Nuaekata! An all you can eat where you grill or boil the food yourself. Lots of meat, fish, vegetables, fruits (not for grilling purposes), ice cream and lots, lots more.
At the restaurant, hordes of promotion teams, girls in skimpy dresses, were trying to push several beer brands.
And the cost? 100 Baht. About two euros.
we had an earthquake today. Nothing fancy, the walls only shook a little bit.
Art
My mom sent me a copy of an article from a local Dutch newspaper today. The Delft municipality is paying for an online user driven database of art in public spaces. Have you heard that before? Well, if you’ve known me for a while, you should have: Beeldenstad.net, where I added Delft in March 2003! No doubt, they’re spending thousands of euros to get a website up and running which, according to the article, won’t be going live until October this year.
I’m a bit annoyed about this since this is the second time I’m being passed over for supplying functionality I’ve already created which, as a result will be recreated from scratch at what, undoubtedly, will be several times my cost. Years ago, at the time when Beeldenstad.net went live, I discussed the possibility of facilitating the municipality of Rotterdam with a system like this. They were very non-committal and ‘kept me on a leash’ with a lot of maybes. I decided to build my own when, shortly after, it turned out they had payed for their own system. Sure, it’s a nice system, but that’s mostly because of their access to the right information.
Now, for Delft. A few years ago, I started of a discussion with several individuals in very different positions inside the municipality, all somehow related to public art and/or culture. I suppose to hedge my bets, in the hope that at least one of them would lead to me being able to expand Beeldenstad.net for Delft, properly, and being payed for it. But then, too, a lot of maybes, postponements and whatnot, until I gave up. And now this.
What’s the lesson here?
Lots of them: crickets, silk worms, beetles and then some. And…. wait for it… I ate them. Fried, not raw.
Actually, it's much worse than it sounds. With them being fried, the only thing left is their external skeleton, the hard bits. And they taste like overly used cooking oil. But they still look like bugs. And that's disgusting.
Going native
Besides eating the fried bugs, you can also go native by submitting yourself to a Thai massage. I had one on Sunday and although it's said to be painful, I could only describe it as being quite enjoyable. And, no, that's not because of the happy ending. I wasn't even offered one! Then again, the lady doing the massage was past her sell-by date anyway.
Also, we visited the night bazaar, the most touristy place in town, where you can find German, Dutch, Italian restaurants, as well as McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Subway and whatnot. And DVDs for 80 baht (around 1.60 euro), PS2 games for 120 baht and more clothes than you can wear in a lifetime.
What's for dinner in Thailand? Part 12
Well, the bugs, obviously.
And street sushi. At 10 to 20 eurocents per sushi, it's hard to beat. And not all bad.
The most popular Iranian on the web?
In a recent post, I mentioned my website was slightly less popular than Reza Pahlavi's website. Reza Pahlavi being the son of the last shah of Iran, and to some the last hope of Iran being able to some day resemble a 'modern' state again, that is not all too bad an achievement.
But! According to Alexa, my website is now more popular than the former king's son's. A quick check on the interesting BlogsByIranians seems to support this.
Are you now looking at the most popular (semi-)Iranian blog on the internet?
Unfortunately, hosted blogs (Blogger and such) don't let themselves be measured with Alexa.
In many ways, I’m a simple man to please. Take food for example, I’m easily happy with oysters and red champagne for breakfast. Really, what else would one want?
But seriously, I always enjoy cute or just interesting animals, and the past few days I’ve had my fair share.
On Thursday, with some of my colleagues, I participated in the weekly pub quiz in the UN Irish Pub. Yes, the UN part refers to United Nations, but I have no idea what the connection is. It’s definitely not obvious in the pub itself.
Anyway, we came in sixth, only three points behind third place, which gets a prize, but 13 points behind first place. For one of the rounds, we had to identify the capitals of 12 islands in the South Pacific. What’s the capital of Tuvalu, eh? What was worse, one of the teams had them all right!
Back to the cool animals. Here in Chiang Mai, you can find geckos, small lizards, all over the place. They like to hang out, waiting for the next snack to come along. They’re generally small, maybe 6 or 7 centimeters from head to tail.
So, in the UN Irish Pub, I’d already seen one lounging on the ceiling and, at one point, when i looked up, it was just the moment the gecko made a run for it and grabbed a moth in his mouth. Substantially wider than the gecko’s mouth, it took him a few minutes to swallow the bug. A very cool sight.
Then, today, I walked out of my hotel to see a rather large lizard hang around the entrance. He eyed me, but clearly decided I was no threat to him. I ended up taking pictures of him with the lens of my camera literally only millimeters away from his eyes.
Later, at Wat Bupparam (a temple), a Thai lady came up to me who was carrying a bunch of reed cages with birds. You could ‘buy’ a cage to let the birds go free. For your luck, supposedly. Of course, it’s a ploy, and Felicia later told me she’d heard that the birds are made addicted to a particular type of foodstuff, resulting in the birds coming back time and again after being released.
But I figured it wouldn’t be all kosher anyway, not implying it wouldn’t be fun to free a set of birds. So I chose a cage with four little noisemakers and unwound the small ropes keeping the cage closed. Three flew out quickly, while one jumped up on the edge and eyed me for a while, as if saying “Dude, where’s my food!”.
And then there’s the cute pink cat who hangs around one of the market stalls close to my hotel. He just hangs out, lounging between, next to or on top of the packaged goods. When you stop and look at him, he’ll look you in the eye and greet you (“Miauw!”)
Losing it
Yet more proof I’m getting old, losing touch with popular culture. If you’re wondering, the link will take you to a photoset of (mostly) girls dressed up as manga, anime or video game characters. If those first two terms threw you off, you’re probably even older than I am.
The subculture is called cosplay and is, as Alphaville would say, big in Japan (did you expect anything else?). You can read up on it here.
The dead computers
It’s official, I’m technically cursed. This week, the hard disk in my laptop died once more. Luckily, I’ve learned from the past and no longer store anything on the laptop, using an external hard disk for all my files. But it is damn annoying to have another hard disk die on me. Tom, tech support at HDN, was able to revive the hard disk with a little help. That is, reinstall the OS. But when you tilt or move the machine a little bit while it’s on, the machine will freeze. And the letter ‘e’ is falling off too!
Friday and today, I’ve shopped around for cheap laptops, here in Thailand. Interestingly, the price range is pretty much the same as in South Africa or Holland, but the models are perhaps half a year newer. I hoped on finding a cheap Mac, but no such luck.
Price of a Mac mini:
Thailand: 24490 Baht or 573.07 euro (535.58 euro without VAT)
Netherlands: 619 euro (520.17 euro without VAT)
US: 599 USD (448.22 euro, no VAT)
When you realise Macs are made in China, it’s just so unfair!
What’s for dinner in Thailand? Part 11
This week, I’ve had quite a few foreign dishes. Fish ‘n’ chips in the Irish pub, some Mexican salad in restaurant the Salsa Kitchen on Friday and a braai on Saturday. Still, there were some shining stars within this dark firmament.
During the week, I had one lunch with Suki Haeng Kau (I think), it was, I think, grilled vegetables mixed with egg and chicken with a spicy pepper sauce. Very tasty.
At the braai, part of the on-on-on with the Chiang Mai hash, one of the locals had brought Kielek (don’t voice the last ‘k’, it sounds more like ‘kieleg’), a very bitter but very tasty dish made of green leaves not unlike spinach. However, the girl who made the dish assured me the leaves came from a tree.
This morning, getting up at 5:30, visited Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a temple some 15 kilometers away from Chiang Mai with impressive views of the city and is said to be one of the most sacred temples in the north of Thailand.
The temple was said to be built on the spot where a white elephant took a relic of the Buddha, trumpeting three times before he passed away. Although this is a sad use for a white elephant, the relic was special in that it could reproduce itself and vanish. Now that’s special for a piece of shoulder bone. Wikipedia has a bit more info.
What’s for dinner in Thailand? Part 10
Yesterday, eating at The Blue Diamond, I had “Fried Holy basil tofu veg. Spaghetti” with home made yoghurt and “ice lemon tea (thai style)”. The Spaghetti was ‘just’ a vegetable spaghetti, the lemon tea had a very funny taste to it.
Today, in the afternoon, I had a very tasty green curry, while tonight it was time for something fatty: a Chiang Mai style hamburger with fries and salad.
Tired from my early rise, I ordered an espresso to wake up and a gin and tonic to settle down. I ended up getting a gin with ice and espresso. With sugar, it tasted a bit like a vodka red bull.
Coming back from Spicey, a club in Chiang Mai where surprisingly few local chickitas were trying to sell themselves, if any, but where foreign tourists were having the upper hand, we drank booze by the bucket load, literally, meaning that after a day of hashing and drinking, I was mildly intoxicated when walking home. Okay, okay, totally wasted. Stumbling the short route back to my hotel, at the back of my head, something didn't feel right which later, I realised was the same motor driving past me several times in short succession.
The last time he did, the guy on the motor grabbed my camera bag but because I had the strap over my head, he was unable to take it away. I fell on the ground and was dragged along for what felt like seconds. Immediately, I started to scream and I tried to grab the guy and drag him down from the motor. But without luck. Bruised and battered, I got up and shouted a few more insults before heading to my hotel room.
Hash and tourism
The morning I spent as a typical tourist, taking in some of the sites. But I also visited the Computer Plaza, where laptops are quite cheap, but memory cards are very expensive. In the afternoon, went for a run with the Chiang Mai Hash, just outside of town. In the woods, it was extremely humid.
Most of this crowd consisted of older men who also had their younger (local) girls with them, on the run. You get the picture. Here, I talked a lot with a Dutchman, who had now been living in Chiang Mai for close to a year. In Holland, he ran a garden centre in the town of Veenendaal. But only after first serving in the navy, the Amsterdam police and as a bodyguard. While working for the Amsterdam police, he claimed that one of his informants was de zwarte cobra (The Black Cobra) and that he's been on TV in crime reporter Peter R. de Vries his TV show. He also claimed that, when serving in the navy, he fought the Soviets on Africa's western seaboard, in order to stop them from installing nuclear weapons there. This was to have occurred in the early 1970s.
More spectacular, as late as last year, he fought in Afghanistan, as a mercenary, hired by an English 'lord', where he was commanding 20 Vietnamese. Planting intelligent bombs with cameras, only going off when the camera detects enough people in the area, half his team died on this mission but were picked up by 'cleaning crews'.
Surprisingly, the man sounded truthful.
The same Dutchman also told me about a few Thai concepts. The first is 'kik', or fuckbuddy. The second was 'mirnoi', or second wife. Gotta love those Thai.
What's for dinner in Thailand? Part 9
There's been quite a few good meals over the last few days. On Saturday, I shared a large buffet dinner with fellow hashers from the Chiang Mai Saturday Hash House Harriers. Sunday was tough, recovering from my hangover and scratches and I only had a few small snacks from the Sunday market.
Finger mouse
During my last year at university, I had a mind fart on a mouse attached to your index finger with the buttons integrated, for your thumb to click on. Mind you, in my mind's eye, it was small and pretty, but someone has now created a prototype.
The following is a paid review. If you’d be interested to get paid for reviews or want to have reviews written for your product, check out ReviewMe.
Auto Europe is yet another website where you can book flights, cars and hotels. You’d think that, by now, this market would be completely cornered, but some clearly think otherwise. Still, it surprises me these guys are willing to try their luck at offering these travel related products. All these websites tap into the same systems, meaning that air tickets, hotel rooms and car rental prices never differ much from site to site.
A quick check, Boston to London round trip from 1 to 22 august, resulted in only one fare on Auto Europe, at 821.25 dollar, before tax. Expedia had multiple fares for less than 800 dollars, after tax. The obvious moral: Don’t use this website for airtickets.
Also, the website is very America focused. As a European, I can’t appreciate that.
But it’s not all bad; I really like the logo, the double a, or e. But I do think I’ve seen that before.
There’s an option to buy a Peugeot through a guaranteed buy back program, which, they say, is interesting if you were planning on renting a car for more than 17 days. You can get a quote online, but I couldn’t see any real difference between this and just renting a car. And, ‘buying’ it from 1 to 22 august, picking it up and dropping it off in Brussels still comes down to around 45 dollars per day for the smallest car available. I don’t think that’s a good deal at all.
One option which has potential is the possibility to rent scooters in selected Italian and French cities. However, although the site is able to tell you that driving more than 200km per day will set you back 0.25 per kilometer (expensive!), they can’t tell you how much the rent actually will be. I requested a quote and got a reply within 30 minutes. For a rented scooter from 1 to 22 August, in Rome, I was expected to pay over 2300 dollars. This *must* be a joke. Also, although I gave my first name as Babak and my last name as Fakhamzadeh, Jennifer wrote me back with an email beginning with “Dear Mr. Babek”…
Thai seem to be great fans of Boney M. As I was strolling down the streets tonight, no less than three times did a Boney M song come my way. “Ma Baker”, “Brown girl in the ring” and “Daddy cool”. Indeed, Wikipedia claims that Boney M, along with ABBA, are among the most widely known 1970s Western music acts in such regions as Iran(!) and south east Asia. True masters.
Thai eat out 5 or 6 times a day. No wonder when portions are quite small. Interestingly, take aways, what we have every afternoon, after a lady stopping by everyone to ask what they’re interested in for the afternoon, practically always come in plastic bags. Like coffee.
What’s more, the plastic bags always contain a lot of air, making them bulbous. I’d think that pretty hard to achieve, but even the little bags with chili are bulbous.
What’s for dinner in Thailand? Part 8
Tonight, it was sweet and sour shrimps. Well, almost, I ended up with sweet and sour pork. With rice. And because portions are small, there was room for desert: fried banana with ice cream.
Yesterday afternoon and today, I twice ordered a vegetarian dish (panang dow hoo and kaeng kiao waan jeuy, if my memory serves me right), but without success. On both occasions, someone had thrown in chicken. And last night, it was a dish which, according to my colleague Tina, tasted like spaghetti with meat sauce, but was actually a real vegetarian dish. I had spring lolls as a starter.
One of the systems in use at HDN is a mailing list package called Lyris. Some of the locals call it… Rylis.
One word: plastics
Plastic surgery is extremely cheap and different here. One of the three English newspapers (that I know of), here in Thailand, has a large daily section with classifieds. Half a page is generally set aside for medical treatments, including plastic surgery and, of all things, stem cell treatments.
One practice has a daily advertisement listing its services. Top of the list? Sex change. Cost? Less than 1500 dollars…
Stats
On a sidenote, according to Alexa, probably the leading website ranking service, my site, the one you’re now looking at, is now among the top 300.000 most popular websites worldwide. Considering that, according to some sources, there are some 125 million websites, this is not all too shabby. In fact, this means my website is amongst the top 0.25% worldwide.
Still, Google analytics has shown a not too great last two weeks. I’m worried.
That said, my site being ranked, currently, as number 288366 worldwide, Reza Pahlavi’s website, the son of the last shah of Iran, ranks in at 256875, a very comparable ranking. Meaning that not too many more people check out the website of the last Iranian king’s son than do mine.
While I’m working hard to understand HDnet’s digital responsibilities and desires on my cheap laptop, I’m also eating. As one has to.
Yesterday night, I had dinner with Elyse again in an Irish pub, one of several, where Elyse had fish ‘n’ chips and I had mushrooms and shrimps with rice.
This morning, I had a great scrambled eggs again while, in the afternoon, I had pad pak ruam, a bit like mixed veggies, fried in a wok. Although the menu didn’t say it, they also threw in some beef. To be kind, I’m sure.
Generally speaking, portions here in Thailand are small. Tonight, I had a decent tuna salad and a very decent fettuccine with blue cheese and broccoli cream. But after finishing that, I was ready for more, while there wasn’t.
I did have my first encounter with the bugs of Thailand today. At the restaurant, a 12cm flying cockroach was creeping around. And he seemed to love our table.
This morning, I woke up with the strong impression that I recognized the room from before. And, of course, I did. I had gone to sleep in it.
Felicia, also staying at the Tri Gong, a very decent guest house in a very decent location, and also working at Hdnet, took me to work, practically just around the corner.
Many friendly faces, many of which women, which I suppose is not too odd, realising this is the health sector I’m now working in, and lots of work to do.
Breakfast was a simple affair. Within jumping distance from my guest house, there are more than a handful places that offer breakfast. This morning, I had scrambled egg with cheese, two toasts, jam and butter, a latte and a small orange juice.
In the afternoon, during a ‘brown bag lunch’, where we talked about TB and HIV (HIV kills more about 6000 people worldwide daily, TB kills about 5000 people worldwide daily, even though TB can be cured, and much more), while I had egg fried rice with shrimps.
But, you know, how special is that?
For dinner, HDnet’s HR person took me to a restaurant where we had green curry with fried rice, which didn’t look like what I expected at all and wasn’t very hot and Thai vegetable salad, which was very tasty and huge.
For desert, it was an espresso with banana in bleeding hot coconut milk with added sugar. Elyse had very soft cut up mango and rice pudding, with two cashews on top, in cold milk.
It’s impossible to escape the feeling of hovering over Holland, coming in to Amsterdam airport, with an overcast sky, a drizzle and very, very green scenery, when you’re actually going in for landing at Bangkok international. But at the same time, even from some five kilometers up, Thailand also looks slightly different.
I had to wait for the plane to fly lower to see what it was. The vegetation is different, and planning, at least around the airport, is even more straightforward than in Holland. Rectangular plots of land, either for farming or housing estates, not unlike the ones I’ve just left behind me in South Africa.
I considered taking pictures of everything I consume, here in Thailand, mostly to stir up emotions back home. But I won’t. In stead, I will only post new/different/weird stuff which passes my lips.
I’ve already seen fried insects. The grasshoppers I don’t see as a problem. Some of the other bugs are huge, though. But luckily, no spiders, yet. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
At Bangkok airport, I had to wait six hours for my connecting flight. Luckily it wasn’t on a budget airline as for all passengers, a lounge with free food and drinks (and internet) was available. Besides more western stuff such as tea, coffee and cheese sandwiches, they also offered sweet rice clumps in banana leaves. Not bad, but getting the banana leaves off was hell and they were too tough to bite through. And there were other doughy sweets, also wrapped up in leaves, but with an explanation only in Thai.
Needless to say, as practically all the waiting passengers were bloody tourists, practically no one consumed the leaves.
If Chiang Mai is representative for the rest of the country, beyond a doubt, this nation must be going through an identity crisis.
One typical feature of Thailand are the all night markets. Chiang Mai has a famous one and although I didn’t visit that one today, half the inner city was blocked off for stalls selling everything that a man can carry, that you can think of, and more. And that included the fried insects.
I figured that if I’m going to get the Delhi belly (or should that be Thai-i belly), I’d better get it over with quick. For 20 Baht, a bit under half a euro, I ordered roti with eggs and banana. The lady, a street vendor, peeled then sliced the banana in a bowl, threw in a raw egg and mixed the two up. Then she took a sliver of dough, flattened it and threw it on a hot plate, stretching it out. The banana-egg mix went on top and, after some 30 seconds, the roti was folded inwards, turned around, baked off and handed over to me with some extra sweetening. With a large toothpick as a fork, it was delicious.
Japan is probably the world leader in Kawai (meaning ‘sweet’, in Japanese), but Thailand might just be a close second. Over half of the things being sold were cute things, Japanese style. Think Pukka, Pokemon, Hello Kitty. On key chains, drawings, paintings, t-shirts, puppets, everything you can think of.
After sweets, something hearty. This street seller had no signs to photograph and, since I’m still struggling with ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in Thai, asking him also wouldn’t help. He was selling what looked like meatballs, but they were attached on what seemed like a string, but wasn’t. They were one Baht each, about two eurocents, and the seller used a pair of scissors to cut them from the strings on his braai.
The taste wasn’t too bad, a bit sharp and I suddenly got the idea that they might have been filled pieces of pigskin. On the side, he threw in raw, cut up cabbage, slightly fried ginger slices and FUCKING HOT tiny green peppers.
Last week, the ruling party was sentenced to disband and step down because of unethical and illegal behavior during elections. Many observers considered the last few years, under this party, the worst of the past three decades, so many are probably happy to see them go.
It’s also probably the reason why, what seemed like, election campaigning was going on in town, mostly at the night market
One of the parties was handing out small packages with a gel-like substance. I received two, even though it’s very unlikely I’ll vote in Thailand anytime soon. One was labeled ‘satay pork’, the other ‘fruit juice pork’…
After my suspected pigskin and the peppers, I felt like I was standing under a shower, so much sweat was dripping down my head and neck. I needed something to cool down, something sweet.
One stall was selling drinks in McDonalds-like drinks containers, but made of thin bendable plastic and semi see through. The drink had the color of coke and was sweet, but in it went a healthy scraping from a big black block of what looked like ice, but generated spaghetti-like pasta strings. I got to suck those strings up through my straw.
I thought I faintly tasted coconut.
Shortly after, the black drink digested easily, I had a bunch of spicy tiny fried quail eggs. Yummy yummy!
And then, public life stopped in its tracks.
Every day, at 6pm, speakers throughout town start to play the royal anthem. Everyone, and I mean everyone, stops what they’re doing and stands up for the duration of the tune.
Carry on.
A nice cold Singha (pronounce ‘Sing’).
But the night market had more to offer. A huge kids-run fairground-like anti smoking campaign, with kids handing out posters with really disturbing pictures of smokers with very bad cancers, interesting music which reminded me of throatsingers from Mongolia, fire dancers and a huge musical instrument possibly called a Lanna.
Shortly after I sat down to listen to the music, I realised I had to go home. I was falling asleep, thinking I was awake and under the impression I could understand the Thai singers perfectly, in that they were mixing up Dutch, German, English, Hungarian and Persian. And it made sense!
And once again, I’m pulling myself up from the swamps by my bootstraps.
I’m off to Thailand and, true to form, it’s work. I had hoped for a semi-permanent position as of October, after we expect to be done in South Africa, but no. Now, it’s four weeks in northern Thailand, in the country’s second hub after Bangkok, Chiang Mai. I’m supposed to do some aggregation, cultivation, sanitation and expensation (wouldn’t rhyme) on the web environments HDNet operates. I expect it to be fun.
And I’m told electronics are cheap. I can’t wait.
A romantic drive
Yesterday, finally, I was able to convince Betsy to eat at Apadana, the quite good but also quite expensive Persian restaurant in Johannesburg. That is, she said “You can choose where we’ll have dinner tonight, I’ll pay.”
But it was not meant to be. The restaurant was being turned into yet another carpet seller while a bit of the venue had already been turned in to a video rental den. We contemplated the, also not too cheap, Lebanese restaurant next door, but I wanted to ask the decidedly Persian looking employees of the video store what had happened to the restaurant.
“It’s closed.” Now that was a surprise.
But it had also moved, to the Brightwater Commons, and had become a Persian/Arab restaurant. We headed out.
And, really, we shouldn’t have. Due to a police road block during rush hour, it took us 90 minutes to drive less than 10 kilometers. But we made it to Sahara, without even the police taking a notice of us.
But, Persian/Arab my ass. All the dishes seemed Lebanese and the two male proprietors appeared Turkish. Except perhaps the lady of the house; a quite sweet looking, finely sculpted, dark haired cutie who mostly took care of the fire, to keep the place warm.
When we complained about the lack of bread with our starters, the inevitable happened: “But where are you from?” The cat was out of the bag. They were indeed Iranian (but from Bandar-e-Anzali, which makes it likely that, ethnically, they’re Turkish).
We ended up talking to the lady of the house, who had lived in The Hague for five years and spoke reasonable Dutch. And we got free bread, after the gas supply was restored, and chips. And, next time, we would have to ask for Persian dishes and she would make them on request.
On the plane
The flight to Thailand is with Thai International Airways. And, it’s true, it’s good. All economy passengers have a personal video player with more than 30 movies and many more series and CDs to spend your time with. But, maybe not too surprisingly, most of what’s on offer is utter crap. The food is quite good, with cognac to wash it down.
I’ve increased the number of countries and places I’ve now seen quite a bit while on the flight. It started with what I think were the Iles Glorieuses, just off the coast of northern Madagascar. Then I saw the capital of the Seychelles, Victoria, and later, with the full moon high up in the sky, illuminating the sea, making it look like a black diamond, we flew over Male and other islands in the Maldives. But it didn’t stop there.
We got to see, well, if you were sitting next to a window on the right side of the plane, which was the right side, and were looking out of the window as well, which I was, you’d also have spotted Colombo, the largest city but not the capital of Sri Lanka, and some of the Andaman islands.
On the Thai
The Thai language is a tonal language, like Chinese. The Lonely Planet gives one great example of what this can result in: “Mai mai mai mai mai” (I’m leaving out the accents, which denote the tone), which means “new wood doesn’t burn, does it?”
In northern Thaiand, there’s an area called ‘Sukhotai’, meaning rising of happiness, dating from around the 12th century, which is considered to be the birthplace of Thai culture. In central Afghanistan, there’s a place called ‘Surkh Kotal, some 1000 years older, but named by the Kushans, who ruled what is now Afghanistan at the time. They, as the Thai, were Buddhists. I’ve forgotten what Surkh Kotal means, but I think ‘Surkh’ is a word for ‘Red’.
Still, this almost is too much of a coincidence.
Kanchanaburi, north west of Bangkok and not nearly close enough for me to visit, is the location of the one and only former Bridge over the river Kwai.
Thailand used to be called Siam. And, indeed, that’s where the original Siamese twins came from.
And Bangkok is home to what might just be the most notorious prison on the planet, the Bangkok Hilton. At Bangkok’s airport, i found multiple books with exactly the same subject, but written by different former expat prisoners. All were imprisoned for drug trafficking.
If you’re thinking of going to Thailand, read this book, or any other like it. You will stay away as far as possible from anything even only resembling drugs.
Thailand has a reasonable claim to being home of the first agriculturalists as well as first metallurgists, out dating Sumeria by a few hundred years. Does that mean Thailand should be considered as the birthplace of civilization?
We planned on visiting Parys today. In fact, we were told of a gay couple running a nice bed and breakfast in the, what is said to be, picturesque village of Parys on the Vaal river in the Freestate, about an hour’s drive south of Jo’burg, but although the village, or more accurately, the river, is quite enjoyable, the town, with 50000 inhabitants is practically dead on a Sunday afternoon.
Driving around main street, we found one open restaurant, the Ocean Basket, a chain of (very decent) fish restaurants, and one open snackbar, the Vetkoek Den. A Vetkoek is a bit like a doughnut, but more resembles a Dutch oliebol (similar to a doughnut but without the hole) and it’s an Afrikaans delicacy, often eaten filled (with mince, something sweet, or whatever you can come up with).
Accommodation was also to find. That is, not the venues, for we found five or six, but not the gay couple’s place. But actually finding one where someone could answer our queries was near impossible.
We decided to spend an afternoon chilling in Parys and then to head back to Jo’burg. We’d leave the gays in Parys.
Today’s opening was quite a decent success. A decent turnout, very pretty pictures and lots of very positive comments. What else could one wish for? Well, lots of sales, I suppose.
Mini pies
I don’t normally do this, but this is one great video. And it seems to be real, not digitally crafted.
What language?
A while ago, on a walk in downtown Jo’burg, I was handed a flyer from the Watersrand computer and business college (they claim to have a website but it doesn’t work) which offers courses in HTLM and C+ among others. Idiots.
Only one day away from my (joint) exhibition, opening tomorrow at The Bag Factory in Fordsburg, downtown Johannesburg. Excited?
Here, I’ll show you what’s on show here.
All works are for sale, so you better be quick.
The other two people on show are Stuart Whipps and Jasone Miranda Bilbao. Stuart’s a photographer, Jasone is showing two prints and two statues. It indeed seems I’m the more prolific one. If you come tomorrow, you can judge whether quantity in this case equals quality.
The show opens around 6pm. There will be drinks and, hopefully, some chow as well. Find more details on The Bag Factory here.
3 heads are better than 1
A series of three heads, Mandela, Mugabe and my father. More info here.
Panoramas
A number of panoramas will be on show. Clicking on the images shows you a page with more info. A skyline of Jo’burg, a vista of Pilanesberg, a street scene in Pretoria and a snapshot of the Pretoria parliament.
12 9 14 4 1
Who wouldn’t appreciate a collage of polaroids of a beautiful babe? More info here.
There’s a Dutch word, ‘caberetier‘, borrowed from the French, which refers to a combination of comedian and stage actor and, indeed, has the implication of ‘cabaret’, a multidisciplinary stage show.
Paul van Vliet is one of those and, at 72, considered to be one of the few remaining great ones. In Holland at least.
However, personally, I tend not to be too much impressed by these Dutch caberetiers. Their jokes are often populist and their tricks tend to be the same or very similar, over and over again.
Likewise, I’m not a fan of van Vliet, although during this show I realized that it’s not van Vliet as such, but the characters he often impersonates on stage, which made him famous, that I don’t like.
For this show, van Vliet was flown from Holland to South Africa to entertain the Dutch contingent in both Pretoria and Cape Town, in celebration for the queen’s birthday, traditionally celebrated on April 30th, which actually is the previous queen’s birthday. Many Dutch embassies, all over the world, throw parties around this date but mostly it’s limited to snacks and drinks at the ambassador’s residence. This time, the snacks and drinks followed the show, held at the Musaion, the theatre for the University of Pretoria.
The show was quite enjoyable, partially because he didn’t rely on his impersonations and, possibly, partly because there’s no need (anymore) for him to prove himself. He mostly talked about his experiences trying to set up an English-language equivalent of his Dutch stage shows in the UK and the US, with very mixed success.
Afterwards, the luscious collection of drinks and snacks included the great Dutch treat of raw herring, but no oranjebitter!
It’s official, I am an artist. Of course, I’ve always been, not in the least because I’m a fan of Fluxus, which, briefly, states that ‘Everything is art and everyone’s an artist’. But now, there’s no denying it, even if you can’t appreciate Fluxus.
Why? As of last Wednesday, I’m officially a resident artist at The Bag Factory (TBF), for no less than 11 weeks. And all I have to do is exhibit work I created during this coming period. And if you recognize the name of TBF, that’s because it’s the same guys with whom I organized this year’s photomarathon in Jo’burg. It was a bit of an accident, me ending up here as a resident artist, but then again, isn’t life one huge accident?
And what will I do? Well, it’s not cast in stone yet, but it will probably be something related to photography and the web. What a surprise, eh?
It’s a slow day, so I’ll do some prophesying. Catchy title, eh?
While taking a break, on some terrace or something, earlier this week, I noticed one of those billboards advertising ice cream. You know the ones: very colourful, with a total babe licking some ice cream. This babe was also looking the viewer in the eye. If the ad hadn’t been carrying the name of the ice cream, you’d be excused to think it an ad for some soft porn movie, where you’d want it to be hard core.
Now, when buying the ice cream, women get the idea they’re hot, and man get the idea they can hook one of those babes for themselves.
Then, it occurred to me that, in the not too distant future, when buying large enough consumer goods, like a car, or a home, probably first with a home, you’ll get a humanoid robot thrown in for free, or at a reasonable premium. One to do all your chores for you and to give you, the buyer (of the home), a semblance of social life at home when you’re actually a sad lonely muppet. Sort of like a huge tamagotchi, or a virtual pet.
This sounds probably more far fetched than it really is. Particularly individuals in higher social circles will work harder and harder to try and get on top, when the economy becomes more and more knowledge-oriented. Your future you will be so busy at work, he’ll want to wait until his forties to start thinking about acquiring a mate and building a family. At an earlier stage, it will just take too much time. Time, needed for building his career.
Then, having that humanoid robot around sounds mightily appealing: One who cleans, cooks and opens her mouth when you throw her a cookie. And technically, it’s not too far off at all. We already have robots that walk and run, and fake skin and robot heads that already look quite real.
Needless to say, these humanoid robots will also be pretty and physically attractive, in short, they’ll be very sexy babes. Why wouldn’t they? Why make a robot which looks like your 55 year old smelly aunt?
Then, however, things will slowly start to go wrong. For society at large, that is. Some sod will take out his willy in stead of a cookie and teach his robot some tricks not in the manual. Then, after the appropriate hacks have propagated through the internet, no robot will have been left untried and, with some of the even more realistic models, young urban professionals will stop seeing the point of trying to find that mate after they’re forty. Why keep on a family when you can have all the pleasures without any of the pain (unless the robot runs some version of Windows, perhaps).
Of course, I’m writing this from a male perspective, but the future woman is today’s man, and just as emancipated. No difference there, then.
And then, of course, no, or at any rate, much less, kids will see the light of day.
So there you have it. Civilization probably won’t actually die, but high earning individuals, the economically more successful ones and, most likely and sadly, the more intelligent ones, will filter themselves out of society.
Planet earth will become a society of degenerates.
This Easter weekend, we were on something of a business trip to the small town of Howick, known for its falls, about an hour’s drive north of Durban, and the village where Veto, two years ago, helped build a orphanage and a school. We were now here to get an understanding of the current situation, progress, and possible future requirements, as there might be a few bucks available to spend on the project again in the near future.
Our ‘tourguide’ is the likeable and extremely energetic John Tungay who, at 70, has the enthusiasm of someone decades his junior. Founder of the Drakensberg boys’ choir school, former secretary to Margaret Thatcher, former bigwig at the SABC (the South African equivalent of the BBC), inventor of the word amperbroekie and, now, the driving force behind Khazimula.
At the end of Saturday, while copying my digital images onto a DVD, I noticed a video on one of the shelves with a sticker, The weakest link, with a date in 2004. I commented on it. In that particular show, one of the questions was “Who was the founder of the Drakensberg boys’ choir school?”. “They had the answer in one go.” John said.
In 2000, my fraternity built a house in Beius, Romania, with Habitat for Humanity. In 2005, we thought we could do one better and organize a similar trip on our own. Through an acquaintance, we bumped into John’s Khazimula project in the village of Lidgetton, near Howick. Although the boys slept at Khazimula (“to shine”), most of the work was done on the nearby school Jabula (“happy”).
At Khazimula, only since January, 21 kids now live who seem to be enjoying their stay. They go to school at Jabula, a short drive down the road. Here, unfortunately, the metalwork and woodwork classrooms, which were the ones worked on by Veto two years ago, still have not been used, mostly due to unreasonable local authorities exercising their power and, undoubtedly, venting their frustration at not having control.
Besides visiting Khazimula, during a weekend when the weather resembled Dutch crappy, gloomy, cold and rainy, weather, we also were dragged to several social events: A Zulu boy’s 21st birthday, the opening of an art gallery exhibition and a boat trip on Midmar lake.
Google, today, introduced My Maps on their Google Maps service. With it, you can create and save your own maps. You can add markers, routes, shapes and whatnot. Great.
I’ve been doing exactly that, and was getting quite good at it, with websites like Soweto uprisings . com, streets of Iran . com and, most recently, IsmailFarouk.com. Now anyone can easily do it. Great.
Over the past two weeks, we had our second visitor for the year that we’ve now been in South Africa. As you can see, we’re popular guys and we’ve got loads of friends. It was also the second parent which stopped by, Betsy’s dad.
We’ve been quite the tourists, visiting the Lion Park, the Voortrekker monument, Pilanesberg, Soweto, downtown Jo’burg and loads, loads more.