl of her dad anymore.

Finally, my friend will go back to see her father after new year. I hope her father get well soon and be happy to see her.

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