Pattaya Days

Thank goodness that’s over. For weeks we have been waiting for the decision on Thaksin’s frozen assets. Friday was Judgement Day, and the judges spent 5 hours reading out their conclusions.

The end result was a that $1.4 billion of his assets were confiscated by the state; but that still leaves nearly a billion that was not seized, so the man won’t starve. The response to the verdict from Thaksin was predictable. He did his usual impression of a baby throwing toys out of a pram, with a statement that can be summarised as being “Me! Me! Poor me!”. His supporters seemed disinterested in the fact that he had been found guilty on many counts of abusing power to enrich himself; claiming, with some justification, that all Thai politicians are corrupt, so why pick on Thaksin? So they vow to fight on, for something that is not entirely clear, but they call it democracy; which can be interpreted locally as meaning that whoever can buy the most votes wins. To reinforce the message that the party isn’t over till the fat lady explodes, four grenades were thrown at Bangkok Bank outlets last night.

To an outsider (and probably to most of the Thais, who just wish the problem would go away so they can get on with life), the ongoing political saga here is hard to comprehend. But it’s not my country, so I am happy to remain bemused and generally disinterested.

And anyway, in the wider scheme of things, nicking a billion dollars is not a big deal. Silvio Berlusconi has similar charges of profiting from office laid against him; but redeems himself by being a buffoon who plays around with prostitutes; someone the Italian people can take to their hearts. Ciao! And then of course there is the mass murdering war criminal Blair. Why is he still prancing around, making millions, rather than rotting in prison or, preferably, being placed in front of a firing squad? I am bemused and very angry. Next to him, Thaksin’s misdemeanours are trivial.

And it was good to see that triviality continues to occupy the fine policemen of Pattaya. While their colleagues in Bangkok were dealing with grenade attacks, the Pattaya contingent stopped a young man on his motorbike and discovered a collection of ladies underwear under the seat. The bike rider gave the perfectly reasonable excuse that he had discovered the knickers hanging on his bike, mistook them for dusters, and stowed them for future use. The police, presumably suspecting the man to be the notorious Pattaya knicker nicker, impounded his bike as “evidence”. I am bemused and amused; which is the best of all the bemused conditions, and one of the reasons why I love living here.

18:52 Today. 300mm lens with 1.4 adapter

Excellent name for a movie or a computer game I think.

But in this case it refers to the latest enterprise from our wonderful police force, intended to eradicate the hooker/pimp/drug dealing fraternity that inhabits the beach road in Pattaya. “Crackdowns” are common place here and have three recurring features. Firstly, they are announced with great fanfare. Secondly, they never last more than a day. And finally they always spectacularly fail to resolve the problem they are meant to be addressing.

This latest crackdown, like so many before it, was aimed at the hookers rather than the more nasty pimps and drug dealers who are likely to be armed with something pointy, or even a gun; and are therefore best left alone. Anyway, it is more fun to round up sixty hookers (two thirds women, one third men pretending to be women), take them all down to the police station, relieve them of some cash; and then deliver them back where they came from so they can continue plying their trade (with increased vigour to cover the fine they have just paid).

Other than boosting police funds, no doubt the boys in brown felt that a small fine and a telling-off would be enough to persuade these sad people that they should stop being a hooker and go and do something else, like chartered accountancy or, more realistically, begging.

But a quick check on beach road this morning confirmed that nothing had changed:

So far this year we have had a pirated software crackdown, a foreign criminal in Thailand crackdown, a hooker crackdown, a foreign-operated sex bar crackdown, and an illegal immigrant crackdown. It’s all rather hard to keep up with. I think it would be easier for all of us if the authorities could provide a web-based crackdown schedule so we can be aware of which problem is not being solved at any particular time.

www.crackdowns_R_us.com

Photography has a set of unofficial rules, repeated frequently by the monthly camera rags under different headings to fool you into believing there is something new to be read. One of these rules states that you should keep your shutter speed higher than the focal length of your lens. This assumes that you actually know the focal length of your camera, or actually give a shit about producing a photo which has any degree of sharpness. Judging on output, Billy can stop reading now, although I am sure his fragrant and talented wife knows exactly what I am talking about.

So if your lens is 50mm, keep your shutter speed higher than 1/50th second. 150mm; more than 1/150th second; and so on. All this assumes your subject is static. If it is moving, then other considerations come into play. Polo, for example, has a horse moving vertically and horizontally at the same time. I shoot with a 300mm lens, but 1/300th second is not enough to give a sharp image. So I use 1/640th which is fast enough to freeze the rider and most of the horse, but still provides some blurring of the hooves and lower leg to give a sense of action.

So if you look closely at this shot:

The rider and body of the horse are sharp:

But the legs are nicely blurred to reinforce the sense of movement:

Bikes present a different problem. Apart from some general vibration in all directions, they tend to confine themselves to a horizontal direction. So shooting at 1/400th with a 300mm lens produces a sharp image, like this (although you still need to pan the shot accurately to get a sharp result):

Warning: if you click on these bike shots you will see larger images than usual.

But while you are more likely to get a sharp photo, the result can look a little static:

So, you have to break the rules and drop the shutter speed. Accurate panning becomes even more important and you will throw away many more than you keep.

1/250th:

1/200th

1/160th

1/125th

Hard to capture at these lower speeds, but it looks good when it works.

But there is another problem with shooting bikes at Bira, and you can see hints of it in a couple of the above shots; and very clearly here:

Looks like a delinquent child has ruined an otherwise awesome photo by scribbling on it with green crayon. But it’s grass. The inside of every corner of Bira is covered with thick grass, such that it can feel more like you are on safari rather than at a race track.

I’m going to buy a strimmer.

All the bike shots taken yesterday when the Honda racing team were in town with both Thai and Japanese riders. I have the dubious distinction of being told off by the head of Honda racing for standing in a dangerous position on the outside of one of the fastest corners. He was right, if the bike had crashed, I would have been killed. Still, I did get a nice shot from that position:

Shutter speed was a bit high though, will have to go and take it again when “Mr. Safety” is not looking.

As the proprietor of this throbbing organ, I am approached almost daily with tempting offers, many of which I find it hard to refuse. Even now, the postal network is straining under the load of transporting assorted dubious medications to my door, and my limited savings are being invested in a variety of schemes with new friends from Nigeria who honestly intend sending me large amounts of cash soon.

And now this, from someone called Pam. I know she is called Pam because she starts her message with:

“My name is Pam, and I am part of the outreach team for a new blog monetization network. We have recently launched a sponsored blog post offering that is looking to add quality sites such as your own to our offerings.”

I got as far as “Pam” but then my eyes started to glaze over when she told me she was part of the outreach team. What the hell is an outreach team? Never mind, the team is working on a “new blog monetization network”, which I assume it outreach-team-speak for making money from blogging. Sound good Pam, tell me more; more specifically tell me what a “sponsored blog post offering” entails.

But it’s too late, Pam has already launched into the next paragraph:

“What is the difference between us and other sponsored post services?”
Let me guess, yours is impossible to understand when sober? But she continues:

“We are not looking for authors to provide sponsored reviews of products and services. Instead, we offer opportunities for writers to create content related to the vertical of their website, and monetize that content.”

Well, it is English Pam, but not as we know it. You don’t want to sponsor reviews? Well, that is a shame because I could do that. I can fawn effusively over any damn product you like if you pay me. Damn it, I’ll even say nice things about Sony if there is enough cash on the table. But no, you want me to create content related to the vertical of my website. I’m really not sure I know how to do that.

Which is a shame, because then Pam tells me:

“If accepted into our offering you will receive opportunities with basic writing directions that match your vertical. You will then need to simply follow the directions in the opportunity to get receive payment. When does payment come in? When you report the link to the post back to us.”

To be blunt, Pam; I think some basic writing directions are required at the outreach team level too.

She closes with:
“It’s that easy. It’s that transparent. We are not asking you to review products or services you may never have tried, or mislead your readers. In fact, we pride ourselves on our transparency, and mindset towards community building. If you are interested in our offering simply fill out this form http://blogvertising.org/ . We will review your site more thoroughly to make sure it meets the quality metrics we look to offer, and contact you once accepted.”

That’s a double dose of transparency, but it’s still opaque to me. Anyway, I don’t think I meet the required quality metrics when I include statements such as the following in my blog:

Dear Pam
Please fuck off. Vertically.
love
Spike

Every year I suffer a little peak of stress when my visa renewal comes around. 90% of this is caused by the knowledge I will have to descend into the bowels of hell that is the immigration office and queue, often with people who have clearly not washed for a while, for several hours. And 8% is caused by the fear that immigration might say “no”, and I will have to leave this fine country which I am so lucky to call my home. And 2% is rounding errors.

Usually, I resolve the queuing issue by being outside immigration at least half an hour before they open. I’d rather 30 minutes in the open air, than a couple of hours in the fetid interior, sat next to Boris in a Chang T-shirt who is systematically extracting black stuff from between his toes. But this morning I was forced to wait until the British Council opened their office at 0900 (0904 actually), so that I could collect the expensive piece of paper I ordered yesterday.

So it was almost half past nine before I made my way into immigration and the man behind the counter gave me number 666. “Ah, the number of the beast!”, I bantered. He gave me one of those looks.

I sat down and perused the flashing numbers board, the closest number I could find was 578; it was going to be a long wait. Luckily I had with me the latest book by Richard Dawkins, with a healthy 400+ pages to pass the time. But no sooner had I started absorbing why birds are more likely than insects to fertilise red flowers, than 666 was called and I was at the desk of the man whose face I have seen every year for five years. He perused the mound of paperwork I offered, relieved me of 1,900 baht; and I was then sent to the next chair where the supervisor did another check of my submission and asked me the same question she does every year, “do you own or rent?” This year I was ready with my condo book which I waved in her general direction and before I knew it I was out in the street with a numbered card which I take back on Thursday to collect my passport. Total time, about twenty minutes.

So, there we are, permission to stay. Personally I am most relieved, and I think Wigandays.com would be considerably less entertaining, for me anyway.

It’s the year of the tiger, and that means there is no shortage of idiots who will consider anything related to a tiger to be lucky, and I am not talking about Tigger toys.

An abbot of a temple in Nakhon Ratchasima, in between meditating and acting like a monk, saw a business opportunity in the foolishness of others; and decided to get into the lucky tiger parts trade. Trouble is, it’s not that easy to get your hands on bits of tiger, what with them being protected and also having exceedingly large teeth. So the abbot hit upon a cunning plan to upgrade the domestic cat. He obtained skins of dead cats (and some dogs) and nipped down to the local DIY shop for a can of orange paint, a can of black paint, and a brush. Painted some orange and black stripes on the cat and dog skins and, hey presto, tiger skin!!

Some purchasers became suspicious when the not-quite-dry paint on their newly acquired lucky tiger skins, came off on their hands.

The abbot has been arrested on the charge of fraud. His customers should be arrested for being gullible muppets.

It’s visa renewal time, and as part of the truckload of documentation that the fine people at immigration require, I need a statement confirming my income.

For some reason, I am not to be trusted to write “I earn ten million baht a week. True.” in green crayon on a piece of tatty paper. Instead I have to get the British government to do it for me. So it is down to the British Consul office to present my credentials. I need to fill out a form containing my name and address, and write my monthly income. This amount has to be supported by some sort of documentation, in my case a slip of paper from my previous employer stating my pension (a.k.a. “the pittance”). In return the Consul’s office will fill in my name and address and the amount on a standard letter and give it to me (but not until the following day because everything done by the British government takes at least a day).

And of course there is a fee. To put this in some form of context; if I want a medical certificate I can go to a local doctor who will prod me around a bit and then write out a certificate. He will do this while I wait and charge me 200 baht. A little pricey; but then he is a professional man who spent many years in training, developing the skills to check I am still alive.

And the charge from the British Embassy for their standard letter, knocked out by a clerk after a delay of a day? One thousand, nine hundred and eight baht!! For some more context, that would pay for my lunch (with drink) for 36 days. It would buy The Ghost two women, it would buy Jock six women (one of whom might actually be a woman).

It’s scandalous. We pay our taxes (well, you pay your taxes. I haven’t paid UK taxes since 1984), and then our government servants screw us with things like this.

I’ve a good mind to write to my MP; if I had one.

Bit of an upset in the UK recently, when a bomb detecting device being sold by a British company to a variety of countries was revealed to be useless. The director of the company selling the device was arrested for misrepresentation and exports of the device were banned. And guess who had already bought a shitload of these over-priced toys? Yep, Thailand.

The Thai government have now tested the device, known as the GT200, and have confirmed that it does not work. The Thai army, who laid out the cash for the devices and has been using them in the South of Thailand, disagree and insists that the GT200 works well. So they called a press conference to make their case.

Preparations for the conference went something like this:

Well, Private Somchai, we need to persuade the Thai public that these GT200s work and are a good deal.
Yes Sir! Could be a bit difficult though sir.
Nonsense! Our first argument will be that they have saved lives and are very effective. The UK government says they don’t work, the Thai government says they don’t work; but they don’t wave them around every day like we do. We will say they have saved 7,000 lives; that’s an impressive number.
Very good sir. But the value for money aspect may be a little difficult. A UK scientist says the device is basically a box with a car aerial attached to it.
Ah yes, but I bet the box is stuffed full of complex electronics.
It’s an empty plastic box sir.
What about the different cards you insert to detect different substances? I bet they are really advanced.
Mainly cardboard sir, with a circuit of the type that is used to stop people nicking stuff from shops. It is estimated that entire device costs less than 1,000 baht to construct. How much did we pay for them sir?
More than one million baht.
Well, we bought about 800 units, so that is just a little bit more than 1,000 baht a unit. We got a pretty good deal thanks to our transparent and effective procurement procedures designed to obtain technically acceptable goods at the lowest price. Do you like they way I said that sir? I have learned to say “our transparent and effective procurement procedures designed to obtain technically acceptable goods at the lowest price” without laughing.
Yes Somchai, very droll; but the one million baht cost is per unit. We have spent more than 800 million baht on these pieces of crap. There must be a way we can make them seem more high tech and complex.
I think I have a solution sir!
Do tell Somchai, and it better be good; not like that rubbish you came up with about those refugees who paddled themselves out to sea with no food and water, “for a bet”.
Well sir, my cousin plays a lot of computer games, and he has a souped-up graphics card so he can play “Ninja Giraffe Heroes” at full resolution. The graphics card looks really complex. So we use a photo of all the circuitry to illustrate the complexity of the device.
So we show people a photo of a computer graphics card board and pretend it is the non-existent circuitry of the bomb detector?
Yes!
They will never believe that!
Ah, but here is the good bit sir. The graphics card is called the Nvidia GT200! It’s got the same name!! We just stick up a photo of the GT200 graphics card and everyone will accept that it is somehow a component of the GT200 detector.
Somchai, you are a genius; that just might work!

And so a man in a uniform stood in front of the Thai press yesterday and extolled the virtues of the GT200 bomb detector, whilst a photo of the Nvidia GT200 graphics card was displayed in the background.

Read that last sentence again. They really did that…

Watch the video here:

Just as well the device wasn’t called a Tantalizing Torpedo.

My outfit of choice for a photography session emphasises comfort over style. In fact style is not a consideration at all. Whatever T-shirt is on top of the magically replenished pile in the wardrobe, pair of tatty jeans and my beloved Caterpillar boots which have not been cleaned since I lived in England. Top the lot with a scruffy, floppy, blue hat. So it would be fair to say that I was outdone by this gentleman:

It was not surprising to discover that he was Swiss, but a little surprising to find out that he is a doctor for biological medicine; because I have no idea what that involves. Biological weapons, bad. Biological medicine, good. How do you differentiate?

Anyway, he was shooting with a thirty year old Canon which used to belong to his wife. It was packed in a neat silver case with an assortment of lenses and he was very proud of carrying on his wife’s tradition. He certainly looked very cool:

While I machine-gunned my way through 800+ shots, he took a leisurely film’s worth of 36 exposures; and decided he would keep his second film for another day. And it spite of my high image count; his more relaxed approach may well have produced some better photographs.

Not sure I could return to the world of film shooting though; but I do rather fancy a hat like that.