Hello Kitty Armband for Misbehaving Thai Police

Hello Kitty Armband for Misbehaving Thai Police [not my image]

I’d seen this amusing item a few days back, but thanks to reader Paul D for pointing it out again.

Seth Mydans, in the New York Times:

It is the pink armband of shame for wayward police officers, as cute as can be with a Hello Kitty face and a pair of linked hearts.

No matter how many ribbons for valor a Thai officer may wear, if he parks in the wrong place, or shows up late for work, or is seen dropping a bit of litter on the sidewalk, he can be ordered to wear the insignia.

“Simple warnings no longer work,” said Pongpat Chayaphan, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok, who instituted the new humiliation this week.

“This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor,” he said. “Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It’s not something macho police officers want covering their biceps.”

Ten of the armbands have been prepared, but so far none have actually been issued, according to an officer who declined to give his name while discussing this sensitive topic.

Related: The Hello Kitty Jet.

Categories
Misc.

Bangkok, Maine?

My cell phone rang at 2:41 a.m. today. I had been in a deep sleep and was more than a little confused when I answered.

Me: “Hello, this is Newley.”

Woman with an American accent: “Oh, Hi is this John in…?”

Me: “Sorry, no. I think you have the wrong number. This is Newley in Bangkok.”

Woman: “Oh, wow, sorry about that. You’re in Bangkok, Maine?”

Me: “No, no. Bangkok, Thailand.”

Woman [laughing]: “Oh, wow. That’s amazing! Sorry!”

Me: “That’s okay. It’s a small world.*”

Then I hung up.

Two notes and an asterisk:

1. I think she meant Bangor, Maine, although she clearly said “Bangkok, Maine.” I assume she was calling from somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, because…

2. I have a Washington, DC area code phone number that routes, via Skype, to my cell phone here in Thailand.

If I was confused that a strange woman was calling me from America in the middle of the night, imagine how bewildered she must have been to dial a DC-area code number and reach…an English-speaking stranger in Thailand.

*I’m not sure exactly what I meant by “it’s a small world.” I imagine I was trying to say something along the lines of:

“Hey, isn’t it nuts how in this crazy day and age you can be just, like, trying to call your buddy John to say come on over to our surprise party tonight for Martha, who’s turning 50, and be sure to bring some of those Lays chips that she likes, and also a card, and then next thing you know the streams are crossed because of a solar flare and you’re talking to somebody totally different on the other side of the world — can you believe cell phones these days?”

But it didn’t come out like that.

Categories
Misc.

A New-Look Newley.com

UPDATE (August 18): I’ve done some additional tweaking and settled upon a design. Finally. I invite RSS subscribers to click through and view the updated newley.com in all of its newfound graphical glory.

UPDATE (August 9): I’ve changed the design. Again. Sadly, not everyone shared my passion for the ultra-minimalist layout I was using a few days ago. And alas, dear readers, I ultimately strive to serve you. So I’ve adopted something a bit more exciting (yet still understated). Hope you like it.

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As you can see, I’ve tweaked the design of newley.com. It’s not a major overhaul; I’ve just made some minor changes here and there. Usability, clean lines, and white space still reign supreme.

I’m still fixing some bugs, so if anything seems amiss, please let me know. And if you’re viewing this from from an RSS reader, please do click through to the site and give me your thoughts. Comments for this post are turned on.

More soon…

Yahoo Premiership Fantasy Football

Fantasy Football (Soccer) [not my image]

Newley.com readers who are interested in fantasy football (soccer) are invited to participate in my annual Yahoo English Premiership group. Here’s more info on the game. It’s free. And fun. (Though FC Newley — a perennial force in the late 1990’s — has had several down years of late.) Team selections must be made by the start of the season, which is August 11.

If you’re interested, email me (newley [at] gmail.com) and I’ll hook you up with the group name and password. This year our pool of players is as geographically diverse as ever, with participants in Hong Kong, Argentina, the US of A, and Thailand.

New International Street Fashion Blog

Seoul Street Fashion [not my image]

Street Peeper is a new blog devoted to global street fashion. The Asian cities featured here include Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo, but Bangkok hasn’t yet joined the party…

An Overview of Thailand’s Political Situation

Anti-Coup Protester in Thailand [not my image]

Richard Bernstein’s Letter from Thailand, in yesterday’s IHT, provides an overview of the current political situation in Thailand:

About a week ago, the Thai press reported on a 30-year-old man, apparently not a brilliant one, who, for unexplained reasons, was tormenting an elephant. He hit the animal, according to the newspapers, whereupon the usually placid beast wrapped the man in his trunk, slammed him down, and trampled him to death.

This may be stretching a point, but it seemed to me, visiting Thailand after an absence of a few years, that the elephant-kills-man story is a pretty good metaphor for the delicate state of Thai politics these days, almost a year after an army coup overthrew a democratically elected government that had run afoul of important segments of Thai society.

The ruling coup’s leadership is the elephant in this scheme of things, striving to be a useful beast, indeed making plans to exit the stage as soon as its plans for a constitutional referendum and new elections, all by the end of the year, have been carried out.

But then there are those people angry about military rule and, in some cases, allied to the government of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that was overthrown last September.

They have been trying, in the name of democracy, to get all Thailand sufficiently riled up to attack the elephant.

So far, however, the elephant has trampled them.

Wes Anderson’s New Flick: Set in India

The Darjeeling Limited

Wes Anderson, the auteur behind “Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” among other films, has made a new movie set for release in September.

It’s called “The Darjeeling Limited,” and it features Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman. They play brothers who take a train trip though India. Here’s the trailer.

(Our trip to Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur last year piqued my interest in all things India.)

Wine 2.0

Wine 2.0 [not my cartoon]

Snooth “promises to revolutionize the way people choose wine. By combining the company’s proprietary algorithms with the world’s most comprehensive wine database, Snooth is able to accurately identify the wines best-suited to an individual.”

(Site via. Cartoon via.)

Japanese Rice Art

Japanese Rice Art [not my image]

PinkTentacle.com:

Each year, farmers in the town of Inakadate in Aomori prefecture create works of crop art by growing a little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru-roman variety. This year’s creation — a pair of grassy reproductions of famous woodblock prints from Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji — has begun to appear (above). It will be visible until the rice is harvested in September.

Related Japanese awesomeness: rolling tires down a ski jump. As DY notes, “Fact: lab coats = SCIENCE.”

Four Seasons Tented Camp

Thailand's Four Seasons Tented Camp [not my image]

Good wine, designer shoes, elephants, and Thailand’s Four Seasons Tented Camp all converge in my new globorati post.