bangkok tokyo pusan

CHANGING ASIA
Religious freedom
in China
POPDOM
Stars’ slave
contracts
TRAVEL BITES
Postcard perfect
OCTOBER 8-21, 2010
TOKYO
PUSAN
BANGKOK
US$3 / Bt100
ISSN 19052650
9 771905 265009
28701
28701
PHOTO by A F P
Want more from business travel?
805 lounges Alliance-wide.
You’ve earned it.
As a Star Alliance Gold
member, you’ll have access
to 805 airport lounges
across the alliance to relax in
before you fly. To find out
more about our rewards
visit staralliance.com
www.staralliance.com
Information correct as at 09/2008
Film Feasts
I
t was once said that going to the
movies was a cheap form of
entertainment where for more
than an hour, people can forget
their problems and experience a
different reality.
These days, however, the cost of a movie
ticket has become more expensive than an
average meal so the box-office profits have
not been good. Film-making has become
more expensive too with production costs
and talent fees going up.
In addition, film-makers battle against technology that makes it easy to download movies illegally, mass-produce and sell them on
the streets for less.
It is against this backdrop that film festivals
in Asia continue to mount their annual feasts
for movie buffs.
This month, two major film festivals happen in the region: The Tokyo International
Film Festival (TIFF) and the Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF). Both of them have
been instrumental in putting Asian films on
the world map.
Aside from the problems previously mentioned, these festivals also face funding woes
and lack of government support. Despite
these, there is much optimism that these festivals won’t only show the rest of the world
how far Asian cinema has come, but also to
raise the taste of the movie-going public.
Films have also ceased to merely offer an escape from reality, but they have become a
medium in raising the public’s awareness on
certain issues.
TIFF and PIFF are not the only festivals the
region has to offer. There is the World Film
Festival Bangkok next month, and many others like the Golden Horse for Chinese language films, Shanghai Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival and the Hong Kong
International Film Festival. There are many
to choose from and each festival offers a
wealth of films from talented film-makers in
the region and around the world.
See you at the movies!
Asia News Network
asianewsnet@gmail.com
PH OTO by AFP
OCTOBE R8-21, 2010 • V o l 5 8 N o 2 0
COVER STORY
Battle Of The Film Fests P8
The mood at Asian
film festivals is still
optimistic despite
unending problems
of piracy and funding
POLITICS P20
TECHNOLOGY P40
Sri Lanka Shuns West
The South Asian country finds solace
in emerging powers’ arms
Talking With Our Thumbs
Twitter is becoming a real counter
power in Indonesia
BUSINESS P24
SPORTS P42
Bangkok Bounces Back
Thailand’s capital is showing signs of
resurgence after the riots
Winning The Race
Why the fit, young and good-looking
Filipinos don’t win the ‘Amazing Race’
CHANGING ASIA P26
TRAVEL BITES P44
The Big Switch
China is becoming more generous in
granting religious freedom
Postcard Perfect
Leave Facebook and Twitter alone;
send real postcards
SPECIAL REPORT P16
THE VIEW P6
The China-Japan Row
Every time the two cross words, it has
a chilling effect on Asean
F E AT U R E S
LIFESTYLE P30
EXPLORE P48
Amazing Trip In Chiang Mai
Thailand’s Flower City is quiet and
unassuming
‘Plasticine’ Generation
Burned out, empty and numbed
MUSIC P38
Jazzing Through Tokyo Streets
A novel way to explore the sights and
soundtrack of Tokyo
COVE R IM AG E | I l lustratio n by Nibho n Appakarn/Asia n ews n etwork
Copyright © 2006 of Asia News Network. All rights reserved. AsiaNews (ISSN 1905-2650) is a weekly magazine. Printed by WPS (Thailand) Co, Ltd Subsidiary of Nation Multimedia Group Plc.
WRITE, FAX, EMAIL
Please include sender’s name and address to: anneditor@nationgroup.com | Asia News Network Nation Multimedia Group Plc 1854 Bangna-Trad Road (Km 4.5), Bangna, Bangkok 10260 Thailand.Tel: (662)338 3333 Fax: (662)338 3964
Subscription inquries: Nation Multimedia Group Plc 1854 Bangna-Trad Road (Km 4.5), Bangna, Bangkok 10260 Thailand.Tel: (662)338 3333 Call Center: (662)338 3000 press 1 Fax: (662)338 3964
James Ro n g/A sia News Network
The Party Begins
The dazzling Commonwealth
Games opening has erased
weeks of negative news
The View
By Kavi Chongkittavorn
The Nation (Thailand)
The China-Japan Row
Every time the two countries cross words, it has a chilling
effect on Asean that has maintained close ties with both
v Bangkok
PH OTO BY JAPA N COAST G UA RD/AF P
I
n the past five years, the dramatic improvement in China
and Japan’s relations have
accelerated and strengthened community building in
East Asia as well as the region’s international relations. The Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) has
quickly built on the newly found pillar. But the recent squabbling over
the disputed Diaoyu/Sentaku Islands
has shown the fragility of one of the
most important bilateral ties in Asia.
Every time the two countries cross
words, it has a chilling effect on Asean that has maintained close ties with
both. Apparently, this time around
the implications will be felt much
more strongly and won’t easily fade
away. For one reason, Beijing viewed
recent multiple spats over the maritime territorial problems with Japan,
Korea and Asean as attempts to undermine China’s rise and growing influence in the region.
The conspicuous absence of Asean
views over the island dispute indicates the high level of sensitivity of
overlapping claims in the maritime
territories in which Asean members
are also entrenched. Asean has chosen to remain mute as four Asean
claimants—Malaysia, Philippines,
Viet Nam and Brunei—are currently
trying to end the eight-year impasse
with China over the proposed joint
cooperation in the resource-rich areas of the South China Sea (SCS).
After the Asean ministerial meeting in July in Ha Noi, the AseanChina relations fundamentally
shifted—no longer mutually treated
as a preference—as the SCS was
given an international highlight as
never seen before. For the time being, Asean leaders still heed China’s
advice and subsequently worked out
with the US not to mention the SCS
disputes in the joint statement
which followed their second leaders’
6•
meeting in New York on September 24. It was China’s triumphant diplomatic move—
but a short lived one.
As it turned out, China’s unusual strong response to Japan
has resonated quite negatively
on the region. The Asean claimants have deciphered the Chinese reactions and one message
was succinctly clear—the issue
of territorial integrity and sovereignty would not be compromised—no matter which country was involved. As such, the
future Asean-China negotiations over the SCS could be further complicated as the two
sides are trying to decide
whether to proceed with the
proposed cooperation before
settling the overlapping claims.
Asean claimants constantly
fear that without proper
agreement, let alone settlement, of the overlapping sovereignty claims, the future
cooperation—as detailed in
the Declaration of Code of
Conducts for Concerned Parties in South China Sea
(2002)—could not proceed.
Now Asean is quite concerned that Beijing’s unyielding
position could spread to the management of the SCS dispute and hamper
any future peaceful settlement. One
frequently asked question: Is China
utilising the same yardstick used
against Japan in handling its territorial disputes with Asean?
If that is the trend, one can expect a bumpy road ahead for the
Asean-China friendship, even
though Asean is not siding with
either Japan or China.
At the moment, growing interconnectedness of maritime security issues in East Asia, especially the freedom and safety of sea lane navigation,
DISPUTED: A file handout picture shows a Chinese fishing boat, which
was seized by a Japanese Coast Guard patrol boat, near a group of
disputed islands on September 7.
have drawn international attention
and involvement.
All countries in the region, especially China, rely on free and safe access stretching from the Straits of
Malacca, Lombok and Sunda Straits
to the vast SCS maritime territories.
Various security-related forums, including the expanded Asean Defence
Ministers’ Meeting Plus, which will
take place later this month in Ha Noi,
Asean Regional Forum (ARF) and
East Asia Summit (EAS), can be used
to discuss this topic.
In more ways than one, the state of
China-Japan relations will serve as a
October 8-21, 2010
test case for overall diplomatic resilience in East Asia in the long run. For
decades, Asean has benefited from
the China-Japan rivalry by playing off
each other, especially prior to 2005.
For instance, Asean smartly used
China’s Asean-oriented policies,
especially on a free trade arrangement in 2000, to bargain for more
incentives from Japan. Before Japan signed the Treaty of Amity and
Cooperation five years ago, Japan
had to contend with Asean’s China-firs t s tand, despite Tokyo’s
humongous financial aid. Back
then Tokyo did not have the same
October 8-21, 2010
level playing field as Beijing. Now
China and Japan are no longer
considered outsiders by Asean.
With China recently replacing
Japan as the world No. 2 economy,
Japan has quickly come to grips
with this new reality by examining
its foreign policy towards Asean,
which has been concentrated on
trade and investment.
New diplomatic approaches towards Asean by the government of
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan
will be announced at the East Asia
Summit in Ha Noi later this month.
It will focus on broadening the scope
of cooperation, especially in
science and technology, as well
as in traditional and non-traditional security issues. More
Asean-Japan engagement at
the track-two level are also to
be expected.
China’s high-handed manner towards Japan will inevitably strengthen the dialogue
and cooperation among members of the Asean Plus Three
and EAS. The latter forum focusing on strategic matters
could become a focal point in
mitigating and balancing China’s influence through dialogue
and consultation, as in the early years of ARF. With the future membership of the US and
Russia, the 18-member EAS
would quickly become the region’s premium East Asian security platform to express their
views, individually or as a
group, on their mutual concerns. Asean no longer plays
the role of fulcrum as it once
enjoyed, as it has upgraded to a
10-member team player.
Therefore, it is in China’s interest to find as soon as possible a modus operandi with
Asean over the SCS. More delay, which has been the case in the
past eight years, could be further exploited by outsiders. At this juncture,
real negotiations on the SCS territorial claims will still have to be “bilateral” between China and Asean
claimants. The quicker both sides can
agree on the guidelines for their joint
cooperation, the better for the health
of Asean-China relations and regional stability.
Once all concerned parties kick off
their cooperation, China and the four
Asean claimants could sit down, pair
by pair, and conduct bilateral negotiations to end their conflicting claims.
•7
COVER STORY ASIA’S FILM FESTIVALS
By Yasmin Lee Arpon
Asia News Network
and Song Woong-ki
The Korea Herald
Photos by A F P
Hong Kong
Tokyo
Battle Of The Film Fests
Asian film festivals continue to struggle
for government support and fight PIRACY;
despite these, the mood is optimistic
G
P hoto by AF P
❖ Bangkok/Seoul
Pusan
8•
October 8-21, 2010
oing to the movies these
days in Asia is not exactly
cheap.
In Bangkok’s modern
cineplexes, it costs 160
baht or about US$5. That’s five times
more expensive than an average meal
of 30 baht (less than $1).
Of course that is still cheaper compared with Europe where a movie
costs 12 euros ($16), but compared to
an average meal over there, going to
the cinema is still certainly cheaper.
October 8-21, 2010
For many, it is cheaper to download movies from the Internet or buy
bootleg copies dirt cheap. In the Philippines, for example, a pirated DVD
with 20 movies in it can cost as low as
70 US cents.
Asian festivals struggle with these
conditions year after year—jostling
for government support, searching
for sponsors and fighting the pirates.
Despite these problems, the mood remains very much upbeat.
“The important role of film festivals is to introduce excellent films
Movie Index
City
CostUS$
Tokyo
1,800 yen
21
Seoul
8,000 won
7
160 baht
5
200 pesos
4.5
HK$50
6
Bangkok
Manila
Hong Kong
•9
Pusan
which are not yet screened anywhere
in the world, and to screen films
which are difficult to distribute on
commercial basis even if they are acclaimed internationally,” said Nobushige Toshima, secretary general
of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) in an email interview
with AsiaNews.
Toshima said film festivals ought
to encourage more discriminate
film taste because those movies that
10 •
are available on the Internet or
DVDs are commercial ones. “Film
festivals still have a strong role in
fascinating the film fans even today.
I believe by screening films which
could only be seen in the film festival, this would lead the fans to
appreciate the basic principle in
watching a film in the theatre.”
Toshima, however, noted that despite the financial backing from the
government, “it is not easy to main-
tain the equivalent amount of support every year”.
This year, TIFF cost 800 million
yen ($9.6 million) to mount. The
Japanese government shouldered
only 30 per cent of the total amount.
This is the same problem faced by
the World Film Festival of Bangkok,
which is on its eighth year. “The government doesn’t care about art because it has other concerns,” said
Dusit Silakong, assistant festival director. This is considering that the
festival costs as low as 1.3 million
baht ($43,000) to organise.
Dusit compared their festival to the
Pusan International Film Festival
(PIFF), which he noted has full government support and thus, has successfully transformed itself into one
of the biggest film festivals in Asia.
But even the PIFF has its share of
funding problems as revealed by its
executive chairman, Kim Dong-ho,
73, who is stepping down this year
after 15 years of being at the helm.
Since its inception in 1996, the PIFF
has turned Busan into a cauldron of
celebrity glitz from around Asia.
In its relatively short history, the
festival has had a significant impact
on discovering new talent behind the
camera as well as contributing to the
growth of the Korean film industry.
Kim was the globe-trotting, talismanic figure who tirelessly brokered seemingly impossible deals
that helped boost PIFF’s international profile.
Still, there is one thing Kim regrets
during his tenure that even he could
not fix and that is the lack of financial
support from the government.
“If there’s been any regrets it’s always been our issue with our operating budget,” Kim said during a recent
interview with The Korea Herald.
“There is a need to establish a
financial foundation that would
ensure that the festival would have
enough funds to be operated in a
more stable manner.”
The festival, Kim said, operates on
about 10 billion won ($8.75 million)
provided by the city of Busan, the culOctober 8-21, 2010
ture, sports and tourism ministry and
various corporate sponsors.
The Cannes Film Festival, in comparison, costs an average of 20 million euros ($272 million), of which an
estimated half is provided by France’s
culture ministry.
In light of such a gulf in the level of
state sponsorship between the two
festivals, Kim is adamant that the
PIFF receiving just 15 per cent of its
budgetary support from the government is a major concern.
“This year, 59 per cent of our 10
billion won ($9 million) was footed
by the city of Busan while only 15
per cent was from the government
and the rest about 760 million won
was through corporate sponsors,”
Kim said. “Attracting enough sponsors to fill up the rest of the projected budget is another difficult
task we go through each year.”
He further lamented the anemic
support, citing a broken agreement
the current administration committed to in 2008.
“Just before President Lee
Myung-bak assumed office, the
presidential transition committee
promised us they would put aside
100 billion won for the festival that
was set in stone but once (President
Lee) officially took office, that
promise collapsed,” Kim said.
“It is my wish that the city of Busan
and our government cooperate with
one another to establish a fund that
will amount to about 100 billion won
every year for the festival. That would
give it some breathing room.”
Despite running the festival under
cash-strapped circumstances, the festival has become the most successful
international film festival in Korea,
pulling in an estimated average of 50
billion won ($45.4 million) in revenue to the city.
Its success also triggered copycat
film festivals that have sprung up all
over Korea, where there are currently
over 70 film festivals.
The behind-the-scenes story of
how the festival came to be is a typical
story of an underdog working against
October 8-21, 2010
P hoto by AF P
Photo by AF P
COVER STORY ASIA’S FILM FESTIVALS
Pusan
all odds.
None had given Kim and crew a
chance to turn PIFF into a success.
But they proved the skeptics wrong
with the inaugural festival when
nearly 200,000 visitors from around
the country participated.
“We were determined to turn the
festival into a success. The skeptics
were pessimistic initially,” Kim said.
“Our primary goal to discover new
film-makers and focus on making the
festival exclusively a celebration of
Asian films really became the driving
force that propelled it to become the
region’s representative,” he added.
There are other film festivals in the
region like the Shanghai International Film Festival and the Hong Kong
International Film Festival. The
Cinemanila International Film Festival focuses on Southeast Asian films
while Taiwan’s Golden Horse Film
Festival puts the spotlight on Chinese
• 11
COVER STORY ASIA’S FILM FESTIVALS
The Nation (Thai land)
Major film
festivals
in Asia
Golden Horse Film Festival
and Awards
since 1962
Regional, for Chinese language
films; includes mainland films
since 1996
http://www.goldenhorse.org.tw
Bangkok
language films and has included
those from the mainland since 1996.
This year, both the TIFF and the
PIFF are screening several films
from Taiwan. The PIFF is also
awarding the Film-maker of the Year
to Tsai Ming-liang, who while born
in Malaysia, is credited as one of the
movers of the ‘Second New Wave’ of
Taiwan Cinema.
The TIFF, meanwhile, has dedicated a special section to Taiwanese
films dubbed as ‘Taiwanese Cinema
Renaissance: New Breeze of the Rising Generation’.
“The Taiwanese film industry
attained world attention in the
1980s and 1990s owing to Hou Hsao
Hsien, Edward Yang and other great
artistic film-makers, but after that,
it had been stagnant for a while,”
noted Kenji Ishizaka, programme
director of TIFF’s Winds of Asia
Middle-East section, in an email
interview with AsiaNews.
“But in 2008, beginning with the
smash hit Cape No. 7, new generation directors have produced many
successful films and now Taiwan’s
film industry is going through another renaissance period.”
Despite a healthy mix of Asian and
Western films in its line-up, the
TIFF appears to be making an effort
to pay more attention to Asian cinema. This year, it also honours Hong
Kong star Bruce Lee and director
12 •
Akira Kurosawa in separate sections.
Ishizaka said Lee and Kurosawa
are two giants, not just in Asian cinema but also worldwide. He added
that this year marks the 70th and
100th anniversaries of Lee’s and
Kurosawa’s births, respectively. “It is
natural for us, as Japanese, as Asians,
to celebrate and dedicate homage to
their achievements and feature their
films,” he said.
He added that the section on
Kurosawa features films from other
parts of the world that took their influence from the Japanese director.
Yoshi Yatabe, programme director
for TIFF’s competition section said
the film festival wants to introduce a
considerable number of Asian films
to the world as part of its mission.
But when it comes to Asian cinema, PIFF is still the bigger stage.
PIFF’s Kim Dong-ho said the festival has found its niche by focusing
on Asian films.
“This is where the Pusan International Film Festival came in and
found our niche and this is why we
were quite confident that our festival
would work,” he said.
“In 2002, at a summit which invited the executive chairmen of film
festivals around the world, ours was
seen to be the key film festival representative of Asia, Africa, and Central
America. That showed our labour
had paid off,” he concluded.
Hong Kong International
Film Festival
since 1977
http://www.hkiff.org.hk
Tokyo International Film
Festival
since 1985
http://www.tiff-jp.net/en/
Shanghai International Film
Festival
since 1993
One of the biggest film
festivals in Asia
http://www.siff.com/
Pusan International Film
Festival
since 1996
http://www.piff.org
Cinemanila International
Film Festival
since 1999
Focuses on Southeast Asian films
http://cinemanila.org/
Bangkok International Film
Festival
since 2003
http://www.bangkokfilm.org/
World Film Festival of
Bangkok
since 2003
http://www.worldfilmbkk.com/
October 8-21, 2010
COVER STORY ASIA’S FILM FESTIVALS
“Public space can be won back only through quality.”
Gustavo Restrepo, Architect, winner of the Holcim Awards Gold
2008 Latin America: Urban integration of an informal area,
Medellín, Colombia.
Hot Summer Days (China/Hong Kong/Taiwan)
23rd Tokyo International
Film Festival
October 23-31
Opening film: The Social
Network (USA)
Closing film: The Town
(USA)
Taiwanese Cinema Renaissance: MONGA, Juliets,
Taipei Exchanges, The Fourth
15th Pusan International
Film Festival
October 7-15
Opening film: Under the
Hawthorn Tree (China)
Asian films featured: A
Beautiful Mistake (China/
Hong Kong), Abraxas
(Japan), Addicted to Love
(China), Aftershock (China),
Au Revoir, Taipei (Taiwan);
BI, Don’t Be Afraid (Viet
Nam/Germany/France),
Blood Ties (Philippines),
Chassis (Philippines), Clerk
(India), Cold Fish (Japan),
Dancing Chaplin (Japan),
Thirteen Assassins (Japan)
14 •
Chongqing Blues (Taiwan/China)
Hi-So (Thailand)
Portrait, Zoom Hunting, Let
the Wind Carry Me
Asia Middle East: Magic
(South Korea), Passerby #3
(South Korea), Chongqing
Blues (China/Taiwan), Hot
Summer Days (Hong
Kong-China), All About
Love (Hong Kong), Love in
a Puff (Hong Kong),
Hi-So (Thailand),
The Tiger Factory +
Inhalation (Malaysia/
Japan), Red Dragonflies
(Singapore); Ways of the
Sea and HALAW (The
Philippines), Raavan
(India), Camellia (Japan/
Thailand)
Bruce Lee: Game of Death,
Enter the Dragon, Return of
the Kung Fu Masters and
The Legend is Alive
Spirit of Kurosawa: The
Valiant Ones, Flames of the
Sun, Run Away, Haifa
Japanese Eyes: Wandering
Home, A Liar and a Broken
Girl, hospitalité, Birthright,
Successional Tradition of
Noh, FIT, 442—Live With
Honor, Die With Dignity,
Your Home
Donor (Philippines),
Driverless (China), Emir
(Philippines), Haru’s Journey
(Japan), Here Comes the
Bride, My Mom (Japan),
Hi-So (Thailand), Karma (Sri
Lanka), Kites (India/US/
Mexico), Love in a Puff
(Hong Kong/China),
Magic and Loss (Japan/
Malaysia/Korea/Hong Kong/
China/France), My Ex-wife’s
Wedding (China/Hong
Kong/Korea), My Mongolian
Mother (China), No. 89
Shimen Road (China/
Netherlands), Noise (India),
Outrage (Japan), Pear
(China), Pinoy Sunday
(Taiwan/Philippines/Japan/
France), Railways (Japan),
Reign of Assassins (China/
Hong Kong/Taiwan),
Sandcastle (Singapore),
Strangers in the City
(Japan), Taipei Exchanges
(Taiwan), The Ditch (China/
France/Belgium),
The Drunkard (Hong Kong),
The Fourth Portrait (Taiwan),
The Little Comedian
(Thailand), The Red Eagle
(Thailand), The Tiger Factory
(Malaysia/Japan), Thirteen
Assasins (Japan), Toilet
(Japan/Canada), Udaan
(India), Villain (Japan),
Virgin Goat (India/France),
Wangliang’s Ideal (China),
Wararaifu!! (Japan),
Welcome to Shama Town
(China), Year Without a
Summer (Malaysia), Zoom
Hunting (Taiwan)
Under The Hawthorn Tree (China)
8th World Film Festival
Bangkok
November 5-14
Opening film: Eternity
(Thailand)
Asian Contemporary: At The
End of Daybreak (Malaysia),
Au Revoir, Taipei (Taiwan),
The Child of the Sun
(Philippines), Crossing the
Mountain (China), Eternity
(Thailand), Insects in the
Backyard (Thailand), The
Man beyond the Bridge
(India), Memories of a
Burning Tree (Tanzania/
Singapore), The Night
Infinite (Philippines), No
Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (Taiwan),
Red Dragonflies (Singapore),
Spine on Shine (Japan), The
Well (India)
October 8-21, 2010
Develop new perspectives for our
future: 3 rd International Holcim
Awards competition for projects
in sustainable construction. Prize
money totals USD 2 million.
www.holcimawards.org
In partnership with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
(ETH Zurich), Switzerland; the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, USA; Tongji University, Shanghai, China;
Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City; and the Ecole Supérieure
d’Architecture de Casablanca, Morocco. The universities lead the
independent juries in five regions of the world. Entries at
www.holcimawards.org close March 23, 2011.
The Holcim Awards competition is an initiative of the Holcim
Foundation for Sustainable Construction. Based in Switzerland,
the foundation is supported by Holcim Ltd and its Group companies
and affiliates in more than 70 countries. Holcim is one of the
world’s leading suppliers of cement and aggregates as well
as further activities such as ready-mix concrete and asphalt
including services.
SPECIAL REPORT
By Abdul Hafiz
The Straits Times
FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS: Fireworks
light up the sky as performers dance
underneath the aerostat during the XIX
Commonwealth Games opening
ceremony at the Jawaharlal Nehru
Stadium in New Delhi on October 3.
RITUAL: Britain’s Prince Charles,
Prince of Wales, places the Queen’s
Baton in its holder.
Photos by A FP
The Party Begins
PROUD: Indian President Pratibha
Patil addresses the XIX Commonwealth
Games opening ceremony.
16 •
“D
❖ New Delhi
The dazzling opening ceremony for
the Commonwealth Games has erased
weeks of negative news that threatened
to derail India’s most expensive
sporting event so far
October 8-21, 2010
elhi, tum tayaar
ho?” (Delhi, are
you ready?)
And with that
all-significant
question reverberating in the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on October 3, a
spectacular festival of light and music
celebrating 5,000 years of rich Indian tradition launched the most expensive and scrutinised
Commonwealth Games in the event’s
80-year history.
As drummers pounded on giant
drums, as seats shook and the crowd
marvelled at a 700-million-rupee
(US$15.75 million) helium balloon as
it rose to serve as a unique floating
October 8-21, 2010
film screen and the talent of sevenyear-old tabla prodigy Keshava, organisers were hoping that weeks of
negative news that threatened to derail the New Delhi Games would be
erased and replaced with stories of
sporting achievement.
India has spent $6 billion on its
first major Games since the 1982
Asian Games to showcase a country
on the rise; one that has moved beyond ethnic and religious divisions,
and deserves its place alongside Britain, its former colonial master.
After the 71 Commonwealth
members took their place on the
field, the beleaguered organising
committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi stood up to boos.
But the crowd roared into a forgiving applause after he declared:
“India is ready. India’s big moment
is finally here.”
“There have been delays and challenges but we have risen to the
challenges and we can do it. Despite
the adverse publicity, all the Commonwealth nations have
stood by India.”
From October 4-14, India
will host 6,700 athletes and officials, almost a thousand more
than the previous high of 5,766
at the 2006 Melbourne Games.
The last few months have
seen the shooting of two Taiwanese tourists in New Delhi,
monsoon rains that threatened
to spoil last-minute construction, a dengue outbreak, a collapsed pedestrian bridge outside the main stadium, the
pull-out of several top sports
stars for health and security issues, accusations of corruption
and the Games being criticised
for an ‘unliveable’ Athletes’ Village that was home to dogs and
snakes.
But most of those concerns
have been addressed in the
short time before the opening
ceremony.
The crowning jewel of the Games,
the 60,000-seat Jawaharlal Nehru
Stadium—that was refurbished at
the cost of 9.61 billion rupees ($216
million) and hosted 8,000 performers on the opening day—is a stunning sight.
Venues have been described as
world-class.
The Games Village now, said Singapore veteran shooter Lee Wung
Yew, is the best he has seen, remembering how at the last Games in Melbourne, the athletes were put up in
spruced-up containers.
Even the new addition to the metro
line opened on October 3, just in time
to take spectators to the stadium for
the three-hour extravaganza. And
over 28,000 policemen have been deployed at venues to ward off the
threat of a terrorist attack, but the
high security has caused frustration
among athletes and journalists.
But the lavish opening ceremony
that combined past and present,
from the ancient art of yoga to the
current beats of Bollywood, has
given India a fresh slate—and athletes something to cherish.
THE MASCOT: Shera, the
New Delhi Commonwealth
Games mascot, performs for
the crowd during an opening
ceremony pre-show.
• 17
SPECIAL REPORT
By Rohit Brijnath
The Straits Times
MEDALS: Malaysia’s Chong Ming Chan and Kien Keat Koo pose with
their medals for the badminton men’s doubles titles at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in March 2006.
The Medal’s Value
Never mind if the field is thin, a medal
means the world on the podium
T
Photos by A FP
❖ Singapore
he medal, at most Games,
hangs from a ribbon; it is
round, it is roughly the
same size, it is received on
similar podiums. Yet its
import varies.
It is not as if athletes arrange
medals in order of value on their
walls. All matter. As Katie Mactier,
former Australian track cyclist, who
owns Olympic silver, world championship gold, and Commonwealth
Games gold, told The Straits Times:
18 •
“All hold obstacles (to get there).
They all signify hard work.”
But she concedes: “The Olympics
is on top because you’re racing
everybody.” Athletes know medals
may be of the same weight but have
a different heft.
It is a subject under scrutiny because not everyone is certain what
to make of the Commonwealth
Games: What is its use? What worth
is its medal?
Suggested first by a Reverend in
1891 as a sporting festival for the Em-
pire, the Commonwealth Games
commenced in 1930. Then, it was the
British Empire Games; now, for
some, it is a bunch of former colonies,
who ironically run a Queen’s Baton
Relay, banging athletic shoulders
every four years.
The planet is littered with multidiscipline carnivals, from the obscure
(Arctic Winter Games) to the strange
(Afro-Asian Games) to the known
(Pan-American Games, Southeast
Asian Games). But for most, geography is the pull, the binder, like the
Asian Games which tests those within a continent.
Even the Olympics meets this definition, for its region is the planet. But
the Commonwealth, a forum for disparate nations to engage with each
other, is a loose conglomeration and a
wide one. Bits of Europe, parts of
Asia, a slice of the Americas. It is,
from many angles, a lopsided Games.
Singapore, for instance, has sent 66
athletes to Delhi, but will buy tickets
for 230-odd to Guangzhou for the
Asian Games next month. While we
feel more affinity for our neighbourhood, numbers do not necessarily indicate significance.
More nations (71) will be in Delhi
than were in Doha (45) for the last
Asian Games. Yet more athletes went
to Doha (roughly 10,000), than there
will be in Delhi (roughly 5,500). It
sounds bizarre, except Delhi includes
just 17 sports while Doha had 39.
One might presume that width of
competition gives a Games a grander vitality, but calculations cannot
be so simplistic.
Singapore accumulated 27 medals
at the 2006 Doha Asian Games and
18 at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, but for athletes success is determined differently. For
them, standards determine value,
tougher fields decide worth.
For instance, Singaporeans will
face no gifted Chinese in table tennis
in Delhi, nor their marksmen in the
shooting range. To say it devalues a
medal is cruel; to suggest it puts it in
perspective is fairer.
October 8-21, 2010
In other sports, the reverse occurs.
In athletics, Delhi will have sprinting
Jamaicans and loping Kenyans and
on the cycling track the world-class
English and pursuing Aussies. Even
in diluted fields, those medals may
have a finer sheen. In the pool, it is
more complex: some Commonwealth
records are faster, some Asian events
are quicker.
Lopsided, I told you.
We might infer from the Commonwealth pullouts (pre-security and illness fears) that an ambivalence exists
about the Games. Yes, but to a point.
Usain Bolt’s withdrawal is—appropriately—a matter of timing. As Michael Johnson, the great runner,
wrote recently: “To finish the season
in August and then go back into
training or try to maintain peak competitive form is extremely difficult in
preparation for an event that takes
place more than one month after
your last race.”
Bolt is not alone. Australian road
cyclists have a world championship
on presently in their nation. Brilliant
England cyclist Chris Hoy, a knight
no less, has preferred the European
senior track championships in early
November which helps towards
Olympic qualification.
Top athletes think in four-year
Olympic sequences, for them the calendar (a Games’ dates) affects their
clock (preparation to be quicker in
London 2012).
Yet, ironically, it is the Olympics
which also makes the Commonwealth Games valid. For smaller nations like the Vanuatu or Nauru,
searching for wider competition, it is
experience. For those with no Asian
Games, or unencumbered by date issues, it provides a training ground, a
rehearsal, a point midway between
Olympics to evaluate form.
Said Martin Richard, director of
communications for Swimming Canada: “The Games allows you to live in
a Village. In world championships,
you stay in a hotel. The Canadian media may not be large at a world championship, but it is here.”
October 8-21, 2010
ALERT: Indian paramilitary personnel stand guard at The Commonwealth Games Village in New Delhi.
Journalists, men toting guns, cafeterias bulging with various talents is
distraction, pressure, nerves. Says
Mactier: “You can learn to deal with
it.” When the Olympics comes, the
brain then does not register surprise.
In competition, too, the Games
matter. There might be thin fields in
some places, yet also sturdy ones.
Says Viren Rasquinha, former Indian hockey captain, who played at
the 2006 Commonwealth Games:
“We took it very seriously. The Asian
Games has an Olympic berth, but it’s
tougher to win the Commonwealth
gold. This time six nations who
played in the World Cup are here.”
Everywhere, the word Olympic
sneaks in. Canada’s Richard says
their goal is to “win the swimming
competition at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014. If we
can beat the Aussies and Brits we
can use that as a stepping stone to
being competitive at the Olympics”.
This trek begins now.
For the spectator abroad, these
Games might stir in us patches, we
might yawn at lawn bowls but not at
the track. We relish multi-sport
events, yet find this one slightly awkward. But the athlete might differ, he
needs winning to become his habit,
whether he competes against a fierce
field or his own insecurity.
And so until October 14, on podiums, medals will hang on athletes’
neck. Years later, if he has won them
all, he might put Olympics first, world
championship second, and debate
Asian versus Commonwealth on
standard. But for that one shining
moment on the podium at least, the
Commonwealth medal will mean the
world to that person.
Security
unlike any other
At venues during the Games
Police
Ministry of Home Affairs
commandos
Delhi police commandos
SWAT members
Sniffer dogs
Bomb disposal squads
28,378
2,300
1,000
70
275
15
At the opening ceremony
Security personnel
7,500
CCTV cameras
350
No. of checkpoints
90
the highest ever for an Indian stadium.
Helicopters were also in the air, armed
with commandos and snipers.
Text: ABDUL HAFIZ
ST GRAPHICS
• 19
POLITICS
By Amantha Perera
Inter Press Service
Sri Lanka Shuns West
The South Asian island nation finds solace in emerging powers’ arms
T
PH OTO BY I shara S. KO D IK ARA /AF P
❖ Colombo
he European Union’s decision to suspend trade preferences for Sri Lankan exports may have finally
come into force, but the island nation is not budging an inch on
any of the powerful bloc’s recommendations on its controversial human
rights record.
On the contrary, Sri Lanka remains adamant about its position
against the EU’s proposed measures
concerning allegations of human
rights abuses committed during the
three decades-long civil war in the
island nation that ended in May
2009. And President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s administration knows that it
20 •
is not fighting a lone battle against
the EU, having received support
from emerging economies like China
and India to withstand pressure
from the Western block.
On the same day the European
body ended the Sri Lanka trade benefits on August 15, Rajapaksa ceremonially released water into the newly built Chinese-funded harbour at
Hambantota, a southern coastal city
in Sri Lanka. The port was built to the
tune of US$360 million, about 85 per
cent of which came from China.
While the EU and even the United
States want Sri Lanka to address the
human rights issues hounding it, China has called for more international
support for the South Asian country.
During last month’s visit to China
by Sri Lankan foreign minister Gamini Peiris, his Chinese counterpart,
Yang Jiechi, said: “Countries big and
small have their own problems, and it
is important to remember that solutions have to be found to suit the circumstances of each situation in keeping with the wishes of the country in
question without hectoring or pressure from outside.”
Last month, Sri Lanka forged an
$83 million agreement with India to
reconstruct a section of the northern
railway left in tatters by the war that
pitted government troops against the
secessionist Tamil Tigers.
October 8-21, 2010
October 8-21, 2010
over $3 billion in 2009.
Government spokesperson Keheliya Rambukwella told IPS that the
conditions imposed by the EU on
GSP+ renewal were an insult to the
country. “It is nothing short of that,”
the minister declared soon after the
EU recommendations were made
public earlier this year.
Just four days before the GSP+ sus-
government of Sri Lanka, including
aspects of the naming of commissioners and publication of terms of
reference detailed in this report,
have raised concerns regarding the
LLRC’s mandate and its independence,” it said.
The government has assured the
public that no jobs would be lost as a
result of the EU’s suspension of the
PH OTO BY Lakru wa n WANN I ARACH CH I /AFP
INDEPENDENCE FROM WEST: Sri Lanka finds itself wrestling with the West because of its human rights records.
The two states had previously
signed a similar agreement to rehabilitate another section of the same
track worth over $140 million. The
commitments are part of a larger
package worth $800 million that India has pledged on concessionary
terms to help rebuild the war-ravaged
northern side of Sri Lanka.
“India remains committed to continuing its assistance to Sri Lanka as
it undertakes the important and challenging task of reconstructing the
northern province,” the Indian Mission in Sri Lanka said when it announced the new funding.
India is also helping reconstruct
houses destroyed in the north during
the armed conflict. According to the
UN, India has pledged to build
50,000 out of an estimated 160,000
new houses.
Indian companies are also exploring prospects for expanding their
presence in Sri Lanka. The Mahindra group, worth over $7 billion, announced last month in Colombo that
it was introducing new vehicle models into the Sri Lankan market while
looking to set up an assembly plant
in the country.
“Sri Lanka has been able to stave
off pressure brought on by the EU
and the Western block because other
countries like India and China have
supported it, especially in the UN,”
analyst Jehan Perera told IPS.
The EU has accused Sri Lanka of
violating international human rights
conventions that made the continuation of the trade concessions problematic. It has recommended certain
measures to the Sri Lankan government to facilitate the reinstatement
of the concessions under the Generalised System of Preference Plus
(GSP+), a tariff reduction regime unilaterally granted by the EU.
In 2008, GSP+ was worth around
$100 million, based on EU data. Expected to be hardest hit by the removal of the concession will be the
270,000-strong apparel sector, the
country’s biggest foreign exchange
earner. Garment exports raked in
EXPORT CUTS: The EU’s decision to suspend trade preferences for Sri Lankan
exports will have tremendous effects on ordinary labourers but the government has
assuaged fears of job losses.
pension came into effect, the US released a critical report on actions
taken by the Sri Lankan government
on possible violations of human
rights during the final phase of the
bloody civil conflict.
“The principal measures the government of Sri Lanka has taken to
investigate incidents of alleged violations of international law have been
the appointment of two commissions,
the ‘Group of Eminent Persons’ and
the ‘Commission on Lessons Learnt
and Reconciliation’ (LLRC),” the US
State Department noted.
“The State Department concludes
that the Group of Eminent Persons
was ineffective. The LLRC is less
than halfway through its six-month
term (it was established May 14,
2010). Initial actions taken by the
GSP+ concessions. In fact, said Rambukwella, the government expected
to increase foreign reserves to $7.5
billion by the end of this month. A
strong currency and reserves on top
of increased earnings from other sectors like tourism and foreign remittances will cushion any fallout from
the GSP + loss, he added.
Yet such assurances have not assuaged the fears of the workers in the
apparel sector, said Achila Mapalagama, who heads Stand-up, a workers’
rights campaign in the Katunayake
Free Trade Zone just north of the
capital Colombo.
“No one has a clear idea what will
happen now that the concessions are
gone. We will see within the next six
months. For now there is a lot of
fear,” she said.
• 21
POLITICS
By Irwin Loy
Inter Press Service
PH OTOS BY AFP
severely inadequate in a country
where few rural residents have access
to the Internet.
“It’s not meaningful to victims,”
said Sok Leang, the interim director
and victims outreach manager for the
NGO Centre for Justice and Reconciliation. “The names of the victims
will be listed in the final verdict and
then they will be digitised and posted
on websites so everyone can see. This
is just ridiculous in light of the technologies that victims living in remote
areas have access to.”
INDICTED: (L-R) This combo photos of former Khmer Rouge leaders, ‘Brother No. 1’ Nuon Chea, former foreign minister Ieng Sary, his
wife and ex-social affairs minister Ieng Thirith and former head of state Khieu Samphan.
What’s Next For Khmer Rouge Trial
Justice goes beyond indictment of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge leaders
A
❖ Phnom Penh
22 •
United Nations-backed tribunal.
“I think the case is going to be the
most important trial in Cambodian
history. It could allow Cambodians to
turn to the next page and move on,”
said Youk Chhang, director of the
Documentation Centre of Cambodia,
whose researchers have compiled a
vault of evidence archiving the regime’s abuses.
Officials with the Extraordinary
Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
(ECCC), the tribunal’s official name,
say they hope a trial will begin during
the first half of 2011.
However, some observers say the
court will not truly be effective unless
it can properly address the crucial issue of how reparations will be given
to victims of the regime.
In July, the court convicted former
Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing
Khek Eav. Duch, as he is better
known, was convicted of overseeing
the murders of an estimated 14,000
people judged to have been enemies
of the regime. But advocates for victims and their surviving families said
the court did not go far enough to address the hugely symbolic issue of
reparations.
Part of the court’s mandate is to
give a voice to victims. And so it allowed qualified victims and their
families to participate directly in the
proceedings as civil parties—and at
levels that were unprecedented in international justice.
The tribunal is also able to award
“collective and moral reparations” to
approved victims. Demands from
civil parties in the Duch case included free medical care, the creation of
staffed education facilities and a curriculum about human rights abuses
and genocide, as well as a trust fund
that could provide vocational training and small-business loans.
But in the end, the court consented
only to having the names of approved
civil parties and victims listed in the
final written judgment and for transcripts of Duch’s apologies and admissions of responsibility to be posted to the court website. This latter
gesture was derided by some as being
October 8-21, 2010
to be proud of the trial,” he said. “If
the reparations after this second case
are similar to the first case, then most
victims will not be satisfied. If the
reparations are still the same, I think
it will not be successful.”
But the tribunal has taken measures that could see the matter handled differently in the second case.
A day after the indictments were
publicised, the court announced it
had approved new rules that will
expand its options for reparation
during the second case.
The court will now
be allowed to award
reparations that may
be funded by donor
contributions. This
would mean that potential reparations
that would have been
excluded under the
old rules because the
accused lacked the
money to pay for
them, could now be
covered by donors.
The rule changes do
not affect the reparations rulings for the
Duch trial.
“I think we are
learning throughout
the process what is
working and what is
not working,” said
Lars Olsen, a court
spokesman. “Remember, this is the
first time in international criminal justice that we have vicIF THEY COULD TALK: Khmer Rouge’s victims’ remains at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh.
tim participation on
this scale.”
But in their decision, trial chamber said of some of the harsh reactions
But while reparations have a highly
judges noted that they were “con- to the decision on reparations.
symbolic meaning for victims, Olsen
strained” by the rules of the court. It
In the second case involving the said the focus must remain on the
was not within the tribunal’s scope, four senior Khmer Rouge leaders, trial’s criminal proceedings. “By the
they said, to award reparations the then, the tribunal must find more end of the day I believe the most imcourt had no jurisdiction to enforce— creative and symbolic solutions to the portant factor for any victim is to see
thus ruling out civil party demands issue of reparations, should the ac- that justice is being served,” he said.
to create school curriculums or na- cused be found guilty, Sok said.
“This can mainly be done through
tional memorials.
“People have to have something to criminal proceedings, holding perpeAnd while the court’s legal frame- take away and be proud of this court; trators responsible for crimes.”
October 8-21, 2010
• 23
P HOTO BY Christophe ARC HAM BAULT/AF P
war crimes tribunal in
Cambodia may have
reached a major milestone last month by indicting four former leaders of the Khmer Rouge. But much
more needs to be done to ensure that
the long-awaited trial is meaningful
to the regime’s victims, analysts say.
On September 16, the tribunal announced the indictment of four
Khmer Rouge leaders: Nuon Chea,
the party’s chief ideologue; Ieng Sary,
the foreign minister; Ieng Thirith,
the social affairs minister; and Khieu
Samphan, the party’s head of state.
They face charges including crimes
against humanity, murder and genocide and are accused of being among
the architects of a regime that caused
the deaths of up to 2.2 million people
during the Khmer Rouge rule from
1975 to 1979.
More than three decades after the
regime collapsed, the four ageing suspects are also the only senior Khmer
Rouge leaders to be charged by the
work stipulated that the accused was
to be solely responsible for reparations, there were no measures allowing the ECCC to enforce its rulings if
Duch was unwilling or unable to
comply. The court was also unable to
draw funding for reparations from
third parties like donor countries or
government.
S o k s a i d th e fi r s t c a s e w a s a
“test”—one that he said produced
very mixed results. “I think it was a
lesson for the victims as well as a
lesson for the panel of judges,” he
BUSINESS
Bangkok
Bounces Back
Thailand’s capital is showing
signs of resurgence after the
riots with the re-opening of
its biggest mall and new
businesses around the city
T
❖ Bangkok
en o’clock on a Sunday is
still early for city folks but
for a group of five friends
from Hong Kong, it is the
best time to head to the Erawan Shrine at the intersection of
Rajphrasong, to worship the fourfaced Brahma.
Erawan Shrine is famous among
tourists especially from Hong Kong,
Singapore and Malaysia who believe
in its immense power to grant wishes.
Grace, 25, together with her friends,
are no exception.
This is not the first time that Grace
has been to Thailand. “It’s always
nice to shop here, the clothes are
cheaper compared to Hong Kong,
and lots of things to see,” Grace said.
She and her friends are not concerned about Bangkok’s political situation, though they have seen the red
shirt protests on TV ending in a violent dispersal on May 19.
“Everything appears back to normal,” Grace said, looking down at
the Rajphrasong intersection—site
of the red shirt protests—from the
MRT station.
Indeed, everything appears to be
returning to normal in Bangkok and
travel agents are expecting increased
tourist arrivals in the coming peak
season from November to March.
24 •
Photos by The Natio n (Thai land)
By Yasmin Lee Arpon
Asia News Network
Suchat Sritama, Khetsirin Pholdhampalit
and Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn
The Nation (Thailand)
REBIRTH: Officials of CentralWorld wave as
they make their way down the escalator of the
newly renovated mall.
The Association of Thai Travel
Agents (ATTA) said recently that international arrivals are expected to
soar by 20-30 per cent toward the
last quarter of the year.
“If there is no further political turmoil, operators hope this year’s high
season will be a good one for tourism,” ATTA president Surapol Sritrakul said.
As of September, advance bookings from overseas were up 5-10 per
cen t. To ur is ts from China and
other Asian countries have reserved
packages for Thailand, and nearly
all of them plan to visit Phuket,
Samui and other islands in the south
as well as Bangkok, Surapol said.
Across from Erawan, CentralWorld
has re-opened portions of the mall
on September 28. This particular
Sunday, there is a long queue in
front of the mall’s entrance facing
Ratchadamri Road.
It turned out to be fans of Korean
boy group JYJ (three members of the
former TVXQ) that will have a concert in Bangkok on October 15. The
crowd, mostly girls in their teens and
early 20s, were there to buy tickets
ranging from 800 baht-4,500 baht
(US$26-$147).
The crowd has attracted curious onlookers as local shoppers and tourists
alike started to trickle inside the mall.
BIG HIT: Customers wait for their turn
at Bangkok’s first Krispy Kreme outlet in
Siam Paragon.
Only 80 per cent of the mall has
been re-opened, while the remainder
will be operational in December. The
Zen department store, which was
damaged by fire by red shirt protesters, will unveil in August next year.
A receptionist at the concierge
counter on the second floor said most
of the tourists visiting the mall were
from Asia.
The sales clerk at the newly opened
XXI Forever store said many shoppers come from Japan, Taiwan and
Hong Kong. “It’s been good,” she
said, referring to the sales since the
store opened on September 28.
XXI Forever, is the flagship store of
American fashion line Forever 21. It
was among the new and old shops
that joined the re-opening of CentralWorld last month.
The mall’s renovation and reconstruction cost 2.8 billion baht
($90.5 million).
Many areas of the mall are still
under construction, particularly
those near Zen, but the smell of
smoke and traces of what happened
in May are gone.
Kobchai Chirativat, president and
CEO of the mall’s operator and developer Central Pattana Plc., said they
have installed a system that would
contain a riot similar to May 19,
should it happen again. “We have enOctober 8-21, 2010
hanced security measures. It’s not the
government’s duty alone to preserve a
peaceful situation but it’s also up to
the operators.”
CentralWorld’s new design features a mushroom fountain, a giant
sunflower and soon, a 100 millionbaht ($3.23 million) open-air skating
rink that will open in November.
The mall is also introducing an ‘allladies parking area’ that can accommodate up to 200 vehicles.
Kobchai is confident that CentralWorld’s regular customers and tourists would flock back to the mall, noting that tourist arrivals in Thailand
“have gone back to normal”.
Almost upstaging CentralWorld’s reopening was the opening of US doughnut chain Krispy Kreme at nearby
Siam Paragon on the same day.
Thousands of people lined up in
front of Krispy Kreme’s first Thai
outlet and, according to local franchisee Ausanee Mahagitsiri, about
3,000 boxes containing one dozen
doughnuts sold out in no time at all.
“The overwhelming response from
local customers was beyond expectations,” said Ausanee. “Similar phenomena have occurred at the opening
of almost every Krispy Kreme outlet.”
US gourmet café Dean & Deluca
also opened here its first outlet in
Southeast Asia in August.
October 8-21, 2010
“Bangkok was our first choice because of the rich consumption culture
of the Thai market,” said general
manager John Barton.
Away from the city’s heartland,
American-based premium ice cream
Cold Stone Creamery opened its second outlet at Central Bang Na. The
first Cold Stone Creamery at CentralWorld had only been open a few
weeks when the mall was set on fire.
Although Bangkok is already
home to many major ice cream
brands, Wachiraporn Wanitchai of
Thailand’s operator Central Restaurants Group (CRG) believes
there is still room for something
different—in this case, premium
ice cream served with a twist.
Meanwhile, CentralWorld’s rebirth
is seen as a boost to the Rajphrasong
shopping area whose retailers suffered low sales at the height of the red
shirt protests.
Sucheep Tamacheepjareon, vice
president for light food of CRG,
said after the mall’s long closure,
its reopening should result in a
stronger performance by the company, and other retailers in the
area, in the final quarter.
CRG operates about 500 branded
restaurants throughout the country.
“As a group, we don’t feel any significant impact on our overall perfor-
mance from the closure of CentralWorld. Once the downtown area of
Bangkok was hit by this problem (political unrest), consumers preferred
shopping and dining out at suburban
malls and restaurants instead (including those CRG operates),”
Sucheep said.
Aside from the trains being
crowded with tourists again, the
long queues at the immigration
counters of the Suvarnabhumi international airport can be an indication that Thailand’s tourism sector
is bouncing back.
Despite this, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is choosing to be
cautious, and has downgraded its annual tourism growth forecast to less
than 8 per cent in a five-year plan, in
light of the domestic political situation and global factors.
“Although the number of visitors
and domestic movements are hoped
to increase next year and afterwards,
the growth rate of both segments will
be lower than the initial projection of
8 per cent,” TAT governor Suraphon
Svetsreni said recently.
The country’s tourism industry has
been facing many problems including
internal political unrest, global economic fluctuations, natural disasters
and new diseases that have caused
growth to stall over the past few years
and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
“All these factors are expected to
drag down tourism over the years
ahead, so that will reflect on the tourism industry,” Suraphon said.
TAT targets 15.5 million foreign
tourists and 91 million domestic trips
next year, which will be less than 8
per cent above the estimate for this
year of 14.5 million international and
90 million domestic travellers.
However, the frequent bomb blasts
in Bangkok have not yet caused any
worries for tourists planning to come
to Thailand, Suraphon noted.
And neither did it bother Grace
and her other friends from Hong
Kong as they joined the morning
crowd at Erawan that Sunday.
• 25
CHANGING ASIA
By Rupak D. Sharma
Asia News Network
The Big
Switch
This is the same with other faiths
like Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, whose followers are
growing rapidly every day.
One of the reasons behind the rise
in the number of religious followers
is spiritual void, which people of this
modern and materialistic country
are becoming tired of. Many people
in China may have enough money,
sleek cars and beautiful apartments,
but these gains are not enough to
keep them happy. So they are
turning to religion in hope it would
offer a set of values that are larger
than materialism and short-term
China is gradually
becoming more
generous in granting
religious freedom to
its people
organised in 2006 and the International Forum on the Daodejing it
held in 2007.
The latest in the series is the
government-sponsored birth
anniversary celebration of China’s
most famous philosopher, Confucius.
Born in 551BC, his teachings focus
on social relations, proper conduct,
and social harmony, which are
crucial to turn the current materialist Chinese into socially committed
people with a stronger sense of
community.
To spread his message, the
government, last year, also sanc-
turned religious.
The Chinese Communist Party still
believes there is no God in the world.
But what has changed is that it has
also started believing it should
respect and protect religious belief
and not infringe interests of religious
followers.
That’s why it is building China’s
largest state-sanctioned church,
which can accommodate 5,000
worshippers, in Nanjing. It is
providing land and 20 per cent of
the construction costs as per its
strategy of encouraging the development of religion in the country.
CHANGING PERCEPTION: Performers dressed in ancient costumes prepare to pay
homage to Confucius on his birthday at the Confucius Temple in Beijing on September 28.
O
Photos by A FP
v Bangkok
n September 28, Beijing
celebrated the birth
anniversary of ancient
philosopher Confucius at
his 14th century temple
in Guozijian quarter. This was the
first time the country’s atheist
government had allowed Beijing to
hold such an event since the founding of communist China.
Security was tight around the
ancient temple and the ceremony
was closed to the public. But the
irony is that journalists were not
barred from attending it, which
showed the Chinese government’s
eagerness to exhibit the religious
freedom it is trying to bestow upon
its people.
People in China were free to
practice a number of religions prior
to the Cultural Revolution, a mass
movement led by Mao Zedong.
There were followers of various
faiths like Buddhism, Taoism,
Confucianism, Christianity and a
number of folk religions—under
which mythical figures and ethnic
26 •
deities were worshipped.
But after the communist government came to power in 1949 religious beliefs were viewed as superstitious in nature and means to expand
Western colonial rule. That was
when the places of worship were
destroyed and all forms of religious
expressions were banned. This
turned China into a religion-less
country. Chinese people were finally
allowed to practice religion only after
the fall of Mao in 1977.
Today, China’s constitution
guarantees ‘freedom of religion’. The
state has also officially recognised five
religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam,
Catholicism and Protestantism. Yet
the highhandedness of the authorities
continues. For instance, followers of
Tibetan Buddhism are still not
allowed to carry pictures of their
spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who
is considered a ‘living god’ by many
Tibetans but a ‘separatist’ by the
Chinese authorities.
Christians are also not allowed to
practice their religion freely. They
still have to visit churches designated
by the government and the followers
of the religion have to register their
names with the local police. The
unregistered worshippers, who
usually visit unsanctioned underground churches, can get beaten
mercilessly if caught by the police.
Despite these threats and hurdles,
many agree there has been dramatic
change over the years in the country’s religious sector. Pastors of the
churches say they are happy the
Christian missionaries are at least
not forced out of the country like in
the days when the country was under
the grip of Mao Zedong. They may
have been shackled and can only
preach religion by remaining inside
the boundaries created by the
government, but the growth in the
number of Christian followers,
estimated to have swollen to 40
million-100 million, gives them a
reason to heave a sigh of relief. Some
experts believe the number of
Christians will grow to 400 million
in the next three decades, making
China one of the largest countries
with Christian population.
October 8-21, 2010
CHINESE CHRISTIANS: Chinese worshippers attend a
Holy Communion during Christmas Mass at a Catholic
church in Beijing.
thinking.
Lately, the government is also
coming to the aid of these people by
indirectly encouraging them to
become religious. Earlier this year,
the Chinese government, for instance, oversaw a massive function
to mark the birth anniversary of
Chinese folk god, Mazu, a sea deity
believed to protect fishermen and
sailors. The government, to the
surprise of many, said such events
should be celebrated as they are
cultural heritages of the country.
Other examples of how the communist government is promoting
religious activities in the country are
the World Buddhist Forum it
October 8-21, 2010
FOLK RELIGION: A man places joss sticks in a giant urn at Mazu
Temple on Meizhou island off China’s coastal province Fujian.
tioned an expensive movie on his
life to coincide with the 60th
anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. It was said the government at that time even directed
some theatres to give priority to
this movie after James Cameron’s
Avatar—which was released
during the same period—started
diverting people’s attention.
These examples show drastic
changes in the attitude of China’s
communist government, which
until three decades ago was
demolishing temples and penalising religious followers.
But this doesn’t mean China’s atheis t government has
The Chinese government is also
reviving the teachings of Confucius
as a means to push China’s soft
power abroad.
Last month, during the birth
anniversary of Confucius, China also
invited scholars from around the
world to share views on the philosophies of Confucius. One of the
reasons behind organising the event
was to find ways to promote aspects
of Confucianism—which remained a
state religion under the Han dynasty
from 206BC to 220AD—as a “core
value” of modern China. It also
wants to brand this image overseas
“to boost China’s lagging efforts at
spreading its soft power”.
• 27
LIFESTYLE
SINGAPORE
By Jocelyn Lee and Huang Huifen
The Straits Times
Perfect
10.10.10
Wedding
Oct 10, 2010 is a
special date as
wedding bells ring
for more than 700
couples in Singapore,
even though it costs
more to say I do on
that day
I
Photos by The Straits Times
❖ Singapore
t is going to be a perfect 10 wedding for hundreds of couples in
Singapore on Oct 10, 2010.
Statistics from the Registry
Of Marriages show that 7 74
couples have signed up already on
that 10/10/10 date, compared to 70
on a normal day.
In recent years, two dates rang
wedding bel ls bec ause of their
unique numbers: 357 couples got
married on Sept 9, 2009, while 443
tied the knot on Aug 8, 2008.
However, on the calendar of desirable dates, the biggie was Feb 14, 1995.
A record-breaking 1,082 couples got
hitched that day, as it was Valentine’s
28 •
GETTING HITCHED SOON: Jay Lim,
30, doctor, and Elizabeth Fock, 26, cardiac
technologist.
ALL SMILES: Kamal Yacob, 37, bass player
of local band Stoned Revivals, and June Khoo,
37, account manager.
THE COUPLE: Chai Yee Wei, 34, Singapore
film-maker, and Diane Chan, 37, marketing
manager.
Day and it coincided with the 15th
day of the Lunar New Year.
October 10 is not just a Big Day
for couples, but it is also a moneyspinner for businesses associated
with weddings. Hotels are charging
5 to 20 per cent more for bookings
made on this date.
Hotels, photographers, florists, stylists and wedding solemnisers are experiencing a surge in demand for that
red-hot date.
Soon-to-be-newlyweds who have put
a circle around October 10 say it is a
beautiful date as it has a nice ‘ring’ to it.
Product executive Kamal Yacob,
who is the founding member and bass
player of home-grown indie band
Stoned Revivals, is among those saying “I do” that day.
The 37-year-old says: “We chose
this date because of the number
10.10.10. It is unique and easy to remember. It also falls on a Sunday,
which is perfect for us.”
He and wife-to-be June Khoo,
also 3 7, are celebrating their wedding on a yacht at Marina at Keppel Bay, so no wonder they want
everything to be ship-shape.
Singapore film-maker Chai Yee Wei,
34, who also chose the same date,
agrees: “The Chinese believe that the
number 10 represents completion,
perfection and beauty when used in
the Chinese idiom, ‘shi quan shi mei’. I
love that idiom and I want my marriage to be perfect.” The idiom means
perfect and flawless.
The same goes for St James Holdings
marketing executive Gordon Foo, 28,
and his 27-year-old fiancee Doreen Chua.
Foo, whose father is St. James’ chief
executive officer Dennis Foo, says: “It is
a nice date. Plus we had the assurance
from the feng shui master that it is a
good date to get married. Couples who
get married on this date are said to conceive within the next three years.”
With a surge in weddings on October 10, hotels are also looking forward
to that date.
The 15 hotels The Straits Times spoke
to are having a busy time. Some have
October 8-21, 2010
October 8-21, 2010
turned away as many as 50 to 100
couples who want to book a venue
for their wedding reception that day.
Many of the hotels are imposing a 5
to 20 per cent surcharge on that date.
Pan Pacific Singapore Hotel is hosting three weddings that day, with the
earliest booking made more than a
year ago. It had to reject more than
100 couples who wanted to hold their
reception there then.
T he couples who managed to
book will pay 20 per cent more,
with each table costing more than
S$1,388 (US$1,049).
Over at Goodwood Park Hotel,
all of its five wedding venues have
been booked for October 10 for
both lunch and dinner, with a S$50
(US$3 7) surcharge for a table. It
had to turn away 50 couples.
Manda rin Orcha rd is hosting
three weddings that day, with a 5
per cent surcharge.
Referring to the October 10 date,
general manager John Sartain says:
“ Ten is an even, round number
which is auspicious to the Chinese
as it symbolises a pair and union.
There’s also a Chinese idiom associated to 10 which loosely transl a t e s t o p e r f e c t i o n . M o r e o v e r,
10/10/10 is indeed an auspicious date
in the Chinese almanac.”
Master Hui Jie, director of Hui
Master International Geomancy,
says the date is a day of harmony,
which means couples will have a
harmonious marriage.
Though such obsession with numbers is more prevalent among the
Chinese, he adds that the 10.10.10 date
is popular with other races as well.
Hui Jie, who has picked the date
for about 20 couples, says: “I have
an Indian couple who are getting
married on that day too.”
Another geomancer, Adelina Pang
of Adelina Pang Fengshui Consultanc y, says that this number is
popular among the non-Chinese
because of its novelty and it is an
easy date to remember.
Businesses are happy too. Kelvin
Koh, founder of Lightedpixels Pho-
tography, postponed his sabbatical
plans next month after getting 20 inquiries for wedding-photo packages.
Like all wedding photographers, he
can take on only one client as a wedding shoot takes up the whole day.
For that day, his terms are that couples must sign up for the S$5,000
(US$3,782) full-day package instead of
the usual option between that and a
S$4,000 (US$3,025) image-only package.
Chris Woon of moretopurple Photography turned away nine couples
for that day too, but he will not be
charging more for his services.
He says: “Couples pay for the quality of the work. It is not as if I will
shoot particularly well on that day.”
Business at florists is blooming, too.
Florist Michelle Poh, business development manager of The Red Petals
Florist, has hired five more staff and
rented an extra vehicle to cope with
the double workload that day.
She says: “I will be shuttling among
10 locations and surviving on just a
bun the whole day. But I love the
adrenaline rush.”
And Sing See Soon Floral and
Landscape is increasing its manpower
from 40 to 70 that day to cope with
an expected 40 weddings.
Local Justice of Peace Tan Poi Eng is
solemnising four weddings that day and
had to turn away three other couples.
The 63-year-old, who has been a
wedding solemniser for the past 11
years, says: “I restricted it to four
weddings on October 10 as I did not
want to tire myself out. On normal
weekends, I may get one wedding or
none at all.”
But all the hype does not guarantee a
perfect 10 marriage, says consultant
Gerard Lee, 30, who has chosen to hold
his wedding on October 9 instead.
He says: “All the hotels will be so
busy and the quality may be compromised. It may also be a chance for
organisers to increase prices.
“A wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime
event and I have an important crowd
to please. Anyway, the number 9
symbolises everlasting in Chinese, so
it’s good too.”
• 29
LIFESTYLE
CHINA
By Sim Chi Yin
The Straits Times
I llu stration by Li Min/Chi na Dai ly
More and more young Chinese
professionals feel burned out, empty
and numb, and have no goals in life, no interest in anything
A
❖ Beijing
Photo by S IM C HI Y IN/ The Straits Times
30 •
lmost as soon as he
wakes up at 8am each
d ay, p ro p e r t y a g e n t
Kevin Tu is already tired.
He drags himself to
work, and puts in nine hours in front
of the computer and with clients.
Then he goes home to his one-bedroom apartment in the south side of
Beijing to stare at TV shows alone.
A go-getting executive in a multinational company just a few years
ago, Tu, 31, now lives just “one day at
a time”, as he puts it.
That might be the motto for a
growing group of fatigued young,
white-collar Chinese known as ‘eraser’ or ‘plasticine’ men (xiang pi ren).
Brow-beaten out of shape by life,
they show little if any response as
they are kneaded this way and that,
October 8-21, 2010
Photo By G ao Erqia ng/Chi na Dai ly
Rise Of The
‘Plasticine’
Generation
reported a local news magazine which ty are not difficult to find. While he is
She does not quite see herself as a
has popularised the term now spread- not depressed and surrounds himself ‘plasticine’ person, however.
ing in Chinese cyberspace.
with friends, Tu said he feels much
“I feel stuck in life. And I feel
Broadly defined, they are mostly like a ‘plasticine man’.
confused, trapped. But I can’t find
white-collar workers who are some“Everything just feels very bland,” the motivation to do something
what numb to life, have no dreams, he said. “I have no ambition, no real about it,” she said.
interests or ideals, and do not feel much goal in life and I just don’t feel inter“I want to change my life, but I
pain—or joy—reported the Guangzhou- ested in anything anymore, even in don’t know the way out.”
based New Weekly magazine.
hobbies I used to have.”
If there is a growing group of “plasThere are no known
ticine men” among Chiacademic studies on
na’s white-collar class, it
this phenomenon, but
is hardly surprising, said
the magazine c ited a
outspoken sociology prosurvey carried out last
fessor Zhou Xiaozheng
year by The Beijing News
of Renmin University in
n e w s p a p e r a n d Sin a
Beijing.
We b p o r t a l o f 1 , 7 0 0
“We are all slaves these
people across China.
days. Buy a house and
It showed that 70 per
you’re a ‘house slave’
cent of them displayed
(fang nu). Buy a car and
signs of job burnout.
you’re a ‘car slave’ (che
Almost 60 per cent
nu). Bear a child and
of the companies polled
you’re a ‘child slave’ (hai
also said that the incinu),” he said.
dence of burnout among
The official People’s Daitheir employees had
ly recently reported that
increased.
the burgeoning ranks beSTRESS RELIEVER: Young executives under pressure are finding new
These ‘plasticine men’ ways to let off steam—like this pillow-bashing party for white-collar workers.
ing labelled ‘middle class’
can be found among docin China are battling daitors, bank employees,
ly worries about paying
teachers, journalists, traffic policemen,
The native of Wuhan city in central for a house, car and credit card bills.
civil servants, actors and taxi drivers, China lives in Beijing alone.
“Young Chinese feel suppressed by
the magazine reported. Typically, they
Most Chinese men his age would pressure on many fronts,” said Zhou.
work alone and for more than 50 be married and about to start a family, “Once they graduate, they have to
hours a week. They feel as if they have but Tu said: “Now that I feel stuck in fight to find a job, make enough monexpended all their energy and all they my career, I am in no mood to look ey to buy a home amid soaring propget in return is a sense of emptiness.
for a mate.”
erty prices, and once they do that
The term comes from a 1986 book,
Advertising executive Wang Xin, 29, they are in debt for a long time.”
Xiang Pi Ren (Plasticine Man), by still- on the other hand, is equally jaded
“My generation had more idepopular novelist Wang Shuo, that was about her job but puts her energy into a l s , m o re ro o m t o f u l f i l t h o s e
later made into a film entitled Out Of finding a husband—by dating assem- ide als,” he added.
Breath (Da chuan qi)”.
bly-line style.
The root source of these woes is
It tells the story of a plucky young
She spends hours every night “me- the great inequality in Chinese society
man who arrives in the southern eco- chanically” checking two match-mak- today, he said, noting that powerful
nomic powerhouse of Guangzhou ing websites “like a stockbroker elite interest groups keep a stranglewith lofty dreams. Cheated many checking stock prices”, she said.
hold on wealth.
times over in business, he ends up in
She exchanges e-mail or mes“In China, if you’re not born into
jail where he is repeatedly beaten up sages on social networking sites the elite, then you’re just unlucky for
by fellow prisoners.
with the men she might have some life,” Zhou said.
He is left indifferent and dehu- luck with. Wang has dated—and
For his part, Tu is concerned less
manised, feeling nothing when he broken up with—three men in the with money than about finding his
discovers his lover has long been past eight months.
zest for life again.
stringing him along.
“I feel very trapped in my boring
“Maybe this numbness is just a
That fictional depiction might be a job of six years, but I keep thinking I phase,” he said, thinking aloud.
tad dramatised, but soulless white- have to first find someone to marry “Or maybe life will just be this
collar Chinese workers who feel en- and then move on in my career, so I bland for me and I’ll just have to
trapped in this pressure-cooker socie- keep trying,” she said.
accept that this is it.”
October 8-21, 2010
• 31
LIFESTYLE
CHINA
By Mei Jia
China Daily
I
❖ Beijing
Photo by H u Y u/For C hina Daily
China’s Pig Babies
Public kindergartens in China
are struggling to cope with
influx of thousands of
3-year-olds born in the boom
year of 2007—the auspicious
Year of the Golden Pig
32 •
n June, Gao Yuexia, 96, her
son and grandson, took
turns to line up for nine
days and nights to enrol
Gao’s 2-year-old great-granddaughter in a public kindergarten
in northeastern Beijing’s Changping district.
Some 200 parents vied to get
their kids into the kindergarten whose modest monthly
charges of 400 yuan (US$59)
made it a popular choice with
many young couples.
“While waiting for days is
no 100 per cent guarantee of a
spot, not joining the queues
could mean ver y little chance
of finding a proper kindergarten for our child,” says a
father surnamed Chen.
Getting a place in a kindergarten that is affordable and conveniently located is posing a major
headache for parents with
children born in and after 2007.
Two popular sayings doing the
rounds are that, “entering kindergartens is harder than being
recruited as a public servant” and,
“attending kindergartens is costlier
than going to university”.
The existing capacity in public
kindergartens is unable to cope
with the sudden increase in
births in 2007, the year of the
golden pig, considered auspicious
for having babies by the Chinese.
The baby-boomers have now
entered the kindergarten-going
age of 3 this summer.
Xinhua News Agency reports
that only 73,000 out of Shenzhen’s
135,000 kids born in 2007 will find
a kindergarten spot. A Southern
Daily report says Beijing saw
415,750 births between 2007 and
2009, but has only 248,000 spots
in the registered kindergartens.
Song Lihong, 34, a full-time
mother of a 3-year-old in Beijing,
began her hunt for a kindergarten
last April. The public ones,
known for their lower fees and
more reliable quality, were Song’s
October 8-21, 2010
preferred choice.
She went to almost all of those
near her home, and found they
charged 600-900 yuan ($89-$134) per
month, but would accept only
children who meet the strict
requirements of hukou (registered
household certification).
“Parents with no Beijing hukou,
like us, have to pay a so-called
voluntary amount of at least 50,000
yuan ($7,300) over three years, which
is beyond us,” she says.
“But even so, we tried to find
some way to give this extra money.”
When she couldn’t, she finally
turned to a private kindergarten
and got her kid in after waiting
for three months.
“It’s more expensive, but we have
no choice,” she says.
Song says her family is under
intense financial pressure.
“Our threshold for kindergarten
RELIEVED: Gao Yuexia, 96, smiles as her
2-year-old great-granddaughter was enrolled
in the kindergarten after she (with other
relatives) lined up for nine days.
October 8-21, 2010
TIRING: This photo provided by China Photo Press shows parents and grandparents lining up
for days and nights with stools and umbrellas to get their kids into the public kindergarten in
Changping district, Beijing.
fees was 1,000 yuan ($149), but now I
pay 1,700 yuan ($253). And then there
is the rent to take care of,” she says.
Like Song, Liu Jingjia, 32, a
vocational school teacher in Kunming, Yunnan province, is also
considering beginning the search for
a kindergarten although her daughter is not yet 2.
“The public kindergartens are
cheaper but hard to get in; the
private ones are easier but far more
expensive,” Liu says.
She says she hopes starting her
search early will bring her better
luck than Song.
Zhang Yan, a pre-primary education expert with Beijing Normal
University told The Beijing News: “The
real problem is not getting into a
kindergarten, but into an affordable
and reputable one.”
Feng Xiaoxia, with China National
Society of Early Childhood Education, told Xinhua recently that “the
imbalance in public and private
kindergartens, and limited governmental input in pre-primary
education, are the reasons” for the
difficulties facing parents.
In growing recognition of the
problem, the National Education
Conference held this July made
“advancing the equality in education” a major emphasis.
The final draft of the National Plan
for Long-Term Educational Reform
and Development (2010-2020) released
recently also pays particular attention
to the “kindergarten puzzle”. It hints
at increasing official input to promote the development of both public
and private kindergartens.
Shanghai is already taking the
lead by extending the number of
kindergartens to keep pace with
the construction of new residential buildings. Beijing is also
planning to build 118 new
kindergartens and renovate 300
old ones in the coming years.
“If we’re lucky enough, I’d like to
get my daughter registered by
September next year,” says Liu,
expressing a hope that is on the
minds of many young parents.
• 33
CULTURE
THAILAND
By Kee Hua Chee
The Star
GOD OF CREATION: The four-faced Brahma at Erawan Shrine
in Bangkok is world-famous for granting wishes.
GOD OF WEALTH: The statue of Lakshmi,
the goddess of luck, wealth and fertility.
GOD OF MERCY:
ELEPHANT-HEADED GOD:
Lord Narayana standing The shrine of Lord Ganesha.
on his vehicle Garuda.
Hindu Gods Of Bangkok
Everyone knows the famous Erawan Shrine in Bangkok dedicated to
Lord Brahma, but did you know there are five other Hindu shrines
within a stone’s throw of each other?
B
PH OTO S F RO M TH E STA R
❖ Bangkok
angkok is synonymous
with Buddhism, but the
savvy traveller, the superstitious and the devout
know that the city also
has five other Hindu shrines the size
of Thailand’s ubiquitous spirit houses.
Together, these six shrines honour the Hindu deities of Brahma,
Indra, Narayana, Lakshmi, Trimurti and Ganesha.
To visit and pray at all six is easy
because they are all within walking
distance of one another. All six
life-sized statues are located on
relatively small spaces, and worshippers pray in the open air.
It’s customary to start at the famous
Erawan Shrine, also called Brahman
Shrine or Phra Phrom by the Thais.
You should have no problems locating
it since every taxi driver in Bangkok
knows this most revered and famous
of shrines in Ratchaprasong, the city’s
pre-eminent shopping and entertainment district.
Millions, including Malaysians, visit
34 •
annually, to petition the four-faced
Brahma to grant them their wishes.
At anytime, you are likely to find
devotees beseeching Brahma to answer their prayers as well as those
who return to offer thanksgiving for
wishes granted.
Erawan Shrine sits on a small, triangular patch of land beside the Grand
Hyatt Erawan Hotel. How the shrine
came to be can be traced back to the
‘50s. During the construction of the
hotel in 1958, so many workers fell ill
or suffered from accidents that soothsayers were summoned to intervene.
The spiritual advisors recommended that a shrine be built in honour of
Brahma, the Hindu god of creation.
From the beginning, it is said that
Brahma answered all the prayers of
his faithful worshippers, with many
returning to thank him by commissioning a performance by classical
dancers or donating wooden elephants
to honour the sacred elephant of Hindu mythology, Erawan.
Thais are said to be very protective
of the deity, as became graphically
evident in the early hours of March 21,
2006 when a mentally-ill man smashed
the statue of Brahma and was killed
by passers-by for the outrage. A replica was made, guided by Buddhist
monks and Brahmin priests, and installed on May 21, 2006.
After Erawan, the next shrine to
visit is Indra’s in front of Amarin
Mall. This beautiful jade green Indra
carries a thunderbolt, discus, bow
and triple-pronged lance. Indra is
Lord of Heaven and God of War,
Storms and Rain. He is the god who
looks after mankind.
A symbol of power and courage,
Indra leads the way in the timeless
battle between good and evil and
has more than 250 hymns dedicated
to him in the Rigveda, more than
any other god.
Vishnu, in comparison, has only 93
hymns. But not being part of the Holy
Trinity, Indra is seen to exhibit more
human qualities. He slayed Vritra to
release life-giving waters back to mankind and also rescued the sacred cows
of the gods from the asura or demons.
October 8-21, 2010
Of fering s to Indra are usual ly
yel low marigolds and smal l elephant fig urines.
Once you’ve completed the ritual at
Indra’s shrine, cross the road to worship Narayana, whose shrine is located in front of Intercontinental and
Holiday Inn hotels.
Narayana stands with one leg on the
shoulder of his vehicle Garuda. In each
of his four hands, he holds the lotus
bud which symbolises purity, the discus which denotes the destruction of
ego, the mace which stands for divine
power and the conch shell which
shows his power over the universe.
A god of mercy, Narayana is also a
manifestation of Vishnu, the preserver
of life who also maintains the balance
of the universe.
The Narayana statue was erected in
1997, following a bad period marked
by a spate of bankruptcies, to help
ailing businesses. So if your business
is in the doldrums, Narayana should
be able to make your cash registers
ring merrily again.
Your next destination then is Gaysorn, the upscale mall next door.
Head to the fourth floor and ask to
see the statue of beautiful Lakshmi,
Goddess of Luck, Wealth and Fertility.
You will find yourself escorted to the
outdoor terrace where Lakshmi stands
resplendently above a golden lotus
under a nine-layer umbrella.
Lakshmi’s statue was erected in
1996 by the owners of Gaysorn Plaza
when it was being built, and they
October 8-21, 2010
GOD OF LOVE: The Trimurti
shrine.
have been laughing all the way to the
bank ever since. As Lakshmi is the
consort of Narayana, who you have
just worshipped, your petitions
should be doubly reinforced by this
divine couple.
Said to protect her devotees from
money-related woes, Lakshmi was
born at the same time as other precious celestial objects like the moon,
her brother, and her elder sister Alakshmi, the Goddess of Misfortune, during the celebrated Churning of the
Ocean of Milk period when amrita,
the source of power and divinity, was
produced.
The deva (heroes) and asura (baddies) were said to have used the serpent Vasuki to stir the Kshisagar (Ocean
of Milk) for a thousand years. Upon
the amrita (elixir of life) being produced, Vishnu took the form of lovely
Lakshmi to distract the demons while
the deva quickly drank the elixir and
became immortal.
Bring lotus flowers, sugarcane juice,
coins, jewels and other symbols of
wealth as offerings, and you will be
rewarded manifold! Or so it is said.
Now cross the road to Central
World Plaza where the Trimurti Shrine
is located in front of Isetan. As Trimurti is the manifestation of the Holy
Trinity of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu
the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer,
this shrine is said to be a powerful
one. The joining of this trio, the holiest
and most important in Hinduism, into
one statue make Trimurti the represen-
tation of the cosmos.
However, in recent years, Trimurti
has become very popular with young
Thais for a different reason—they
have designated him the God of Love!
As a result, there are endless streams
of young Thais and farang (foreigners)
who pray to have the affairs of their
heart sorted out.
Try to come at 9:30pm on Tuesdays
and Thursdays because this is when
Lord Trimurti descends to listen to
prayers and grants love to those seeking
it. Offerings include nine red joss sticks,
red candles and, of course, red roses.
A few steps away is Ganesha
Shrine, devoted to the elephant-headed god, a.k.a. the Remover of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings, Patron of the
Arts and Sciences, and Deity of Intellect and Wisdom. Also known as
Ganesh or Ganapati, he is known as
Pikanet in Thai and his power is said
to be in ascendance now.
Devotees usually invoke his name at
the beginning of prayers, important
undertakings and religious ceremonies.
When Ganesha was born, he had a
human head. Despite his father Lord
Shiva’s foreboding, his mother, Parvati, was so proud of his dazzling good
looks that she insisted on showing
him off to all the gods, including Shani (Saturn) who looked at Ganesha
with his dreaded “evil eye”, burning
his head into ashes.
The distraught Parvati then begged
Vishnu for help. Vishnu directed Shiva to chop off the head of the first
living thing he came across, and this—
it happens—turned out to be an elephant! Deed done, Vishnu then replaced Ganesha’s head with that of
the elephant.
Another version has Ganesha being
born from Shiva’s laughter. As he was
too alluring to bear, Shiva decided to
give him an elephant’s head and a
protruding belly. Ganesha is one of
the most beloved and powerful of
gods. Despite his size, his celestial vehicle is a tiny shrew or mouse!
This well revered deity promotes
success and protection from harm,
which should just about take care of
all of our earthly desires.
• 35
POPDOM
By Yasmin Lee Arpon
Asia News Network
s
e
v
a
l
S
Star
AFP PH OTO / C-JeS Entertainme nt / H O
or so we thought.
,
fe
li
s
u
ro
o
m
la
g
a
Pop stars live
ntracts that take
co
ve
a
sl
to
d
e
ti
re
a
Some of them
hard-earned money
d
n
a
m
o
d
e
e
fr
,
th
u
away their yo
RENEGADES: Former members of South Korean boy band TVXQ (L-R) Hero Jae-Joong, Micky Yoo-Chun
and Xiah Jun-Su have regrouped in Japan while their case against SM Entertainment is ongoing.
I
❖ Bangkok
36 •
Leong’s finances, receiving all her
income and deducting its expenses
and commissions before she gets anything. She was paid a “salary” of
HK$5,000 (about US$644 in current
terms) per month, but the royalties
she was entitled to ranged from only
below 1 per cent to 2 per cent of the
net sales of her work, depending on
the medium.
Leong’s contract with EEG also
stated that in case she severs the
agreement, she was barred from
working in the entertainment
business for up to seven years.
Such terms in what is dubbed
as ‘slave contracts’ particularly in
October 8-21, 2010
October 8-21, 2010
Agencies protested that they could
not possibly allow their talents to
change their contracts halfway when
they have become famous, considering the huge amount of money they
have invested in them.
In the second quarter of this year,
Korea’s Fair Trade Committee
investigated 20 entertainment
companies and found that 230
celebrities under 19 agencies had
unlawful clauses in their contracts.
Some contracts even have a clause
requiring talents to fulfil “other
services” imposed by the agency.
There have been rumours that these
include sex or escort services.
These stories only show that behind
all that glamour are sordid tales of
some stars paying the price for fame
and success. But is it worth it?
Some like Leong, Woo and the
three TVXQ members have taken
steps to contest the terms of their
contracts, but others have not been
as brave, scared that they won’t be
able to fight the system.
On one hand, a netizen on the
PopSeoul website (www.popseoul.com) named Joe
called slave contracts
as a “prison sentence
with a lot of cash,
clothes and coke”.
Of course this
depends on the
amount of success the
talent achieves, and it
further differs when
you have to share
the earnings with
others like in the case
of Super Junior that
has 13 members. This
means the net profit
of the group would
have to be split into
13 and in the end,
they don’t really get
as much as what the
public thinks.
Some netizens are
less than sympathetic though. “Not
getting paid and
working on a whim of a master is
slavery,” another netizen posted on
PopSeoul. “TVXQ signed a contract,
knew where they were headed, get
over (US$200,000 or about 228
million won) a year and live like
princes... Working nonstop? They
definitely have time off. Yeah, they
work more than the 9-5 business
people. So? It’s all spelled out in
their contract.”
Another said that it should be the
parents who are to blame since these
stars were too young at the time
they signed the contract.
Woo’s case has been resolved
while that of the three members of
TVXQ is still under way. Leong has
settled out of court with EEG
through the help of Richard Li, son
of Hong Kong billionaire Li Kashing. The younger Li, the father of
Leong’s three sons, reportedly paid
US$6.2 million to bail Leong out
from her contract with EEG. She
lives a cushy life without having to
slave as a singer or actress. And after
lessons in the US, she can now read
and speak English
Who knows, with her newfound
wealth, Leong can start her own
agency and given her experience,
offer more humane conditions to
aspiring stars.
asianpopdom@gmail.com
FREED: Hong Kong
actress-singer Isabella Leong
has retired from the spotlight
after her romance with Richard
Li resulted in three male heirs
to the Li fortune.
POPBOX
Common unfair clauses in ‘slave
contracts’
➜ Star must tell Agency of their
exact location at all times
➜ If Star decides to cancel his/her
contract, Star must stop all
activities relating to or resulting
from Star’s celebrity status
➜ Star cannot retire without
Agency’s consent
• 37
PHOTO BY A FP
magine a 12-year-old girl who
could barely read English—
much more, understand it—
presented with a contract that
offers her a chance at stardom.
Images of a glamorous life—with
designer clothes, cars, trips abroad
and most importantly, never having
to worry about food on the table
ever again—must have flashed before
the young girl’s eyes. That moment,
it was all that mattered and her
mother, who neither read nor
understood English, signed the
contract, nevermind if by the time
her daughter finishes it, she would
have been 22 years old.
This was the story of Hong Kong
star Isabella Leong, who extended her
contract with Emperor Entertainment
Group (EEG) to 15 years when she
turned 14, and to 20 years when she
turned 17. This would have tied her to
EEG until she was 32 years old.
In 2008, or when Leong was 20,
EEG hauled her to court for breach
of contract. She countersued accusing
EEG of unfair contract terms, among
them, that she had to inform her
manager of her whereabouts at all
times and that she did not have
ownership nor copyright and control
of any of her works. EEG controlled
South Korea, is common in the
entertainment world.
Last year, three members of the
Korean boy group TVXQ filed a
case against SM Entertainment,
claiming that their 13-year contract
was too long and that the group’s
earnings have been unfairly
distributed among the members.
Other stars under SM Entertainment
were also found to have similar slave
contracts. Girls’ Generation’s Yoona was
tied to a 13-year contract, that of
members of Super Junior ranged from
between five and 13 years, while
members of SHINee from six to 13 years.
In August this year, South Korea’s
Supreme Court invalidated long-term
contracts between entertainers and
their agencies saying they were
“unfair”. The court’s decision
stemmed from a case filed by U-Kiss
member Woo Sung-hyun against
Ssing Entertainment over his 10-year
contract stipulating that inactive
periods caused by health reasons or
the mandatory military service
would be added to the term. The
agency also required him to pay
three times its investment should he
violate the terms and conditions.
The court’s ruling that contracts
longer than seven years are unfair, in
effect, put a stop to entertainment
agencies’ practice of tying their stars
under slave-like contracts.
“The first 10 years after his debut
album constitute virtually his entire
life as a singer. Given the nature of the
industry, the contract term is unfair
and excessively infringes upon his
rights,” the court said in its ruling
favouring Woo.
Entertainment agencies, however,
reason that a 10-year contract is par
for the course since it takes as much
time to train, launch and turn these
wannabes into stars. In Korea for
example, it takes two to three years of
tough training—in dancing, singing,
hosting, acting etc.—before anyone
could debut. These trainees start
when they are teens and by the time
they reach the peak of their success, if
they do, they would be in their 20s.
MUSIC
By Jane Kitagawa
The Daily Yomiuri
Mix Masters
Jazzing Through
Tokyo Streets
B
❖ Tokyo
The jazz taxi service
offers a novel way to
explore the sights and
soundtrack of Tokyo
W
PH OTO BY A FP
❖ Tokyo
e hopped into the
taxi, but knew immediately this was
no ordinar y ride.
“ Tok yo is a jazz
town,” begins taxi driver Toshiyuki
Anzai, animatedly speaking as the
crisp sounds of a brass section burst
through the cab’s speakers. “The city’s
landscape is improvised, messy, unplanned—just like the music. But if I
had to really pinpoint Tokyo’s style, I
would say it’s atmospheric; it woos
you, it’s seductive. That’s the style of
jazz here...it makes a move on you!”
His excitement palpable, it is obvious that this city and its soundtrack
have made a move on Anzai.
“I was (originally) working for a taxi
company, but I wasn’t enjoying it,”
Anzai explains. “I decided to become
my own boss, but as soon as I got my
private cab license in 1991, I realised
that if I was going to step out on my
own, I needed to enjoy it more, otherwise things would never change.
“I thought about what I was into at
the time—jazz—and of pairing this with
taxi driving. I could combine my two
areas of expertise—jazz and Tokyo—
hence the jazz taxi service was born.”
38 •
A novel way to explore the sights
and soundtrack of Tokyo, the jazz
taxi service (http://homepage2.nifty.
com/jazztaxi) comprises a 90-minute
night cruise around central city landscapes paired to background music
especially chosen by Anzai. The
68-year-old cabbie is enthusiastic
when describing how he pairs this
music, selected from his personal collection, with carefully chosen spots
around the city.
“Music is evocative, it’s such a pleasure choosing music for the night cruise,.
Tokyo is such a magnificent city. I never tire of it. So much has changed over
the years. Driving over the Rainbow
Bridge in Odaiba is one of my favourite
pastimes. It’s so dramatic, and in winter, so eerie, the building tops surrounded by fog. Breaking away from
jazz, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkryies is so
fitting, you know?”
Another of Anzai’s favourite spots
is Tsukuda, near the Sumidagawa
river. Here, despite having never
travelled overseas—”I’m petrified of
flying!”—he has discovered Tokyo’s
own New York.
Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York
sets the tone. “It’s become a popular
proposal spot, actually,” Anzai says.
“There have been 61 proposals on my
tour so far, and all of the women said
‘Yes!’ I still receive postcards from
such customers once they end up
having children! Three proposals took
place within the taxi; that must have
put pressure on the poor women. But
the rest took place down near the
river and I discreetly watched proceedings from above.”
Despite his lack of travel, Anzai is
an avid movie buff and loves using
the Internet to research different cultures and locales for inspiration.
“When some men see the Tokyo
‘New York’ location, they look upset.
I can tell the area doesn’t live up to
their expectations. But once the music
starts playing, Sinatra starts crooning
and everything kicks in, they realise
how appropriate it is. And thank me
afterward,” Anzai laughs.
Birthdays are another of the business’ mainstays. “I keep champagne in
the trunk for the occasion and serenade my passengers with Happy Birthday on harmonica, which I first learned
to play in middle school. Listening to
Louis Armstrong at that time, and Radio FEN (now AFN), is what inspired
my love of jazz,” Anzai recalls.
The service has also helped Anzai’s
October 8-21, 2010
business remain recession-proof at a
time when most taxis are struggling
for bookings. While most of his customers are in their 20s and 30s, people
often end up booking the jazz taxi
night cruise for their parents. After
all, everyone has a birthday, and at
different times of the year.
What has also cemented Anzai’s
popularity is the taxi’s sound system:
The music is provided by an iPod
boasting over 10,000 tunes, and powered by Soviet-era 6BQ5 Class AB
vacuum tubes set in a locally made
amplifier system.
“It led to a lot of favourable press,
in the early days,” says Anzai. “I had
reporters from specialist audio magazines end up interviewing me, and
business snowballed from there. It’s
even resulted in certain promoters requesting the taxi for touring musicians. I’ve been lucky enough to meet
Randy Baker, Chick Corea—that was
certainly a surprise,” he recalls.
Toward the end of our journey, the
music changes. Sinatra’s My Way
comes through the speakers. Although reserved for passengers who’ve
successfully proposed to their partners, the tune no doubt reveals something about Anzai as well.
October 8-21, 2010
ack in 1929, Japan saw the
opening of its first jazz
coffee shop—a jazz kissa
called the Blackbird. Like
many to come, it was located across the road from a university and its purpose was to introduce
its customers to foreign music. It also
heralded social change, eventually offering a place for artists, students and
intellectuals to meet. But ultimately, it
was about the music.
“You can’t write a thorough cultural histor y of post war Japan
without being attentive to the world
of jazz,” says historian and jazz
pianist Mike Molasky, winner of the
2006 Suntory Prize for Arts and
Letters for his book Sengo Nihon no
Jazu Bunka: Eiga, Bungaku, Angura (jazz
culture of postwar Japan: film, literature, the underground). He also
published a book on jazz kissa, Jazu
Kissaron, in February this year.
Along with many other cafés of its
ilk, it continued to play a range of
music until the late 1950s, when perceptions of jazz changed. At this time,
the ‘modern’ jazz kissa appeared, attracting an intellectual crowd that was
more underground than mainstream.
“Between 1958 and 1961, when
American jazz drummer Art Blakey
and the Jazz Messengers toured with
their album The Freedom Rider,”
continues Molasky, “the ears of students, intellectuals and artists were
open for the first time, and modern
jazz seemed both energetic and dynamic and refined and worthy of
their own intellectual aspirations.”
By 1976, there were about 500 of the
jazz coffee shops in Japan. Cities such
as Tokyo and Kyoto became hubs
where jazz was tied to the political
and artistic happenings of the time.
“The jazz kissa’s popularity was
partly due to the lack of high-quality
performances available at the time,”
says Takashi Yamamoto, Disc Union
jazz and DIW (Disc in the World)
label director, as he recalls his days
spent visiting, then working, at a jazz
kissa in Meidaimae called Miles. Run
by a friendly lady called Motoyama
san, the cafe first opened in 1960, has
a strict vinyl-only policy, and was
once visited by John Coltrane.
“No radio stations were broadcasting jazz, and few people could afford
imported records or audio systems.
Vinyl was hideously expensive...300
dollars per record. And in the typical
Japanese wooden house, it was impossible to play music loudly.”
Despite the costs of the hard-tofind records, little was actually needed to start up a successful jazz kissa,
according to musician Otomo Yoshihide, who recounts in his essay
“Leaving the Jazz Cafe”: “2.5 by 6 metres of space. That and a pair of huge
JBL or Altec speakers, a couple hundred jazz records and a bar counter
were all that was necessary to open
your basic jazz kissa. (They) often
would be run by an arty, interesting
man or woman, who would play records on their system all day long,
according to their own taste...Charlie
Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and sometimes Derek Bailey or
Evan Parker.”
While the details have since
changed, the spirit has stayed much
the same. There are new kissa designed to foster intellectual connections through jazz music, there are a
handful of festivals and there is constant innovation.
On the festival front, Jazz Art Sengawa, held in Chofu, western Tokyo,
began three years ago with a strong
curatorial focus on featuring local
performers of free jazz and alternative
improvised music to contrast with
more famous events, such as the Tokyo Jazz Festival.
Also important is the curatorial
crossover between jazz musicians
and artists from other genres such
as novelists, dancers, filmmakers,
actors and poets.
“The development of jazz is marked
by its absorption of various traits from
other musical genres. Its history is full
of free and innovative changes. What
is now said to be ‘outside jazz’ could
become mainstream during the next
generation,” explains renowned jazz
critic Teruto Soejima.
• 39
TECHNOLOGY
By Louise Lavabre
The Jakarta Post
ILLU STRAT IO N BY THE NATI O N (TH AIL AN D )
Talking With Our Thumbs
Twitter may
turn out to
be a real
counter
power in a
country like
Indonesia
40 •
‘F
❖ Jakarta
ollow us on Twitter’.
If you get a chance to
stroll around the
streets of Jakarta, this
is what you are increasingly likely to read on the iron
facade of even the tiniest stalls.
Follow us on Twitter? Yes, every
little music shop in Indonesia seems
to have a Twitter account—and so
do 6 million Indonesians who are
now members of the website.
With more than 20 per cent of Indonesian Internet users holding a
Twitter account, Indonesia is the
sixth most active country on the famous micro-blogging site, according to Internet marketing research
company ComScore.
The key to Twitter’s success?
Simplicity. With just 140 characters,
tweeters answer one basic question:
What’s happening? People can, and
do, tweet about everything from
what they’ve just been eating to
how they feel about a government
policy.
Twitter is nothing but a mere
container of random thoughts, stories, instants in people’s lives from
all over the planet who decide it is
worth sharing those 140 characters
with their webmates.
Twitter is riding on people’s
growing desire to be constantly
“present” in each other’s lives,
and to share even the smallest
details of their lives or thoughts
with everyone, including people
they don’t know.
Sherry Turkle, a sociologist from
MIT and a specialist in networking,
recently described the social network community as a “lonely
crowd”, a place where “your psychology becomes a performance”,
in The New York Times.
This concept has been adopted en
masse in Indonesia, where people
October 8-21, 2010
have a strong sense of community
and already an intense mobile texting activity.
“Everywhere in Asia, and in particular in Indonesia, social networking is huge, and this is due to two
major factors: the particularly high
mobile phone penetration, and the
sense of community,” Vaishali Rastogi, Boston Consulting Group
Southeast Asia Chairman, told The
Jakarta Post.
She added that mobile penetration was expected to continue to increase and Internet broadband
would develop fast in the years to
come in Indonesia. This is good
news for Indonesian twittering.
“Have you ever seen an Indonesian alone in a mall or a café? Indonesians like to be with others, and
above all, they like trends. If someone says this is the next cool thing
to do, then everybody is going to
follow,” actor Arifin Putra, one of
the most active Indonesian celebrities on Twitter, told the Post.
“So basically if you give the tool
to the right people, then it can become huge very fast,” he added.
And indeed, this is what has happened. The most prominent stars,
politicians, brands and associations
of Indonesia are tweeting away in
cyberspace. Not to mention the millions of anonymous Indonesians
also tweeting every day.
Because this is the Twitter revolution: with this really simple tool,
you are let into the intimacy of
p e o p l e yo u c o u l d h ave n eve r
reached before, people who finally
step from their pedestal down to
this “lonely crowd”.
Twitter reverses the logic: People
who used to be fans become friends
with famous people, and vice versa,
your friends become actual fans of
your tweets.
“Basically, I am just a tweet away”,
sums up Arifin, who with 25,000 followers (people who automatically
see your tweets), uses Twitter as a
way to get closer to his fans, as a promotional mean. And it sure works.
October 8-21, 2010
The entire launch of the film Rumah Dara, in which Arifin plays one
of the main characters, happened
on Twitter. People responsible for
promoting the film started to tweet
about the synopsis and the actors.
They then sent out videos, photos, and ended up posting quizzes
and games for tweeters to win tickets for previews.
Twitter helped create a big buzz
around the release of the movie,
which was not only a commercial
success but also earned Shareefa
Daanish an award for best actress at
the Puchon International Film Festival in South Korea.
A distinction should be made be-
tween social tweeting and promotional tweeting. But in the end, isn’t
it all about promotion, since when
people tweet about the book they
are reading or where they are
spending their holidays, they are
still, in a way, promoting themselves
to their followers by giving out
clues about their personality?
Twitter is a way to create a virtual
identity that will promote the image
you want people to have of you.
This holds true for famous people
and anonymous twitterers.
Indonesians understand Twitter
all too well. Many famous restaurants, bars, clubs, brands have Twitter accounts they use as a free marketing platform.
While Twitter is often used as a
way to promote oneself in Indonesia, it is also used as a way to promote ideas, enhance movements
and shifts.
This is where Twitter enters
t h e m e d i a s p h e re . Tw i tte re rs
share news, web links to actual
articles or videos relaying the
news. By retweeting (forwarding) a tweet, people can spread
information very fast to an incredible number of followers.
Twitterers are in fact creating
news themselves. There are many
example of news breaking on Twitter here, for instance the July 2009
bombing of the Ritz-Carlton and JW
Marriott hotels in Jakarta.
Because updates are in real time,
Twitter is closer to the present than
any media.
Malaysia and corruption were
two of the hottest topics on Twitter
last week, highlighting Twitter is a
way as well to gauge the mood of
people and understand what strikes
them more in the news.
Twitter may turn out to be a
real counter power in a country
like Indonesia.
On Twitter, Indonesian can express themselves freely about
what’s going on in the country; they
can choose to follow NGOs or political parties that promote another
vision than the one proposed by the
government in power.
In a young democracy like Indonesia, Twitter can be seen as a
real tool to strengthen the idea of
the individual self and the one of
equal sharing.
Twitter enhances self-consciousness and helps to build a political
community. For instance, the fake
Islam Defender Front (FPI) group
created on Twitter, which, through
satire, criticises the real Islamic defenders front, has 22,908 followers.
Muslim scholar Ulil Abshar Abdalla who defends a liberal Islam,
counts 23,696 followers.
“We used to talk with our tongues,
we now talk with our thumbs,”
someone tweeted the other day. To
paraphrase the tweeter, one could
say Indonesia used to express itself
with its tongue, and is now going to
express itself with its thumbs, its
millions of thumbs. And this is
much harder to control.
• 41
SPORTS
PHILIPPINES
By Monette Quiogue
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Winning The Race
episode because of an inept cab
driver. “You live and die by your taxi
driver” is a rule that the Marc-Rovilson partnership remembered well
and used to their advantage.
Geoff and Tisha couldn’t help
but agree, “The one thing that cost
us the race was not of our doing,”
says Tisha. “We did everything
that we could to get in first place
in the final leg. Which included
being first out of the airport, first
to the clue box, and so on. Unfortunately, our cab driver had no
idea where he was going and we
couldn’t even flag down another
driver, or ask for directions to the
place we were looking for.”
There were lessons learned
along the way. It was a lesson in
humility, says Ernie of the Race,
and on the need for mental
preparedness, adds Jeena.
Asked what they’d do differently
given another chance to join the
Race, Ernie laughs: “I wouldn’t take
the Fast Forward. And I wouldn’t
have let go of the good cab driver.”
Marc and Rovilson, on the other
hand, say they’d have done things
exactly the way they did, even the
final damning task. Even before the
race, the pair had agreed that they
would alternate doing the road
blocks, which was why the flag-identification task landed on Rovilson. “If
we had to do it again, we’d do the
exact same thing,” says Rovilson. “It
ended the way it should have: the
underdogs won.”
He adds, “It wasn’t about the
winning, but travelling together and
doing well.” It was an attitude that
the two guys held on, right to the
disappointing end. After the flag
task, Rovilson remembers Marc
our advantage. We know how
to use our abilities.”
A little more preparation doesn’t
hurt, says Rovilson who adds that
teams have to be smart to win.
“Study old episodes and learn from
the mistakes of the past teams.”
What other advice can they give
the RP team?
“I don’t know that they’d want
advice from me,” says Ernie with a
laugh, but gamely adds: “If you have
a good cab driver, don’t let him go!”
Offers Tisha: “Relish the moment.
Have no regrets!”
Having a good attitude, Rovilson agrees, is key to enjoying and
even winning the race. “Money
and winning are not the top goal.
Make friends and keep the friends
that you make.”
But really, are there strategies they
can immediately apply? Rovilson
Filipino racers are young, fit and gung-ho, not to mention good-looking,
but they have yet to win ‘The Amazing Race Asia’
T
PH OTO S F RO M TH E A MA ZING RACE AS I A P UB L IC IT Y
❖ Manila
hey came, they raced, but
didn’t quite conquer.
For three seasons, local
viewers watched The
Amazing Race Asia (TARA)
with sanguine anticipation. After all,
most of the Filipino racers were
young, fit and gung-ho, not to
mention good-looking. But the final
pit stop always proved to be the pits
for the Filipino team.
So what went wrong? And what
can Filipinos do right to get ahead
of the pack? Looking back, what
would the RP (Philippines) team
have done differently?
Well, for starters, they’d still join
TARA.
“Joining Amazing Race was my
dream,” reveals Jeena Lopez, who
considers herself and husband Ernie
as an active and adventurous couple.
The pair has tried bungee jumping,
diving, tech diving, wreck diving,
rock climbing, wake boarding and
42 •
skydiving, among other sports, and
joining the Race was the logical next
step on their checklist.
Early favourites Marc Nelson
and Rovilson Fernandez meanwhile suddenly found themselves
single on the last week of the
audition and decided the Race was
just what they needed to climb
out of the dumps. With the help
of friends, they turned in what
the show’s producers described as
“the best audition tape ever”.
Filipino-Canadian former beauty
queen Tisha Silang confesses that the
reality show enticed her because “it
involved a lot of travelling, which I
love”. Teammate Geoff Rodriguez
had a different reason for joining. “I
wanted to beat Marc and Rovilson.
Plus, have the adventure of a
lifetime,” he says unabashedly.
Once accepted, the teams went
into the thick of preparations, from
practicing their physical skills, to
watching the old episodes of The
Amazing Race USA. Marc even loaded
the episodes in his iPod. “We were
watching the series right up to the
time they took our things from us.”
They should also have practiced
self-restraint, some of the teams rue.
Says Tisha: “Our weakness as a
dating couple at the time was that
we argued a lot more than the other
teams. Time spent arguing might
have been better spent on finding
solutions quicker.”
Fortunately for Ernie and Jeena,
the couple had agreed beforehand
that they would not argue on-camera. “We didn’t want to embarrass
ourselves in front of everyone,”
says Ernie. Being extremely competitive, the pair managed to put
aside their differences and focus on
the tasks at hand.
Still, not everything can be
controlled, the racers realise now.
“The race is all about brains, brawn
and luck,” says Ernie of their team
being eliminated in the second
October 8-21, 2010
Geoff
Rodriguez
and Tisha
Silang
Marc Nelson and
Rovilson Fernandez
“Decision making is harder under
pressure. You don’t have time to
think,” says Geoff, who got a lot of
flak from fellow contenders for his
brusque manner. “I learned that
being ruthless and playing the game
will not win you the race.”
Rovilson is as candid, recalling
how he lost the race for his team
when he failed to identify the flags
of several Asian countries. His
particular learning at that point?
“The history and geography lessons
in the US are sub-par compared to
the rest of the world,” says this TV
host who studied in the United
States.
October 8-21, 2010
‘The Amazing Race Asia 2’ competing teams
with Marc Nelson holding the Philippine flag.
telling him in the cab, “It was an
honour racing with you. Let’s hold
our head high; we have nothing to
be ashamed of.”
With TARA’s Season 4 which
premiered recently, local viewers
can’t help but ask, “Will Filipinos
ever win this Race?” Previous
contenders seem to have it all:
strength, intelligence, teamwork,
fitness, but they weren’t enough.
Do Filipinos actually have a shot
at the top prize?
Jeena wholeheartedly agrees.
“Maabilidad ang Pinoy (Filipinos
are ver y resourceful). We know
how to make the rules work to
Ernie and Jeena Lopez
says: “Use the Internet!” And Marc
adds: “Pack light!”
Still, even the smallest backpack
should have room for a bit of
national pride. Take it from Marc
who was carrying a Philippine flag
the whole time. “I was hoping that I
could run to the final pit stop with
it,” says this Australian citizen who
is English-Burmese-Chinese by blood,
but describes himself as “the biggest
wanna-be Pinoy (Filipino)”.
Hopefully, the thought of
representing the country in this
globally-watched series should be
enough to give Filipino racers
wings on their feet.
• 43
TRAVEL BITES
By Jofelle P. Tesorio
Asia News Network
Postcard Perfect
If you are
reading
this, ask
yourself:
when was
the last
time
I received a
postcard?
44 •
T
❖ Bangkok
hey always say that a
postcard is better than
something sent through
electronic mails. Getting a
postcard is something we
look forward to in the past. The
short message conveyed in the
postcard is enough to make our day
because we know that the person
sending it found the time to write
and remember us.
The best thing with getting a
postcard is we hold on to something
physical that we can hang on the wall
or carefully stashed in a shoe box full
of other postcards and handwritten
mails. Until now, despite the fact that
most people prefer e-postcards, I have
friends and loved ones who constantly send postcards wherever they go. It
is different from a postcard-perfect
photo of your friend on Facebook.
With networking sites, seeing a travel
picture doesn’t evoke feeling of
nostalgia because you know that there
are hundreds of people who receive
that photo automatically. You don’t
feel special at all.
Even in this day and age, we still
long for a certain personal relationship that goes beyond networking
sites. The real postcard gives so
much more warmth than the electronic one. The last time I visited a
friend’s house, I saw the postcard I
sent from The Netherlands a couple
of months ago tucked on the door of
the fridge. My friend said she was
surprised and felt special because she
never receives snail mails or postcards at all. Factor in the fact that
she is an ‘80s baby. By the time she
grew up, sending postcards had been
overtaken by MySpace, Friendster,
Facebook and Twitter.
October 8-21, 2010
The fact is not all travellers bother
to send real postcards. With the
availability of Wi-Fi, it is more
convenient to just post photos of
travels instantly through smartphones
or Internet. People these days
communicate with their thumbs and
no longer with pen and paper.
Finding a shop that sells postcards,
stamps and mailboxes to match is
harder than getting a Wi-Fi or
Internet access. Today, when we
travel and get overwhelmed with the
beauty of the place, the instant
reaction is to share the photos from
our digital cameras or smartphones
and upload on the Internet for
everyone to see. It’s a fast world; we
don’t have time to just sit down and
reflect by simply picking up a
postcard and write what we feel.
Some travellers also find it hard to
compose a postcard message, which
October 8-21, 2010
is probably a little more than 140
characters that Twitter allows. This
postcard dilemma was posted
online: “I am having trouble writing
a good postcard, with such limited
space I feel like I can hardly greet
the person and i run out of room. I
don’t want any thing lame like
‘Wish you were here’.”
Is there really a formula for
postcard writing? How creative
can you get with such limited
space to write on?
One best online answer this fellow
got is to start with choosing a
postcard with a picture of a place
that the traveller has already seen or
about to visit. Then he can also
discuss the weather if it’s so different
from home or the buzz of activity in
the place. When I was in Southern
France, I sent a postcard of a wine
tasting event to a friend who dreams
of becoming a wine connoisseur. I
wrote a short message about our
recent trip to a vineyard in small
village called Octon and how we
drank wine every afternoon because
a bottle of wine cost only US$3.
Choosing a postcard can also be
time-consuming if you think of the
person receiving it. What kind of
image does my mother love or
would my artist friend like a
picture of Angkor Wat at sunrise?
To avoid this problem, I usually
look for free promotional postcards
at the airports, restaurants, bars and
hotels. There’s a minefield of free
postcards from these places. You
will be surprised that some of them
are better than the ones for sale. If
you couldn’t find free postcards, the
generic ones are the safest bet. It’s
the thought that counts.
If sending a postcard is a problem,
you can always ask people for the
nearest post office. But if you don’t
have time, the hotel staff (even in the
cheapest hostel) always knows how
to get your postcards sent. Some
hotels have free postal service as long
as you have stamps on. But when I
was in Kolkata, India, the staff at the
two-star hotel I was staying asked
for 50 rupees (US$1) for my postcards to be delivered at the post
office. This was meant for transportation of the staff and maybe some
snack money, which I didn’t mind at
all. The six postcards I sent reached
their destinations within two weeks.
Make someone at home smile and
feel loved. Send a postcard whenever
you have a chance. Happy travels!
travelbites.asia@gmail.com
• 45
TRAVEL
THAILAND
By Phoowadon Duangmee
The Nation (Thailand)
Wild
Women
White water rafting is
not just a man’s thing
PH OTO S by TH E NATIO N (TH AI LAND )
NO EASY FEAT: The city
girls from Bangkok ready to
tame the wild waters.
46 •
T
❖ Chiang Mai
he signpost for Baan Kuet
Chang is far behind us
and we’re about as remote
as you can be in Thailand’s Chiang Mai, way
out in Mae Taeng. In minutes we’re
descending into a deep valley—no
more villages to be seen.
I’m in a convoy of pick-up trucks
full of women who range in age
from early 20s to late 40s, but what
brings them to such a forsaken
place? To our left, the Mae Taeng
River meanders wildly, and on the
right is a wall of rock sprouting tall
trees and bamboo.
I make a mental note: “Women are
very hard to figure out.”
“One minute they’re putting on
beautiful outfits to go power shopping at the malls. The next, they’re
more than 700km from posh Siam
Paragon mall in Bangkok, packed
October 8-21, 2010
into cramped vehicles and yet still
giggling happily.”
These girls are about to ride
inflatable rafts down the Mae Teang,
one of the big draws of the womenonly Lady Journey travel campaign
promoted by the Tourism Authority
of Thailand and UOB credit cards.
In fact, the five rafts get off to a
nice and easy start, the ladies and
some decidedly androgynous male
companions bold enough to make
fun of their skippers, all of whom
are moonlighting local farmers.
“Oh, my God, look at my captain!”
PR executive Ning raves about the
young, muscled man at the helm.
“What’s he doing out here in the
middle of nowhere?”
There’s a burst of raucous
laughter. I’m a male observing that,
when women travel in packs,
they’re no different than guys
when someone
of the opposite
sex comes
close enough
to tease.
The river
sweeps into
lower terrain,
continuing its
tumble from
higher ground in Wiang Hae district
to become one the country’s great
rafting experiences.
The ribbon of frequently savage
water threads 154km past highland crops and rainforest before
joining the broad Ping River. The
rains drag topsoil into the current, turning the crystal-clear
water a cappuccino brown.
The Wa River in Thailand’s
Nan province gives rafters long
pauses between rapids, but the
Mae Taeng stays furious most of
the time, its turbulence linked
every few kilometres.
“There’s no doubt that the Mae
Taeng is the best river for inflatable
rafts,” says Nam, who owns the
Baan Anatta Resort in the village of
Sob Kai at our starting point.
“There’s a glorious mix of exertion, excitement and silent contemOctober 8-21, 2010
plation. The best section is from
Sob Kai to Kuet Chang—10km of
wild rapids and cascades.”
We find that part soon enough, an
S-shaped rush of adrenaline that
demands fast action by our captain
at the rudder. He assesses the
bloated creek that’s pouring into the
river, adding a spin to the current
like the first hazardous turn on the
Sepang racetrack.
If he guesses wrong, the raft
will f lip, and his paying customers will be bobbing perilously for
another 100 metres.
“When I say ‘left’, those on the
left have to paddle very hard,” he
shouts. “Same for the right.
That’s how we get away from
these nasty whirlpools.”
“Just tell me when to jump,” one
of his riders deadpans.
The boat darts into the jumping
with the paddles.
In another hour there will be
rapids with names like Fang Koh
(Deer Island), dominated by a huge
rock in the middle of the river, and
Dragon, which wriggles like a snake
before jumping into the final turbulence near Kuet Chang.
The lower section of the Mae
Taeng is far less angry, the steep
sides replaced by lovely views of
lychee orchards, terraced rice paddies
and cornfields.
“I hardly ever have holidays like
this,” one of the women muses as
she paddles along contentedly. “We
might drive to Hua Hin with the
family on a long weekend, but most
of the time we stay put at home.”
It turns out that I’m in the
“banking boat”—three of the four
women are in finance. Given the
choice between tallying numbers
cascade, bounces off a boulder twice
and becomes trapped in a whirlpool.
Our adrenaline is keeping up with
the river current as spinning water
sucks us downward.
I almost go overboard, but the
woman beside me grabs hold. Little
difference—the boat is full of water
anyway and everyone is sopping
wet as they cling to their seats.
“We’re facing the wrong way!”
someone screams as we bound off
another rock and take a sharp turn
against the thundering flow.
“Get down and hold the rope
tight!” the captain commands.
But the river insists on winning,
and we surrender all control and
direction. We’re swept downstream
like a teabag in a toilet.
When the ordeal is finally over, a
chorus of “Yeah!” rises from the
bottom of our lungs and we high-five
and chasing dodgy debtors, or
flying and floating down a river of
drama, they’d rather be 700km from
their desks.
The adrenaline has come in
high-voltage jolts for these normally
lethargic city girls, and now their
trip can end in style at the Baan
Anatta Resort.
With glasses of chilled Chardonnay
in hand, they can let down their hair
and dry themselves in the warm sun.
Girls gone whoa!
The Tourism Authority of Thailand and UOB credit cards can send
you off on several types of allinclusive weekend packages designed for
women only.
Find out more from Thailand
Tourism Authority’s Wit+Wisdom at
(+662) 652 077780, lady.journey@
hotmail.com or www.TourismThailand.org/LadyJourney.
• 47
EXPLORE
THAILAND
By James Rong
Asia News Network
TRAINED: An elephant
draws a picture at the Maesa
Elephant Camp in Chiang Mai.
treat was required by the
camp and the second was
actually forced because in
the middle of the ride, the
animal refused to budge
until I bought it some banana and sugarcane.
According to Thai legend, a marriage is like an
elephant—the husband is
the front legs that choose
the direction, the wife the
back legs, providing the
power.
When it comes to Thailand, people naturally
think of Bangkok. But
Chiang Mai has actually
become the unofficial capital of northern Thailand
as it grows in cultural,
trading and economic importance. The city is only
second in importance to
Bangkok.
Amazing Trip
In Chiang Mai
While the largest city Bangkok is bustling and
sumptuous, Chiang Mai—the second-largest—
is quiet, leisurely and simple
E
PH OTO S By JA ME S RO NG /A S IA NEWS N E T WO R K
❖ Bangkok
veryone must have seen elephants either on TV or in
real life, but have you taken
a ride on top of it? I don’t
think ever yone has the
chance, but I sure did.
My fantastic experience riding an
elephant happened in Chiang Mai’s
Maesa Elephant Camp. It is located in
the lush tropical jungle of Chiang
Mai’s Maesa Valley, about a one-hour
drive from the downtown area. It is
the largest elephant training camp in
Chiang Mai province and one of the
largest assembly of elephants in the
48 •
north of Thailand.
In the camp, elephants are trained
by mahouts to play basketball and
football, throw darts and pile up
wood, among other things. Amazingly enough, the lovely animals can
even draw very good pictures just like
human beings do.
After watching the performances by
the elephants, I took an elephant ride
through the maintain road and river
for half an hour at a price of 800 baht
(US$26). The experience on the back
of an elephant for the first time in my
life was terrific. During the ride, I
gave the elephant two treats. The first
Guangzhou city, is Thailand’s largest zoo. With an area of over 327
acres (1.32km), it is two times the
size of Singapore’s Night Safari.
Surrounded by Doi Suthep-Pui
National Park about 15km from
Chiang Mai city, the government
nature theme park offers an excellent habitat for more than 400
animals of over 50 species.
Here you can interact closely with
wild animals from around the world,
including kangaroos, wallabies, dingoes, emus, eagles from the Australian
Outback; wild boar, giraffes, zebras,
antelope, lions, hyenas, cheetahs, rhi-
nation to escape from summer heat as
it is cool year-round.
The mountain’s forested slopes include evergreen, pine forest and mixed
deciduous teak. What is unique about
Doi Intanon is its primitive jungle.
Wandering through the jungle can
make people totally forget about the
hurly-burly of city life and achieve
spiritual purification. Inside the jungle, you can enjoy the combined comfort of the sound of water trickling
and twittering of the birds. It’s a luxury from nature.
Thailand is a country characterized
by the Buddhist culture and temples
MOUNTAIN HIGH: The primitive jungle in
Doi Intanon, Thailand’s highest mountain.
WINGED CREATURES: Greater
Flamingos are seen at the Chiang Mai Night
Safari.
Chiang Mai is both the name of the
province and its provincial capital.
The city of Chiang Mai has a population of 250,000 out of the provincial
total of 1.6 million.
While the largest city, Bangkok, is
bustling and sumptuous, Chiang
Mai—the second-largest—is quiet, leisurely and simple.
For animal lovers who travel to
Chiang Mai, the night safari is a mustsee attraction.
Chiang Mai Night Sa fari, the
world’s third nocturnal zoo after
those in Singapore and China’s
October 8-21, 2010
noceros and hippopotamus from African Savannah; pandas, elephants,
wolves, black bears, tigers, crocodiles,
yaks, vultures, camels and peacocks
from Asia as well as mountain goats,
jaguars, mountain lions, alpacas and
jackals from the Americas.
It was the first time I saw so many
animals. After dinner, I took a walk in
the zoo for about one hour, looking at
animals enjoying themselves and feeding some of them including lions,
horses and goats. And then after it
became dark came the fantastic experience of riding on an open tour van
through the habitats of the lovely animals. When the van passed by, most
animals seemed completely undisturbed, while some like giraffes and
zebras even came up to say hello to us.
You can even touch them, it’s so cool.
During my travel in Chiang Mai,
what impressed me most was the Doi
Inthanon National Park. It covers a
vast area and is home to Thailand’s
highest mountain at a height of
2,565m. Doi Intanon is an ideal destiOctober 8-21, 2010
it remained the tallest structure in
Chiang Mai for over 500 years. The
present restored chedi is about 60m
high. I was lucky to see Buddhists
monks, including many young ones,
during their evening prayer session
when I visited the temple. They
chanted Buddhist teachings reverently,
dressed in yellow robes.
During my visit to the two temples,
I saw many people worshipping. In
Thailand, more than 95 per cent are
Buddhists. It’s a pity that many cars
are parked beside the main buildings
in the two temples, severely denting
their traditional charm.
FRENZY: Chiang Mai’s night market.
are an integral part of the culture.
Chiang Mai, the capital of the Lanna Kingdom (1292-1774), has over 300
Buddhist temples (called wat in Thai).
Tourists need to take off their shoes
before entering the temples to show
respect. The main buildings of the
two temples are splendid, partly as a
result of renovations. They offer examples of classic northern Thai style
architecture.
Wat Phra Singh, dating back from
1345, is located in the western part of
the old city centre of Chiang Mai,
which is contained within the city
walls and moat. Back in 1367, the statue of Phra Buddha Singh was brought
to the temple and it has since used its
present name. The main entrance,
guarded by singhs (lions), is situated at
the end of Rachadamnoen road.
Wat Chedi Luang is within a 10-15
minute walk from Wat Phra Singh.
The chedi, an alternative term for stupa, in Wat Chedi Luang used to be
90m high before it was partly destroyed in an earthquake in 1545 and
After visiting the temples, I ended
my trip with a visit to the weekend
market nearby.
Chiang Mai is really a shoppers’
paradise. At the weekend market,
there is a wide variety of goods you
can choose from, including household
items, clothes, Thai handicrafts, religious artifacts, collectibles and food.
What is most appealing to me were
the handicrafted items which the city
is famous for. According to the tour
guide, a lot of handicrafts elsewhere
in Thailand come from Chiang Mai.
The prices in the weekend market are
even lower than at the night bazaar,
another main venue for shopping
which takes up four blocks of Chang
Khlan Road.
It’s amazing to take a stroll in the
weekend market, which is a walking
street covering several blocks. You just
cannot resist the temptation to buy
something. And if you do decide to
buy, you must be ready to bargain
with the vendors as they usually
charge very high.
• 49
DATEBOOK
Flora Expo
JAPAN
F1 Japanese Grand Prix
S I NGA PO RE
JewelFest 2010
This event is a popular affair as the
style, glamour and luxury of the
innumerable pieces on show are
accessible to members of the public.
Situated in the shopping heart of
Singapore along Orchard Road, entry to
the event is free.
When: Ongoing until October 10
Where: Jewel Pavilion, Ngee Ann City
Civic Plaza and other locations
Info: www.singaporejewelfest.com
The Japanese Grand Prix is held at the
Suzuka circuit in Suzuka City, where one
can expect the smell of gasoline and
burned rubber as some of the world’s
fastest engines thunder past.
State-of-the-art cars costing millions
race at speeds of up to 200mph
(320kmh), and teams are followed all
over the world by a faithful band of rich
and famous jetsetters.
When: October 8-10
Where: Suzuka Circuit International
Racing Course
Info: www.mobilityland.co.jp/english/
When: November 6, 2010-April 25,
2011
Where: Yuanshan
Info: www.2010taipeiexpo.tw
B EI JI N G
798 Art Festival
It’s an exciting time for Beijing’s art
scene with Beijing’s 798 Art Zone,
famous throughout the world as one of
China’s main centres for cutting edge
contemporary art.
Once the former factory grounds of
Beijing North China wireless factory, this
fascinating area, with its Bauhaus
architectural style, has been converted into
a trendy art zone, dotted with galleries, art
organisations, cafes and shops.
H O NG KO NG
International Comedy Festival
If you need a good laugh, head to
Hong Kong’s Take Out Comedy Club.
Well-known comedians from all over the
world have audiences rolling with
laughter during the annual Hong Kong
International Comedy Festival.
when: Ongoing until October 16
Where: Take Out Comedy Club
cost: HK$150-HK$300 (US$19US$39)
Info: www.hkcomedyfestival.com/
The 2010 Taipei International Flora
Exposition, a category A2B1 horticulture
exposition, will be the first such
internationally recognised exposition to
take place in Taiwan’s capital city, and
the seventh of its kind to take place in
Asia.
Featuring a theme of ‘Rivers, Flowers,
New Horizons’, the Expo will include 14
exhibition halls, each with its own unique
style, spread across an area of 91.8
hectares, all dedicated to showcasing
notable achievements in horticulture,
science, and environmental protection
technology.
PHU KE T
When: Ongoing until October 17
Info: www.798district.com
Vegetarian Festival
Phuket island seems like a curious
place for a vegetarian festival, but the
Phuket Vegetarian Festival has become
world renowned for its food and its
curious religious rites. Held during the
ninth Chinese lunar month, the vegetarian festival spans the first nine days of
the lunar month. During that time,
Buddhists of Chinese descent follow a
strict vegetarian diet, wear white
clothing and observe a set of rules that
are intended to purify their bodies and
minds.
When: October 8-16
50 •
October 8-21, 2010
P oster from F 1 Japa n Grand Prix
TAI P EI
1 8/31/07
TeaserHGRS_AsiaNewsAdvtv2_080807.qxp:Layout
197x121 7:Layout 1 28.6.2010 9:14 Uhr
Seite 1 9:29 AM
Teaser 197x121 4.6.09:Layout 1
4.6.2009
11:22 Uhr
Page 1
Seite 1
Global
competition
Building
Asia together.2009:
Rewarding
Two Holcim Awards for Asia
construction in Asia
Whether you’re building or investing in factories, homes, bridges,
schoolhouses or shopping malls we’re the perfect
partner
make for sustainable construction
The Holcim
Awards to
competition
and visions
attracted
your project happen. As the No. 1 supplier ofprojects
building
materials
inalmost 5,000 entries from
121 countries – the most outstanding were honored with Global
Asia we can deliver the right solutions when and where it counts.
Holcim Awards 2009. Find out more on page 15.
TheHolcim
HolcimFoundation
Awards are is
supported
byby
Holcim
Ltd
– one
ofofthe
The
supported
Holcim
Ltd
– one
the
The Holcim Awards competition celebrates innovative, futureHolcim in Asia-Pacific:
world’sleading
leadingsuppliers
suppliersof
ofcement
cementand
andaggregates
aggregates––and
andits
its
world’s
oriented and
tangible
sustainable
construction
projects
and
Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, New Caledonia,
Groupcompanies
companiesin
inmore
morethan
than70
70countries
countriesincluding
includingAustralia,
Australia,
visions andNew
provides
prize
money ofSingapore,
USD 2 million
per Thailand,
three-year
Zealand,
Philippines,
Sri Lanka,
Vietnam Group
Bangladesh,Cambodia,
Cambodia,China,
China,Fiji,
Fiji,India,
India,Indonesia,
Indonesia,Laos,
Laos,
Bangladesh,
cycle. The 3rd International Holcim Awards competition is open
Malaysia,New
NewCaledonia,
Caledonia,New
NewZealand,
Zealand,Philippines,
Philippines,Singapore,
Singapore,
Malaysia,
for entries until March 23, 2011. Find out more on page 15.
Sri
Lanka,
Thailand,
and
Vietnam.
www.holcim.com
Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Strength. Performance. Passion.
www.holcimawards.org
www.holcimawards.org