REGULARS
Another New Year
As I get on in life and Father Time starts to take his toll I keep thinking of one of Oscar Wilde's quotes “Youth is wasted on the young”
People tend to associate maturity with age but my experience tells me differently.
How many times in Thailand have you heard a beautiful young girl say to a 70-year-old farang “Come inside handsome man”? - And the mature in age believes her.
Why do so many fairly financially poor old people try and tell financially successful young people how to live. Parental guidance is of course I believe necessary to produce a mature adult and I am in no way associating success in life with money only, but this column is about money. There are also very successful individuals who never had a family upbringing.
This is the time of year when many people get very introspective and an annual personal financial inventory is a great idea for those seeking financial success. After all what great company does not have a regular financial inventory?
For those living here on a state pension from abroad perhaps helped by a small company pension, (let's call them category 1) there are not many options. The best hope is that their income will last until there are no more new years and leave a small pension for their wife and family.
If these people don't have life insurance to help educate their children then they may be even irresponsible. They must also hope that Immigration don't go any further in increasing financial stability requirements for residency here.
The next type of retiree (category 2) has a good company pension supported by a lump sum up to maybe half a million dollars.
Seek good financial advice and buy a “Fortuner” instead of a second hand Merc.
Nobody really cares what you drive here and it's difficult to impress well off Thais who can drive around in 12 to 20 million baht vehicles. I realize that the sensible farangs would rather put this type of money into a condo or house.
The third type of farang (Category 3) is the guy where money is no object. Some will have huge mansions and big cars in the driveway and live lavishly. Others will live modestly and perhaps drive a pick up truck. The point is it's up to them what lifestyle they want to live.
They earned it and they now have a choice. And I guess that that's what financial success is all about-Choice.
If I don't have it then I am condemned to working until I drop in a job I dislike, staying in an apartment I loathe with noisy people I dislike.
Choice can insulate me from this lifestyle. I can live where I like for as long as I like, travel when I feel like it and relax.
Intelligent people know that having choice does not protect me from life's inevitable tragedies, which also happen to poor people.
No matter what your position in life is there are few who would not prefer to have a lot of money. If you deny this then you could get it and give it away to the needy.
So the big question at this New Year for those who are still young and healthy is how do I make sure that when I retire I am in category 3?
The answer is relatively simple. Save and don't spend everything you earn. Self gratification by having this gadget that new car that great holiday now will eventually destroy your financial stability. Where is that laptop you spent your hard earned on five years ago?
Deep down you probably realize that the world is your oyster if you have the courage to face up to it. If you have had the benefit of a Western education, are fit and well, you can do anything.
Whether you end up in category 1 or category 3 is entirely up to you. Take responsibility for your life and as the old philosopher said, “You are where you are today because that's exactly where you want to be.” Maybe an unpalatable truth but you have the power to change it. Remember it doesn't take brains or intelligence to accumulate money. Just don't spend it.
After you've completed your personal inventory, please have a happy and prosperous New Year.
Your comments to jerry@swissinvestcenter.net
Mag's Page
Well folks it's all over again, and hopefully you had a good one. (Christmas that is)
I wonder how many of your Thai friends and colleagues joined in the festivities and made the most of the eating, drinking and merrymaking? Quite a lot I bet.
Did any of them think it was odd, or even insulting, to be celebrating what is essentially a Christian festival? Unlikely isn't it. It was just another opportunity to party, in the same way as we farangs join in at Loi Krathong or the Chinese New Year.
And why not I hear you say. Where is this leading us this month?
Well in case you were too bogged down celebrating to notice, the Powers That Be back in England were having a whale of a time being Politically Correct. So much so that several plots were lost in the process!
In December 3 out of every 4 employers in the UK were reported to have banned traditional Christmas decorations for fear of causing offence to their non-Christian employees. Apparently they were worried about being sued for religious discrimination by Jewish, Hindu and Muslim staff whose own festivals were not recognised in the workplace. So rather than opting to celebrate Hanukkah and all (which would seem to be a sensible way round the problem) the cheapskates chose to ignore the whole thing.
Then the traditional office party came under fire, with debates about the risk of civil litigation by staff unfortunate enough to get drunk and hurt themselves in works time. It seems that even hiring a separate venue for parties wouldn't solve the potential problem because the employer would still be responsible for putting temptation in people's way.
That one brought back fond memories of office parties and ghosts of Christmases past - with mushy peas splattered on walls, staff splattered, hospital cases, and the boss throwing up in a waste bin. Happy days.
As if to justify their Scrooge-like fears some 47% of employers claimed that Christmas decorations made the workplace look unprofessional, while some local councils went so far as to ban them in shopping centres and public areas.
Then a local authority run playgroup in Sheffield stepped into the fray by deciding that Christmas would not be referred to at all, because non-Christian children would feel excluded. Instead their celebrations and events would be held in honour of a “Winter Festival”.
So now we must avoid the risk of offending kids as well. No doubt before long the little angels will be taking their kindergarten teachers to small claims courts for mentioning Santa.
Can you imagine it? No, neither can I. Surely children should be encouraged to learn about other cultures and to respect other religions from an early age. Otherwise they will grow up to be even more PC and paranoid than our present Powers That Be.
And always remember folks - a chimney isn't just for Christmas. (Sorry - the Winter Festival)
Happy New Year all.
d'Geek
Welcome to this month's column which focuses mainly On technological developments for the future, like Wireless recharging, as well as those coming into use Now, such as robotics in schools, augmented reality Is relatively established technology that has not been Fully explored - find out more in d'geek.
WIRELESS RECHARGING?
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher has explained how the batteries of portable electronic devices could be wirelessly - and safely - recharged. Such a technological feat could be accomplished by matching the source and receiver in frequency, similar to radio, MIT Assistant Professor Marin Soljacic said at a physics conference in San Francisco this week. The method could enable efficient power transfer over short distances.
Soljacic, who co-authored a paper on the subject with MIT colleagues,
recognized the real-world complexities that stand in the way of widespread use
of such a technology. Still, it could enable such “novel applications” as powering
handheld devices in a room or robotic devices in a factory, he suggested.
The MIT team investigated how energy can be transferred efficiently from one long-lifetime resonant electromagnetic state to another through the use of long-tailed, non-radiative modes, Soljacic reported. Tuning the drain and the source
of energy to the same long-lifetime frequency should enable very efficient energy exchange with negligible interaction with other off-resonant objects, he explained.
Considering the number of laptops, mobile phones and other devices that presently require wires to recharge their power sources, Soljacic's talk has already generated significant buzz in the industry. While freely radiative transfer models work for data transfer -- including the 802.11 WiFi wireless technology widely used in offices, homes and public places -- the model does not work for power transfer because most of the energy ends up wasted. However, Soljacic and fellow researchers contend that if the source and receiving device are both resonating on the same frequency, a wireless power transfer could take place in a room or even a factory pavilion.
DataComm President Ira Brodsky take on this was that given the challenges and
possible hazards of such a technology, it would take a more compelling reason than the replacement of a three-foot electrical cord to justify its development, and while he recognized the potential for specialized applications of the wireless energy technology -- particularly in such areas as radio frequency identification (RFID) -- Brodsky said he remains sceptical.
SPECIAL NEEDS ROBOTICS
Robotics, which has played a longstanding role in industrial applications, has
finally entered the classroom in the form of applications for disabled students. It's a trend that could move beyond special needs and into the education mainstream. Gallaudet University , a school for the deaf and hard of hearing, recently added Anystream's Apreso Classroom, which captures lectures and makes them available online for students to download and review.
Gallaudet's goal is to improve comprehension and address the challenges faced b the 10 percent of its freshman class who are new to sign language. “We believe lecture-capturing technology will be as common as LCD projectors
within five to 10 years, because the benefits are so abundant and obvious,” says Mark Jones, vice president of education products for Anystream. “We have optimized versions of our software for the visually impaired as well, so they can use a screen reader to read it. Accessibility is essential to serving higher education.” Other universities have implemented Apreso Classroom - but at Gallaudet, it's the robotics that gives the technology a futuristic spin. A robotic camera tracks signed interactions occurring in the classroom. Those interactions become closedcaptioned so that the students who are new to sign language can develop their communication skills.
“Apreso's closed captioning provides our new signers the invaluable opportunity
to view video of their professors presenting course content paired with captions,
ensuring the comprehension and retention of course materials while their sign
language skills develop,” said Gallaudet's eLearning Manager Earl Parks.
Apreso Classroom can be scheduled to run automatically, so professors don't need to spend much time learning how to operate the system or alter the way they teach, Jones said.
AIR GUITAR GOES HI TECH!
It doesn't fight disease or help with global warming, but Australian scientists are thrilled with a technological advance that harnesses the very latest in biotechnology: a T-shirt impregnated with sensors that allows the wearer to wirelessly generate sounds through computer. Richard Helmer, a researcher at the taxpayer-funded CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization), told reporters Monday that his team had come up with the perfect product for the aspiring air-guitarist because arm movements alone could bring forth music.
“It's all sample-based, so basically you're choosing a chord which is a pre-recorded chord being played,” Helmer said. “We could do it more sophisticated than that, but that's what we're doing for the demonstrator that we [have] at the moment.”
AR YOU READY?
Virtual reality has been a rich vein of computer science for fiction writers and
movie makers, but its less heralded cousin, augmented reality (AR), may have a
greater influence over how we lead our daily lives in the future AR overlays the virtual world on the real world in real time. While virtual reality attempts to insulate itself from the real world, augmented reality extends the
virtual world into the real one.
A common use of AR is in TV sports, visible to TV viewers but not to players
or fans at the game. So, too, is the use of “blue screen” technology to project
advertisements on backstops behind sportsmen. “In the future, we will not be getting information principally or exclusively through looking at a computer screen, but by looking at something that's in the real world and a display that's integrated with that,” says Henry Fuchs, a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina. “What augmented reality will do is unify the real world with the computer display of it,” he added.
Although the computer science community has maintained its interest in virtual
reality over the years, AR's road to development has been a rocky one.
“Virtual reality has made some progress in game applications and virtual design,
but augmented reality is entirely different,” says Rolf R. Hainich, author of The
End of Hardware: A Novel Approach to Augmented Reality. “It hasn't made progress,” he continued. “People abandoned the field years ago. It's just recently that it's been rediscovered.” Part of that rediscovery may be related to the rapid development of the cell phone, which is considered a very promising area for AR technology, as a team of researchers at Nokia (NYSE: NOK) demonstrated last month at the fifth International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in Santa Barbara, Calif.
The team from Nokia's Mobile Augmented Reality Applications (MARA) project
has created a prototype phone that actually makes objects in the real world
hyperlink to information on the Internet. Using the phone's built in camera, a user can highlight objects on the mobile phone's LCD and pull in additional information about them from the Internet. Moreover, by altering the orientation of the phone, the display will toggle between live view and satellite map view. In map view, nearby real world objects are highlighted for convenient reference.
Cell phones appear to be ripe for early AR applications, according to Steven K.
Feiner, a computer science professor at Columbia University. Not only are cell phones becoming cheaper and more powerful, he noted, but they combine hardware components that support AR applications, such as digital cameras, global positioning (GPS) sensors, and wireless Internet connections “AR applications for cell phones are near-term,” he says. “If you know where you
are with things like GPS , you can do a quite decent job of adding additional
information.
“GPS, at least the kind that normally gets put into cell phones, is not amazingly
accurate,” he observed. “We're looking at being off by many, many metres.”
However, he continued, when using the camera in the phone and a database of
geocoded imagery, the GPS readings can be corrected to produce a more accurate indication of a user's location.
“That enables you to overlay information on what you're seeing
in a very precise way,” he said. “If I'm a tourist, I can walk around and see the
hours for a museum, a restaurant's menu or historical information about a building without having to pull out any of a variety of guidebooks and look things up in them.”
Although much of the technology exists to make many AR applications a reality,
other factors will determine when and if AR products will reach consumers,
according to Feiner. “The availability of a lot of these technologies depends less on technology decisions than marketing decisions,” he maintained, “decisions made by people with MBAs rather than technologists.”
Earth Report
Alternative vehicle fuel
PETROLEUM ELECTRIC HYBRID VEHICLES: A PEHV is a vehicle using an on-board rechargeable energy storage system (RESS) and a fuelled power source for vehicle propulsion. The HV pollutes less and uses less fuel during its useful life, although a two-year study by CNW Marketing Research could suggest that the extra energy cost of manufacture, shipping, disposal, and the short lives of these types of vehicle outweighs any energy savings made by their efficient propulsion system, thus their total dust to dust energy cost is potentially higher. The different propulsion power systems may have common subsystems or components. The HV provides better fuel economy than a conventional vehicle because the engine is smaller and may be run at speeds providing more efficiency. Other techniques may be used to recover or reduce waste energy (such as regenerative braking and shutting down the combustion engine).
PEHVs most commonly use internal combustion engines and electric batteries to power electric motors. Modern mass-produced hybrids prolong the charge on their batteries by capturing kinetic energy via regenerative braking. As well, when cruising or in other situations where just light thrust is needed, “full” hybrids can use the combustion engine to generate electricity by spinning an electrical generator (often a second electric motor to either recharge the battery or directly feed power to an electric motor that drives the vehicle. This contrasts with all-electric cars that use batteries charged by an external source such as the grid, or a range extending trailer. Nearly all hybrids still require gasoline and diesel as their sole fuel source though other fuels such as ethanol or plant based oils have also seen occasional use.
ALCOHOL FUELLED VEHICLES: Alcohols have been popular alternative fuels for many years. In fact, Henry Ford's first car was fuelled with alcohol. Both ethanol and methanol are now used as transportation fuels and will likely play an increasingly important role in the future. The first four aliphatic alcohols (methanol, ethanol, propanol, and butanol) are of interest as fuels because they can be synthesized biologically, and they have characteristics that allow them to be used in current engines. One advantage shared by all four alcohols is octane rating. Biobutanol has the additional attraction that its energy per kilogram is closer to gasoline than the other alcohols (while still retaining over 25% higher octane rating).
Methanol and Ethanol both have advantages and disadvantages over fossil fuels, such as petrol and diesel. For instance, ethanol can run at a much higher compression ratio without octane-boosting additives (its octane rating is 129 as opposed to approximately 91 for ordinary petrol). It burns more completely because ethanol molecules contain oxygen; carbon monoxide emissions are 100% lower than fossil-fuelled engines because the only products of an ethanol combustion reaction are carbon dioxide, water, and heat.
However, ethanol is degrading to some plastic or rubber parts of fuel delivery systems designed to use petrol, and has 37% less energy per litre than petrol. Methanol is even more corrosive and its energy per litre is 55% lower than that of petrol. High compression ratios and corrosion-resistant materials can overcome these issues, but require extensive engine modification.
Methanol has also been proposed as a fuel of the future. There has been extensive use of methanol fuel in Funny Cars for years, and it has been the fuel of Indy car racing in North America since 1965.
Ethanol is already being used extensively as a fuel additive, and the use of ethanol fuel alone or as part of a mix with gasoline is increasing. In 2007, the Indy Racing League will use ethanol as its exclusive fuel, after 40 years of using methanol. Ethanol can be mass-produced by fermentation of sugar or by hydration of ethylene from petroleum and other sources. Current interest in ethanol lies in production derived from crops (bio-ethanol), since it is a sustainable energy resource that offers environmental and long-term economic advantages over fossil fuels, like gasoline or diesel. It is readily obtained from the starch or sugar in a wide variety of crops. Ethanol fuel production depends on availability of land area, soil, water, and sunlight. Flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) are specially designed vehicles that can operate on alcohol, gasoline or any combination of the two. FFVs have become quite popular with California fleets. Although some vehicles run on pure alcohol, FFVs operate on alcohol blends for two main reasons. Adding a small amount of gasoline improves the engine starting in cold weather and improves flame visibility in daylight. Pure alcohols burn with a nearly invisible flame in daylight. By adding gasoline, the flame is easier to see and therefore safer.
The alcohols used in FFVs are E85 (85 percent ethanol with 15 percent gasoline, or M85 (85 percent methanol and 15 percent gasoline). FFVs are specially designed to tolerate the corrosive nature of alcohols.
Propanol and butanol are considerably less toxic and less volatile than methanol. In particular, butanol has a high flashpoint of 35 °C, which is a benefit for fire safety, but may be a difficulty for starting engines in cold weather. The concept of flash point is however not directly applicable to engines as the compression of the air in the cylinder means that the temperature is several hundred degrees Celsius before ignition takes place.
The fermentation processes to produce propanol and butanol from cellulose are fairly tricky to execute, and the Weizmann organism (Clostridium acetobutylicum) currently used to perform these conversions produces an extremely unpleasant smell, and this must be taken into consideration when designing and locating a fermentation plant. This organism also dies when the butanol content of whatever it is fermenting rises to 7%. For comparison, yeast dies when the ethanol content of its feedstock hits 14%. Specialized strains can tolerate even greater ethanol concentrations - so-called turbo yeast can withstand up to 16% ethanol.
Despite these drawbacks, DuPont, British Petroleum, and British Sugar Corporation have reportedly started to convert an ethanol plant in the United Kingdom to produce butanol fuel from sugar beets (and in the future perhaps other starting materials).
NATURAL GAS VEHICLE: A Natural gas vehicle or NGV is a vehicle that uses compressed natural gas (CNG) or, less commonly, liquefied natural gas (LNG)) as a clean alternative to other automobile fuels. Worldwide, there are roughly 4 million NGVs as of 2004, with the largest number of NGVs in Argentina, Brazil, and Pakistan. They are also popular in Italy and Germany.
NGV's have the advantage of being potentially refuelled at home from existing natural gas lines with home refuelling stations that tap into such lines. Honda has pioneered such a system known as “Phill”.
While existing gasoline-powered vehicles may be converted to CNG, an increasing number of vehicles worldwide are being manufactured to run on CNG. For example, in Klang Valley, Malaysia taxis had converted theirs car to NGV, greatly reducing the cost of operation. GM do Brasil introduced in August, 2004 the MultiPower engine, which was capable to use NGV, alcohol and petrol as fuel, since it's electronic fuel injection could adapt automatically to any acceptable fuel configuration. This motor equipped the Chevrolet Astra and was aimed at the taxis market. In Bangkok there are now a large number of taxis and private cars equipped to run on CNG, and you may notice this if the driver loads something into the boot, as this is where the gas tank on converted taxis is housed. Although a localized problem, NGV refill stations can be scarce in some places, so cab drivers need to wait in long queues to refill. Natural gas has long been considered an alternative fuel for the transportation sector. In fact, natural gas has been used to fuel vehicles since the 1930's!
According to the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, there are currently more than 2.5 million NGVs worldwide. In recent years, technology has improved to allow for a proliferation of natural gas vehicles, particularly for fuel intensive vehicle fleets, such as taxicabs and public buses. However, virtually all types of natural gas vehicles are either in production today for sale to the public or in development, from passenger cars, trucks, buses, vans, and even heavy-duty utility vehicles. Despite these advances, a number of disadvantages of NGVs prevent their mass-production. Limited range, trunk space, higher initial cost, and lack of refuelling infrastructure pose impediments to the future spread of natural gas vehicles.
Most natural gas vehicles operate using compressed natural gas (CNG). This compressed gas is stored in similar fashion to a car's gasoline tank, attached to the rear, top, or undercarriage of the vehicle in a tube shaped storage tank. A CNG tank can be filled in a similar manner, and in a similar amount of time, to a gasoline tank.
This natural gas fuels a combustion engine similar to engines fuelled by other sources. However, in a NGV, several components require modification to allow the engine to run efficiently on natural gas. In addition to using CNG, some natural gas vehicles are fuelled by Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Some natural gas vehicles that exist today are bi-fuel vehicles, meaning they can use gasoline or natural gas, allowing for more flexibility in fuel choice. Many of these vehicles, which were originally gasoline only, have been converted to allow the vehicle to run on either fuel. This conversion is costly, and typically results in less efficient use of natural gas.
There are many reasons why NGVs are increasing in abundance and popularity. Emissions laws worldwide are increasingly requiring an improvement in vehicle emissions over the foreseeable future. Natural gas, being the cleanest burning alternative transportation fuel available today, offers an opportunity to meet stringent environmental emissions standards.
In addition, natural gas is very safe. Being lighter than air, in the event of an accident natural gas simply dissipates into the air, instead of forming a dangerous flammable pool on the ground like other liquid fuels. This also prevents the pollution of ground water in the event of a spill. Natural gas fuel storage tanks on current NGVs are stronger and sturdier than gasoline tanks.
One of the primary reasons for pursuing alternative fuelled vehicle technology is to decrease environmentally harmful emissions. It is estimated that vehicles on the road account for 60 percent of carbon monoxide pollution, 29 percent of hydrocarbon emissions, and 31 percent of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions in the America. All of these emissions released into the atmosphere contribute to smog pollution, and increase the levels of dangerous ground level ozone. Vehicles also account for the emission of over half of all dangerous air pollutants, and around 30 percent of total carbon emissions in America, contributing to the presence of ‘greenhouse gases' in the atmosphere. The environmental effects of NGVs are much less detrimental than traditionally fuelled vehicles.
Natural gas vehicles, when designed to run on natural gas alone, are among the cleanest vehicles in the world. In fact, the Honda Civic GX, released in 1997, has the cleanest internal combustion engine ever commercially produced. This natural gas powered automobile emits so few pollutants that in some large cities the emissions from the car are cleaner than the air surrounding it! California, with some of the tightest clean air standards anywhere in the United States, has recognized selected natural gas vehicles as meeting and exceeding its most stringent standards, including low-emission vehicle (LEV), ultra-low emission vehicle (ULEV), and super-low emission vehicle (SULEV) standards.
Natural gas vehicles are much cleaner burning than traditionally fuelled vehicles due to the chemical composition of natural gas. While natural gas is primarily methane, gasoline and diesel fuels contain numerous other harmful compounds that are released into the environment through vehicle exhaust. While natural gas may emit small amounts of ethane, propane, and butane when used as a vehicular fuel, it does not emit many of the other, more harmful substances emitted by the combustion of gasoline or diesel. These compounds include volatile organic compounds, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides (which combine in the atmosphere to produce ground level ozone), benzene, arsenic, nickel, and over 40 other substances classified as toxic by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Dedicated NGVs also produce, on average, 70 percent less carbon monoxide, 89 percent less non-methane organic gas, and 87 percent less NOx than traditional gasoline powered vehicles.
Natural gas vehicles as they exist today are best suited for large fleets of vehicles that drive many miles a day. Taxicabs, transit and school buses, airport shuttles, construction vehicles, garbage trucks, delivery vehicles, and public works vehicles are all well suited to natural gas fuelling. Because these vehicles are centrally maintained and fuelled, it is economical and beneficial to convert to natural gas.
The primary impediments to the public proliferation of NGVs include the high initial cost, limited refuelling infrastructure, and automobile performance characteristics. NGVs, despite being cheaper to refuel and maintain, are more expensive initially than their gasoline powered counterparts. However, as the technology becomes more advanced, the cost of manufacturing these vehicles should drop, which may then be passed along to the consumers.
Natural gas vehicles have suffered in the past from limited driving range and limited storage space, due to the volume of the CNG that must be carried on-board. However, research is currently underway to develop a mid-sized NGV, with similar range and storage space as its gasoline powered counterpart. It is expected that with improved technology, research, and infrastructure, the use of NGVs in non-fleet settings will increase in the future. Natural gas vehicles present an exciting opportunity to reduce the damage of one of our most polluting sectors.
New gift idea solves global warming crisis
Gift buying has never been more rewarding or life changing, thanks to a new environmentally friendly solution by the PATT Foundation. UK registered charity, the PATT Foundation, is on a mission to reverse global warming by reforesting the world — and now, with their Carbon Free programme they have made it easy for people to make a difference through gift giving. Virtually everything we do contributes to our carbon footprint – the carbon dioxide emissions we as individuals are responsible for as a direct result of our actions. This CO2, a key greenhouse gas, is responsible for contributing to global warming.
Experts predict that unless we do something about global warming right now, in as little as 40 years the arctic ice cap could be ice free in summer and sea levels could rise by as much as 3 feet by century's end. This could have a devastating impact on human life, up to a million animal species, our native ecosystems, industries, infrastructure, health, biosecurity and economy.
Facts like these have resonated with PATT founder Andrew Steel and are what inspired him to set up the charity. “Many people think global warming is a big business problem and that individuals can't make a difference,” says Mr. Steel. “They can. And with our Carbon Free programme we have made it easy for them to do that.”
Trees absorb and store carbon dioxide and forests act as effective carbon sinks. The more trees, the slower the rate of global warming. Plant enough trees and we can help cool down the planet.
The trouble is deforestation is destroying 13 million hectares of forest per year, which puts the Earth in grave danger. When trees are cut down they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Deforestation accounts for up to 25% of total carbon emissions. In 1961, more than 50% of Thailand was covered in trees. By 2000 that number had dropped to just 19%. The story is the same in the Amazon, and around the world.
Frightening news, yes, but according to Steel there is something we can all do about it.
“It takes almost 500 trees to absorb the approximately 10 tonnes of carbon that each person emits per year, on average,” Steel continues. “At PATT, you can offset your emissions for life, this is called a Carbon Life Credit (CLC). So—by planting those trees you're effectively doing something to counteract the CO2 you put into the air each year.”
With the PATT Foundation Carbon Free programme, people can offset their carbon emissions.
By donating to plant trees, we can offset your carbon emissions for your car, a flight, or your total emissions for a year or your whole life. It's a fact—we are on the brink of an environmental catastrophe the likes of which human civilisation has never seen before. It's not a case of “if” but “when”. And experts are saying that the “when” could be just a handful of years away. UNLESS—we make radical changes NOW.
You can do your part to help save the planet from as little as £26 per year. Offset your carbon emissions today.
Doing that is easy. Just go to www.plant-a-tree-today.org/carbonfree
Kristina Mills and Chris Doherty
ARTS & CULTURE
Have you ever looked in a mirror and seen the back of your head? Or seen a clock melt? No? Well that is how surrealist artists see the world, and the movement they belonged to is explained in our latest look at the world of art.
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural, artistic, and intellectual movement oriented toward the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative faculties of the “unconscious mind” and the attainment of a state different from, “more than”, and ultimately “truer” than everyday reality: the “sur-real”, or “more than real”.
For many Surrealists, this orientation toward transcending everyday reality toward one that incorporates the imaginative and the unconscious has manifested itself in the intent to bring about personal, cultural, political and social revolution, sometimes conceived or described as a complete transformation of life by freedom, poetry, love, and sexuality. In the words of André Breton, generally regarded as the founder of surrealism: “beauty will be convulsive or not at all.”
At various times individual surrealists aligned themselves with communism and anarchism to advance radical political and social change, arguing that only transformed institutions of work, the family, and education could make possible a general participation to the surreal.
The word “surreal” is often used colloquially to describe unexpected juxtapositions or use of non-sequiturs in art or dialog, particularly where such juxtapositions are presented as self-consistent. It is also used in everyday language to describe experiences that are highly unusual, that breach the conventions of everyday life, that are dreamlike, or that manifest the logic of the unconscious.
PHILOSOPHY: Surrealist philosophy emerged around 1920, partly as an outgrowth of Dada, with French writer André Breton as its initial principal theorist. Surrealists look to so-called “primitive art” as an example of expression that is not self-censored.
By the turn of the 21st century, Surrealist philosophy varied amongst Surrealist groups around the globe. Some Surrealist theorists have stated that Surrealism has somehow “gone beyond” or “superseded” philosophy, or that philosophy has been “outclassed” by Surrealism.
SPLIT FROM DADA: Breton's Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 and the publication of the magazine La Révolution surréaliste (The Surrealist Revolution) marked the split from the more Dada oriented Surrealists centred round Tristan Tzara.
Five years earlier, Breton and Philippe Soupault wrote the first “automatic book” (spontaneously written), Les Champs Magnétiques.
The Surrealists developed techniques such as automatic drawing (developed by André Masson), automatic painting, decalcomania, Frottage, fumage, grattage and parsemage that became significant parts of Surrealist practice. (Automatism was later adapted to the computer.) Games such as the exquisite corpse also assumed a great importance in Surrealism.
SURREALISM IN THE ARTS: In general usage, the term Surrealism is more often considered a movement in visual arts than the original cultural and philosophical movement. As with some other movements that had both philosophical and artistic dimensions, such as romanticism and minimalism, the relationship between the two usages is complex and a matter of some debate outside the movement. Many Surrealist artists regarded their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, and Breton was explicit in his belief that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. In addition, many surrealists and surrealist documents have declared that surrealism is not an artistic movement for a number of additional reasons, among which is the conception of the “artistic” manifestations of surrealism as just one form of manifestation among many, various conceptions of visual work being created which somehow “goes beyond” traditional conceptions of art or aesthetics, or even the complete cessation of creative visual production. In addition, the art object/product - while an important part of the Surrealist process - is viewed as merely a “souvenir” of a vastly more critical journey, interesting only in so far as it is revelatory of that adventure.
Dalí and Magritte created the most widely recognized images of the movement. Dalí joined the group in 1929, and participated in the rapid establishment of the visual style between 1930 and 1935.
Surrealism as a visual movement had found a method: to expose psychological truth by stripping ordinary objects of their normal significance, in order to create a compelling image that was beyond ordinary formal organization, in order to evoke empathy from the viewer.
1931 marked a year when several Surrealist painters produced works which marked turning points in their stylistic evolution: Magritte's La Voix des airs is an example of this process, with three large spheres representing bells hanging above a landscape. Another Surrealist landscape from this same year is Tanguy's Palais promontoire, with its molten forms and liquid shapes. Liquid shapes became the trademark of Dalí, particularly in his The Persistence of Memory, which features the image of clocks that sag as if they are made out of cloth.
The characteristics of this style: a combination of the depictive, the abstract, and the psychological, came to stand for the alienation which many people felt in the modern period, combined with the sense of reaching more deeply into the psyche, to be “made whole with ones individuality”.
Long after personal, political and professional tensions broke up the Surrealist group, Magritte and Dalí continued to define a visual program in the arts. This program reached beyond painting, to encompass photography as well, as can be seen from a Man Ray self portrait, whose use of assemblage influenced Robert Rauschenberg's collage boxes.
During the 1930s Peggy Guggenheim, an important art collector married Max Ernst and began promoting work by other Surrealists such as Yves Tanguy and the British artist John Tunnard. However, by the outbreak of the Second World War, the taste of the avant-garde swung decisively towards Abstract Expressionism with the support of key tastemakers, including Guggenheim. However, it should not be easily forgotten that Abstract Expressionism itself grew directly out of the meeting of American (particularly New York) artists with European Surrealists self-exiled during WWII. In particular, Arshile Gorky influenced the development of this American art form, which - as Surrealism did - celebrated the instantaneous human act as the wellspring of creativity. The early work of many Abstract Expressionists reveals a tight bond between the more superficial aspects of both movements, and the emergence (at a later date) of aspects of Dadaistic humour in such artists as Rauschenberg sheds an even starker light upon the connection. Up until the emergence of Pop Art, Surrealism can be seen to have been the single most important influence on the sudden growth in American arts, and even in Pop, some of the humour manifested in Surrealism can be found, often turned to a cultural criticism.
As with many artistic movements in Europe, the coming of the Second World War proved disruptive: both because of the rift between Breton and Dalí over Dalí's support for Francisco Franco, and because of a diaspora of the members of the Surrealist movement itself. Dalí said to remain a Surrealist forever was like “painting only eyes and noses”, and declared he had embarked on a “classic” period; Max Ernst in 1962 said, “I feel more affinity for some German Romantics”. Magritte began painting what he called his “solar” or “Renoir” style.
During the 1940s Surrealism's influence was also felt in England and America. Mark Rothko took an interest in bimorphic figures, and in England Henry Moore, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Paul Nash used or experimented with Surrealist techniques. However, Conroy Maddox, one of the first British Surrealists, beginning in 1935, remained within the movement, organizing an exhibition of current Surrealist work in 1978, in response to an exhibition which infuriated him because it did not properly represent Surrealism. The exhibition, titled Surrealism Unlimited was in Paris, and attracted international attention. He held his last one-man show in 2002, just before his death in 2005.
SURREALISM IN LITERATURE: The first surrealist work, according to Breton, was Les Champs Magnétiques (1921 “Magnetic Fields”), which was actually a collaboration with the French poet and novelist Philippe Soupault. But even before that, in 1919, Breton, Soupault and Aragon had already published the magazine Littérature, which contained automatist works and accounts of dreams. The magazine and the portfolio both showed their disdain for literal meanings given to objects and focused rather on the undertones, the poetic undercurrents present. Not only did they give emphasis to the poetic undercurrents, but also to the connotations and the overtones that “exist in ambiguous relationships to the visual images.”
Because surrealist writers seldom (if ever) appear to organize their thoughts and the images they present, some people find much of their work difficult to “parse”. Examples of surrealist literature are René Crevel's, Mr. Knife Miss Fork, André Breton's, Sur la route de San Romano, Benjamin Peret's, Death to the Pigs and Antonin Artaud's, Le Pese-Nerfs.
SURREALISM IN MUSIC: In the 1920s several composers were influenced by Surrealism, or by individuals in the Surrealist movement. Among these were Bohuslav Martinu, André Souris, and Edgard Varèse, who stated that his work Arcana was drawn from a dream sequence. Souris in particular was associated with the movement: he had a long, if sometimes spotty, relationship with Magritte, and worked on Paul Nouge's publication Adieu Marie.
French composer Pierre Boulez wrote a piece called explosante-fixe (1972), inspired by Breton's mad love.
Germaine Tailleferre of the French group Les Six wrote several works which could be considered to be inspired by Surrealism, including the 1948 Ballet “Paris-Magie” (scenario by Lise Deharme, who was closely linked to Breton), the Operas “La Petite Sirène” (book by Philippe Soupault) and “Le Maître” (book by Eugène Ionesco). Tailleferre also wrote popular songs to texts by Claude Marci, the wife of Henri Jeanson, whose portrait had been painted by Magritte in the 1930s.
Even though Breton by 1946 responded rather negatively to the subject of music with his essay Silence is Golden, later Surrealists have been interested in - and found parallels to - Surrealism in the improvisation of jazz (as alluded to above), and the blues (Surrealists such as Paul Garon have written articles and full-length books on the subject). Jazz and blues musicians have occasionally reciprocated this interest. For example, the 1976 World Surrealist Exhibition included such performances by Honeyboy Edwards.
Surrealists have also influenced reggae and, later, rap and some rock/pop bands such as The Psychedelic Furs. In addition to musicians who have been influenced by Surrealism (including some influence in rock — the title of the 1967 psychedelic Jefferson Airplane album Surrealistic Pillow was obviously inspired by the movement), such as the experimental group Nurse With Wound (whose album title Chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and umbrella is taken from a line in Lautreamont's Maldoror) surrealist music has included such explorations as those of Hal Rammel. More importantly, the ideas of chance have been used by such modern musical artists as David Bowie and Brian Eno who - in turn - have sometimes mentioned either Dadaists or Surrealists in their work.
SURREALISM IN FILM: An avant-garde movement in the arts stressing Freudian and Marxist ideas, unconscious elements, irrationalism, and the symbolic association of ideas. Dreamlike and bizarre surrealist movies were produced roughly from 1924 to 1931, primarily in France, though there are still surrealistic elements in the works of many directors.
Surrealist films include Un chien andalou and L'Âge d'Or by Luis Buñuel and Dalí. Jean Cocteau made history in the film world with what is considered to be his surrealist masterpiece, the Orphic Trilogy. These films included The Blood of a Poet (his directorial debut), Orpheus, and Testament of Orpheus (his last film). There is also a strong surrealist influence present in Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad
Some have described David Lynch as a Surrealist filmmaker. He has never participated in the Surrealist movement or in any Surrealist activity, but there are arguably some aspects of many of his films that are of Surrealist interest, although - despite his work's superficial resemblance to many of the Surrealist images - his overall vision tends to be socially conservative, which is not an ideal promoted by Surrealism at large. Much the same problem can be seen in the work of David Cronenberg, whose films - seemingly surreal in their visual components - are often conservative in their content, usually admonishing and punishing those who would go in search of “more reality.” Jan Bucquoy and André Delvaux (the latter in the tradition of the magic realism) are the only representatives of the Belgian surrealist school in cinema.
IMPACT OF SURREALISM: While Surrealism is typically associated with the arts, it has been said to transcend them; Surrealism has had an impact in many other fields. In this sense, Surrealism does not specifically refer only to self-identified “Surrealists”, or those sanctioned by Breton, rather, it refers to a range of creative acts of revolt and efforts to liberate imagination.
In addition to Surrealist ideas that are grounded in the ideas of Hegel, Marx and Freud, surrealism is seen by its advocates as being inherently dynamic and as dialectic in its thought. Surrealists have also drawn on sources as seemingly diverse as Clark Ashton Smith, Montague Summers, Fantomas, The Residents, Bugs Bunny, comic strips, the obscure poet Samuel Greenberg and the hobo writer and humorist T-Bone Slim. One might say that Surrealist strands may be found in movements such as Free Jazz (Don Cherry, Sun Ra, etc.) and even in the daily lives of people in confrontation with limiting social conditions. Thought of as the effort of humanity to liberate imagination as an act of insurrection against society, surrealism finds precedents in the alchemists, possibly Dante, Hieronymus Bosch, Marquis de Sade, Charles Fourier, Comte de Lautreamont and Arthur Rimbaud. Surrealists believe that non-Western cultures also provide a continued source of inspiration for Surrealist activity because some may strike up a better balance between instrumental reason and the imagination in flight than Western culture. Surrealism has had an identifiable impact on radical and revolutionary politics, both directly -- as in some surrealists joining or allying themselves with radical political groups, movements and parties -- and indirectly -- through the way in which surrealists' emphasis on the intimate link between freeing the imagination and the mind and liberation from repressive and archaic social structures. This was especially visible in the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s and the French revolt of May 1968, whose slogan “All power to the imagination” arose directly from French surrealist thought and practice.
Art Exhibition – Opas Chotpanvanon
This 40 year old artist paints in a semi-abstract style, influenced by nature and the underwater world, as well as his life experiences.As a young artist Opas won awards for his work, which was largely in the impressionist style, and as he has developed his work has been influenced by his family and particularly his son. His piece ‘My Son' was created from the shape of the baby boy's face. His work has been exhibited publically before, and he was invited by the Rak Chang Foundation to use his talents to portray the elephants they care about. The current exhibition reflects the 15 years of his work, and critics have compared Opas to a blossoming tree in his development. See for yourself at the Leisure Art Gallery, 33/2 Phetkasem Road, Hua Hin (tel. 032 547723-4) until the 14th January. The Gallery is open everyday from 11 am to 8.30 pm.
The Ideal Not The Reality
This is an art exhibition by internationally exhibited Chinese artist Li XiaoFeng, with his latest body of work. It is illusory and elegant, and romantically interweaves the physical and spiritual. From myths and tales ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, he has taken his subjects, ranging from Oriental images of the Buddha to the Western Christian angels and saints, or from the ancient Chinese tale Fengshen Yanyi to Grecian myths - all are sources of inspiration for his creative themes. See his work at The Rotunda Gallery, Neilson Hays Library, 195 Suriwong Road, Bangkok. Tel. 02-233-1731. Opening hours Tue - Sun 09.30 - 17:00.
THE TICKET 
ARE YOU IN A RUT?
Is life becoming predictable? Well do we have something for you! Do we? Yes!!!!!
Preparing this months issue we were trawling through the usual suspects on the entertainment front, but decided that our beloved readers deserved more.... they needed to be enlightened, their horizons opened up to more adventurous ways of being entertained.
Who knows, over the next six pages we might be responsible for the seeds
of new clubs starting up in the Hua Hin area. We might even inspire a new world champion. We start with our personal favourite
which we cannot wait to try ourselves....... Zorbing!
ALTERNATIVE TICKET- ZORBING
Zorbing was invented in New Zealand during the early 1990s by Andrew Akers and Dwayne van der Sluis, who started out by looking for a fun way to walk on water.
They made a few different prototypes and eventually came up with the zorb, an inflatable ball made of clear plastic with a space in the middle that's big enough for a person to fit inside.
Zorbing worked on water but they soon found it was even more fun on land, and a new adventure sport was born. Andrew and Dwayne describe it as “the sport of rolling down a hill at speed inside a giant inflatable ball.” The first site was set up in Rotorua on New Zealand 's North Island , and since then Zorb has rolled into Asia, Australia , Europe and North America .
A zorb, a gentle slope and a willing participant (called a zorbonaut) are all that's needed to start zorbing. Once the journey is underway, a zorbonaut feels a strange sensation of weightlessness and sees a view of blue sky, followed by green grass, followed by blue sky, and so on. As the old saying goes, blue and green should never be seen... except inside a zorb.
You might imagine zorbonauts emerging battered and bruised, or covered in the contents of their own stomachs. But the soft inflated sphere keeps them safely cushioned and Andrew and Dwayne claim that out of more than 100,000 zorbonauts, not one has ever thrown up! The two types of zorb are harness and hydro. For harness you're strapped in. Hydro has no harness and a bucket of water is thrown in so that you (and a friend or two) can slip and slide around inside. In winter, warm water is used for a lovely spa-type experience. Just remember to bring a change of clothes!
There are also a growing number of celebrity zorbonauts, the most notable being Peter Gabriel, who on his 2003 world tour used a specially made zorb during the song ‘Growing Up', which had no colour in the strings or around
the door - and the valve is located in the door hole to give as clear a view through the Zorb as possible.
There are no Zorb championships just yet, but you can be sure it won't be long before there is.
You can contact the Bangkok offices via email; zorb@greeneryresort.com, or go to the website for all zorbing at http://www.zorb.com.
ALTERNATIVE TICKET- AIR GUITAR
What Air Guitar is all about, is to surrender to the music without having an actual instrument. Anyone can taste rock stardom by playing the Air Guitar. No equipment is needed, and there is no requirement for any specific place or special skills. In Air Guitar playing all people are equal regardless of race, gender, age, social status or sexual orientation.
Air Guitar has been played for as long as electric guitars have wailed as the ultimate instrument of rock music and the guitar heroes of rock bands have been adored as idols. But what was previously a hobby to be pursued at home alone in front of the mirror or behind closed bedroom doors is now a public stage show in front of thousands of people.
The Air Guitar World Championships took place on September 8, 2006 at Club Teatria, Oulu , Finland for the 11th time. Japan 's strong presence produced a world champion and this year Ochi “Dainoji” Yosuke gets a chance to spread the gospel of air guitars. Yosuke outplayed the other skilful contestants with his simplistic but extremely classy air guitaring.
The chair of the prestigious jury was, for the 11th time, Juha Torvinen, a legendary Finnish guitaris. In addition to Torvinen, the jury included Sami Lopakka, an ex-guitarist from Sentenced; Marzi Nyman, a real guitar virtuoso, Milton Mermikides, a guitar professor of the Royal Academy of Music London; and Philipp Brammer, the organiser of the Austrian competition.
As usual, the contestants welcomed everyone to join in as they played their guitars along with the song Rocking in the Free World. Air guitarists believe that all the bad things disappear from the world when everyone plays the air guitar.
THE RESULTS OF THE AIR GUITAR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS ARE:
1. OCHI “DAINOJI” YOSUKE ( JAPAN ) 35.4
2. CLAY “BANGERS” CONNOLLY ( AUSTRALIA ) 34.8
3. CHRISTIAN “HEART BUCKBOARD” SWEEP ( GERMANY ) 34.6
4. GABRIELE “THE HOXTON CREEPER” MATZEU ( ENGLAND ) 33.9
5. TAKESHI “THE SAMURAI” KONGOCHI ( JAPAN ) 33.8
6. CRAIG “HOT LIXX HULAHAN” BILLMEIER ( U.S. ) 33.7
6. RAINER “LE FREAK” FUSSGÄNGER ( AUSTRIA ) 33.7
8. ROMAIN “SIDEBURN” LESAFFRE (FRANCE) 33.4
9. CHRISTIAN “DER PRETTAUER” STEINHAUER ( ITALY ) 33.1
10. BENJAMIN “HELMUTT” GREANEY ( NEW ZEALAND ) 32.7
11. KARITA “RÄSSI RINSESSA” KIVIOJA ( FINLAND ) 16.7
11. MICHAEL “DESTROYER” HEFFELS ( NETHERLANDS ) 16.7
11. IGMAR “IGGY STARDUST” DE HAAN ( NETHERLANDS ) 16.7
11. EERO “OULUN OMA POIKA” OJALA ( FINLAND ) 16.7
15. MAX “MAX” HELLER ( AUSTRIA ) 16.4
16. KANAGAWA “SUPER IQ” IQ ( JAPAN ) 16.2
17. TERJE “DOC” STEPHANSEN ( NORWAY ) 15.7
ALTERNATIVE TICKETCHEESE ROLLING
England is well known for its rolling hills. Mostly they're gentle, green and grassy. But Cooper's Hill is steep, mean and cheesy.
For hundreds of years Gloucestershire has played host to the Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake. In the past this unusual festival featured many activities, including bobbing for apples, dancing round the maypole, shin kicking, tugof- war and wrestling. Now all that remains is the infamous rolling of the cheese.
Cheese rolling is a downhill footrace with a twist – runners plunge down the course in pursuit of a big wheel of the region's famous Double Gloucester cheese! Originally at midsummer, the festival is now held on the last Monday in May.
Cheese rolling is simple and dangerous. Cooper's Hill is almost vertical and most ‘runners' actually tumble all the way down. Even the spectators aren't safe. One year an onlooker was seriously injured when they were hit by the cheese!
Every year the course is lined with thousands of spectators. Impatient crowds have been heard to chant, “Roll that cheese!” At the bottom of the hill wait a group of catchers, to try and stop the out-of-control competitors, and representatives from St. John Ambulance, to treat the inevitable injuries.
On the count of three a special guest roller launches the cheese and on four the
fearless competitors follow. The first person to arrive at the foot of the hill wins.
The reward? They get to keep the cheese! Rumours are that Wallace and Gromit
will be attending next year's race, being the cheese lovers that they are!
There are also three uphill races (boys, girls and open) for children and people
who fancy themselves as super fit. These races are slower, safer and much more
physically demanding!
ALTERNATIVE TICKET- ROCK PAPER SCISSORS
Toronto , November 12 - Bob Cooper, a 28-year old sales manager from London ,
UK , won the World Rock Paper Championship, hosted by the World Rock Paper
Scissors (RPS) Society in Toronto . Cooper beat approximately 500 competitors
to take the World Champion title, $7,000 CDN and the gold medal.
What is amazing about RPS is that for a game of such complexity the rules are
actually very simple (see right). The game obviously becomes more nuanced as you dive further into it, here are a taste of the rules:
INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED ROCK: Represented by a closed fist with
the thumb resting at least at the same height as the topmost finger of the hand.
The thumb must not be concealed by the fingers.
Rock also happens to be the most effortless of the throws and fast reactions are
never required to employ it with success. By careful examination of the options
and atmosphere of play, a well-placed rock will crush a carelessly thrown pair of
scissors every time.
INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED PAPER: Is also delivered in the same
manner as rock with the exception that all fingers including the thumb are fully
extended and horizontal with the points of the fingers facing the opposing
player.
Paper is actually the most challenging of the basic opening moves since it requires the manual displacement of the most digits. It is therefore generally viewed as the least obvious of opening throws. Should you open with a paper be forewarned that a reply of scissors will cut you down to size in no time flat.
INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED SCISSORS: Is delivered in the same
manner as rock with the exception that the index and middle fingers are fully
extended toward the opposing player.
Opening with a pair of scissors assumes that you are playing against an opponent who has tight control over their aggressive tendencies and therefore may not open with a scissor-smashing rock. One of the main pitfalls of opening with scissors is the tendency by many to reveal the throw too early, allowing an experienced opponent to easily counter.
Surf FM Chart
This month, the Surf FM team would like to dedicate our top ten to some of our most listeners and the songs they request. Some tune in to 102.5FM in and around Hua Hin, others are based farther a field and listen via our internet stream at www.surfhuahin.com. Thanks for your support guys.
1 Kun Oi, Kao Takiap The Rolling Stones - Losing My Touch
2 James Raj, Singapore Soft Cell - Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (Ext. Mix)
3 Miss Yannapha John Travolta - Sandy
4 Ryan/Wayne (for Big Boss Balon, Big Kiang U2 – With or Without You
5 Hugo and Paul, On Point Embrace – All you Good Good People
6 Robert, Munich Wines Queen – We Are The Champions
7 Johnnie Walker, Johnnie Walkers INXS – Need You Tonight
8 David, Hua Hin Ham Bacon and Meat Company Kid Creole and the Coconuts – Stool Pigeon
9 Katie, Bangkok Beyonce – Irreplaceable
10 Dr Dave The Soul Monsta Las Ketchup – The Ketchup Song
If you want to make a request you can do so at any time by calling 032-522990 or if you're online Skype Surf 102.5 or email play@surfhuahin.com. We are Hua Hin's only truly international music radio station broadcasting daily from 6am, to 12 midnight. Our DJ's play a wide selection of musical styles along with news from the BBC and Radio Thailand. www.surfhuahin.com
ONCE YOU'VE TUNED IN TO SURF FM, YOU'LL NEVER TOUCH YOUR KNOB AGAIN!
Movie Review
The feet in the title of George Miller's new film shuffle and stomp with glorious
syncopation, but it would be a stretch to call them happy. Small and webbed
and clawed, the appendages belong to an animated emperor penguin named
Mumble (Elijah Wood) who, through the wizardry of computer animation,
gets his terpsichorean moves from the brilliant tap-dancer Savion Glover.
Like Mr. Glover and Eleanor Powell, Mumble was born to dance. There's
a song in his heart if not in his diaphragm, but, strangely, a lot of his
tippity tappiting has the urgent pulse of an S O S.
Much like Mr. Miller's excellent “Babe: Pig in the City” and his dystopian
“Mad Max” trilogy, “Happy Feet” presents a vision of the world seen through a
glass darkly. Even in a story about singing-and-dancing fat and feather, Mr. Miller
can't help but go dark and deep.
It takes him a while to get there. First, he must unleash Robin Williams, who gives wacky, at times uneasy voice to several characters, including that of a charming Adélie penguin named Ramon, who sounds more East L. A than Anywhere Antarctica . Having been shunned by the other emperor penguins because he can't sing, Mumble joins a flock of smaller, stubbier Adélie penguins who, when not collecting pebbles, do stand-up. Mr. Williams, who these days is better heard than seen, also pours on the molasses as an Rockhopper penguin called Lovelace, who sounds a lot like the singer Barry White, which means he's one of the few so-called black voices in a world that sounds otherwise white as deep winter.
That doesn't mean that Mr. Williams isn't funny, only that it's discomfiting that so many children's films depend on voices that are funny only because they exploit ethnic and racial stereotypes. Because penguins look pretty much alike, most of the principals deliver distinctive vocal performances. Nicole Kidman recycles her baby-breathy Marilyn Monroe shtick for Mumble's mother, Norma Jean, while Hugo Weaving sticks a Scottish burr in his throat to play an elder penguin named Noah. For Mumble's father, Memphis , Hugh Jackman throws his voice into the deep-fryer and comes up with something that's a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n' roll. Everyone sounds pretty white except when they're lip-synching (beak synching?) the funk and R&B standards on the film's playlist.
“Happy Feet” is far from the only animated film to lean on stereotype for its
comedy: “Over the Hedge” and “Cars” do the same, among many other animated
features, as does, of course, “Borat.” I bring this up only because Mr. Miller brings an unusual depth of feeling to his work as well as a distinct moral worldview. “Happy Feet” is a familiar story about a wee outsider forced to struggle against the usual odds and misguided adults to discover his inner penguin. Yet tucked inside this nominally feel-good jukebox musical with its crooning and swooning critters is a piercingly sad story about the devastation being visited on the natural world. The tapping we hear, as it turns out, is drilling holes in our hearts.
As politically pointed as it is disturbing, “Happy Feet” is a view of hell as seen
through the eyes and ears of creatures we foolishly, tragically call dumb.
“Happy Feet” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). There are a few scenes of peril that might frighten young children, but it's the adults who will probably need the hankies.
Happy feet
Directed by George Miller
With the voices of:
Elijah Wood (Mumble),
Robin Williams (Ramon/Lovelace the guru),
Brittany Murphy (Gloria),
Hugh Jackman ( Memphis ),
Nicole Kidman (Norma Jean),
Hugo Weaving (Noah the Elder),
Anthony Lapaglia (Alpha Skua),
Miriam Margolyes (mrs. Astrakhan),
Magda Szubanski (miss Viola),
Carlos Alazraqui (Nestor),
Johnny Sanchez iii (Lombardo)
Jeff Garcia (Rinaldo).
Bush, OPEC and Chavez of Arabia
(By Pepe Escobar) www.atimes.com
Dig that red VW Beetle showing up this past Sunday morning at a Caracas barrio. Behind the wheel is none other than Hugo Chavez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (as it has been officially designated since 1999), global South working-class hero and scourge of the Washington Consensus, on his way to one more red-Ferrari-style landslide electoral victory.
The historical metaphor came with a Bob Dylan blowing-in-the-wind swing: while Chavez - who is seducing the global South with his attempt to prove another world system is possible - was having his mandate renewed by an overwhelming majority of voters in a free, fair, transparent election, in Santiago the aging former US-backed Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet - the ultimate, sinister Latin American dictator from central casting - was suffering a heart attack.
In the absence of credible, untainted opposition, Chavez was actually, once again, running against George W Bush. “Against the devil [George W Bush], against the Empire, vote for Hugo Chavez,” proclaimed red flags scattered all over Caracas. While Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentina's Nestor Kirchner, the top two powers in Mercosur alongside Venezuela, celebrated Chavez' victory, no tears were shed for for Pinochet (Evita Peron was much cooler).
As for Bush's twin daughters - who were having a ball in Buenos Aires, even with Barbara's wallet and mobile phone pocketed by a dangerous “terrorist” whose quick hand managed to floor all the defense systems of the most sophisticated Secret Service on the planet - they didn't stay for the celebration: they left Argentina last Thursday.
As they were unable to dissolve the Venezuelan people and elect a new, more pliable president, the discredited opposition - a motley collection of racist, corrupt oligarchs and plutocrats - was meekly forced to shelve the threat of launching a plan B, a “Great Avalanche against Fraud” scheduled for this Tuesday to protest against alleged electoral shenanigans.
This was despite a heavily built-up public relations campaign accusing Chavistas of being “Nazis” and empty promises of unleashing a Ukraine-style Orange Revolution to counter the so-called “fraud”. Once again Chavez won fair and square, under the eyes of hundreds of international monitors. The non-dissolved Venezuelan people preempted a foretold coup d'etat.
OPEC MATTERS: Behind all the smoke-and-mirrors “debate” around the variable “stay the course” scenarios, the only strategic factor that really matters for the Bush-Cheney system in Iraq is control of oil resources, which in theory would allow Washington to knock out the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
According to the original Bush-Cheney system plan, it would be crucial to increase Iraq's oil production, make sure that a barrel of oil does not cost more than US$30, and prevent any moves (by Russia and/or Iran, for instance) from the petrodollar toward the petro-euro. To allow Iraq to produce 3.5 million barrels of oil a day (nowadays it can be pumping as low as 1.8 million, if that), the US would have to invest at least $5 billion before the end of Bush's term - and count on no sabotage by the Sunni Arab resistance.
OPEC, for its part, wants a barrel of oil at $60 minimum. In the forefront of this policy we find none other than Hugo Chavez. This “minimum price” and the contours of a redistribution of production will be decided in an extraordinary OPEC meeting in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, on December 14. Chavez - and not the Bush-Cheney system - will definitely get what he, and other OPEC member states, want.
CHAVEZ OF ARABIA: King-of-polemicists Chavez is set to remain the most popular political leader in the global South for years. It's not hard to see why. In Venezuela, as in Colombia, Ecuador or Paraguay, most of the population is mestizo - a mix of Spanish colonizers and indigenous people. The key issue in these countries is race mixed with class (as in struggle). The overwhelming majority of mestizos, not by accident, happen to be poor. Chavez is Venezuela incarnated because he is an absolute mestizo - Indian, Spanish and black. He had to be popular: he's one of “them” - the ones who had been excluded for centuries.
On top of it, Chavez is spectacularly popular from Mexico to India and especially in Gaza, Ramallah, south Beirut - not to mention Baghdad and Tehran. His portrait is now brandished all over alongside that of iconic Che Guevara. A torrent of editorials in the Arab press have nailed it: the dispossessed masses have clearly identified how cowardly, corrupt Arab rulers a la Hosni Mubarak, Saudi King Abdullah or the emir of Kuwait have not dared to do what a non-Arab, non-Muslim Latin American has done: to confront head-on the Empire's way of regulating the world.
What could Chavez teach, for instance, Hamas and Hezbollah? A lot: first of all, that it is possible for a clear alternative to emerge respecting the rules of parliamentary democracy. Chavez has not emerged protected by a religious movement; he is a democratically elected (and re-elected) president and a committed anti-imperialist socialist. He reaches way beyond national or communal division. He insists on continental unity (in the Middle East, that would translate into pan-Arabism). And his socio-economic policies are absolutely egalitarian, with an emphasis on redistribution of wealth.
As far as the Middle East is concerned, it also helps that Chavez dedicates a lot of thinking to the Iraq war, totally supports the Iraqi resistance and defines himself as a Nasserist (while in Beirut and south Lebanon he has become as popular as Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah). He appeals to Sunnis and Shi'ites alike - in fact echoing large swaths of public opinion all over Latin America who do not regard the Middle East in sectarian terms and clearly support the Palestinian struggle, the Iraqi resistance, the Lebanese Shi'ites, the Arab nation as a whole, and also Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program.
THE BOLIVAR SWING: Assorted neo-cons and the Washington establishment cannot but be horrified by the steady progression of a Bolivarian movement bent on uniting South America against imperialist practices and the Washington Consensus. They now look south of the Rio Grande and see a solidified ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana para las Americas, or Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) alliance - Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia - not to mention the return of Daniel “Sandinista” Ortega in Nicaragua and the ascension of Rafael Correa in Ecuador, plus a solidified Mercosur where Brazil-Argentina-Venezuela are deeply committed to an indigenous trade mechanism that has nothing to do with the US-promoted Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) or bilateral free-trade agreements (FTAs).
Chavez enjoys ample to total support from Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba and now Ecuador. Correa's recent electoral victory in Ecuador rang the same themes: against corrupt elites; against US-imposed FTAs; in favor of “socialism for the 21st century” (a key Chavez theme); and crucially a desire for Ecuador - the fifth-largest oil producer in Latin America, and major exporter of crude to the US - to get back into OPEC, which the Andean country had quit in 1992. This would mean, of course, more support for Chavez within OPEC.
The only US military (air) base in South America happens to be in Manta, Ecuador. It's part of Plan Colombia and is supposed to be active in the “war on drugs” (Plan Colombia is actually more worried about Chavismo than drugs). The lease expires in 2009. Correa - a sharp, US-educated economist - said, “We won't close the base in 2009, but the United States would have to allow us to have an Ecuadorian base in Miami in return.”
Meanwhile, Lula's strategic advisers have recommended Brazil to propose in 2007 a South American version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - as a dissuasive shield against, what else, US designs especially on water. No wonder: South America holds the largest fresh-water reserves on the planet, a lot of oil, and an extremely rich biodiversity. Chavez had already proposed a similar plan last July, but only including the five Mercosur member countries. South America's NATO would inevitably be on a collision course with the US national-security doctrine.
To help implement its agenda, the US still relies on the School of the Americas - an assassins' den that since 1946 has trained more than 61,000 Latin American soldiers in everything from counterinsurgency to, yes, torture techniques. Everyone in South America remembers the infamous Operation Condor, which was in essence a Pinochet-controlled assassination machine of intellectuals and leftists.
In 2001 the Pentagon decided to re-christen the assassins' den as a Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, but this is the same old counterinsurgency university. Brazil and Venezuela, years ago, and later Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia, stopped sending “students”, but scores of tiny Central American states still do.
As much as all over Latin America people have not forgotten the rape-and-pillage US strategy of supporting the Pinochets of the world, the Arab nation as a whole won't forget what interests lie behind Bush's Greater Middle East.
It's easy to see why a Sunni Arab Iraqi or a Lebanese Shi'ite is seduced by Chavez of Arabia. It's a question of true sovereignty and self-determination - and of course it has to do with oil. Venezuela has become a tremendous “threat” to US strategic interests in essence because Chavez nationalized oil giant PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela SA).
The logic of getting a better deal for the key national resource and as a direct consequence improving the quality of living of the most deprived sectors of the population by investing in health and education is simply anathema to the Washington Consensus: a few years ago this was a “communist” thing, now it's branded by cowed corporate media as “populism”, a “destabilizing influence” or, even worse, “totalitarianism”.
MEET ‘TOTALITARIANISM': For an alleged communist hell on Earth, Venezuela is quite well behaved. Economic fundamentals and the right to private property remain intact. Chavez knows he needs taxes to finance social projects. In 2005, Venezuelan gross domestic product grew a whopping 9.4% - and the same may happen in 2006. Bilateral trade with the US was $40 billion in 2005 and growing. The - white, plutocratic, “I love Miami” - elite represents less than 5% of the population. They don't have many reasons to complain. So it's back to racism: after all, Chavez is a mestizo.
Wealth redistribution is working. The minimum wage rose no less than 327% under Chavez, and is now about $250 a month (Brazil's, for instance, when readjusted in 2007, will be less than $180). When Chavez came to power in 1999, 55.4% of Venezuelans were considered poor; now they are 39.7%. More people are working in the formal economy than in the informal. And in human-development terms, according to the United Nations Development Program, Venezuela is climbing the charts and is now in 72nd place.
One of the key - and very complex - objectives of the Bolivarian Revolution is to organize an alternative production model. Chavez started by solidifying some state enterprises in strategic areas - in oil, electricity, telecom, transportation, food distribution. At the same time he has been turbocharging so-called “basic enterprises”, cooperatives and the so-called “social production enterprises”. The Bolivarian Revolution is all about the building up of a more egalitarian society.
WE GOTTA TAKE HIM OUT: Late last month, respected Venezuelan-American lawyer Eva Golinger published a remarkable book - Bush vs Chavez: La guerra de Washington contra Venezuela, ie “Washington's War Against Venezuela” (Monte Avila Editores, Caracas) - detailing the extent of the “strategic threat” posed to the US by the Bolivarian Revolution. For the moment the book has not yet been translated into English.
Golinger tells how the US is financing no fewer than 132 Venezuelan opposition groups; how the US is exercising “diplomatic terrorism” - via threat of sanctions - for non-cooperation in the “war on drugs”, for instance, which is not true; and for non-cooperation in the “war on terror”, which has led to Venezuela being forbidden to buy weapons made in the US or incorporating any US-made parts.
Surrealistically, Venezuela has been lumped with other “terrorist” nations (according to Washington thinking) even though it was never officially depicted as a state sponsoring terrorism. According to Golinger, “They did that because they wouldn't be able to get away with classifying Venezuela as a terrorist nation within the world community - just yet.”
Harassment is non-stop. The current Republican-dominated US Congress has issued a report charging that Chavez smuggles Islamic terrorists from the Middle East to Margarita Island, trains them in Spanish, gives them a new ID and sends them to Mexico, where they cross the border and enter the US presumably to concoct a new version of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
And most of all there's the extensive military front. Evidence of US Central Intelligence Agency involvement in the April 2002 coup against Chavez can be found on the Internet. Nowadays, Golinger details what the US military base in Curacao is up to: the relentless pressure on the Curacao government for a strategic refinery leased to Venezuela to be sold to the US, the possibility of a US missile attack on Venezuela staged from Curacao, the secret US base being built in Colombia near the Venezuelan border for conducting espionage, the nefarious underground activities of a heady mix of Colombian paramilitaries and US Special Forces, attempts to push FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) into Venezuela so the mix can wreak havoc inside the country, and a detailed analysis of Plan Balboa, which is in fact the Pentagon invasion-of-Venezuela plan.
According to Golinger, “More than having an invasion, they're going to try and assassinate Chavez. And that's where the paramilitaries come in, because that's what their mission is. A paramilitary leader I spoke to told me that. They're already here. There are more than 3,000 in the region of Caracas alone.”
No wonder Washington is so furious. South America is now the only region in the world where progressive ideas shine - and have a chance to multiply. The United States, the European Union and East Asia are narcotized by neo-liberalism - and immersed in an intellectual void. Russia offers Gazprom plus truculence. The Middle East is being devastated by the Bush-Cheney system. Afghanistan is a black void sucking Pakistan once again. And the “international community” still does not give a damn about Africa.
South America is bristling with hope - with ideas of unity in diversity, a collective “Enough!” to foreign exploitation, a belief that another world system is possible. Plutocracies are weary. The Pentagon may be proceeding “full speed ahead” with plans of militarization and all-out intervention in South America. But Chavez of Arabia won't go quietly - and sooner rather than later other kindred spirits are inevitably bound to rise all over the global South.
Useful Telephone Numbers for Hua Hin
Railway station
032-512 770, 032-511 073
Bus station of Hua Hin
032-511 654, 032-512 543
Bus station of Prachuabkirikhan
032-601 901
Bus station of Pranburi
032-621 443
Hua Hin Hospital
032-520 401
Dog Rescue Center
0-1981 4406
Wild life Rescue Center (Tayang)
032-458 135
Department of Land Cha-am office:
032- 430 846-7
Department of Land Hua Hin office:
032-536 164, 032-512 407
Department of Land Prachuabkirikhan:
032-611 211
Department of Land Pranburi
032-622 199
Local Government (Hua Hin)
032-521 340, 532 471
Local water supply
032-511 677
The Power Board of Hua Hin
032-512 215, 032 513 165
Observer office:
032-531 078
Red Cross.
032-512 567
San Paolo Hospital
032-532 576-85
Polyclinic International
032-516 424, 032-516 425
Shell Cooking Gas
032-511 144, 032- 515 620
The Communication Authority of Thailand
(Hua Hin)
032-511 351
Rotary Club of Hua Hin
0-1916 6637
Meeting every Thursday 8.pm
at Hua Hin Grand Hotel & Plaza
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