At least that is how my girlfriend explained it to me how this ‘yellow uniform culture’ grew in her architectural firm (Australian). She said at about November last year, the office workers just sort of started wearing yellow nearly daily on their own volition, copying the growing yellow phenomenon in government & private companies. My GF said that the Thai women employees particularly like the yellow unitorm daily . . saves them money because now they don’t have to wear fashion and chic clothes in the offices. The farang bosses did not like it and right after the King’s celebrations, started asking the employees to only wear yellow Mondays. At least in her office, there are less office employees wearing yellow every Monday.

In some very large foreign companies, if men forget on Mondays, the boss will make some joking remark. You don’t have to don something yellow, but it’s a reminder not to do it again.

A friend of a friend is a rather simple country boy. Orphaned, dirt poor, but somehow with some luck and foreign friends, he and his brother now have their own store. I don’t think he has any interest in politics or the king, one way or another. He just thinks wearing yellow is stupid. He gets asked all the time on Monday why he isn’t wearing yellow. He got asked on other days of the week some months ago.

He’s got a stock response: “Oh, I carry the king in my heart.” He says that he can do it because he has his own business but he couldn’t get away with it if he worked for the government or a company.

Just because I’m a Farang doesn’t mean I haven’t lived in Thai villages and know what people do in some, but not all, Thai villages. Gossip pretty much ensures you learn the whole history of a village good and bad whether you want to or not.

We have a house in a Thai village land my mother-in-law has a house in another Thai village. I haven’t taken a statistical survey of villages. Neither have you. We both draw on our limited experience in the villages we live in.

“Coercive” is a word that could apply to a lot of things in village life and **it was this way during the Thaksin era and before.**

Do I like this? No. Do I see the Thai system as generally an effective one that works? Yes. **I have also lived in a lot more dysfunctional places than you will ever live in**, like Burma, for instance.

i don’t know if you realize Grasshopper how imbecillic your #19 poster sounds. Color yellow traditionally meaning sickness to the farangs??? Surely Grasshopper you jest or you hallucinate!
Yellow is sunshine, yellow is gold and yellow to a yankee can be used to denigrate a coward.

Let’s take Thaksin . . . I could easily call him yellow for refusing to face the courts and face his accusers while during his rule he cowardly allowed the cold blooded murder of thousands by his extrajudicial edict against very poor blacklisted village suspects!

I would also think yellow may take a more romantic theme to the die-hard red-shirts waiting for the return of their Thaksin with a Tony Orlando song: ”

I’m coming home I’ve done my time (not yet but may soon happen) . . . . Tie a yellow riboon on all Suvarnabhumi trees and poles . . . et al (I forgot the lyrics, sorry!)