Sitting in a carriage of the BTS skytrain today, we were all pleasantly surprised when a group of BTS staff in red t-shirts burst into song whilst one guy strum along to his guitar. They were singing christmas carols but in Thai and so well - it was very cool. At first everyone looked bemused by the whole thing but after the first carol a few people shouted out “more, more!” and we all sat there smiling.

Aaaaahhhhhhhh.

Not the game. Did anyone feel the earthquake tremors this morning? I don’t think I did, but I am currently next door to a building site so I wouldn’t know. Seems like a lot of damage has been done all over S.E.A though and that’s nothing compared to the steadily rising death toll. The videos of Phuket and particularly Patong Beach have been incredible - the damage. What is weird is all the incoming news from India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and so on… but nothing from Burma / Myanmarr - and surely it must have been hit hard, if everywhere else was. BBC here and CNN here.

there was a “chris-messy” party at noriega’s last night. two punks bands. and the djs playing

Happy Christmas to all our Christmas-celebrating readers (because we know there are some!) from all of us here at Metblog Bangkok. Hope you all have a great holiday. Me? Well, I’m off to the cinema.

The chicken’s in the oven (a turkey would’ve been way too much for just two of us) and the potatoes are roasting ;) the smell of fresh thyme is wafting in to the study. Yum.

Christmas eve in Europe, where I come from, is always one helluva frenetic day - everyone rushing to get their last minute presents and the last ingredients for Christmas dinner - that extra cinnamon for the rice pudding and so on. The streets are normally crowded and the queues at the supermarket are looooong.
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I just received a very interesting email from a colleague that I had to share that is interesting in the way it depicts the assumption of what Thai women want most. You’ll have to forgive the Tinglish.

It’s really cute in email form because everything is animated.

On that note, Merry Christmas to my fellow bloggers and any who would read this!

My wife’s good friend was robbed today.

A group of friends and former colleagues from my wife’s former company gathered this evening for a much anticipated reunion dinner at a popular restaurant in a well-travelled soi in an upscale area in the financial district. At 6:50 pm, the sun was beginning to set, but there was enough daylight to easily mistaken the time of day to be several hours earlier.

My wife’s friend and her husband had parked their car a few meters from the restaurant and were about to step in from off the street when a man on a motorcycle raced past, snatching her purse. The rider was halfway down the street before she could scream or her husband could react. Half a party at a police station filing a police report, half a party guarding the car from the possible return of a thief armed with stolen car keys, and one ruined evening for an entire party of friends.

The relatively low rate of petty crime in the central business district can make it easy for one to grow complacent. My wife and her friends are still a bit shellshocked, and I’m that much more paranoid (as well as a bit delusional to boot, nursing fantasies of foiling a purse snatching on my wife, followed by me beating the would-be thief within an inch of his life).

The moral of the story: keep alert, and be wary of motorcycle riders with no license plates on the bike.

Yesterday, one of my colleagues told me an interesting retail industry factoid: most Thai supermarkets tend to triple their average monthly sales in the month of December. In other words, just over 21% of a supermarket’s annual sales are generated in the last month of the year. I could imagine that many department and specialty stores generating that kind of sales spike (typically 25%+ of annual sales), and definitely the toy sector, which generates upwards of 70-75% of annual revenues during the Christmas season. But groceries? It didn’t make sense to me.

And then it hit me: holiday gift baskets. Thais have a tradition of sending out supermarket holiday gift baskets to preferred clients, family members, and elders. These tend to consist of consumer products hand-arranged & assembled (much like a floral bouquet) in a woven wicker basket and then shrink wrapped for delivery. Prices can range from about Baht 1,000 (US$25) for an eclectic mix of goodies such as juice, talcum powder, and non-dairy creamer, to a more wallet-busting Baht 12,000 (US$300) for tony items like Johnny Walker Blue and other high-priced, imported consumables.

Cynically speaking, gift baskets are such a terrific scam for grocers, both figuratively and in some cases literally. Figuratively because even after accounting for the cost of the basket and the labor used to assemble these things, the retail mark-up on these baskets are fantastic, and I’m hoping my company sells enough of these things to goose our annual bonuses (insert dripping sarcasm here, but not too much: Papa needs a brand-new plasma screen!). Literally because some less-than-reputable supermarkets (not my company!) have in the past used gift baskets as a means of clearing out excess inventory, mostly less-popular unsalable items and in many cases expired and rotten merchandise. Not only do these supermarkets have a way to dump crap inventory before the close of the fiscal year, but they get to book sales of otherwise unsalable merchandise at a significant premium to non-holiday prices rather than taking the write-off. Buddha bless the entrepreneurial spirit and creative accounting!

If you do partake in this ritual, my advice would be to hand-pick the merchandise off the shelves yourself (checking the sell-by dates first hand) and watch the supermarket employee assemble and wrap the basket. A better suggestion would be just to buy a bottle of Blue Label and get plastered with your client/friend/elder and use the savings for a pair of Montecristos.

Incidentally, can anyone tell me if supermarket gift baskets are a regular part of holiday gift giving in other countries around the world? I don’t seem to recall this going on in the United States, though I’m surprised that the large supermarket chains and consumer product companies haven’t tried to start a similar tradition stateside (they could take a lesson from the greeting card companies and confectioners with regards to hawking products on Easter, Valentine’s day, and Mother’s Day).

I read in “Mars” magazine last month issue. One columnist who lives in NYC wrote that NYC isn’t city for family. Everything is practical for single, young and enegetic people. There is no space for children to play and too lonely for olders.

I’ve never been NYC but I can feel that after watching Sex&the City. I think everyone will accept that Bangkok is following NYC step. But the question is now Bangkok is the city for single yet?

The gym I frequent is, in my eyes, one of the better ones in Bangkok. Nice surroundings, great facilities, friendly staff and an excellent range of equipment. But the male changing rooms are… well, let us say “indicitive of the nature of certain elements of the members“. How do I know? Well…
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