MIN THITIPAT POOKBOONCHERD (Part 2)

In which H shares a few choice TIDBITS ABOUT MIN

1. 

    Kimmon: Min unfollowed Kimmon on social media around May 2015, after their Sing For Nepal concert. There was a long text post on Twitter (I don’t understand Thai), which I’m guessing ended things, not in a pretty way.

I don’t know what happened between them, but after this “breakup”, Min never attended any event with Kim alone again. Just think how close they were back in those early Freshy Camp days.

2.   Min only agreed to go on the Lovesick On Tour gig to Udon (with Buff4) with Na’s company.

3.   Around November, Min also unfollowed Alone (on social media). Alone was this guy that took care of Min and Oat, and drove them to the set, took them home, basically a chaperone. I consider this surprising, since they pretty much went everywhere together for months.

4.   So after the MinOat fanmeet, after the end of Lovesick, the only person from that whole thing Min kept in touch with is Na. And Oat. Min still seemed OK with Oat, replying to each other’s Tweets, and they hung out together at Christmas eve. 

WEEKEND READING LIST: PICTURE BOOKS OF 2015

I've sworn off buying books for a while now, not for any noble green reasons (although you must consider these), and have been dutifully been borrowing all my reading from our wonderful libraries here. Truth is, I simply have no more shelve- or indeed floor-, space for one more book, and yet... I couldn't resist these. 
These are all picture books, and are about drawing, a talent which I've been neglecting - I havn't picked up a pencil to sketch in ages, and I suppose these purchases are meant to inspire me to draw in the new year (and not act as dust magnets). Fingers and toes crossed, guilt-drenched.

How can you resist Gruau: Portraits of Men (with a come hither cover like this)? 

How to resist anything by David Downton? I squawked when I saw it and flew down to Kinokuniya and bought it in a flash. David Downton: Portraits of the World's Most Stylish Women is not unrelated to Gruau and his work is very much in that tradition, although Downton doesn't acknowledge that debt. I don't agree with Downton's pick of "most stylish" - Coco Rocha? Dita Von Teese? Really? - but still.

Finally, my niece Sharon very kindly ordered the book Harry Bush Hard Boys - and she promptly added one into the cart for herself! I think she said she bought it on Book Depository, but whatever it was, it arrived to make an excellent Christmas present for me!

WE ARE WHAT WE CONSUME: THE WORLD AS A SUPERMARKET

We consume constantly: We spend every minute of the everyday consuming fuel and fauna and destinations. We also consume ideas, and time, and people. We consume the beautiful, the complex and the simple. Enter the supermarket – the cultural symbol of our vast appetite for all that is natural and unnatural. This is our orderly paradise, an Eden of plenty with the gifts of nature – in orderly, manageable stacks, packed odorless-ly away on foam trays and inside tins, and nestled in paper and clad in glass and cling film and caught in multiple plastic bags. Nature in all its variety and then some – season-less, region-less, hybrid, we want it all! This is how we consume science – cold-pressed, vacuum-packed, vitamin-enriched, flour-less, zero fat, zero calorie, flavoured, coloured, preserved, non-stick, instant. This is where we go to consume the comforting and the familiar, carbs and creams and food from the mega-brands of childhood. It is also where we find the exotic and the delightful – stuff our parents never heard of and never dreamed of consuming. And here, finally, in the supermarket, is where we go to find ourselves, and define our next selves. Better, healthier, thinner, more sophisticated – what we are, or hope to be, is what we consume after all.

WEEKEND READING LIST: ALL ROADS LEAD TO THAILAND

The last time I was in Bangkok was literally the eve of the anti-government demonstrations last November; the hotel manager called me that morning soon after breakfast and instructed me to pack my bags and leave just as I can because he had received advance information that demonstrators had begun to move towards the road leading to the hotel and would close it to traffic; he couldn't say if things would get violent but was advising guests to evacuate. Something in his tense voice over the phone made me pack my bags at once, and within an hour, I left in the hotel car. Turning back for one last look, I saw the crowd of demonstrators marching in, flags waving, with something of a festive air, but guards were beginning to bar entrances with barricades, and the streets were noisy with shrill whistles and clappers.

I felt like Sigourney Weaver in A Year of Living Dangerously.

Fast forward to (more or less) six months later and I'm simply longing to visit Bangkok again. As you know, for most Singaporeans, Bangkok is simply an obsession and a habit. I have not heard of any Singaporean who didn't like Bangkok; and according to my luxury brands PRs, the local press are always keenly enthusiastic about Thailand press junkets (as opposed to those to Hong Kong and etc ones, although arguably the press here salivate like a komodo dragon at any mention of a junket, with eyes bulging and ropes of sticky drool, cankerous tail waving). I wonder if it is thus for your country?

This last weeked I was reading 2011's Thoughtful Gardening by Robin Lane Fox, one of my favourite (living) writers and amongst the riveting chapters on cuttings and pests, Mr Fox remembers his visit to Bangkok as a young journalist. In particular he mentions the Phukae Botanic Garden, a gigantic park in Saraburi, some 60 miles outside Bangkok. Within the city, Mr Fox remembers Wang Suan Phakket (Lettuce Farm Palace), the lovingly tended garden of the late Princess Chumbhot. He took the bus number 3, which delivered him to the door of this "tranquil retreat". 

Reading about these gardens made me simply long to visit Bangkok.

I called my Thai sister Ms O. All my visits to Thailand are preceded by calls to my Thai sister.

She was busy making T-shirts.

What for?

Ms O was involved in what promises to be the mother of all demonstrations; she was making T-shirts for the anti-Thaksin army. Ms O said: "Honey please don't come between 5 May and 17 May. Millions of people are going to demonstrate to oust Yingluck. May not be that peaceful. Come after." 

Sure enough, the papers are full of dire reports on the impending demonstrations which will climax with new, and surely contested, elections in July. 

With this wearying warning in mind, it could be months before I see Mr Fox's Thai gardens.  

Four Movies and a Flight

On a recent trip, I buckled down with the goal of watching four movies by the time I got home, flying not being one of my favourite things to do. I don't like anything about flying do you? These were the four movies I watched: 
To Rome With Love

He's taken us to London, Barcelona, Paris and now Woody Allen has landed us at yet another luxury-tourist European capital, Rome. It's pretty and escapist and great in that honeyed sunset lighting and picturesque and familiar setting kind of way. In this ensemble/omnibus movie (it's got Judy Davis, who's always so droll!), not all the jokes come off, but on the whole it is engaging, undemanding fun with gags that are one-liners but milked for slightly more than its worth. It's a warm, slight movie, far from the greatness of his earlier ones, but fun nonetheless. I want to highlight that Allen's movies are always nicely styled, and all the actors look prosperous and attractive. I was especially thrilled to see the patrician Flavio Parenti (below), whom I first discovered in I Am Love in this movie playing the activist/lawyer Michelangelo. And Jesse Eisenberg who plays the architecture student is creamy-cute!

Bel Ami

Pat Pat and Kristin Scott Thomas

Can you resist a costumer with Uma Thurman and Kristin Scott Thomas? Robert PatPat plays a pale, vampiric Belle Epoque social-climber with greasy hair under his hat and suggestively poufy breeches and seduces both Uma Thurman and Kristin Scott Thomas. Of course I had to watch this! Adapted from a novel by Guy de Maupassant, the unsympathetic protagonist, a would-be journalist, Georges Duroy clambers clumsily from a roach-infested garret to the poshest salons of literary Paris. I've never read the book, and the movie doesn't make me want to, as the script seems sketchy and cliched and none of the characters seem particularly sympathetic or indeed interesting. I think the story's point is that Pat Pat  is both foxy and self-deluding, but Pat Pat just comes off as petulant and sulky and in need of a good shampoo. Pat Pat always looks clammy and unwashed and I'm sure Ms Scott Thomas (who seems to be in a separate, better movie) must have fought the urge to bury her nose in a hanky doused with Jicky. There's lots of Pat Pat's white, thickly-fleshy body in this movie if that's what you are into.
No judgements!

Farewell, My Queen

This much lauded period piece about the French Revolution is told from the perspective of a servant to Marie Antoinette in Benoit Jacquot’s rather claustrophobic film. Most of the film is situated in smallish chambers or hallways and seems unfamiliar, a sort of 'fresh take', I suppose, but one does like a bit of grandeur and pomp in period movies, doesn't one? Sidonie Laborde (Lea Seydoux) is the queen’s devoted “reader,” and Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger), who spends most of her time considering patterns for new dresses and dithering over her infatuation with the beautiful Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen in too brief an appearance) seems mostly bored out of her wigs. It's not escapist fare and I clutch at the introduction of  a handsome gondolier (Vladimir Consigny), who isn't even necessary to the plot. How sad. This movie could be of special interest to history buffs, who will appreciate the “behind-the-scenes” speculation, but I'm not sure this is all that good an idea for in-flight entertainment. Much has been made of Ms Kruger's portrayal of Marie Antoinette, but I almost want to say I prefer KiKi Dunst's in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. 

Magic Mike 

Could I have missed this?
This is the perfect movie to watch just before you land because it's silly fun, and you can rush through it with your finger on the forward button and still enjoy it entirely. Inspired by Channing Tatum's stint as a male stripper, director Steven Soderbergh's comedy uncovered Alex Pettyfer for me, and that's enough. He's dreamy and a Brit and if you can hug his image all the way to the hotel like a double cashmere coat . Matthew McConaughey is the big daddy stripper, and despite the chocolate bar abs doesn't register as sexy. There's just a hint of erotic energy (unapologetically targetting the reliable gay dollar)- there's ample, if unthreatening, man candy, of course, fit for the mainstream. The script isn't polished or strong on character with no narrative originality or emotion, you don't really care about the girlfirends, and the poverty and drugs never seems real. But you can almost read this movie as a bromance because it seems more about male camaraderie and the buddy element is the emotional core of the movie. If anything, the friendship between Tatum and Pettyfer is the main narrative - it's Brokeback Lite. The Chinese uncle sitting next to me was so riveted by the stripping scenes that he actually leaned over and asked me what I was watching - I told him, pointing to the title in the the menu, and then he turned it on, put on his headphones and studiously ignored me me for the rest of the movie. Well, at least one person enjoyed the flight.

ARE YOU MISS WU?

"Instead of just doing 'Jason Wu-for-less,' the idea is to explore the other side of myself. I always see Jason Wu as my aesthetic, my design sensibility. Miss Wu is my personality. It was really fun to explore that facet of who I am - slightly more downtown, and with a more relaxed attitude." - Jason Wu

First Lady Mobama is actually the first person to be photographed wearing a dress from Miss Wu, the Jason Wu diffusion line slated to hit Nordstrom stores January 2013. It's a big endorsement for something very dubious. I like the name Miss Wu, but I'm actually not sure if there's a need for another line from this designer when his eponymous first line still seems so immature. Has Wu a "design sensibility" or "aesthetic" yet? 

One rather wonders what it is. 

A USD 680 satin clutch from the Miss Wu line: The owl logo is cute, as cute as Mr Wu is, but is it as cute as USD 680?

Chi il Bel Sogno di Doretta

I'm really obsessed with this swoonsome Puccini aria right now! The best version is by Montserrat Caballe I think. I could listen to it over and over again all afternoon, and so can you: Turn up the volume!

Humble Moths and Flies

By artist John Dilnot who uses clipped illustrations of birds and months he to create dioramas within wooden boxes. Dilnot frequently lines the interiors with antique maps and arranges the birds in small flocks, setting them on perpetual cartographic journies.

Weekend Reading List: Mrs Dalloway

"The hall of the house was as cool as a vault. The cook whistled in the kitchen. She heard the click of the typewriter. It was her life and, bending her head over the hall table she bowed beneath the influence, felt blessed and purified, saying to herself how moments like this are buds on the tree of life (as if some lovely rose had blossomed for her eyes only)." - Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

Weekend Reading List: On a Plane

I read about La Bella Principessa on the plane in the National Geographic, and it interested me more than anything I've read in a long time. This purported 'lost' drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, in ink and coloured chalks on a sheet of vellum measuring only 330mmx39mm (it was reproduced in actual size in the magazine over a spread, like a centerfold), is a controversial find. Its origins and authenticity continue to be debated over by experts. The drawing is on a sheet of vellum which carbon-14 tests date to between 1440 and 1650, which coincides with the years in which da Vinci was working. The direction of the hatching shows that the artist was left-handed, as was Leonardo. The Renaissance-style garment is said to be accurately rendered, and is purportedly the portrait of Bianca Sforza, the teenage daughter of the Duke of Milan.The Portrait of Isabella d'Este (below), a chalk drawing on paper by Leonardo da Vinci, is the only profile drawn by the master.Reading the story made me think of my painting classes at NAFA. Our teacher Fern made us paint oils of radishes in claypots, which is quite different from sketching a doomed teenage bride in an Italian court I suppose, but still. Rembering those days reminded me of this passage from Brideshead Revisited, one of my favourite scenes:"One day in a cupboard we found a large japanned-tin box of oil-paints still in workable condition.
‘Mummy bought them a year or two ago. Someone told her that you could only appreciate the beauty of the world by trying to paint it. We laughed at her a great deal about it. She couldn’t draw at all, and however bright, the colour were in the tubes, by the time mummy had mixed them up, they came out a kind of khaki. Various dry, muddy smears on the palette confirmed this statement. ‘Cordelia was- always made to wash the brushes. In the end we all protested and made mummy stop.’"
And so Charles Ryder began to paint. I imagined the japanned-tin looked like this.

He Said She Said: Pillow Talk

"Money is the root of all evil and women must have roots" - Pillow
(Click on the picture - the pillow really does say that)

Pattern

Models Make Fashion Possible

"Models make fashion possible.
They make the extremes of design seem attractive because of their perfect beauty – the poreless, flawless tans; The zero-fat tautness, the nubile waists and necks and tiny, little pin heads; The dense heads of hair brunette or blond; The magnificent legs and the glossiness of extreme youth. Anything would work on them, even the most outré of designer fashion. And that’s where accessories come in. For the rest of us mere mortals, with our untidy office-honed physiques, our secret, unbidden bulges and wrinkles, there are shoes, and bags, and sunglasses (and the patronizingly named ‘small leather goods’!). You may not have the stature to wear cropped multi-pleated Hammer pants, but hey, there’s that pair of fancy croco lace-ups that will add two inches to your self-esteem. You may not be brave (or foolish) enough to wear a leopard print jacket with metal studs but there’s a bag for you somewhere in the same collection that won’t make you look like an interesting ottoman.
Colour, too, can be thought of as an accessory in the way that wearing a splash of brilliant colour can really turn a dreary outfit around immediately, and improve your mood considerably. A bold red loafer, a royal blue shirt, a brightly patterned Hermes scarve, are all painless, easy ways to adopt colour into a too-staid wardrobe.
A menswear staple that can work as a figure-enhancing accessory is the jacket. A classic jacket will do the trick if like me, you feel fashion has left you behind, along with a waist, which I last had in 1990."

Weekend Reading List: Flight

Even as you read this, I'm probably on a plane off for the long National Day weekend. I've packed all the stories I printed last Thursday in the office and put them in a blue Prada folder. I packed those in first with my pouch of sun care stuff (Clarins and Sisley), along with the two books I'm reading. Then I chucked in my Capri sandals and zebra print pony belt and a bottle of Coramandel and then I left, feeling heavy-hearted and slightly sad.I'm already in the middle of the the long-awaited (seven years, to be precise) Alan Hollinghurst novel, The Stranger's Child, which is exactly what I like (that means 'country house') - it's like Henry James, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton and - mostly - E M Forster modernised. It reminds me of Howard's End, and Maurice, with a pinch of Brideshead Revisited. It's glorious and I'm savouring it like a delicious, late meal. I read that it had come out in June in the announcements that it made this year's Booker Prize longlist. Critics and punters are speculating that it will win. This would be Hollinghurst's second Booker Prize, if so. His last book, The Line of Beauty won in 2004.
The call from Kinokuniya Liang Court came when I was in the cocoon of EN's beautiful car. In the rain, in the carpark behind Hilton. We were laughing at the pictures in my iPhone. I don't know much about cars but EN's car was palpably beautiful; it feels like you're inside a Kelly bag, with its tan leather interior and white top stitching. It's a deja vu moment. I've been in a car like this before, talking for hours, in just this carpark, in another rainstorm ages ago. So many things happened, in so many cars which circled, and stalled and went nowhere. The magical time in the car, with the radio on, and the aimless cozy chatter is like a bubble that couldn't stand the test of reality. You can't stay in the car forever, and so the bubble bursts, and you're there on the sidewalk with the rain in your face.Kinokuniya wanted to know if I still wanted their last copy of The Stranger's Child; I said I bought the book at Harris already. I hope a lovely young person buys that copy and becomes inspired like me.
It was raining sheets that morning; I had to pick my way out carefully in my sandals around the puddles from the cargo lift floor to the road so EN could pick me up for lunch. I saw the flash of EN's white smile when he saw me huddled under the Burberry umbrella as he zoomed past to the traffic light to make the U-turn for me and that lit me up, even though my toes were all wet by now and the new sandals ruined beyond repair. He didn't know I saw his smile.
What R said about me at the dinner at the Killiney Road S11 is true - I do love a challenge. The best way to make me do something is probably to say I can't, or won't. One of the things I printed out to read was Getting Bin Laden, by Nicholas Schmidle, about the ambush and killing of Bin Laden that night in Abbotabad. It's 17 pages long, and I find it fascinating. Did someone say I wouldn't like terrorist stories? The food, incidentally, was unexpectedly good; but it was damn hot. R and Mr B were both wearing skull pendants. R's was lime green plastic, and Mr B's was white gold with diamond eyes.
The other things I printed out: Alex Ross's essay Deceptive Picture on Oscar Wilde's writing of Dorian Gray, and Jackie O, Working Girl by Greg Lawrence, on the icon as an editor. Jackie O had a literary side, did you know? It wasn't always sunglasses and champagne.The other book I'm reading is The Classical World by Robin Lane Fox (I love Robin Lane Fox!). I'm at the chapter on Pericles - I told you, not everything's about sunglasses and champagne.

Jackie's Capri

Tod's sent me this book just last week and I must say it's one one of the things that really delighted and inspired me! It's a catelogue from the Tod's sponsered exhibition in Capri called “JACKIE’S CAPRI”. The exhibition is a selection from the photographs taken by the papparazo (one of scores that dogged her every move)Settimio Garritano during Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s frequent visits to Capri from 1969 through 1972. The evocative pictures capture moments of Jackie’s habitual pastimes on the island: frequenting shops, cafés and restaurants, with her husband Aristotle Onassis, her two children John-John and Caroline Kennedy, and various friends, during walks and visits to Capri’s historic sites and legendary attractions. I had the good fortune to be in Capri in 2009 and I bought, and still wear, many of the Capri sandals made by the same cobblers that Jackie O frequented! She had such style!

Hello Again

Well, it's good to be back.
I did like the days in Amsterdam a bit, but I prefer being home, to be honest. The roses and those Tudor style houses along the canals actually reminded me of England.
I liked looking out the windows from the Okura room at the people whizzing by on bikes and the badly dressed oldies (this isn't, I must say, a fashion sort of city) walking their fluffy dogs.
The pollen was flying in the Japanese garden where I had some very early, and very delicious Japanese dinners; I was the only one wearing a sweater and jeans amidst a sea of business-suited, sleek haired businessmen.
I have to say I prefer the Okura than the creaky, winding up and down boutique Pulitzer, which is in many ways, just a really big bed and breakfast. Its heavy gloom was not enlivened by the chatter I can hear from two rooms down, nor the constant slamming of heavy doors or the clatter of guests clumping all over the place.
I read rather a lot during the week(magazines and papers), and I'd especially recommend the novel Landfalls by Tim Mackintosh-Smith, about a Moroccan traveller of the early Renaissance. This is a heavily researched book lightened by jaunty prose. It does dwell enlighteningly on Islam, which one learns is more complex and less dogmatic and not completely abstract.One learns as one goes along, doesn't one?
On the other hand, my first trip up to Bangkok in four years was spent hectically catching up with friends I'd lost contact with for a while. I didn't manage to see everyone of them, but I managed at least to collect their numbers, so next time.I also made some new friends, as I was travelling with a young group I'd never travelled with before. The meals and traffic jams were made hilarious by the constant patter of rubbish from one young man called DH. This trip will always remind me of him, and his obsession with vintage jeans, sunglasses and watches. An afternoon spent giggling with DH in the back of a sedan isn't at all dreadful, I must say, even if it was pouring in sheets outside. Also the Greek-American model, 20 year old Christian, made quite an impression, and I only wished I had more time with him under the chandeliers of the gilt and mural Edwardian ballroom of the Oriental.
I love the Oriental Hotel, don't you? The rooms are so comfy, and the service civilised. Of course the food's really great. I ate quite a lot, I'm afraid.
The traffic jams are as horrific as ever, and the city is steadily, unstoppably transforming into one gigantic, dust-coloured mall. One morning, very bored, I bought on a beauty binge:1. Olay Professional and Pro-X products, including the age-defying day moisturiser (SPF 30), wrinkle smoothing cream and a deep wrinkle complex (don't ask).
2. Boots No 7 Protect & Perfect Serum.
3. Laura Mercier Creme Brulee Honey Bath.
4. Kyoku For Men Lava Masque which has mineral-rich mud, black sand and ash from Mount Fuji (don't ask, and let's not go there).
5. Tengan exfoliator which has shirasu volcanic ash, sourced from Japan's southern island of Kyushu (is it radioactive? Let's not go there). I do, in fact, have a thing for volcanoes.
But just to tell you that I'm not all vanity, my hair is all grown out of shape, and the grey is showing, but I can't be bothered to spend three hours at the salon.
Go figure, and have a lovely week ahead.
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