Monday, June 12, 2006

 

the good royal

Here I am in Bangkok yet again and what a historic time it is as today there is a royal barge procession on chao phraya, one of the unique events to commemorate the thai king’s 60th year on the throne. Sixty years! And still highly revered and respected by one and all. The only king in the world perhaps that is truly liked and loved by his subjects. The only king that has his picture that I ever see people actually hang in their HOMES, And not just in one or two , but you can see it every where, from the homes of middle class, well educated people to poor farmers in remote regions of chiang rai to nongkhai. I’ve yet to meet any thai that doesn’t have any good words to say about his king, and this is said with all honesty and not out of politeness or fear. Amazing…he must be doing all the right things…

what a far cry from all the rest of royalties in other parts of the world who are largely seen as useless buffoons and treated as decrepit relics of bygone age. Kings and queens who are intent on making fool of themselves or worse …

But a pity, I can only watch this historic event - of strange beautiful and ornate long barges slowly moving along the river with rowers in colorful attires performing orchestrated rowing movements like some form of ballet accompanied by a rather mournful chanting of some sort - on tv as I can’t make it to the riverside on time and join thousands of thais because of this little meeting that I had to attend .

a small aside. One book that I leafed through every now and then and which never fail to keep me green with envy is Irving wallace’s ‘the secret sex lives of famous people’…one of whom was the great thai king mongkut who kept 3000 concubines…a rather excessive number even for a highly tolerant and permissive thai society I guess… but when he had to become a monk (as every thai male has to undergo at some time in his life) he gave consent to any of these young girls to choose if they want to be free and perhaps not surprisingly none did. Goes to show that being a king’s kept woman is a lot better than becoming a poor farmer’s wife…..not very much different from what’s happening these days where everyday you can see big rich fat and ugly businessman with a beautiful young bimbo hanging on to his arm…

Saturday, June 10, 2006

 

crabwalk

Started crabwalk by gunther grass a few weeks back. Reading a few paragraphs on and off intermittently and now only into the first 15 pages or so…I’m that slow… and being dragged down by so many other books half read and all the internet stuff don’t help…incidently, crabwalk is the first fiction I read that have internet stuff –chatrooms, websites, forums… mentioned and described in the way only mr gunther grass can do…

currently juggling between kurt vonnegut’s bluebeard (3/4 way) , a couple of non fictions - Paul Theroux’s ‘Riding the iron rooster’ a travel book on rail journey through china and an old Turkish prison escape adventure ‘midnight express’ which was made into a memorable film by alan Parker in the late seventies. One of the reasons why crabwalk has gone sideways is because I was absorbed with John kennedy toole’s ‘confedaracy of dunces’ but I left the paperback in the back of the hotel limo on the way to Beijing airport last week so perhaps I can get back to the heavier read by the great Mr Gunther Grass now.

Oh, while in Beijing this time, went to lido as usual and got a great box set of 7 dvds from BBC Art collection series – on monet, Picasso, rodin, whistler, Pollock and ‘seeing salvation’ (on evolution of portraits of jesus in western arts over the ages …very fascinating even for non Christians like me) – all fantastic stuff as only bbc can come up with. And another valuable buy was a box set of the whole monty python flying circus comedy classic…every single episode of them! And all these for a very cheap 10 yuan per disc. But the next day went to sunlitung bar district for a drink with some friends and before you get to sit down this old lady came up and shoved a copy of da vincy bloody code up your face (there’s no escaping dan brown anywhere in the world) but we asked her to bring all she have and in ten minutes she brought a huge collection in a black garbage collecting bag and offered each dvd for just 5 yuan! Half the price of what I paid in TOM’s DVD at lido! She did not have all these box sets of course but bought three movies that may be interesting…George Clooney’s ‘good night and good luck’, Spike Lee’s ‘Inside man’ and a Palestinian film ‘paradise now’ by hany abu-assad…

Don’t know when I’ll watch any of these films what with all this soccer madness season now….

And oh oh…went to panyayuan weekend market again and bought three coffee table books on Russian paintings (still life, landscape and potraiture) and a few past years chinese art auction catalogues and one fairly good copy of celadon ceramic with fine crackles…the owner’s initial asking price was 800 yuan, I just took off one zero and asked it for 80 and without hesitation she accepted it straight away. The right price probably is around just 30 yuan!

And oh oh oh… was dragged up the stage in the famous muslim restaurant ‘a fun ti’ to do a male belly dance …the whole place got a comedy sketch for free and what fool I made myself ..and what a riot…my friends laugh and laugh until …well, they stopped.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

 

a little footnote

Just came back a few minutes ago from my Taiwanese friend’s room on the 26th floor of the Shangri La Pudong (with a great view of the Hwangpu river and the vista of concrete jungle along the famous ‘bund’ on Puxi side of shanghai admiring his newly acquired snuff bottles that he got very cheaply from some out of place flea market in a small town which I’ve already forgotten the name of and what did I see on his bed side table? A paperback of da vinci bloody code. Seems I can not get away from this book... it's everywhere...

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