House Hunting

09. February 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Daily Life

I decided towards the end of last year that I wanted to move. The house I’m living in is getting increasingly run down, and the new neighbours are truly neighbours from hell. I also decided that I wanted to move to Bangkok – closer to supermarkets that stock Western foods and with cinemas that show films in English. However, I don’t like living in large cities, so I needed to find a house in a moobaan on the fringes of the city. Thanks to the wonders of the Interweb I was fairly readily able to come up with a shortlist. Next was to spend a day visiting the likely suspects.

The first moobaan I visited was in a strange location. To explain: many main roads in Thailand have smaller roads running parallel to them on both sides (known as “frontage roads) for local traffic. Often these roads are one-way. This moobaan was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields and small villages, off such a one-way frontage road. To get onto the frontage road I had a nightmarish drive through a series of complex junctions in very heavy traffic.

At the sales office I was greeted with a cold drink and there was some discussion about the type of house I wanted. Then it was onto an electric cart to view a few houses in various stages of development. None of them was quite what I wanted. (I was particularly keen to have a bedroom to use as a study since I spend way too much time in front of the computer.) The sales agent then suggested a house type that wasn’t on the website. And it was cheaper than the two house types I’d short-listed. It had a downstairs study – perfect.

The moobaan was quite attractive. The gardens of the completed properties were very pretty. The roads curved and the properties were varied so the place didn’t look too regimented.

The next moobaan I visited wasn’t right for me. None of the properties was quite large enough, though on the plus side it had a communal gym and a clubhouse.

The visit to the third moobaan started with a shock: there was a kerfuffle amongst the security guards at the gatehouse: there was an enormous (and I’m told poisonous) snake which soon slithered off into the gutter.

I must say, I loved the setting. I could have had a house overlooking a large pond (and I love living close to water). However, the study was pretty small, and the developer very inflexible. (This particular developer is Thailand’s largest, so can do as it likes.)

All the houses I looked at had features in common, such as lots of windows (I’m going to spend a small fortune on window treatments) and tiny, inconvenient kitchens. Rather than usual cabinets, the work surfaces are Thai-style, made of concrete, tiled. And there’s nowhere for an oven.

To be more precise, each property had two kitchens (both tiny): an outer kitchen for preparing food, then an inner one (with good ventilation) for the actual cooking. (The toxic fumes released by frying garlic and chillies together is quite overwhelming.)

Something for me slightly strange was that you were expected to keep your washing machine outside. What’s to stop the neighbours climbing over the fence and using your washing machine whilst you sleep?

Anyway, a week later I was back at the first moobaan paying a reservation fee for a house that will be completed at the end of May. (Thai builders, unlike British ones, do actually complete on time, so I’m told.)

When finished the house will look something like this (minus the large garden):

House in Bangkok

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A Tale of Three Investments

28. January 2010 · 3 comments · Categories: Money

Since I don’t work I depend upon my investments to provide me with the wherewithal for my modest lifestyle. That means that I spend a serious amount of time each week reviewing my investments and searching my heart to determine what I believe to be true about the world. However, sometimes I don’t get it right. This is a tale of three investments where I got it seriously wrong.

Corazon Capital Absolute Return Fund
One of my weaknesses is that I tend to take on more risk in my investments than I should. I really try to force myself to invest more conservatively than my gut tells me. One such conservative investment was the Corazon Capital Abolute Return fund. For years it has provided a nice, steady return of around 9% per annum – a bit better than cash, but not spectacular.

Then things went disastrously wrong. In 2008 it lost more than 30% of its value. Ouch!

The fund itself is a fund of hedge funds. (Yes, I know the charges associated with such funds are absolutely lunatic, but I hoped for a steady, risk free return.) The problem (in part) was that the fund invested in Weavering Capital’s Macro Fixed Income Fund. The fund was basically a fraud. Weavering apparently had the brilliant idea of not bothering to do any of the trading it was supposed to – rather it did a few trades with … its chief executive.

The FSA (that’s the Financial Services Authority to most of us, and the Fundamentally Supine Authority to Private Eye readers) is looking into things. I won’t be holding my breath. Personally I think there’s already enough evidence for the fund’s CEO to be strung up by his gonads until dead.

I do wonder, however, what Corazon was doing. Magnus Peterson (the fraudulent chief executive) had previously run another hedge fund into the ground. I paid a hefty premium so that Corazon can vet the hedge funds in which it invests. And yet it invests with someone like this scum bag.

To add insult to injury, Corazon decided to move a chunk of the fund into “Special Situations” class. This is USD denominated (and I loathe anything that is USD denominated), and can’t be sold. Over the coming years the investments will gradually be sold and I’ll get some money back. Still, not good enough.

And are Corazon offering to refund their pretty outrageous fees (for doing very little, and doing even that incompetently)? Uhhh … no! In fact, they can’t even be bothered to reply to my email.

To quote (selectively) from Gary Wiess’s “Wall Street Versus America” on the subject of hedge funds:

  • They cause people to pay fees that would be considered highway robbery in even the most wack-a-doo mutual fundamentally
  • They cause people to give their money to creeps they haven’t bothered to check out, the kind of people they wouldn’t trust to run out and buy then a sandwich, must less manage their investments
  • They cause people to sign contracts that are so one-sided they would make a credit-card lawyer blush

Wish I’d read that first.

Arch Cru Investment Portfolio
Diversification is said to be the only free lunch in investment. Beyond the usual equities, bonds and cash, private equity is a fairly common diversifier. Arch Cru provided a seemingly easy way to access this asset class. About half the funds’ assets were private equity. It sat in the “Cautious Managed” sector (according to the IMA) and was described as “low to medium risk”. Sounded good to me. How wrong I was!

The fund was suspended from dealing in March last year. Eventually, in December, we were told by Capita that the fund had dropped in value 40%. Huh! Surely it’s more likely that the underlying investments were grossly overvalued and that investors were basically being conned into buying those underlying investments at grossly overinflated prices.

Capita (or “Crapita” as they’re known to Private Eye readers) have been as fundamentally supine as the FSA. The flow of information has been, at best, treacly. In my mind there’s no doubt that there has been a serious fraud here. But no one’s doing anything about it.

And to top it all, Crapita says that it will take 3-5 years to realise the fund’s (seriously depleted) assets.

And they say lightening never strikes twice.

Carpathian IT
The last investment I got seriously wrong is Carpathian – a property company that invests in retail properties in Central and Eastern Europe. It has a good portfolio of properties and is well managed. However, the share price plunged 90%. Double ouch!

The share price is fundamentally irrational. It’s trading at a 73% discount to NAV. (Though even if the share prices bounces back to reflect NAV I’m still going to be hurting.)

As John Maynard Keynes (allegedly) said:

“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”

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Language is Changing, Innit?

18. January 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Language

Language change is inevitable. In English we’ve dropped malison (a curse), though kept benison (a blessing). We’ve lost wrine (a deep line in the face), but kept the diminutive form wrinkle. Wofare has gone, too (it means sorrow), but we’ve kept welfare. The change seems capricious, with little logic.

Language change is inescapable. It’s neither a good thing, nor a bad thing, though some try to cling to some past ideal of what language should be like. The French go further than most in this respect; its General Commission of Terminology and Neology has tried to eliminate le weekend, le shopping, le air bag, le cash flow and le stress, but with little success. In England some decry the rise of “Estuary English”, but that’s just the way some people talk, and others want to talk. (Yes, Jamie Oliver, I’m thinking of you.)

Language change is surprisingly fast. Latin mutated into both Spanish and Italian in perhaps as few as 50 generations. And the changes are decidedly odd. For example, the Latin scola (school) became école in French and escuela in Spanish. Actually, the changes weren’t in a single step. For French:

scola → iskola → eskola → escole (Old French) → école (Modern French)

Here we have the introduction of a leading vowel, then a change in that vowel, then the loss of “s” where it occurs before another consonant.

In Spanish the sequence runs:

scola → iskola → escuela

Sometimes sounds even get switched around, so the Latin parabola became the Spanish palabra (meaning word). And Old English brid became bird and hros horse.

Perhaps one of the most astounding changes in English was The Great Vowel Shift as we moved from Middle English to Modern English when long vowels started to be pronounced higher in the mouth and (in some cases) further forward. Thus /o:/ became /u:/, /a:/ became /e:/ and /e:/ became /i:/ . At the same time certain long vowels became diphthongs. (For clarification, a diphthong is not an undergarment worn by the sartorially challenged at the beach.) Thus /i:/ became /ai/ and /u:/ became /aʊ/. So, whilst we used to live in a hoose (as the Scots still do), we now live in a house; and whereas we used to milk a cuu, now we milk a cow. Even the number of digits we have on each hand has changed, from feef to five.

Thai underwent a similarly dramatic change: The Great Tone Shift. Tones are incredibly important in Thai; maa can mean come, horse or dog according to the tone with which it’s pronounced. Similarly yaa can mean grass, medicine or don’t. Every word has its correct tone. However, dramatic changes occurred in which words that were originally pronounced with a low-tone are now pronounced with either a low-tone or falling-tone; words that were pronounced with a mid-tone are pronounced with a high tone or a falling tone &c. Unfortunately, the changes occurred shortly after King Ramkhamhaeng devised the Thai script, which accounts in part for the complicated written mess that is the Thai language; originally the two tone marks each corresponded to a single tone, as did the absence of a tone mark. (Subsequently two further tone marks were introduced to accommodate certain foreign words.)

Such a dramatic shift in the language sounds like a recipe for total confusion. I don’t want to go to a restaurant and order dog meat, yet receive horse. Nor do I want to go to the pharmacy and be given grass to cure my malady. Yet Thais can whisper to each other and be understood with no difficulty at all, even though the physiology of whispering makes it impossible to produce tones. Perhaps the tones aren’t that important after all.

Thai continues to evolve. At the moment perhaps the majority of Thai speakers uses /r/ and /l/ interchangeably (very similar to the way that in most Spanish dialects /b/ (or /β/) and /v/ have merged, so many Spanish speakers Barcelona and Valencia start with the same sound). It is axiomatic in historical linguistics that once two sounds have merged they can never “unmerge”. Whether the merger will run to completion in Thai is unclear to me. There appears to be little social stigma attached to merging the sounds. (In other languages undergoing a similar merger there has been a small “upper caste” which has preserved the sound distinction, and the merger has not been completed, and has often been reversed.) However, Thai is obsessive about maintaining the original spellings of foreign words in its script, so the need to be able to write might just preserve the /r/ /l/ distinction.

A second change is the dropping of consonant clusters. Thai has no consonant clusters at the ends of syllables, so a word such as statistics becomes sa-thi-ti (สถิติ) in Thai. And there are few Thais who could get their tongue around a word such as crisps. Consonant clusters at the beginning of words tend to have an unstressed /a/ inserted. So, sport becomes sa-port in Thai, for example. However, the language does have a limited range of initial consonant clusters- but these clusters are fast disappearing. Thus plaa (fish) is most often pronounced paa, and the polite particle used by men, formally pronounced khrap is most often reduced to khap.

So, like, y’know, language changes. People just talk so vat uvver people cn understan vem. Wasssamatter wiv vat?

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Green Day Live in Bangkok

13. January 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized

Sunday morning coffee concerts at the Wigmore Hall in London are a staid affair. Quite possibly they could be enlivened by ear-splitting amplification, pyrotechnics, spraying water over the audience and stage-diving. Such entertainment was certainly prevalent at last night’s performance by Green Day at Impact Arena on the northern outskirts of Bangkok. And if the staid way that the audience at the Wigmore Hall were replaced by a vast throng of people jumping up and down on the spot, waving their hands in the air, clapping and shouting, well, why not? Of course, I was left with stiff shoulders, aching hands and a hoarse voice, but they say that pain is character-building. I am left wondering, though, why I spent a small fortune for a seat which I didn’t find much occasion to use. It was far more fun being on my feet with everybody else.

The audience at the Wigmore Hall dresses most conservatively. The late-middle aged and elderly turn up in their droves dressed in shirt, tie and jacket or ever-so-tasteful skirt, blouse and knitted cardigan. Here the dress code was equally conservative: black T-shirt and jeans.

Of course, the coffee concerts at the Wigmore Hall conclude with a civilised glass of sherry (or, for the abstemious, a cup of coffee). Here the only refreshment was Singha beer (which you had to pay for) – from one of the sponsors of the concert – not that I imbibed. Sitting for two and a half hours with a full bladder is far from my idea of fun.

As far as I recall, the Wigmore Hall doesn’t explicitly inform its audience that glass bottles, chains, weapons and illegal drugs are banned. Nor does it tell them that cameras are banned “for your safety”. Of course, almost every mobile ‘phone has a built-in camera these days, so at times in front of me I saw a sea of mobile ‘phone screens help up better to capture the artistic moment for posterity in a grainy picture.

As a prelude to the performance a performer dressed in a pink rabbit suit staggered drunkenly across stage clutching a bottle of beer in each hand. I couldn’t tell whether it was Singha, but it certainly demonstrated the perils of the demon drink. It was actually quite funny. Then Green Day took to the stage…

Green Day, Bangkok, 2010, ticket

The performance was both everything I had expected and everything I had hoped for. They performed a full range of their greatest hits, from the early days to the latest album. There were also a couple of songs I didn’t know. Many of the Thai fans knew all the lyrics, and at one point a young man was hauled out of the audience to sign the opening verse of one of the songs. He did amazingly well – and I’m sure it’s an experience he’ll remember for life. It’s not every day you get to perform before a packed arena.

The concert ended with Billie Joe doing a couple of solo numbers with him accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. His voice was a little hoarse after a two and a half hour performance, and the songs were a little bitter-sweet (“Wake Me Up When September Ends”, which is about the death of his father, and “Good Riddance (Time of your Life)”). All in all, for me, a great way to spend an evening.

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I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost

06. January 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Quirky Thailand

As I’ve written before, ghosts in Thailand are greatly feared yet ghost stories are a major film genre here. However, as this Thai advert reveals, they’re really not scary at all:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFbHNbZI5oI&hl=en_GB&fs=1&]

About the Ghosts

Phii Kraseu (ผีกระสือ)
This ghost is in the form of a beautiful woman, albeit one with no lower body and trailing intestines and a brightly beating heart (which you can see just before the lights are turned out at the end of the commercial). Lacking legs she gets about by floating. She lives inside a witch and leaves her host’s body during the night through the mouth. She’s not generally harmful to human, except when she eats their entrails. She’s also rather partial to sucking out and eating the placentas and foetuses of pregnant women just before birth. Generally, though she just eats poo. Consequently going to an outside lavatory in the night can be a terrifying experience. Thank goodness for the invention of the chamber pot. Before the host witch can die she must find someone to eat some of her saliva, so snogging such a witch is not the best of ideas.

Phii Krahang (ผีกระหัง)
This ghost is a man with feathers and a bird-like tail. He flies by means of rice threshing baskets and eats poo and sits on a pestle used for pounding rice. At night he glows.

Banana Ghost, Phii Kluay (ผีกล้วย)
This kind of ghost is female and lives in a banana tree. When it’s dark they come out and try to seduce men. Once seduced the man is trapped in the spirit world and can never return to the real world.

Jackfruit Ghost, Phii khanun (ผีกขนุน)
This isn’t actually a ghost, but rather a slang term for a lady of the night. The English subtitles in the clip are actually wrong – the father says it’s a person, not a transvestite. In days gone by prostitutes used to loiter alongside roads and in parks, often under jackfruit trees. When children asked about these strange ladies the parents, unwilling to explain the real situation, said they were jackfruit ghosts.

Blue Ghost, Phii Puming (ผีปุ่มิ่ง)
Usually this ghost is a beautiful female who is partial to human flesh. However, it also comes in male form. When Suvarnabhumi Airport was built they made a couple of mistakes: (1) they built it on a swamp (the area was originally known as “Cobra Swamp”), and (2) they built it over a graveyard. The former meant that the place started cracking up even before the first passengers had flown. The latter meant the place was infested with ghosts, including this one. A large group of monks performed a ceremony to clear the place of ghosts. The other problem is rather more intractable.

Phii Preet (ผีเปรต)
This ghost is as tall as a palm tree and is very thin on account of having only a tiny mouth. Gluttons tend to be reborn as this ghost. At night it roams the countryside making a plaintive whistling sound begging people to make merit for it so it can be released from the karmic consequences of its greed in a former life. This ghost is one of the pretty harmless ones.

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Through A Glass, Darkie

02. January 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Quirky Thailand

It’s probably fair to say that Thailand isn’t famed for its political correctness. One well-known brand of toothpaste (actually from Taiwan) used to be known as “Darkie”, and the packaging featured a stereotypical minstrel (allegedly inspired by Al Jolson).

Darkie Toothpaste

Procter & Gamble took over the company, and the preparation is now know as “Darlie”, though still has the minstrel as its logo.

The following advertisement, for another toothpaste (which happens to be black) is both touching in its portrayal of a black man in Thailand, and quite shocking for the implicit racism.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0NU9KULHO8&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

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Power Cut

23. December 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Burma

Yesterday there was a power cut. It’s not an unusual occurrence, and power was restored in less than an hour. Being without a fan to keep me cool is a minor inconvenience, as is not having any water supply. Had the power been out for much longer I might have contemplated contacting the electricity supplier. If I were living in Burma, I wouldn’t.

Back in August U Khin Maung Kyi ‘phoned the electricity company in Rangoon to complain about a power surge. It wasn’t the first time he’d complained. He’d already been charged with “obstructing the work of the electricity company’s staff” with his complaints. This time he was arrested and imprisoned. The man who’d taken his ‘phone call agreed that the caller hadn’t used offensive language or made any unlawful threat. However, his manner was “impolite” and his calls were “an inconvenience”. The court was told that he had encouraged people to vote “no” in last year’s (farcical) constitutional referendum, and had photographed flooded roads after heavy rains. The people of Burma must surely be grateful that such a dangerous criminal is off the streets.

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A Winter’s Morn

21. December 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Daily Life

The metal feels cold against my hand as I slide open the gate. The street lights harshly illumine the deserted street. As I shut the car door the dull thud breaks the early morning silence. A dog barks. And as I drive I can hear the dull rumble of tyres against the rough concrete.

As I pull out onto the main road I can faintly make out the flooded paddy fields on the far side. There hundreds of ducks sit on the low mud banks that partition the field. They weren’t here yesterday, and they won’t be here tomorrow. They’re simply taking a break as they fly south from Cathay to warmer climes. Later they’ll dabble in the shallow waters for insects and fish before heading on their way. I pause to envy them: a break in life; a respite from the daily round; and the certainty of better to come.

I pass the Old Man’s shop. Outside are stacked carboys of water and tanks of gas for sale. I can make out the outlines of the Old Man and his wife faintly illuminated by a single light bulb as they sit, stooped eating their breakfast from bowls, not talking; it’s not a tight, difficult silence, rather a relaxed companionship brought on by half a century of familiarity. There is nothing more to say, and nothing more that needs to be said.

I see orange-robed monks padding, bare-foot against the chilly ground, clutching their alms bowls tightly to their chests. A few women wait patiently to place their offerings in an alms bowl. They kneel behind low wooden tables bearing bags of rice and curry. A monk quietly recites a prayer in return for that which is proffered then moves silently on. This is as it has been for the last two and a half thousand years – a symbiosis between the sacred and the secular, between those set apart and those who remain.

Beyond is the modern: a convenience store that never shuts. The harsh light from its bright fluorescent tubes spills out onto the road. A gaggle of young men with motorcycles is encompassed by the blaze.

The railway station disgorges its passengers into the street: factory workers, students. Some climb into waiting tuk-tuks or onto the backs of motorcycle taxis, but most take a place on the back of one of the old, rusty songthaews that ply their regular routes around town. Others cross the street to the small market that clings to the side of the road to break their fast on rice soup, grilled chicken or one of a myriad of fragrant delights. I can smell the smoke, the spices and the burning fat from the braziers, see the steam rising from the bubbling aluminium pots. Mingled with the crowd are a few monks, their sacred orange flashing bright in the early morning light.

And on.

The sun is now low in the sky, a red disk suspended above the horizon. A band of mist hovers above the paddy fields. Soon light will flood the earth and a new winter’s day will begin.

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Sunflowers

13. December 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Tourist Attractions, Travel in Thailand

Sunflower field panorama between Saraburi and Lopburi

As one moves from the flat central plains towards the East the landscape changes. The road climbs and craggy limestone hills jut from the ground. This makes the area perfect, it appears, for the cultivation of sunflowers. The area between Saraburi and Lopburi has many large fields and for the few brief weeks the flowers bloom each year, attracts hordes of domestic tourists.

The first I knew I was approaching a flowering field was crazy men in the road waving red flags. My initial thought that there were roadworks ahead, or a bad accident. But no. At the side of the road there were cleared fields where one could park, and beyond vast swathes of the yellow flowers right up to the edge of the hills beyond.

Sunflower fields in the shadow of a hill near Lopburi

At the entrance to the flower fields there’s a small market selling sunflower-related knickknacks and local products such as wild honey, fruit wine, dried fruit and (of course) sunflower seeds.

Small market at the entrance to a sunflower field near Lopburi

In the fields people wander along the paths and into the blocks of sunflowers taking photos of their companions.

There are also a few elephants giving rides.

Elephant in a sunflower field near Lopburi

(The large metal sunflower on the right of the picture is to poke your head through to have your picture taken.)

Everyone seems to cheerful. It truly is a happy time and place.

A perfect sunflower in a field near Lopburi

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Hippo Hunting

07. December 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Thailand News

Thailand isn’t usually associated with big game hunting. There aren’t wildebeest or giraffe roaming the central plains. The few remaining wild elephants, tigers and gaur are highly elusive, confined to the depths of the forest, protected in national parks. However, in Chiang Mai there is a new sport, hippo hunting. But let me begin at the beginning…

It is said that if sleeping were an Olympic sport, the Thais would win, hands down, every time. Thai people have an innate ability to sleep anywhere, any time. Oft has been the time that I’ve been white-knuckled with terror as a crazed minivan driver has been weaving in and out of traffic at high speed on the Asia Highway whilst the passenger next to me has been in the land of nod, his or her head falling on my shoulder. It’s therefore not surprising that security guards are often caught snoozing. Unfortunately, one such guard was supposed to be keeping an eye on a sick baby hippo (a one month old female) in intensive care at a zoo hospital in Chiang Mai. Whilst he was asleep the baby hippo wandered off. Footprints show she headed towards a large forest area which forms part of the zoo grounds. More than a hundred people – zoo keepers and volunteers – have been searching for her, so far to no avail. It is thought she is unlikely to survive if not retaken quickly.

Update (8 December)
After a week searching the baby hippo was found dead, less than 100 metres from the hospital.

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