Tag: thailand

lameness at the top

this week, i participated in an 1-day economic forum at the un conference center in bangkok. pm thaksin’s performance was less than stellar, barely able to read from the script. while it provided few new clues about the economic outlook, i was very impressed with the performance of Kenneth Curtis from Goldman Sachs. having just arrived by learjet from frankfurt, he gave his 2 cents on the world economy in flawless, logically coherent statements (which he had not prepared, as the Q & A showed)

The crisis will accelerate the shift in technology, by placing a premium on cost-cutting, efficiency and earnings. Anyone who thinks these forces will slow is wrong.

The professionally idle

Well, I was bored, so I went out to Narcissus. As it happens, I meet this girl who asks me to come to a private party. Which I promptly did. The party turned out to include some 20 people, all crowded in the room of a rich Chinese son. Once inside, the music was turned to full volume until 13:00.

After which I finally found some sleep. When I asked some of the attendees what they did for a living, they went like: “nothing”. Apparently it is rather common to do just that. !?

Angkor Wat

well, i heard today that by paying 15k baht (600 SFr), you can rent 2 police officers with motorbikes that will keep traffic clear for you. sounds like a bargain, and could only happen here.

on a different note, i will likely spend the weekend in cambodia, to visit the great ruins at angkor wat i hope the trip won’t be too rough, one has heard tales of harassed tourists lately.

My Bangkok Apartment

it’s been like 5 days since i moved into my new apartment. while its not in any way up to european standards re: cleanliness etc, i don’t mind.

its situated in a building full of thais, so i get to experience the thai way of life up close. first night i slept there, my roommate came back from a party at 5:00, quite drunk.. i was somewhat surprised 🙂

the following night, someone in the building thought it a good idea to do some home improvement at 3:00 one morning, no water in the shower.. so i applied a renaissance level of perfume to cover the sweat stench. 🙂

the other night, the owner of the building had his birthday. he is running a spa just opposite the apartment. naturally, all his employees were there partying with him. that meant an enormously loud sound system on the street in front of the building, and some 30 thais dancing all night like crazy. it was great fun, or sanook as they say around here. (yes, i finally got around to buying an english-thai dictionary which helps me to make major inroads into the thai language)

Bangkok Day 15

today was a good day. i made a lot of progress, we completed a release ready to install at the customer site, and are now heavily into re-architecting the application (it needed that, seriously..) slowly, but surely, the thais around the office pick up my ideas and start to become more productive by being more organized. sooner or later i will explain them how to write a .NET application 🙂

also, my surfing got a lot faster when i installed the proximotron, a very cool local proxy that filters out all the crap that goes into websites these days.

in the evening, i went to emporium and met jam by chance. she is a friend of oliver and me and i know her from my last visit. afterwards, i went to see memento, a very special movie.

Bangkok Days 8-13

august 1st
ok ok it’s been a while. but i have been rather busy.. on august 1st, well we skipped the swiss festivities, and went to an indian restaurant instead. after, we went bowling. then we got hit by the new tendency of the thai police to shut down everything at 1:00. very stupid i tell you.

august 2nd
well, i don’t remember what i did on that day.. other than being late in the office due to hardly any sleep. going out & working is hard to keep up. so i went to bed early.

august 3rd
visited a swiss client here, was very interesting (they do international wine trading). in the evening, finished cryptonomicon (great book.) then i got a call from laurent, and we went to see final fantasy. it was a great movie, although the story was strangely japanese in style. but the imagery made up for that.

august 4th
rose very early to go to river kwai with laurent. the trip was fun. learned about the houseboats. you can rent a houseboat, complete with a VERY large sound system, that holds 10-20 persons for 24 hours for 2000 baht. great deal. we’ll have to do that.. in the evening we went to see a typical thai boxing event. it was not that interesting. our expectations were way out of proportion (possibly due to having seen too many movies..)

august 5th
went shopping. it seems that everyone was there, blowing their salary on the first weekend (thais get their salary at the end of the month). i bought 9 shirts / tshirts for a grand total of 60 swiss francs. in the evening i started japanese lessons with a cd rom that oliver bought. great fun.

august 6th
contemplated going to kuala lumpur for 3 days. but the flight alone is like 600 swiss francs.. oliver, of course, makes heavy use of his fathers qualiflyer miles. i am not so lucky so i’ll stay in bangkok this time.

Bangkok Day 6

most interesting thing by far was the interview in the early evening with webcontrol and gateinfo, 2 thai e-business companies.
both of them have a range of very interesting projects coming up, and so i am left with the difficult task of deciding whom to give the go ahead. i opted to go with them instead of siemens because they are more entrepreneurial in style and have their technological act much more together.
i hope to hold a series of brown paper bag speeches / seminars about the implications of web services to the employees of these 2 companies. doing so will allow me to contribute my interest in the field towards a better technological vision for these enterprises. i hope to spark their interest, and therefore
work with these technologies during my stay.
on a different subject, thailand is really going down the toilet. lulled by a comparatively healthy economy, the thai leadership is asleep at the wheel,
and rotten to the core with corruption. they fail to implement crucial reforms, such as a cleanup of the bureaucracy or more stringent rules for bookkeeping. instead, they propose (this i no joke! i did not make this up) to align their time zone with singapore because singapore has been economically successful. do they really believe that they will achieve anything other than a good laugh with fumbled strategies like these?

Bangkok Day 5

being sunday, i overslept my appointment until oliver showed up at the hotel at 12.30. we then went to bayoke, arguably the tallest hotel in the world at 308 meters, and had lunch at the top. it was 310 baht fare & all you can eat. incredible, especially the vietnamese cuisine. go for it. the view was also great however we will probably do some shots at night when there are some taillights from the traffic.

on we went to do some clothes shopping, with many stores to choose from. it was more an exercise to avoid all the obvious, been there done that diesel fakes and go for the meatier stuff than anything else. freshly dressed we entered pantip plaza to check out new software releases. sure enough they already had final fantasy on dvd. (it will show here in 1 week.. ha) i opted for some baldur’s gate expansion instead (hello guido do you copy?)

oliver had to be back early, so i charged back to the hotel and went to the swimming pool and read on in cryptonomicon. you cannot complain if you get a swimming pool for 10 swiss francs a day accommodation. i then decided to check out the hotel restaurant for dinner. it was great. rumor has it that their menu has repeatedly been stolen by thai restaurants from around the world, and dinner was like 4 swiss francs.

Bangkok Day 3

After a nice breakfast at the incredible Atlanta, I head to town to work on my emails. At 14.00, I decide to go to a spa to make use of the 555 baht special deal where you can have massage, sauna, body scrub, manicure, haircut, for 20 bucks.

At 14.10, I call Siemens Thailand. They invite me over for an interview (so no spa today). I have a nice chat with them, resulting in a job offer around 16.00. Afterwards, I finish Bill Gates “Business @ the speed of thought:”. I then head back to the Atlanta, chill out until 20.00. On the street, I then get bitten by a stray dog. 22.00: Sun arrives at Oliver’s apartment. 24.00:Ii am in the hospital to get vaccination against rabies (which that stupid dog surely had) 1.00: I eat noodles with chicken on the street. 1.30: We are shaking it at Bangkok bar.
2022-07-27: I may have dodged a huge bullet on that day. Rabies is scary.

Bangkok Day 1

i arrive in bangkok after a rather tiresome flight, no driver in sight, so i catch a taxi and drive to the hotel atlanta which i have in fond memory from my previous trip to bangkok. once in my room, jet lag takes over, and i sleep for the next 5 hours.

in the evening, i join oliver in his apartment and i am immediately subjected to his rant about thailand. its his 18th trip to thailand, and unfortunately for me, he hates it this time..

apparently his job at webcontrol is rather stressy, with no one talking to him during the workday, 20 minute lunch breaks and so on. so he might change jobs by the end of the week..

after dinner we go out to play billiard. the place is new to me, and its quite decent even though its in the center of the red light district. decent in this context means we are not approached by any bar girls, which is nice.

after making the acquaintance of a swedish formula one journalist (oliver seems to be into formula one. i have no idea what they are talking about..) i hit the sack.