Values VS Feeding

Though I still live parents, I feel bad if I still ask for their money while I’m waiting to start a new job. Guess what? I’ve got another part-time job. This is super perfect. I don’t have to go out work. Just sit in front of the computer and it’s nothing to do with working online and luring people into the network or anything.

I’m a translator for UBC. It’s the biggest and the only cable TV provider in Thailand. Once a week, I get one Discovery Channel’s video type (You didn’t read it wrongly. Video type, not a VCD or DVD.) and an English script. It’s 1-hr type and I kinda thought I would finish it in a few hours. The truth is I took 14 hrs to finish it! (1 hr watching the cracky type, 13 hrs translating into Thai and 1hr editing it) When comparing to other translation work, one page is worth much less Baht. With this amount of time wasted, I thought I would gain not much profit.

Here come to the discussion with my friend, Kok. She said I should think about the fact how big this company is and how it treats their employees. The questions are: how many million people are watching the Discovery Channel through UBC and reading my translation? And how much I get in return as part of its success? I wasn’t ignorant by this fact. But UBC is the only source available that suits me best - the flexibility of time and still bearable wages.

Here comes to the economy mechanism: demand – supply. When the wages don’t meet the demand of the employees, they will refuse to work. Eventually UBC has to increase its wages or faces the lack of translators in the pool.

But what if there are many people like me, who is ok with this trivial wage and let this situation continues. Do you think UBC will be the dominant to control the low wage of the translators (and other companies will copy?)?

That’s the matter of you’re going to do something about it or pretend that it does no harm…
The similar situation occurs in the Thai politics. Thaksin Shinnawatra, the apple of the poor’s eye did everything to win over the grassroots (the majority of the voters---no wonder, Thai Rak Thai Party won their places again.). His projects focus on the poor, such as the 30 Baht for all medication, 1 Scholarship for 1 Sub-district, Village Fund (worth 1 million baht), etc. It does sound he is a clean guy, but the great man has flaws. How many relatives of his sit in the military leader positions? What did he do to harass human rights – the slaughter in Tak Bai in the south, Drug Elimination project that killed hundreds of people before they go through the trial, media rights, etc.

Fortunately there were a lot of people having a demonstration against him and feel no fear to say what he did was wrong. That’s more likely to be only in Bangkok…by the educated. Those are people who have no worries for what to feed and how to cure their diseases.
The question is will Thailand ever be developed mentally and spiritually when they have to care about their basic needs before the political need?

What I fear how Thailand will become is that its people will only care about materialism and their own beings than caring about sustainable life. How will their children mentally be in this country that bombards with false notions of self-success, self-being and praising those who are economically successful?

For me, UBC or not UBC. That’s still a question.

But to look at the matter does need a lot of elements to judge. How would you judge my matter?