Some reasons not to undertake property development in Pattaya right now:

Civil unrest

A saturated housing market where nothing is selling

Obscene exchange rates

But I must be too pessimistic, because there are a rash of new developers spending money on posters, brochures and fancy sales offices, hoping to persuade punters to part with some cash; after which they may or may not start to build something.

Took she who must be obeyed to Starbucks in Central Beach Road a couple of days ago and discovered that a nearby unit had been converted to a swanky sales office for a development called The Koral.

Sticking the word “the” in front of a a random word is the latest trend from property developers, desperate to come up with a name which will hint at opulence and exclusivity. Naming a development “Crumbling Towers” doesn’t say much, but “The Crumbling Towers” tells the world that this is the special crumbling towers; out of all the crumbling towers on offer, this is the one. Utter bollocks of course.

Substituting a K for a C in a word is a currently cool (sorry, kurrently kool) thing to do; as in Mortal Kombat (computer game) and Korea (Editor: are you sure you have your facts right? If so, kool).

And so we have The Koral, which is already sufficient reason for not wanting to live there.

But the brochure was opulent; printed on thick, quality paper in full colour and stuffed with computer generated images, illustrating what The Koral will look like should they ever get round to building it. And with encouraging text written in English; sort of. It starts with “Millions of travelers from around the world know Pattaya as a city of vibrant.” No, I didn’t leave a word out; they did. And there is more. “Uniquely design for timeless style”. “As you step out the landscape is surrounded minimal tropical garden”. The lovely, expensive brochure, clearly designed for attracting English speaking customer, is grammatically buggered.

Why do they do this? How hard would it be to have the wording checked by a native English speaker before printing? For goodness sake, they could just walk up to someone and ask them to take a look.

Hello, do you speak English

Yeah. But. No. But. Yeah

Can you check our slogan please? It’s: “Luxury living in the beach lifestyle”.

Nah, that’s no good, innit. Wanna use “Buy this condo you fucker or we’ll come and burn the fucker down. Fucker”

Thank you for the correction. What’s your name by the way?

Jeff Savage, innit.

OK, so the name is crap and the brochure is flawed, but the actual show units were rather pleasant. Good use of space and the view out the front across beach road was OK. “I’ll take this one, I like the view”, I told the flustered sales girl. “No, no, no, you have to see real site” she said.

So I looked in the brochure, and this was the view:

The antics of Mr. Jeff Savage were of sufficient interest to make yesterday the busiest day ever for Pattaya Days. Not that that is saying much; and rather sad that it should take the antics of a dickhead to draw in the crowds, rather than perhaps a beautifully written analysis of the role of post-modernism in the culture of Eastern Europe (under preparation, watch this space, don’t hold your breath).

It seems appropriate that I should follow up on yesterday’s media success with a post bearing a title that will attract a large number of punters, and a content that will please nobody (apart from genuinej, who has been pleading for more pussy shots for some time).

The Boston Globe’s The Big Picture is a regularly updated web gallery of photographs. A gentleman by the name of Alan Taylor chooses the subjects, sources the photos, and the collections are invariably stunning.

Today’s offering is the Bangkok crackdown and the photo selection is impressive, sobering and sad:

Not surprising to see that most of the photographers are Thai, there are some great photographers in this country. And, given that it takes more balls than I could ever muster to put yourself in the middle of a riot, I offer them my profound admiration.

Well, not exactly fiddling, but called to Bira to take some shots of the usual suspects.

When I lived in Aberdeen I decided to start up a little business, renting out equipment to the rapidly expanding housing market. The company was appropriately, if unimaginatively, named “Aberdeen Home and Garden Equipment Hire”; but I was quite proud of our slogan: “Setting a hire standard”.

We rented out mowers, rotavators, small cement mixers, ladders; the sort of equipment a home owner might want to use on an occasional basis but was not wanting to buy. “We” was me, and I had to juggle a job with an oil company with the delivery and collection of rental equipment. This often involved Sunday lunch being interrupted by a call to come fix a belt on a rotavator, or to satisfy an urgent request for a ladder (another grandmother stuck up a tree).

Customers were generally friendly and decent, apart from one prick who refused to pay for an extension of hire. I immediately wished him dead. Long after I gave up the company (I had to chose between oil and lawn mowers, the oil won), I kept the culprit’s name and address on file and plotted ways of making him suffer. Even now I bear him ill-will.

In short, once I have decided I don’t like someone for what I consider to be valid reason, then it is for life. Of course this is not a healthy attitude, but it can prove useful on occasions. Like yesterday for example.

Two years ago I was dragged along on a trip to a durian farm. It was not the best of days and I was no rush to repeat it. Fortunately, since that time I have added another name to my (very short) list of people I want nothing to do with. I shall not go into the reasons, just to say that there is a certain gentleman of Italian extraction that I never wish to speak to again.

So when the next durian farm adventure was planned, and he was to be one of the attendees, she who must be obeyed knew it was a lost cause to get me to come along.

We are going to the durian farm again, do you want to come? (small hopeful voice). Will (insert name of Italian gentleman, registered on list of people I want nothing to do with) be there? Yes. I am not going. You should forgive him. Never forgive, never forget (especially if it gets you out of durian farm trips).

And so I didn’t go, and judging by the state of my beloved upon her return, it was just as well. She was sweaty and exhausted and desperately in need of a shower. But of course she came home bearing fruit, and my back passage is currently stuffed with seventeen smelly durian, one of which is reserved for genuinej’s back passage. The other sixteen are for inserting into that fucker in Aberdeen who still owes me money.

No way am I going to eat any, but they are weird enough to warrant a photograph or six.

One of the applications on my iPad that I visit daily is a collaboration between The Guardian newspaper and Canon. Called Guardian Eyewitness, it features a new photo almost every day, with a caption describing the photo, plus “pro tips” on how to take such a photo. These tips are usually useful, although there are exceptions, such as this:

Thanks for the suggestions as to the reasons for yesterday’s pain. They were all entrants in the magnificent Pattaya arm-wrestling competition which is running at Royal Garden Plaza this weekend.

As usual, there were no clear indications as to when the event might start, so I rolled up around 1230 to find that there many contestants and a couple of men shouting into microphones. Thought there might be time for a quick sandwich and a coffee at The Coffee Club. There was, in fact there was time for a five course meal and an afternoon nap; because the preparations were endless. Everyone had to go in a draw to find out who they were wrestling. Then we had a crap demonstration of martial arts. Then the mayor stood up and made a speech to apologise about the mess on Thappraya road (dream on), and various other people felt the need to say something. Time to start? No; now it was time for the contestants to parade in front of the crowd and flex their muscles.

Finally, at nearly 15:00, the first two wrestlers took to the stage. And then they stood around for twenty minutes while the rules were explained. By this time I had a headache from the endless shouting interspersed with rubbish techno music and I just wanted to go home and lie down. Took a few shots first. It’s on again this afternoon starting at 14:30, which means sometime after 16:00. I won’t be there.

Why?

Answer tomorrow. Most amusing suggestion in the meantime wins a prize.

Breakfast with she who must be obeyed before she heads off for work.

As usual, she worries about things more than she should, and is currently fretting about the red shirt debacle in Bangkok. What if the country descends into civil war, where would we go? My view was that we would go nowhere and our condo would be as safe as anywhere else; especially as “civil war” would most likely consist of army factions fighting each other in a localised way. and the locales would not include the street outside our condo.