Thailand's blind children's orchestra - from BBC news website today for anyone interested.

[Nirish guy]

A short piece on the "Thailand's blind children's orchestra" for anyone who might be interested.


Personally once I heard the elephant camp linkage I just started to think "yeah no doubt another money making scheme for someone who will no doubt have the kids being wheeled out for paying performances, either locally or internationally. But then, even if so I wondered ( assuming the kids are getting looked after) is that even such a bad thing ?

Or, I could of course just be being a terrible cynic and it is just what it's meant to look like i.e some good people doing good things for blind children and letting them enjoy making music? Either way, I guess it can't hurt - right ?

From BBC website....

The Thai Blind Orchestra is made up of young musicians and is run by a man whose daytime job is managing an elephant conservation centre. It’s one of a very few initiatives in Thailand that gives blind children a chance to learn to play instruments. A BBC team went to meet the group at an open-air concert they held at a national park in the north east of Thailand.

Link below for those that are interested.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39330976

[fountainhall]

Thanks for posting. I think it's great that these kids have discovered something they really enjoy doing. And being blind need not be a barrier to a musical career. Dame Evelyn Glennie is the world's finest percussion soloist - and blind. Andrea Bocelli sings occasionally in opera performances - and is blind.

I wonder if the elephants who inspired the kids make up the famous Thai elephant orchestra. No, this is no joke. It's been going for at least 20 years and has made 3 CDs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Elephant_Orchestra

[Marsilius]

Evelyn Glennie is not blind. She is deaf.

[fountainhall]

Apologies - she is indeed deaf!

[cdnmatt]

Thanks for the link, and sounds like the kids are quite happy. Thanks for the reminder as well, as I really need to get my shit together, and begin helping.

Being blind isn't all that bad, and there's some benefits.

- You become much stronger internally. Going blind is quite terrifying, so you have no choice, and find an inner strength you never knew you had before.

- You get to experience human compassion much more. Instead of living in a cold, heartless looney bin of a world that you know is out there, you end up living in a world filled with warmth and compassion. Whether it's just someone just offering you a ride home, helping you cross the street, helping you pick out items from a store, or whatever.

- Your intution is increased. You can no longer read people by their body language or facial expression, so your intuition gets kicked up a notch, and you can pickup on people's vibes and tell what they're feeling / thinking better. I still constantly surprise Leo by telling him what he's thinking, or what he's about to do. :)

- You concentrate only on the important things in life. Everything now takes three times as long, and is a struggle, hence a lot of bullshit gets cut out of your life. You only care about what truly matters -- the things you'll be thinking about on your death bed. The rest of life is just fluff anyway.

- This is jokingly, but you get to act like more of an idiot in public, because hey, nobody is going to get angry at the blind guy.

- You no longer have any secrets, because you rely on others too much to keep them. May seem like a negative to some people, but it's actually quite liberating.

See, it's not all ad. :) There's the obvious drawbacks, but I try not to concentrate on those, as that just leads to depression.

But yeah, thanks for the reminder. I need to get my house in order, and begin providing assistance where I can.

n

[arsenal]

While highly impressed by your charitable nature Matt I am curious as to the nature of the help you can give. Please keep us informed as to how you get on as I'm sure many members here will be badgering you for details. Probably quite often.

[Manforallseasons]

..

[christianpfc]

Being blind isn't all that bad, and there's some benefits.

- You concentrate only on the important things in life.

Absolutelty!

Like participating in this forum.

[Tintin]

Absolutelty!

Like participating in this forum.

Speak for yourself!

[cdnmatt]

Don't worry too much about Creepy Christian. I stood him up over 2 years ago, and he still hasn't shut up about it.

Hell, Newalaan stood me up about a year ago. We were supposed to meet for a beer / coffee, and he ended up giving me a call saying he can't make it because he had to cut his trip short due to personal circumstances. My response? I simply said, "no problem, totally understood, and hope you have a safe flight home".

Stand Christian up though? He'll badger you online for over two years saying you're not actually real. In hindsight, I'm very glad I followed my gut and didn't meet him, because just look at how he reacted.

[christianpfc]

May I publish our email communication, so everyone can form their opinion based on facts?

[arsenal]

Ooohhh. Please say yes Matt. Most intriguing.
🙄

[newalaan2]

Don't worry too much about Creepy Christian. I stood him up over 2 years ago, and he still hasn't shut up about it.

Hell, Newalaan stood me up about a year ago. We were supposed to meet for a beer / coffee, and he ended up giving me a call saying he can't make it because he had to cut his trip short due to personal circumstances. My response? I simply said, "no problem, totally understood, and hope you have a safe flight home".

And that's exactly what happened. I (that is ME Christian NOT matt) made a very last minute cancellation. I can't actually remember the exact reason plans were changed but we lost our 'spare' day in Khon Kaen City during which I had planned to partly use to meet up with Matt and had to bullet off elsewhere at very short notice. I had hoped to meet Matt just so I could report back to ChristianPFC (as well as a few other sceptics)that he did indeed exist in KK, if nothing else just to shut CPFC up as his continued references and digs at every possible opportunity regarding Matt were getting somewhat tiresome.

Right up to the day we expected to meet up there were no excuses forthcoming from Matt to cancel, even when I finally called him and were chatting before I actually informed him of the change of plans there were no pre-excusues being laid down by him to avoid a meet up when I spoke on my thai phone to his thai phone (with no indication that I was taking to someone long distance not in Thailand). In fact Matt was gracious about it, with no drama, he just wished me the best for the rest of the trip and let me know the invitation was open for a future date.

The thing with my Khon Kaen area visits is that bf's village/town is 70km north east of the city itself so I would only meet up if we were to be in KK city centre for the day for some specific reason as there just never seems to be spare time during a visit and that's with having real full days from early morning as opposed to Pattaya's going to bed early morning and up very late. My trip in Feb/Mar this year we avoided KK area, we're hoping to have time to be there on my up-coming June/July trip, so depending on Matt's situation and our plans it might still happen.

Anyway apologies to NIrish for off topic content but happy to 'but in' with support for Matt's view of CPFCs veryyyyyy long standing obsession.