Apologies, haven't posted up photos from numerous trips away, including Chiang Rai, Singapore and Phuket...
Work has been pretty hectic at the moment, will try to find some time to write and upload photos soon!!!
9 is an auspicious number here in Thailand.
So today - 09/09/09 - the Thais are going absolutely mental.
The mother of all supermarkets, Makro is probably best described as two parts aircraft hanger, one part disneyland and one part Coles.
Just finished up at a work dinner at The Peninsula hotel, a flash place on the Chao Phraya river.
I’ve just started boxing training once a week as part of the lead-up to the adventure race, with a good mate of mine training myself and a bunch of other mates at a little Muay Thai boxing gym, roughly 20 minutes from where Clare and I live.
I’ve really enjoyed learning the basic technique, not so much the 5:20am starts, and have been feeling good after some pretty tough sessions. This week I jumped into the ring for my first ever (thankfully short!) sparring session, up against a mate who used to be a British Navy Champion boxer. Needless to say, my mate Steely can hit.
I don’t plan on becoming a professional boxer. Why? Check out the clip below featuring ex-NZ champion David Tua, who became a NZ national heavyweight champion at age 15 and a bronze medalist at the Barcelona Olympics.
Oresome.
With just 23 days to go until the Koh Samui Adventure Race, it’s articles like these that just send my fat-boy instincts well off the radar.
It was my Dad’s birthday today. I spoke with him and Mum over skype and chatted to Mum about what she was preparing for his birthday dinner…very much indicative of how my family celebrates!!
Sad I have to miss yet another family event, but happy knowing they’re celebrating in style!!
The Wallabies have shown their heads are in the right place in making positive steps toward eliminating homophobia in sport. Captain Stirling Mortlock, Al Baxter, David Pocock and Stephen Moore got together and were photographed with a number of provocative placards. Check out the flickr slideshow here.
The rugby league Footy Show, known for its homoerotic skits and homophobic fervour, spat out a hideous PR exercise that somewhat backfired a few weeks ago. The producers got two of the Sydney Convicts on the show to talk about the club and gay men in sport, but the awkwardness shown by the host Fatty Vautin was unmistakable, and no doubt the show will continue to propagate the same stereotypes in the future. I really like the footy show - there’s some really smart football minds on there - but the segments featuring such mindless humour has often got my blood boiling.
- “All rugby players are boofheads? All gay men are weaklings? Reject stereotypes, accept people.”
- “It’s not who you are, it’s how you play the game.”
- “We support diversity in sport.”
- “Everyone deserves a sporting chance. Stand up against homophobia.”
Just over one year since the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games flew out of the starting blocks, I found these statistics on the magnitude of the opening ceremony on a Chinese business website:“In the past two years, I dared not slack at my job. I have never led such a huge team, with so many performers, staff and volunteers," said Zhang Yimou, Artistic Director of the Opening Ceremony. “There is one simple sentence from the bottom of my heart, ‘I hope you enjoy yourselves tonight.’”
The 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony officially “combined the ancient elements of Chinese culture with modern forms of performance.”
Fireworks erupted from 287 points on top of the Bird's Nest National Stadium, 12 positions across the Olympic Green and 29 locations across the city. A total of 11,456 fireworks were set off from atop the Bird's Nest National Stadium, and another 8,428 in central areas of Beijing.
110 minutes of music was specially created by 18 composers, with 2,583 special lights, 15,153 sets of costumes in 47 styles, 516 sound amplifiers and 160km of power cables used for the show.
Some 4.5 million visitors have visited the Bird's Nest National Stadium since it opened to the public in September 2008, with the adjacent Water Cube National Aquatics Centre having received 3.8 million people, according to the Beijing Tourism Board.
It's 6.30am and for the first time in quite a while, I've woken up to the morning reverie of wild birds.
What makes it even more significant is that the closest Clare and I get to nature these days in Bangkok is in caring for our little struggler of a baby frangipani tree.Gloriously titled, the article ’10 things I hate about chew’ runs through a number of Simon Thomsen’s pet hates when dining out. A wonderfully insightful piece on the state of dining in Australia - the bloke can write too!
Meils – take notice!
Some of the funnier pieces included:3. Seasoning. Also known as The Pepper Grinder. A growing number of restaurants don't offer any salt and pepper on the table. That's fine - the chef should season, but bringing a pepper grinder the size of a nuclear warhead to the table and asking if we want some before we've tasted the food is inane. I ask for it to be left on the table and promise not to steal it.
6. Overblown menu descriptions. Sometimes it sounds like the ingredients are having sex in a Barbara Cartland novel.
I work with a person here at the bank whose name is suffixed by ‘Na Ayuthaya’.
I asked one of my Thai colleagues what ‘Na Ayuthaya’ meant, suspecting it had something to do with social standing – apparently it indicates a person’s familial lineage, which is usually traced back to the royal family. There are several types of these ‘extra’ names given to those fortunately born in the right place at the right time, or who have married someone in ‘the family’.
I was trying to figure a Western cultural equivalent (such exercises help make sense of this country). All I could think of was an OBE, MBE etc.
My colleague wisely said that therein lies a wonderful illustration of the fundamental differences between the two cultures. In a general sense, where social status (think jobs, opportunity) is delivered via one’s blood lines in Eastern cultures, in Western cultures, status is earned and generally related to positions attained or money earned.
Interesting segment from the ABC's Bush Telegraph on mulesing from last Friday...
On page 69 of this week’s Take 5 magazine, a social journal of high repute, you will find a picture of Clare, a surfboard and a mysterious-looking orb (I’ve previously blogged the photo
My mate Millgate submitted the picture on my behalf into the journal’s resident psychic Jenny Smedley, asking her what the orb in the photo means for us both.
As you can see in photo to the right, it sounds like there’s a baby on the way…
It's panda-monium in Northern Thailand at the moment.
From last weekend's Fitzfiles:
I WANT to pen a paean on golf. In what other sport can you get anything remotely close to the scene we witnessed at the British Open last weekend? I mean, a legend of the game such as Tom Watson - whose last major win was 26 years ago! - taking on the world's best, including not only Tiger Woods, but a 17-year-old from Japan, a 16-year-old from Italy, other players of all ages from as far afield as Colombia, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden, South Africa, Spain and Fiji … and getting within a single shot of winning the whole tournament! Not one of them threw a tantrum; not one raised hell in local nightclubs before or after their rounds, all behaved impeccably. The sporting theatre of the whole thing was spectacular, and there were no corporate billboards flashing, no logos emblazoned on the greens, no nuttin'. In all the codes in all the world, golf is the big-time sport that has got it absolutely right, and Watson's achievement last weekend served to highlight it as never before.
Face is a funny thing.
Back home, the word face commonly means the outer-front-side of someone’s head, some of which are quite nice to look at. In Asia, it is a misty mystifying social veil of beauty, frustration and humour.
Beauty in the sense that the concept of ‘face’ and ‘saving face’ is so culturally intricate, thus difficult to understand and at times exclusive. You just can't help but admire the social pillar.
Frustration in the sense that its unspoken language can be excruciating at times to navigate. Why hasn’t he returned my emails? Why do they have such dark tinted windows on their BMW? Why say the bus would take 4hrs, when it always takes 16?
Humour, well sometimes you just need to sit back and smile. For example, I’ve been meeting weekly about a forward sponsorship strategy with a whole bunch of the bank’s VPs and execs. Every week, this important-looking dude walks in, is wai’d profusely by those in attendance, sits in an remote part of the boardroom, doesn’t say anything, then leaves after 5-10 minutes.
Reason? All for face I reckon. It’s important to show respect in meetings by turning up in person (as opposed to just sending apologies). It’s also not necessary to contribute to a meeting if you’re not an important cog, and it’s cool to send a minion there on your behalf to report back to you. It's also cool to just leave after 5 minutes without contributing.
With all due reflection, every country and sub-culture has its own language of face. At home, you never visit someone for a meal empty-handed. Or you always remember to return a shout at the pub.
It’s quite an introspective human behavior really, fascinatingly manifested differently across every culture. The world is quite charming, isn’t it?
It would be interesting to know what variations of ‘face’ you see where you live, or what circles you hang in?? Rural, city, European, beach, work, gay, sports clubs, shopping, politics…
'Boris Burger'??
Are you serious?
This appeared this morning in my junk email folder - spammers either have a good sense of humour, or have been watching Wimbledon whilst smashing some McDonald's delivery.
Need to big-up a customer letter or some other ad/web copy?
Chuck something in about the royal family.
‘One Step Ahead’ - Rod McQueen
I was too busy getting bollocked by a voracious client last night to be able to watch Game 3 of the State of Origin.
From all accounts, it sounded like a little pearler of a match, fit with freakish athleticism, hard hits and the odd spot of biff. Saw the fight on YouTube when I was finishing up last night.
“Well, they’ve come from everywhere…almost like it was a rehearsal”
“Well! We’ve seen plenty of this in Origin – this is one of the best!”
“Av a look at them throw them!”
