MUSIC
Something about which I know nothing...well another thing!
What are the orthodox explanations for why music became the defining art-form of the last 50 years?
I am not heavily into toons..but we were playing Desert Island Discsof an evening....mind you in Wales you would not need to play... it would be real.......and it probably will be in Chiang Mai...if we ever get there. I don't think I want to say songs or pieces...what I would want is discs that contained......of course in no particular order:
Schubert's 9th Symphony
Tom Waits including Grapefruit Moon
John Coltrane Blue Train
Anna and Kate McGarrigle..must have Heartbeats Accelerating
Paul Brady
Indochine...must have J'ai Demande a la Lune
William Boyce Symphonies
Varunee..Best
Suzanne Vega...?
J.S.Bach..probably Brandeburg concertos
Why?
Well there are of course other things that were probably greater milestones. Lawrence Tibbett singing De Glory Road-played endlessly in 1960! Elvis-Its Now or Never, echoing over Glandyfi along with Living Doll and Ricky Nelson, Scarlatti(Wanda Landowska) and Carmina Burana!. Hank Williams, John Lee Hooker.... Later Bryan Ferry, David Bowie, Missa Creola and Brahms, Other Schubert, Neil Young, even later Nanci Griffith and Karla Bonhoff then Bird-Tongchai Mackinthai, Patchala and Mai Charoenpura...but these are people I still listen to! and that is the difference!
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
ANOTHER DAY OF NONSENSES
This gets worse. Just wrote a whole page and Blogger has 'lost' it.
Upgraded Blogger to Plus to get pictures. All that has happened is they have removed the ads!. Of course, being from across the water they have taken their money in return for nothing. Also sent a amazon gift certificate to the one who is going hold my hand with all this. Amazon, too, have taken their money..but she cannot get the certificate!! Not impressed with The Big Country today. Mind you France no better. Spent ages registering a couple of domain names to which all this is going to migrate. But I entered a contact phone number, not the home phone...and anyway their forms are all upside down so the ZIP comes before the Postcode unlike the UK. Result? Bank sends me PANICKY email saying an attempt has been made to use my Credit card fraudulently and would I know anything about this....WHAT??
On the brighter side the Bangkapi Street Vendors have had a good day. Got a girl in the pm. selling White Prawns from a styrofoam box perched on a supermarket trolley........$6 a kilo....$12 in the supermarket. A little bit of garlic, red shallotts, chili and lime juice. MM. I like them stirred with butter and salt. BUT they are not Welsh Prawns and basically tasteless...by comparison.....and the larger they are the worse...All those tourists ordering jumbo shrimp in Phuket to receive "Cardboard in the shell" with a lethal chili sauce. A couple of dozen prawns taken from the sea in Wales worth $20.in a restaurant.......Rhodri used to put on goggles and a wetsuit to catch them late into a September evening, as the tide flooded slowly and swimmingly into his net!!
This gets worse. Just wrote a whole page and Blogger has 'lost' it.
Upgraded Blogger to Plus to get pictures. All that has happened is they have removed the ads!. Of course, being from across the water they have taken their money in return for nothing. Also sent a amazon gift certificate to the one who is going hold my hand with all this. Amazon, too, have taken their money..but she cannot get the certificate!! Not impressed with The Big Country today. Mind you France no better. Spent ages registering a couple of domain names to which all this is going to migrate. But I entered a contact phone number, not the home phone...and anyway their forms are all upside down so the ZIP comes before the Postcode unlike the UK. Result? Bank sends me PANICKY email saying an attempt has been made to use my Credit card fraudulently and would I know anything about this....WHAT??
On the brighter side the Bangkapi Street Vendors have had a good day. Got a girl in the pm. selling White Prawns from a styrofoam box perched on a supermarket trolley........$6 a kilo....$12 in the supermarket. A little bit of garlic, red shallotts, chili and lime juice. MM. I like them stirred with butter and salt. BUT they are not Welsh Prawns and basically tasteless...by comparison.....and the larger they are the worse...All those tourists ordering jumbo shrimp in Phuket to receive "Cardboard in the shell" with a lethal chili sauce. A couple of dozen prawns taken from the sea in Wales worth $20.in a restaurant.......Rhodri used to put on goggles and a wetsuit to catch them late into a September evening, as the tide flooded slowly and swimmingly into his net!!
Monday, September 02, 2002
FOOT SHOOTING
What a day of nonsenses!
We live in Bangkapi which is, I suppose, to Bangkok as ?Richmond is to London or ?St.Cloud to Paris or whatever. It is, for here, wealthy. We have a huge shopping Center, called The Mall and just up the road are Carrefour and BigC.
Also Makro
We have three good hospitals, schools and a major University-Ramkhamhaeng. In about a month a huge Tesco Lotus Hypermarket
will open..more of that in a moment.
We went to Makro today to buy some Gaz cylinders and a baby-walker. Very hot in Makro..why?
"Oh Makro has taken the decision to turn off the air conditioning as too many people were wandering around in the pleasant ambience without buying anything!!"
Ah well.
So we get to the checkout with our Gaz, a bottle of Chateau Cadillac and a plastic bag of Oysters!
Can I have your card please?
Sorry? What Card?
Oh Makro have decided that they are only selling wholesale now. You must have a Makro Card. So Kunjana turns to the three people behind us in the queue and asks if they will swipe their card. No-one has a card. Kunjana then observes. "I wondered why Makro was empty"...true, it was normally teeming...Makro have managed to tell all their customers to f. off...and Tesco is opening. Another multinational cock-up.....
We wonder how long it will be before Boots closes? Already closed in Japan I gather. Good stuff as at home..but EXPENSIVE!!. Bottle of shower cream downstairs $1.30 bottle.In Boots $4.50. Watsons the HK pharmacy will clean up.
Anyway back to Tesco. They opened a big store down Rama 3 way. As everywhere, there had to be motorcycle taxi ranks. Some bright spark decides there should be one at each side of the store. Unfortunately they give one franchise to a mob run by a policeman and the other to a gang run by a soldier. Result: gunfights in the carpark and customers shot in the store.However they seem to have sorted it for now! We eagerly anticipate the awarding of franchises in Bangkapi.
As to other nonsenses
Well here is a story.
We have two friends called-well I had better not name them-lets say the girl is called Gay and the guy Asoda. She is Thai and he Japanese. They have lived together, on and off, for three or four years. he has some doubtful watch business. There was a great panic a couple of years ago when his Japanese colleagues threatened to move the production to India. She is an orphan. But has a husband who is in jail for dealing 'chemicals'. Asoda thinks he is her brother. Common mistake, here. In the early days life tootled on. Gay, who is 21, went out, drank Johnnie Walker, danced the night away etc. Asoda, who is 60, stayed home, watched unlikely Japanese videos, ate salad and went to work. But there was some other chemistry at work! A couple of years ago Gay started to investigate chemistry more seriously. Mainly she met a guy who was an advanced researcher. So after a while she is doing several tabs a day of what is called here Ya Ba.....literally mad medicine..amphetamines...with a few E tabs thrown in at the discos. A few lines of ice for good measure. She comes out in serious lesions....next we know Asoda is tripping away with her, also the maid and the driver. Kunjana spoke to her today and Gay says. The dogs are not well. Why not asks K. Oh I guess its the amphetamines. What? Well no-one has the energy to buy food for themselves, let alone the dogs, so we give the dogs tabs. They are very thin and their fur is falling out. Oh. What about you? Well I am down to 31 kilos!! And I cannot go out because I am too shy with all these red patches all over me. K reckons they have 2 years unless they pull out of it. Me, being naive about this stuff says...have to do something etc. K says..look I knew half a dozen people or so from school and another 6 from university who did this..they are all dead. Its a Thai problem......................??? I have talked the nights away with them, she says. They don't care. It is happening all over Bangkok and up country too. If the politicians were not making so much money out of the trade they would have to do something...as it is..All the amphetamine factories in Burma are funded by Thais...so..when anyone complains they just shrug. Can't come between a Thai and his money!
What a day of nonsenses!
We live in Bangkapi which is, I suppose, to Bangkok as ?Richmond is to London or ?St.Cloud to Paris or whatever. It is, for here, wealthy. We have a huge shopping Center, called The Mall and just up the road are Carrefour and BigC.
Also Makro
We have three good hospitals, schools and a major University-Ramkhamhaeng. In about a month a huge Tesco Lotus Hypermarket
will open..more of that in a moment.
We went to Makro today to buy some Gaz cylinders and a baby-walker. Very hot in Makro..why?
"Oh Makro has taken the decision to turn off the air conditioning as too many people were wandering around in the pleasant ambience without buying anything!!"
Ah well.
So we get to the checkout with our Gaz, a bottle of Chateau Cadillac and a plastic bag of Oysters!
Can I have your card please?
Sorry? What Card?
Oh Makro have decided that they are only selling wholesale now. You must have a Makro Card. So Kunjana turns to the three people behind us in the queue and asks if they will swipe their card. No-one has a card. Kunjana then observes. "I wondered why Makro was empty"...true, it was normally teeming...Makro have managed to tell all their customers to f. off...and Tesco is opening. Another multinational cock-up.....
We wonder how long it will be before Boots closes? Already closed in Japan I gather. Good stuff as at home..but EXPENSIVE!!. Bottle of shower cream downstairs $1.30 bottle.In Boots $4.50. Watsons the HK pharmacy will clean up.
Anyway back to Tesco. They opened a big store down Rama 3 way. As everywhere, there had to be motorcycle taxi ranks. Some bright spark decides there should be one at each side of the store. Unfortunately they give one franchise to a mob run by a policeman and the other to a gang run by a soldier. Result: gunfights in the carpark and customers shot in the store.However they seem to have sorted it for now! We eagerly anticipate the awarding of franchises in Bangkapi.
As to other nonsenses
Well here is a story.
We have two friends called-well I had better not name them-lets say the girl is called Gay and the guy Asoda. She is Thai and he Japanese. They have lived together, on and off, for three or four years. he has some doubtful watch business. There was a great panic a couple of years ago when his Japanese colleagues threatened to move the production to India. She is an orphan. But has a husband who is in jail for dealing 'chemicals'. Asoda thinks he is her brother. Common mistake, here. In the early days life tootled on. Gay, who is 21, went out, drank Johnnie Walker, danced the night away etc. Asoda, who is 60, stayed home, watched unlikely Japanese videos, ate salad and went to work. But there was some other chemistry at work! A couple of years ago Gay started to investigate chemistry more seriously. Mainly she met a guy who was an advanced researcher. So after a while she is doing several tabs a day of what is called here Ya Ba.....literally mad medicine..amphetamines...with a few E tabs thrown in at the discos. A few lines of ice for good measure. She comes out in serious lesions....next we know Asoda is tripping away with her, also the maid and the driver. Kunjana spoke to her today and Gay says. The dogs are not well. Why not asks K. Oh I guess its the amphetamines. What? Well no-one has the energy to buy food for themselves, let alone the dogs, so we give the dogs tabs. They are very thin and their fur is falling out. Oh. What about you? Well I am down to 31 kilos!! And I cannot go out because I am too shy with all these red patches all over me. K reckons they have 2 years unless they pull out of it. Me, being naive about this stuff says...have to do something etc. K says..look I knew half a dozen people or so from school and another 6 from university who did this..they are all dead. Its a Thai problem......................??? I have talked the nights away with them, she says. They don't care. It is happening all over Bangkok and up country too. If the politicians were not making so much money out of the trade they would have to do something...as it is..All the amphetamine factories in Burma are funded by Thais...so..when anyone complains they just shrug. Can't come between a Thai and his money!
Sunday, September 01, 2002
As she becomes more vocal, we are talking a great deal about the languages she will speak. We came on this about Bilingual and Multilingual Children. Seems like good sense. If she speaks English and Thai as parental tongues and goes to a French school. We would not be unhappy! Over ambitious father would quite like her to have either Chinese or Japanese! Many people here speak three and four languages. Thai and Lao, Khmer, or Kammuang-the languages of the North, SW and East of Thailand as well as a more local dialect. Many in Bangkok and the central areas of Ayutthaya and Suphanburi, as well as Phuket speak Thai and a Chinese language-usually Teochew or Hokkien. Indeed possibly more people speak a language other than standard Thai as their first language. In all there may be over EIGHTY languages spoken here! See Ethnologue report for Thailand So four does not seem so many! Rhodri is miffed that we did not enable him to speak French as a native tongue, though speak he can, as can I. And of course we have the doubtful skill of reading Latin! But my mother spoke French with me. And she had some Italian too. I have yet to hear an authoritative view on how well RS spoke Welsh. What I do hear suggests he spoke it too correctly. He used to moan that he could not speak pure Welsh in the grocer in Pwllheli as they just laughed. And however well educated were the population of Lleyn they must have found his conversation a little hard going. The hard task will be to find the school. I dont think we want to go the Westminster route again. So this adds all the more piquancy to our game of choose the French town! We read this top to bottom. Aix en Provence would be OK-a bit too urban I suspect. Otherwise the front runners were Vannes and Nantes (bit too damp), Montpellier and Valence (except Valence has a nuclear power station!), Gap and Chamonix (bit out of the way no TGV or airport) so now we are onto smaller places: Annonay (Ardèche / Rhône-Alpes) and Romans Sur Isere (Drome/Rhone Alpes) this week!
I have asked some of you already the question-if you did not live where you do where would you live. Been asking it all my life really and no sign of stopping. You could not prise Rhodri away from London except, maybe, to NY.
I have asked some of you already the question-if you did not live where you do where would you live. Been asking it all my life really and no sign of stopping. You could not prise Rhodri away from London except, maybe, to NY.