A lame script, some dodgy acting and a flimsy plot won’t stop Transformers being one of the films of the year. From the cartoon to the highly successful toy line, Transformers have played a starring role in many children’s lives.
I used to live in Southampton he said. Oh yeah? Doing what? I replied. I was training for MI6 he responded.
My ears pricked up at this point.
MI6? came my query. Yes he confirmed. So you’re a secret agent? was my probing response.
He actually said he was a secret agent. I frowned for a moment and asked the other people in our small circle of media folk sipping wine, and they confirmed that he wasn’t lying.
Hold up a minute, I thought to myself. A secret agent? Isn’t that classified information? Was I walking to the Thai James Bond? To my surprise, he coolly confirmed he was the Thai James Bond.
A new job, a new city, a new home, a new group of neighbours.
My landlady, in her late-twenties, is youthful, elegant and married. Her husband lives in Bangkok. Her “sister”, who is actually her sister-in-law, is a tall, peculiarly elongated woman who married my landlady’s brother. He, a chubby, bespectacled Thai man, is an agreeable character who is always happy.
An old British man and his Thai wife, of similar age, live upstairs. I have only seen them twice: once on the stairs, when they greeted me as if an old friend, and once in a restaurant that I think they manage together.
Robust in appearance, a stout young farang girl mooches about, driving off on her scooter from time to time. I greeted her with a casual “Hey” once but received nothing but coldness in return. Today she was overheard demanding 299 baht back because the wireless internet has not been working “because of the storm”, as my landlady informed me today.
Another day in Thailand, another hit and run, another life lost, another coward that won’t be brought to justice. It’s tragic that you read so many news reports like this, taken from The Phuket Gazette’s website:
Lamphun Kotpanna, 27, from Sakhon Nakhon, died last night after her motorbike was hit by a pickup truck on the steep hill near the Marina Phuket Resort.
“No witnesses can remember the license plate number, color or make of the pickup truck that hit her because it happened too quickly.
You hear countless tales about people who are hit by drivers who then speed off from the scene, perhaps out of fear, or cowardice, or both. Accidents happen, but this common reaction to run off when they do is awful. This is not to say that such a reaction is intrinsically Thai, but it does happen more than it should in Thailand.
Tonight’s the night that Bangkok’s bloggers will be out in force to put questions to the man who blocked YouTube, Thailand’s Minister for Information and Communication Technology Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom. It might feel like a Bangkok bloggers’ convention in the FCCT tonight, so get down early if you have something on your mind you want to put to Thailand’s most eccentric minister.
So what would you ask Sittichai given the chance? This could be an opportunity to get deep into the mind of the man at the forefront of internet censorship in Thailand, but how much he will be prepared to reveal remains to be seen. Hopefully Sittichai’s advisors will not have a tight leash on him.
Let’s also hope that Bangkok’s bloggers don’t all go in guns blazing with identical questions. The results of tonight’s discussion may prove most interesting. I’ll hand over to all the bloggers in attendance tonight to relay what goes down. I’m going to hazard a guess that the best write-up will come from Real Life Thailand, so keep an eye out.
The event starts at 8 pm on the Penthouse floor of Maneeya Center Building, next to Chit Lom BTS station.
Techno’ tags: Sitthichai
