ARE WE SOLVING PROBLEMS OR JUST CREATING NEW ONES?

       A FEW weeks ago, our Ministry of Culture delivered a piece of bad news to our teenagers - again.
       This time it's a new regulation on the time per day that each teenager in Thailand is allowed to access online games, both from home computers and at Internet cafes, and the authorities can verify this by asking them to key in their national ID number before having fun.
       At the moment, another online activity is under close surveillance - namely a few local websites that offer sex services by a membership system. Clients can even pay a monthly fee for a certain amount of "dates".
       What the authorities may have overlooked, though, is the fact that our teenagers, apart from online games, still spend too many hours in the cyberworld, without really taking advantage of this worldwide web of information. At the top of the current list is Facebook, which some have used as their secret photo album, and others as the space for their daily statement issued to the world. Then, of course, there are many time-consuming computer games that are neither online nor restricted.
       As far as I understand it, culture can also refer to ways in which people live and enjoy their lives. And apart from shouting, "No, you can't do this," our cultural authorities could perhaps also promote "Do you want to try this?" as well.
       However, it seems that most of our tax money, in this cultural management matter, is going to the preservation of our national heritage and the prevention of certain modern lifestyles that are deemed improper for this eight-century-old country.
       Instead of working closely with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology in this matter, maybe Ministry of Culture officials should sit down with their Ministry of Education counterparts in order to better understand how teenagers spend their days, and come up with better alternatives than staring at computer screens for six hours a day.
       Despite my age, I can still recall secondary school days when I spent most of my school evenings on basketball courts, football fields, and in movie theatres. It was the pre-Internet, pre-O-NET, A-NET, GAT, PAT, and pre-Ministry of Culture era. I'm not even sure what it's called now, thanks to its frequent changes. Back then, my friends did not feel that it was a must to go to tuition schools in the evenings - we had had seven or eight hours of class already, and our teachers made sure that they were enough to get us into good universities.
       I can also remember that often our teachers loaded us into buses to go to watch films or performance art outside the school. Interestingly enough, most of these were not programmes that were deemed traditional (and thus highly recommended by any cultural authority). Rather, they were what the teachers - who repeated to us that we could gain knowledge and experience not only in classrooms - found relevant to the content of some classes. The school administrators believed in this extra effort to organise such activities.
       By working together, and perhaps combining their budgets, maybe the ministries of Culture and Education could devise a master plan to promote cultural extra-curricular activities for our teenagers, so that they have more activities to choose from, in addition to the online ones.
       Let's look at an example here. In many countries, including a few in our region, schools receive extra funding from their ministries when they organise such extra-curricular activities. Meanwhile, arts companies also receive more funding from their relevant ministries when they host afternoon or evening activities for students. But of course, the Ministry of Education and schools must prove first that students do not need to attend tuition schools in order to be admitted to good universities. After all, we want the next generation in the work force to not only know how to work efficiently, but also to enjoy arts and culture.
       This issue of problem-solution reminds me of a memorable experience at Muangthai Rachadalai Theatre last Thursday. Entering the playhouse, I was happy to see that there were four lines, instead of the previous two, for the audience to pass through the security check - in other words, metal detectors to make sure that we didn't bring in cameras to take still or moving images of the performance. I was shocked, though, that each member of the audience was asked to have their body temperature checked with an ear thermometer, which would be cleaned after each check. The theatre management team claims in the programme booklet that this is a precautionary measure for type-A(H1N1) flu. Well, I think they forget about ear infections. My job requires me to watch many live performances in different countries in the region, Since the breakout of swine flu, I've never seen such a precautionary measure anywhere else.
       At the intermission, when nature called, I found that the gentlemen's restroom was also available for women. This innovative measure was to make sure that all female audience members could return to their seats in time for the curtain of the second act.
       Twelve years ago, when I first visited the Stratford Festival of Canada, a volunteer staff member informed me that the main playhouse, called the Festival Theatre, had three times the number of women's restrooms than men's, to make sure that there'd be no long queues for women. That Canadian playhouse is more than a decade old, while our Muangthai Rachadalai Theatre is a little over two years old. So what's happening here? Did our Thai investors hire the wrong architects and interior designers - if I'm not mistaken, foreign ones - and now they have to solve these problems Thai style?
       If they can spend scores of millions to bring over an international touring musical production, why can't they spend a few hundred thousand on temperature scanners, like those we see in some airports, and a few hundred thousand to rebuild toilets for more privacy?
       Let's look at these problems carefully and thoroughly, and wisely solve them; otherwise, more relevant problems may arise and, now that our heads and hands are full, we will never be able to deal with them.