Thai nicknames

What can I say about Thai nicknames? To our parents, a nickname does not seem to be as important as a real name. I think that is one of the reasons why many Thai parents pick anything to refer to their kids as. Khun Sam wrote about this on her blog.

Some Thai parents do not seem to be very bothered about calling their kids whatever they like. Take my childhood friends, for example, four siblings were given their nicknames after various creatures: แมว(a cat), กระต่าย(a rabbit), ปู(a crab) and the youngest one was named “หมู” which means a pig. Some of my friends’ nicknames were chosen by their parents according to what their folks believed their kids would grow up to be, in terms of figure and appearance. A friend of mine whose name is อ้วน(fat) turned out to be not quite as paunchy as his parents expected. Another friend, ขาว(white), is not as pearly as her parents had hoped for. Instead, she has a very dark skin. Given that their informal names do not match what they look like, they do not mind being called by their given names. That is our parents for you. Many of them will go to a lot of trouble to seek a perfect real name which will endow good luck on their baby boy or girl. But when it comes down to nicknames, they simply don’t mind.

They are so unbelievable

“BNP to consider non-white members“, according to the BBC.

I find it very hard to comprehend their way of thinking. Even in this day and age, there are, apparently, still characters like these who do not accept people from different races in their society. What is the matter with them? Do they genuinely think people from different ethnicities are inferior beings? If that is the case, it is not dissimilar to Nazism then? I suppose these Stone Age beings are never going to be worried about how people label them or what people accuse them of. Then again, bigotry and hatred exist in every nook and cranny of this world.

Guess whose book this is?

The Bad Life: A Memoir of High Society, Sexual Politics, and the Nouvelle Vague by the French daddy will be available in English around April 2010. Anyone who is keen to learn about his scandalous sexual adventures in Thailand can order the English translation in advance on Amazon. There is also a debate about this hanky-panky on France24 which is somewhat newsworthy.

French daddy and his Thai rent boy

The French Cultural Minister Frederic Mitterrand has been in trouble owing to having written about his sexual experiences in Thailand. The book itself was published in 2005. Yet suddenly it has become the source of a huge uproar following the minister’s decision to defend Mr. Polanski. You will recall that the film maker was apprehended  in Switzerland in connection with the incident which took place in 1977. To my way of thinking, the guy should not have drawn unnecessary attention to himself when he has had such experiences in the Land of Smiles and especially when he has included his adventures in his “not totally autobiographical” book. More details of this story via the link.

According to my research, men in this part of the world have such sexual bizarre fantasies. Some are into strange things such as BDSM, Master and Slave or other sexual role plays and so on. The experiences depicted in the book coud simply be just wishful thinking. Many middle-aged western men like to enjoy the company of young men when they visit Thailand. Just because there may be a yawning gap between their ages does not mean that their relationship is not one of legally consenting adults; not unlike the liaisons between older western men and young Thai women. What he wrote in the book referring to his partners as “boys” might be just the sexual fantasy of “a sugar daddy and his toy boys”. However, if he did do anything that is not between consenting adults, he should be punished in accordance with the rule of law in his country.

People are very strange indeed….

Bangkok Girl – Deleted Interviews

‘Winter Sleep’ almost literally put me into a slumber

The story centres around a guy named Nakagi, also known as Sensei, who is a painter and who has been staying at a mountain cabin in order to cultivate his art. He was once a committed murderer. The man spends every morning running up the mountain pass and back to his cabin and does nothing else particularly important. One day a woman named Natsue Kosugi comes to the cabin with the intention of reserving a painting. He tells her that he does not want to make a promise that he might break and to buy it after he has finished it. The two of them converse for a while and before she leaves, the woman says she will return another day. One evening when he goes into the dining room he comes across another young woman, whose name is Akiko. She aspires to be his student, whether he likes it or not. After that he sees her every day and spends some time with her. These two women, one older than him and the other far younger, are going to disrupt his seclusion.

So far, I have read just over fifty pages and nothing very much has happened. Hopefully, as I read on, the story will become more engaging. At the moment, I am finding “Winter Sleep” by Kenzo Kitakata slightly arid. Someone compared the author partly to Spillane and partly to Dostoevsky, but always ‘hard-boiled’, according to the blurb on the back of the book. We shall see.

I am the Director

Source: Thaicinema.org

My perspective, as a Thai, on the programme

Much is being discussed and debated about a television programme called “Big Trouble in Tourist Thailand”. The programme has been broadcast on Bravo, a British television channel, every Monday at 10 p.m.  for the last couple of weeks. I watched the first two episodes and I will carry on watching the rest of the series. Personally, I see nothing wrong with the programme. Given the title of the programme it is guaranteed to feature scenes depicting the bad behaviour of some tourists and locals. To my surprise, many people have been making a big fuss about it. The Thai authorities are not pleased to see what features in the show and have been taking action. Some expats are also not very keen to see their fellow citizens behaving badly in the Land of Smiles. Having watched quite a few programmes on Bravo, I am aware of the fact that this channel caters for a particular kind of audience. There have been programmes before on the channel where British tourists have gone abroad and got into trouble. Although this show about Thailand comes across as cheap entertainment, it also provides good advice to foreigners on how to steer clear of trouble when they visit certain places in the country and also how to deal with the locals in sticky situations. Here is a list of websites and blogs that discuss the show:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Big-Trouble-Tourist-Thailand-t291222.html

http://absolutelybangkok.com/big-trouble-in-tourist-thailand/

http://www.bangkokdiaries.com/2009/09/10/big-trouble-tourist-thailand/

http://jamie-monk.blogspot.com/2009/09/phuket-jet-ski-debate_12.html

http://jonnytheforeigner.blogspot.com/2009/09/big-trouble-in-thailand.html

http://leosia.com/2009/09/16/big-trouble-video-nasties/

http://www.thai-blogs.com/index.php/2009/09/12/thai-police-ganja-scam-on-big-trouble-in?blog=8

http://www.tfs2m.com/main/2009/09/11/from-the-producerdirector-of-big-trouble-in-thailand/

http://soi1114.blogspot.com/2009/09/big-trouble-in-thailand.html

I bet the people behind the programme have been beaming with pleasure to see it being widely discussed. Hats off to them, I suppose!

The panda

I wonder how Thai people will react when it is time for the baby panda and her mother to return to China? I suspect that some people will be in tears to see her departure. For goodness sake!

Lovely threesome

I have been reading this Japanese novel for a week. I first read it many years ago as a Thai translation and even brought the book with me to the UK.  I very much adore it. I decided to ask someone to buy the English translation, called “Twinkle Twinkle”, for me when it was published in 2003. The story is about two people who were wed into a marriage of convenience. The wife is an emotionally unstable alcoholic and the husband is a doctor who happens to be gay and has a boyfriend.

The story was told by Shoko and Mutsuki, the newlyweds, who commented on one another alternately from chapter to chapter. Despite their bizarre relationship they, including Kon, the husband’s male lover, managed to accept each other’s imperfections and fill in the gap that had been missing in their lives. For these three people, merely to be together with the ones they cared about, although difficult from time to time, enabled their lives to be dazzling.

Especially for someone

Someone said that she liked this ‘Silly Fools‘ song which is called “Num Lai”, i.e Saliva in English. Even though she has not asked to hear it, I am still posting this song for her.