Monthly Archives: September 2006

Interesting Times

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Well this is all getting rather um, “interesting”.

Sep 19 10:27:13PM Martin: check thailand news
Sep 19 10:27:15PM Martin: i think summit bigs happened

The BBC is reporting an apparent military coup here in Bangkok. And typically, having been out and about in Bangkok all day, the first I heard about it was online, via the Western media.

Every Thai TV station seems to be showing stock footage of the King, set to “patriotic” music. There has been what looked like an address to the people by an official-looking chap repeated a few times, but I have no idea who he is or what he was saying. Everybody at the street restaurant where I saw it either spoke English or Thai; nobody spoke enough of both languages to be able tell me in English what the message was.

Tanks are, apparently, surrounding the government buildings (a few miles from here), I haven’t seen a single thing on the street to suggest any kind of crisis. Shops and restaurants here are open as usual – even the seedy massage parlour next door still had the neon lights on.

There has been no violence yet that I’m aware of, long may this remain the case.

To sum up, I’m fine and so is everyone I’ve spoken to here. Let’s just hope this is over quickly and peacefully.

[Edit: Martin has posted his piece here]

So I guess this means I’m staying…

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Takamine Dragon guitar

I had to sell my Fender acoustic and my Ibanez hollowbody electric guitars when I left England behind. My Peavey telecaster clone went to a friend. That was five months ago.

In many ways, that was the moment in which the enormous size of my situation really hit me. No guitars. I had never been without a guitar – my Dad’s was always around when I was a child, and I acquired the first guitar of my own when I was still at high school.

In other ways, I suppose the uncertainty of life here in Thailand had stopped me buying a guitar so far. The feeling that at any point, it could all go wrong, and that I would have to return, a failure, to England.

Today, after buying the pictured Takamine Dragon, I guess I finally feel at home.

Embracing Geekhood

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There is a certain stereotype of we computer geeks. Socially inept, poor personal hygiene, no girlfriend, dubious ponytail and facial hair, inch-thick spectacles, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of Star Trek.

I’ve certainly suffered from most of these at one point or another. Many of the geeks I know still do. Fortunately for me I have overcome all but the last – I never actually got into Star Trek.

I saw Star Wars many times as a kid, and was awestruck. I knew every character’s name – even the ones who were only on screen for maybe a minute (which didn’t stop Lucas making action figures of them). I was playing at a friend’s house aged 5 or so, and his mum asked if I wanted to watch Star Trek. I’d never heard of it.

“Oh, it’s just like Star Wars – and you like that”, she said.

One episode later I vowed to reconsider this friendship, and would never again acknowledge his mother. There were no lightsabers, no rebels, no stormtroopers, no “the force”, not even any Ewoks. It was nothing like Star Wars!

I had been misled, and refused to watch Star Trek for years afterwards.

I have since seen bits and pieces of the original series, snippets of movies, and a few bits and pieces of the spin-offs, but profess to know very little about the whole thing. Unfortunately, going back to my initial point, this is possibly preventing me from attaining ultimate geek status.

So I have acquired all ten Star Trek movies, and will be watching them over the coming weeks. Kill me now…

Bits and Pieces

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Yesterday I saw a truck driving down Thong Lo with Osama bin Laden mudflaps. I almost fell off the motorbike. I’ve seen bin Laden merchandise here before, but mudflaps?!

Seth writes that job interviews are a waste of time, I’ve been saying the same for years. The whole hiring system, at least in the UK, is fundamentally flawed. It measures how good candidates are at interviewing, nothing more. I’ve worked mostly in IT, so I’m more than well aware of the irony of testing the people-skills of programmers.

References are almost as amusing – “Please give us two telephone numbers we can call to hear good things about you. It would help if the two liars we call from your local pub can at least pretend to have some technical knowledge, but if they’re worried about that then they can just pretend to be management. Don’t worry, we won’t verify who they are or anything, that would involve a degree of effort”.

FOX News are lying scumbags

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I’ve been stewing over this entry for a while now – in the interim, the events that sparked it have dissipated, but the point remains. John Mark Karr was deported from Bangkok, my home, to the United States on August 20th after he confessed to murdering six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey in 1996. Charges have since been dropped after DNA tests, and it seems he made the whole thing up. I’m not defending Karr. But I am pretty disgusted by the media circus that has been vilifying Bangkok ever since – based purely on heresey, speculation, stock footage from 15 years ago, and downright lies.

John Karr was on the run at the time of his arrest. He’d been travelling all over Asia. Incidentally, he’d been here since June. Two months. He does not reflect on us, and Bangkok is not the “paedo-paradise” that Fox News has been gleefully crowing about in the video report on this page.

There are child prostitutes in South-East Asia. Witness Gary Glitter’s moves to Cambodia and Vietnam. Both have since, I am told, cracked down on the problem. Thailand did the same thing 10-15 years ago, eradicating the problem at least to the same levels found in the West. But nobody seems to have told the Western media.

Says David, on the topic, in an excellent Mango Sauce article:

The whole story is pure fabrication from start to finish. I’ve been to every sleazy bar in Bangkok and have never once been offered a child prostitute.

Whilst I’m not quite as well-versed in the ways of the nightlife as David, I also haven’t seen any child prostitutes here. I’ve heard second- and third-hand horror stories about them (most of which are said to have occurred a long time ago), but not as many as I’ve heard about places like Rotherham, Birmingham, Bristol and Brixton. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen here – just that I’ve never seen it, and nor has anybody I know here. And that the FOX News report is utter, utter lies. Perhaps they should be looking closer to home, where they might actually (gasp) send a reporter to investigate – something they clearly haven’t done here.

One reader at Mango Sauce left this very thought-provoking comment:

If I had never been to Thailand I might believe this news story. Makes me wonder what other inaccurate stories I believe.

And another:

You’re dreaming if you think the ‘facts’ for this story came from any journalist based in Thailand.

As a journalist myself, it’s not too hard to guess sources when none are quoted. Her source in this case was an internet search lasting no longer than 30 minutes, or I’ll eat my hat and the little ‘Press’ badge that sticks out of it.

Luckily for Thailand, FOX viewers were never in their tourism demographic. Anyone who takes FOX News seriously is too petrified to step out the front door, let alone onto a plane.

The real issue here is not truth in media – it’s clear there’s precious little of that left these days. It’s of the media’s hold over the people’s assumptions. I love Thailand – the climate, the food, the cost of living and the general attitude of the locals all provide a refreshing change from the sorry state that the UK had become when I left. And yes, Thai women can be very attractive too – there’s a whole phenomenon of western men living here who have vowed never to date western women again. I’m not amongst them by any means, but there’s no denying that it’s a draw – the cultural differences here are staggering, and the differences in attitudes clearly suit a great many Western men.

But before I left the UK, if I mentioned Thailand to the average person (who probably couldn’t find it on a map), they’d reliably come back with an “amusing” remark about either ladyboys or ping-pong shows. Yes, both exist here in Bangkok. No, that’s not why I’m here, nor is it why anyone I know is here. If that was it, I’d have spent a weekend in Amsterdam for £30 with the rest of the chavs.

If I mention Thailand to an average person next time I’m in the UK (April 2007), will their gratuitous remark be about ladyboys? Ping-pong shows?

Or will it be, thanks to the media, regarding paedophiles?

I may, at some point, want to return to the UK to work. How’s my CV looking, with the past four months spent in “paedo paradise” (© Fox News)? All because of media sensationalism, supposedly “professional” journalists not even doing the minimum of research, and downright lies. Thanks a lot, guys.