for those of you that wear contacts, there’s a contact lens delivery service (within bangkok). http://ta-to.com + tel: 02.661.6236

their website isn’t eye catching or anything, and is basically a catalogue for all the different products and variants they offer. and you call them up to place an order. they operate in english and thai. if you call early enough, you can get same day delivery, if not then it’s next day delivery. they accept visa and cash only.

i’ve been using them for over a year now, their prices are a lot cheaper than optometry stores and they have pretty good promotions (buy two coloured contacts get one free).

i think it’s a great service, they deliver to my office on sathorn and have a decent CRM programme, they keep track of when your lens runs out and call you up a few weeks before you run out of your lens and ask if you want a refill or not. i like that.

in other news, i went to a brazilian restaraunt last night, called Fogo Vivo.. it’s actually a brazilian churrascaria grill and bar. i don’t know what the hell a churrascaria grill is, and it’s definitely not churros. but basically they have all these assorted meats that they grill and you can choose what you want, from filet mignon and ribs to lamb to duck. the duck is damn good.

i think it’s probably buffet only, it’s at B900 per head, six of us went and the bill came out to be a little under 7k (no wine) and it was super filling. meatlovers, this is a new haven for you.

Fogo Vivo (or

paul also wrote about this

fashion cities:
so there’s milan, london, paris, new york, and tokyo.

bangkok’s aim, or the ministry of industry’s aim, is to put bangkok on that list.

i’m not even gonna knock about the thai’s capabilities, because we’re goddamn good, there are factories here making world-class products. dkny tshirts are made here in thailand, so is a lot of benetton’s clothes. of course these factories are also in china and vietnam and almost every other country in this region.

so where does thailand start? where does bangkok start on becoming a fashion city?

bangkok -isn’t- a fashion city. fuck! we don’t even have educational institutions to support what we want to become. it’s so ridiculous. there’s no reknowned design school. children are surpressed in art classes during grade school years to make carbon copies of art.

they’ve done 7 out of 10 projects so far into gearing bangkok to become a fashion city? and does anybody remember the shit they’ve done? fuck no! all i remember is them closing fucking sukhumvit down and making it a pain in the ass to drive in bangkok that one day. the amount of money they’ve spend on pr and advertising campaigns have pretty much gone to waste. i don’t even want to know the total budget that they were given.

this whole project is just trying to make bangkok to what it isn’t. i totally believe they should focus on the road to become a fashion city, and not just want quick results to pass off as if they’ve actually done work.

i do believe that bangkok has the potential to be a fashion city, if given the right nurturing and a decent plan to build on.

fuck and come on! ministry of industry?! those fuckers who are over looking this whole projects wouldn’t know what the fuck fashion is if it hit them between the legs while they were reaching under the table to take their bribes.

The latest Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) is out today and has left me scratching my head. Most book stores are offering the book for around the 690 Baht mark, except Books Kinkuniya who are offering it for 590 Baht.

These stores seem to believe that offering a Harry Potter shirt or other merchandise will compensate for the higher price, but their not fooling me (and they probably don’t have one in my size).

Sadly, anyone wanting the Thai version of book six, that is the version written in Thai, will have to wait until September. Don’t worry though, I won’t tell you what happens.

In a move that mirrors the passing of the U.S.’ Patriot Act, the Thai government has voted to further water down and strip away more of the countries democratic rights and personal freedoms, all in the name of fighting terrorism and preserving the peace in the south.

After tactics ranging from the violent and heavy-handed (the Tak Bai temple massacre) to childish and utterly moronic (littering the southern provinces with thousands of paper cranes), our government has deemed that the best way to achieve a speedy resolution to southern violence and to rebuild trust is to spy and censor our citizenry, as well as equip our schoolteachers with bullet-proof vests and sidearms. Instead of lecturing and scolding our southern neighbors, perhaps the government should try listening to them? Perhaps if someone came up with a sexy phrase for “coalition building and compromise” that sounds good on a t-shirt or 10-second media sound byte, it might finally become a cause c