Newley Purnell

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately:

1. Boston.com: “How the city hurts your brain…And what you can do about it”

   The city has always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of London, where citizens gathered to discuss chemistry and radical politics, to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris, where Pablo Picasso held forth on modern art. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce; even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains.

   And yet, city life isn’t easy. The same London cafes that stimulated Ben Franklin also helped spread cholera; Picasso eventually bought an estate in quiet Provence. While the modern city might be a haven for playwrights, poets, and physicists, it’s also a deeply unnatural and overwhelming place.

   Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening.

2. AFP: “Thailand blocks 2,300 websites for insulting monarchy”
   

   Thai authorities have blocked 2,300 websites for allegedly insulting the country’s revered monarchy and are waiting for court approval to restrict another 400, the government said Tuesday.

   The blocking of the websites under harsh lese majeste laws which protect King Bhumibol Adulyadej has been criticised by rights groups and media organisations in recent months.

3. Suzanne Yada: “Resolutions for journalism students, part I: Become invaluable” and “Resolutions for journalism students, part II: Network like mad”
   

   If I only had two career resolutions for 2009, it would be these:

   1) Become invaluable, and
   2) Network like mad.

4. Winterspeak: “It ain’t over”
   

   …The US has had a high volatility, but flat 13 years, with the near and medium term outlook decidedly gloomy. Will we have 20 years of flat, but high vol, equity prices?

5. CJR: “Interview with Clay Shirky, Part I”
   

   “There’s always a new Luddism whenever there’s change.”

6. Tools for News — a compendium of tools for online and multimedia journalists
7. Read Write Web: “2009 Web Predictions”
   

   It’s time for our annual predictions post, in which the ReadWriteWeb authors look forward to what 2009 might bring in the world of Web technology and new media.

   Looking back at our 2008 Web predictions, we got some of them right! “The big Internet companies will [embrace] open standards” (Google, Yahoo and others did this); “Mobile web usage will be a big story in 2008″ (check!); “Web Services platforms will be a fierce battleground” (Microsoft Azure and Google App Engine were released and AWS grew). We also got some wrong, including most of our acquisition picks! Digg, Twitter, Zoho, Tumblr - all remain independent. Not to be deterred, we’ve made new acquisition predictions for ‘09… although the names will be familiar

This story came out nearly two weeks ago, but I thought it would be of interest to readers here in Thailand.

Reuters: “True Move to unveil iPhone 3G on January 16″

BANGKOK, Dec 24 (Reuters) - True Move PCL, Thailand’s third largest mobile phone firm, said on Wednesday it planned to sell Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) 3G iPhone in Thailand from Jan. 16, a key driver which should boost revenue next year.

The deal will make True Move, a subsidiary of True Corp TRUE.BK, the first operator to sell the new phone in the fast-growing Thai market.

Shares in True Corp TRUE.BK, which owns 75.26 percent of True Move, surged 17 percent to close at a near two-month high of 1.65 baht. The overall Thai market .SETI was down 0.3 percent.

True Move will sell the 8GB model for an upfront payment of 6,999 baht ($202) and monthly fees of 1,199 baht. Customers are required to use True Move services for at least 24 months, it said in a statement.

(Thanks to BL for the tip.)

Here’s a look back at 2008 — a summary of my work, travel, dining, media consumption, and sports endeavors throughout the year.

NOTE: I haven’t limited my books, music, and film pics to 2008 releases. Some of these were new to me this year, but didn’t come out in 2008.

Writing and journalism

Print and radio journalism

Contributed to the following outlets, among others:

• Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia
• AFP
• ABC News Radio
• ABCNews.com
• Forbes Traveler

Multimedia work

Two items posted on newley.com:

• Audio slide show: State of emergency in Bangkok
• Bangkok Protests: Audio Slide Show

Fiction writing

• I’m happy to say that I completed National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2008, which entailed writing 50,000 words during the month of November. So I now have a first draft of a novel. It…needs a lot of work. But it’s a start! I’ll devote a future post to this experience. Trust me.

International Travel

Trips abroad included:

• Vietnam (motorcycle trip: Hanoi and northeast — pictured above)
• United States
• Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City)
• Indonesia (Jakarta and Bali)

Thailand Travel

Trips within the Kingdom included:

• Beach trip: Pranburi
• Work trip: Koh Chang and Koh Kood
• Beach trip: Koh Samet (twice)
• Ayutthaya
• Road trip along Mekong river: Nong Khai to Ubon Ratchathani

Books

A couple of my favorite reads:

• Fiction: Blinding Light, by Paul Theroux
• Nonfiction: Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer, by Chuck Thompson

Music

A song that I really like:

• MIA’s “Paper Planes” — DFA/James Murphy Remix

TV

• My favorite show — what I would argue is some of the best television ever created — concluded this year. I speak, of course, of The Wire

Movies

• I really liked No Country for Old Men

.

Food and Drink

• My favorite Thai food restaurants are mom-and-pop joints and street stalls throughout Bangkok. One collection of vendors that I like a lot is Langsuan soi 9. Don’t miss Austin’s blog post from a trip we took there. And some readers will recall that this is where the infamous Thai ladies laughing at me video was filmed.
• Other memorable meals include an excellent khao phat gai (chicken fried rice) in Mukdahan, Thailand, overlooking the Mekong river and Laos beyond. And A and I had some excellent ribs, burgers, and bloody marys at the legendary Naughty Nuri’s in Ubud, Bali. We also enjoyed the tasting menu at Ubud’s Mozaic restaurant. And Chesa, an excellent Swiss restaurant here in Bangkok, serves a mean Sunday brunch that we were lucky enough to enjoy a few times. And finally, my brother C and I did some epic eating in Saigon. One word: pho.

Sports and fitness

• I continue to play football (soccer) in the MBMG league here in Bangok.
• Also, I’m grateful to my college buddy Danny, at The New York Fitness Institute, for introducing me to Crossfit back in September. Crossfit is an exercise regimen to which I’ll be devoting a future post. For more info, check out the official site or the Wikipedia entry.

The Web

And finally, here’s an A-Z of some of my favorite sites:

A — Austin Bush Photography (Honorable mention: Angshuman Gosh Films and his Flickr photostream)

B — Bangkok Pundit (Honorable mention: Brad Linder.)

C — CommonCraft (Honorable mention: Common Sense Journalism and Cyrus Farivar.)

D — Daily Routines

E — Evan Rail’s Beer Culture

F — Frugal Traveler

G — Goalkeepers’ Union (Honorable mention: Good Experience.)

H — Hit & Run

I — is.gd

J — James Fallows (Honorable mention: Jay Rosen on Twitter)

K — Kottke.org

L — Laughing Squid

M — Mindy McAdams’s Teaching Online Journalism

N — Newsless

O — On the Media

P — Popurls (Honorable mention: Publishing 2.0.)

Q —

R — Red Cross Chat (Honorable mention: Romenesko)

S — Soccernet

T — Twitter (follow me here) (Honorable mention: Transom, Thomas Crampton, and The Glove Bag)

U —

V — Video.google.com (Google Video)

W — World Hum (Honorable mention: Winterspeak and Wise Kwai’s Thai Film Journal)

X —

Y — Yelvington.com

Z —

So. That was 2008. Here’s to more adventures — both online and offline — in 2009.

(Inspiration for this annual report came from The Feltron Annual Reports.)

Some updates on the new year’s eve Bangkok nightclub fire:

1. At least 59 people were killed and approximately 200 were injured. Some estimates put the number of dead at 61 or 62.
2. The club was popular with Thais and foreigners alike. Survivors include citizens of 12 countries.
3. Witnesses say partygoers at the nightclub had only one exit from which to escape the fire. Some reports say the club had just one fire extinguisher.
4. It may take up to a week to identify approximately 30 of the bodies, as they were burned beyond recognition.
5. The club was called Santika, located on Ekkamai road (Sukhumvit soi 63).
6. Witnesses say the blaze was started by fireworks that were ignited inside the club, though police say the exact cause is still unclear. Some witnesses say revelers were given sparklers inside the club.
7. A sad, ironic twist: new year’s eve marked the club’s “Goodbye Santika” party, as the property’s lease was up and the club was due to be relocated.
8. A Wikipedia page called “2009 Bangkok nightclub fire” has been established.

Here are some recent media reports:

• Bangkok Post: “Pub inferno leaves 61 dead” and “Police to charge Santika owner.”
• The Nation: “Survivors tell of stampede for exits” and “Rescuers helpless as flames engulf revellers”
• AFP: “Survivors recall horror of Bangkok blaze as mourners pray”
• FT: “Blaze at Bangkok nightclub kills 59”
• Bloomberg: “Thai Police Probe Cause of Club Blaze That Killed 59”
• A YouTube search for “Bangkok nightclub fire” yields several videos, both news reports and mobile phone videos by witnesses. (Viewer discretion is advised.)

More than 59 people were killed last night when a fire tore through a popular nightclub here in Bangkok. Approximately 1,000 people had gathered there to celebrate the new year.

Here’s a round-up of media coverage:

For video of the incident, there’s this, from BBC News: “Eyewitness films Thai club fire”

NY Times: “At Least 59 Die in Bangkok Club Fire”

A fire at a high-end Bangkok nightclub killed at least 59 people and injured more than 200 shortly after midnight Thursday as revelers were celebrating the new year, the police said.

Nightclub workers said fireworks had been set off around the midnight countdown, but the cause of the fire has not been determined, according to Lt. Sutin Pongkhamphan, the police officer in charge of the case.

He said 54 people died at the scene at the popular club, the Santika, and that five more died at hospitals. An additional 212 people were injured, 21 severely.

AFP: “New Year inferno at Bangkok nightclub kills at least 58”

Police forensic investigators sifted through the charred remains of an upscale Bangkok nightclub Thursday, seeking clues to a blaze that killed 58 revellers ringing in the New Year and injured 243.

Relatives and friends gathered at Bangkok hospitals and outside the popular nightspot desperate for news of loved ones lost or injured in the inferno that gutted the two-storey building.

Police said a Singaporean national was killed and scores of other foreigners — some from Australia, France, Japan and Britain — were hospitalised.

The blaze apparently broke out after a firework display at the Santika club in the Thai capital’s Ekkamai district, a thronging entertainment hub which is frequented by locals and tourists.

AP: “Fire at Bangkok nightclub kills 61, injures 200”

It was billed as a New Year’s Eve blowout and a last-night celebration of the wildly popular, classy nightclub before it moved to a new location. “Goodbye Santika,” the promotion poster read. Before the revelry was over, at least 61 people were dead and more than 200 injured after they tried to flee what swiftly became a charred, gutted ruin in a glitzy Bangkok entertainment area.

Among the casualties was a Singaporean who died and at least 35 foreigners who were injured, including citizens of Australia, Belgium, Britain, France, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and the United States, according to officials and reporters.

A full accounting was not expected for about a week since nearly 30 of the corpses were charred beyond recognition.

BBC: “Hazy safety in Bangkok party zone”

Bangkok is a party town, and spectacular New Year celebrations are held in many of the clubs which have made the city’s nightlife renowned around the world.

The Santika was a spacious, two-storey club, stylishly decorated like a mock gothic cathedral, complete with fake arches and a large cross hung from the ceiling.

A natural magnet for partygoers, it had become one of Bangkok’s most popular entertainment venues, packed out with young Thais and foreigners at weekends.

A friend of mine was on the dance floor shortly after midnight, when he first noticed the fire.

He told me he had seen small fireworks being tossed from the stage to celebrate the New Year - then noticed flames around the stage and creeping up to the ceiling.

Suddenly, he said, the flames seemed to be everywhere, and the lights went out.

He described people stumbling towards the single entrance, trying to light their way with their mobile phones.

Mis amigos: May this holiday season make you as stoked as this surfer in Huntington Beach, California. Killer, bra. (RSS readers may need to, like, totally click through to see the vid on YouTube.)

(Via BoingBoing.)

I have a story in the January 2009 issue of Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia about a car trip I took along Thailand’s side of the Mekong river, in the country’s rural northeast.

The journey was exceptional in every way: The views were striking, the people were generous and fun-loving, and — this being Thailand — the food was, naturally, quite tasty. You can find the article, called “River Escapes,” on page 76 of the magazine. (It’s not online, but you can find more info about T+L SEA here.)

In addition, I’m happy to say that the excellent images accompanying the article were shot by old Thailand hand Austin Bush, who also happens to be a good friend.

(My previous T+L SEA stories have been about riding a Soviet-era motorbike through northeast Vietnam and exploring Thailand’s Ko Chang and Ko Kood.)

A quick look at my Google Analytics traffic stats for 2008 reveals the following:

Visitors and Page Views
– 31,480 people visited Newley.com this year (an average of 2623 per month) for a total of 50,901 page views

– Visitors from 162 different countries came to Newley.com during 2008. The top ten countries were the United States, Thailand, the UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. And folks from small countries, like Tuvalu, Palau, Bhutan, and Kiribati also came to the site.

– Traffic spiked¹ in late November, as you can see in the graph above. That’s when anti-government protesters shut down Bangkok’s airports, leading to a flurry of folks finding the site via Google searches for news about the situation.

Most Popular Posts
Some of the most viewed pages were:
– Jalapeno Hands: A Cautionary Culinary Tale (10,104 page views). This post, about my friend C’s cooking accident², ranks highly in a Google search for jalapeno hands and jalapeno burn. Judging from the 179 comments on the post, this epidemic has been simmering in the cooking world for some time…
– Waffle coated hot dog: Consumed in Kanchanaburi, Thailand (1,321 page views)
– Ecuadorian slang (1,220 page views)
– How to use Skype: A Tutorial: (1,054 page views)
– About me (888 page views)
– Bangkok airport closure: Fri. update (872 views)
– Journalism — my page of clips (560 page views)

Other Posts
Some posts from 2008 (and a few from 2007) that I like — but which haven’t attracted as many eyeballs — include:

– Our Northeast India Trip: Top 10 Images
– How to Learn Thai
– The Asus Eee PC: 10 Things You Need to Know About the World’s Coolest Gadget
– Why I Love My Grandmother
– Best Burger in Bangkok
– Audio Slide Show: State of Emergency in Bangkok
– Newley.com Exclusive Video: November in Bangkok
– StateStats: Analyzing Google search patterns
– My Favorite Podcasts: Updated

RSS, Twitter, and Facebook
– According to Feedburner, which I use to manage my RSS feed, Newley.com has 692 subscribers. But I reckon that a glitch has inflated this number artifically, and that the actual number of subscribers is in the neighborhood of 250. (Not a subscriber? Grab the feed here.)

– I’m happy to report that my recently-launched Newley.com Facebook page has attracted 51 fans in just a couple of weeks.

– And Twitter, which I began using in 2008, has quickly become indispensable for me. I have 183 followers. You can find me on Twitter here.

Thanks to all of you for reading. If you have any suggestions for how I can improve the site, please leave a comment on this post or email me (newley [at] gmail.com).

1. The dip in October occurred when I changed the site’s design and neglected to include the Google Analytics traffic code, resulting in a lack of data for a time. [↩]
2. Moral of the story: always wear kitchen gloves when peeling jalapenos! [↩]

CNN has this brief item: “Official: Plot to kill Bolivian president foiled”

A top Bolivian government official said Monday that the country’s intelligence services had uncovered a plot to assassinate President Evo Morales..

“A few weeks ago, the state organizations of intelligence received information about plans in relation to an assassination, and that those plans came from the far-right opposition,” Minister of Government Alfredo Rada told reporters in La Paz.

Rada said the plan was to be carried out by an indigenous person while Morales was in a crowd.

Wire accounts of the story are pretty limited so far, but you can monitor the story via Google News.

UPDATE: I suspect that Bolivia watcher Miguel Centellas will weigh in on this at some point. And you can search Twitter for news, as well.

That’s a line from Anand Giridharadas’s Letter from India in today’s IHT: “For tips on frugality, look to India”

VERLA, India: Watching Americans try to make themselves frugal is like watching Mongolians try to make Bordeaux wine.

Thrift does not come naturally to a country that turned layaway, zero-interest home loans and pre-approved credit cards into a mode of living. And so as they trudge through a cruel holiday season, Americans are cutting back, but hesitatingly and maladroitly.

They are standing in line by the thousands at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, pushing and pulling, and on one occasion trampling an obstructive employee to death with their frantic, frugal feet.

They are embracing the alien idea of sacrifice. Mothers are forgoing personal shopping to spend on the family, and, according to Consumer Reports, pet owners are depriving themselves before shortchanging their pets.

Fourteen percent of Americans are making gifts, not buying them, that magazine reported. Twelve percent are plotting to pass on to others the gifts others give them. Many plan to tip less, scale back charity and go shopping accompanied by that leafy commodity so foreign to Americans: cash.

And then it hit me. The jostling in line, the stampeding, the motherly sacrifice, the homemade presents, the regifting, the thick wads of rubber-banded cash: America is becoming India!

Speaking of soccer (football), if you enjoy the English Premier League but wonder where some of the more obscure teams are located, check out this helpful map. While most non-British fans know which teams are in London and which are in Liverpool and Manchester, fewer are familiar with the locations of teams like Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion, and Hull City.

You can find more geographic/sporting goodness¹ on the Sport Map World home page.

(Link via my college teammate Danny S. at The New York Fitness Institute blog.)

1. Other leagues that are mapped out here include various soccer leagues, the US’s big four — MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL — as well as…the European Poker Tour. [↩]

Striking images from The Big Picture: The year 2008 in photographs.

As I may have mentioned in the past, I’ve been a soccer (football) goalkeeper since the age of 7. I can’t get enough of the game, and I absolutely love goalkeeping. (I still play regularly today.)¹ So I was delighted to see that, according to the New York Times, one of 2008’s big ideas that begin with the letter “g” — along with topics like genopolics, gallons per mile, and the guaranteed retirement account — is goalkeeper science:

What’s the best way to stop a penalty kick? Do nothing: just stand in the center of the goal and don’t move.

That is the surprising conclusion of “Action Bias Among Elite Soccer Goalkeepers: The Case of Penalty Kicks,” a paper published by a team of Israeli scientists in Journal of Economic Psychology that attracted attention earlier this year. The academics analyzed 286 penalty kicks and found that 94 percent of the time the goalies dived to the right or the left — even though the chances of stopping the ball were highest when the goalie stayed in the center.

If that’s true, why do goalies almost always dive off to one side? Because, the academics theorized, the goalies are afraid of looking as if they’re doing nothing — and then missing the ball…

(To read the rest of the entry, visit the link above and then choose “g” in the navigation bar. Sadly, there’s no direct link.)

For more on this subject, I recommend this blog post: “The Rationality of Soccer Goalkeepers”²³

This study illustrates the tension between internal(subjective) and external (objective) rationality discussed in my last post: statistically speaking, as a rule for winning games, to jump is (externally) suboptimal; but given the social norm and the associated emotional feeling, jumping is (internally) rational.

(Hat tip to B.L. for the NYT link. Image credit: Flickr.)

1. A few of my favorite goalkeeper-related Web sites include The Glove Bag — an exceptional online community of goalkeepers — and the news blogs The Goalkeepers’ Union and JB Goalkeeping Blog. And if you’re seriously into the philosophy of goalkeeping, I recommend this manual: “The Art of Goalkeeping or The Seven Principles of the Masters.” [↩]
2. Insert joke about all goalkeepers being necessarily — and perhaps genetically — irrational here. [↩]
3. And if you want to see a photo of yours truly saving a penalty kick several years ago in Taiwan — and I apologize in advance for the tight goalkeeping pants, but it was cold and the pitch was terrible — click here. [↩]

WSJ: “New Thai Prime Minister Faces Immediate Hurdles”

Ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra’s grip on Thai politics — and the instability it provoked — eased on Monday with parliament’s election of a new prime minister from a rival party.

The rise of 44-year-old Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Oxford-educated leader of the Democrat Party, could bring some calm after months of sometimes-violent protests that have undermined one of Southeast Asia’s linchpin economies.

But Mr. Abhisit faces significant political and economic hurdles. His new ruling coalition’s slim majority depends on the support of defectors he lured from Mr. Thaksin’s camp, which still controls the single largest party in parliament. Grass-roots support for Mr. Thaksin and his populist policies runs deep in rural Thailand, and Mr. Abhisit’s election was greeted by public protests by Thaksin supporters.

Mr. Abhisit will also have to deal with the effects of the global economic slowdown on Thailand, which some economists predict could slip into recession next year.

And another snip:

Political risk is likely to remain a watchword for Thailand in the coming months. Mr. Abhisit’s narrow margin of victory in Monday’s parliamentary vote — he defeated pro-Thaksin rival Pracha Promnok by 235 votes to 198 — could make it tough for him to act decisively on the economy, or even to defend his legislative majority. Thailand’s next national election must be held by 2011.

There’s also an interactive graphic that charts Thailand’s GDP growth rate and the country’s political unrest.

AP: “Thai opposition leader becomes prime minister”

Lawmakers chose an opposition leader as Thailand’s prime minister Monday in a bid to end months of political chaos, as supporters of the previous government unsuccessfully tried to halt the result by blockading Parliament.

The articulate, Oxford-educated Abhisit Vejjajiva, who heads the Democrat Party, gathered 235 votes against 198 by former national police chief Pracha Promnok, a loyalist of exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The lower house vote followed six months of instability caused by anti-government and anti-Thaksin demonstrations that culminated last month with a weeklong takeover of Bangkok’s two airports.

The selection of a new prime minister was expected to calm the country’s politics, at least temporarily. However, several hundred Thaksin supporters tried to block the gates of Parliament in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the outcome. Riot police later cleared a path for lawmakers to leave the compound.

And a snip from the end of the story:

Abhisit and his party enjoy strong support from the middle class and many in the business sector. But Sukhum Nuansakul, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Ramkhamhaeng University, said the hopes of many for a respite from political instability was likely to be short-lived.

“The fundamental problem has not been resolved,” Sukhum said. “A Democrat win sets the stage for another round of street protests, this time by pro-Thaksin groups.”

Panithan Wattanayagorn, a political analyst from Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, predicted that Abhisit was going to face “among Thailand’s roughest premierships.”