There seems to be a cultural, logistical, and/or educational disconnect between the meaning of being on time and actually being on time,
I was wondering about this for quite a while, but recently I noticed with my daughter (12) that she’s actually genuinely surprised when she says like “be at school at 4.30 to pick me up” and I’m actually there at that time.
In fact, if i call her, her first question is “where are you” even i always say then “you asked me to be there at this time, so this is where i am now”
It seem like the understanding that in order to be “on time”, you have to be there earlier, depending on the situation, of course, this means anything between seconds or even hours but generally the time you get there should be smaller than the time you should be there.
This is kind of sort of a stereotype in Thailand where people joking about this behaviour, but this is a real problem when try to tach a teen values of life.
not only that this is incredible disrespectful (not only for westeners, also for thai people), and you can never have an appointment with somebody outside of a professional setting where time is actually essential, which is a little bit of problem if you’re not from here.
The flip side of that is also if you are going anywhere other than with yourself, it almost always means that your whole day is lost because of that kind of things that are going on, like random changes in times, the plan that was agreed on is also constantly changing. So for me personally, when we go somewhere, I just assume the role of the driver and just don’t have any opinions about where and when we’re going to be.
My daughter now shows the same treats, i strongly try to encurage her to be on time or to prepare herself, but this is a losing battle.
