It’s the year of the tiger, and that means there is no shortage of idiots who will consider anything related to a tiger to be lucky, and I am not talking about Tigger toys.

An abbot of a temple in Nakhon Ratchasima, in between meditating and acting like a monk, saw a business opportunity in the foolishness of others; and decided to get into the lucky tiger parts trade. Trouble is, it’s not that easy to get your hands on bits of tiger, what with them being protected and also having exceedingly large teeth. So the abbot hit upon a cunning plan to upgrade the domestic cat. He obtained skins of dead cats (and some dogs) and nipped down to the local DIY shop for a can of orange paint, a can of black paint, and a brush. Painted some orange and black stripes on the cat and dog skins and, hey presto, tiger skin!!

It’s visa renewal time, and as part of the truckload of documentation that the fine people at immigration require, I need a statement confirming my income.

For some reason, I am not to be trusted to write “I earn ten million baht a week. True.” in green crayon on a piece of tatty paper. Instead I have to get the British government to do it for me. So it is down to the British Consul office to present my credentials. I need to fill out a form containing my name and address, and write my monthly income. This amount has to be supported by some sort of documentation, in my case a slip of paper from my previous employer stating my pension (a.k.a. “the pittance”). In return the Consul’s office will fill in my name and address and the amount on a standard letter and give it to me (but not until the following day because everything done by the British government takes at least a day).

My outfit of choice for a photography session emphasises comfort over style. In fact style is not a consideration at all. Whatever T-shirt is on top of the magically replenished pile in the wardrobe, pair of tatty jeans and my beloved Caterpillar boots which have not been cleaned since I lived in England. Top the lot with a scruffy, floppy, blue hat. So it would be fair to say that I was outdone by this gentleman:

Bit of an upset in the UK recently, when a bomb detecting device being sold by a British company to a variety of countries was revealed to be useless. The director of the company selling the device was arrested for misrepresentation and exports of the device were banned. And guess who had already bought a shitload of these over-priced toys? Yep, Thailand.

The Thai government have now tested the device, known as the GT200, and have confirmed that it does not work. The Thai army, who laid out the cash for the devices and has been using them in the South of Thailand, disagree and insists that the GT200 works well. So they called a press conference to make their case.

Preparations for the conference went something like this:

Well, Private Somchai, we need to persuade the Thai public that these GT200s work and are a good deal.

Yes Sir! Could be a bit difficult though sir.

Nonsense! Our first argument will be that they have saved lives and are very effective. The UK government says they don’t work, the Thai government says they don’t work; but they don’t wave them around every day like we do. We will say they have saved 7,000 lives; that’s an impressive number.

Very good sir. But the value for money aspect may be a little difficult. A UK scientist says the device is basically a box with a car aerial attached to it.

Ah yes, but I bet the box is stuffed full of complex electronics.

It’s an empty plastic box sir.

What about the different cards you insert to detect different substances? I bet they are really advanced.

Mainly cardboard sir, with a circuit of the type that is used to stop people nicking stuff from shops. It is estimated that entire device costs less than 1,000 baht to construct. How much did we pay for them sir?

More than one million baht.

Well, we bought about 800 units, so that is just a little bit more than 1,000 baht a unit. We got a pretty good deal thanks to our transparent and effective procurement procedures designed to obtain technically acceptable goods at the lowest price. Do you like they way I said that sir? I have learned to say “our transparent and effective procurement procedures designed to obtain technically acceptable goods at the lowest price” without laughing.

Yes Somchai, very droll; but the one million baht cost is per unit. We have spent more than 800 million baht on these pieces of crap. There must be a way we can make them seem more high tech and complex.

I think I have a solution sir!

Do tell Somchai, and it better be good; not like that rubbish you came up with about those refugees who paddled themselves out to sea with no food and water, “for a bet”.

Well sir, my cousin plays a lot of computer games, and he has a souped-up graphics card so he can play “Ninja Giraffe Heroes” at full resolution. The graphics card looks really complex. So we use a photo of all the circuitry to illustrate the complexity of the device.

So we show people a photo of a computer graphics card board and pretend it is the non-existent circuitry of the bomb detector?

Yes!

They will never believe that!

Ah, but here is the good bit sir. The graphics card is called the Nvidia GT200! It’s got the same name!! We just stick up a photo of the GT200 graphics card and everyone will accept that it is somehow a component of the GT200 detector.

Somchai, you are a genius; that just might work!

And so a man in a uniform stood in front of the Thai press yesterday and extolled the virtues of the GT200 bomb detector, whilst a photo of the Nvidia GT200 graphics card was displayed in the background.

Read that last sentence again. They really did that…

It’s mid February and the streets, beaches and shopping malls are still clogged with visitors enjoying the sunshine and spending their national deficit dollars (or laundered roubles). Quite honestly they have been here long enough, and it is time for them to fuck off back to where they came from and leave us in peace.

There was glimmer of hope this week when Thailand made it into the critical category of the TRI. This would be good news for the country if TRI was an acronym for Tremendous Restaurant Infrastructure; but sadly it stands for Terrorism Risk Index and Thailand now joins the likes of Iraq, Afghanistan and New Zealand Somalia in the critical category.

Ten days, during which time I took nearly 5,000 photos in seven days of shooting and spent any spare time processing shots. And then it all came to a sad end on Sunday afternoon; and the last thing I wanted to do yesterday was work on processing the many outstanding photos.

Having witnessed death, I felt the need to celebrate life. That meant a couple of hours of windsurfing during which I almost managed to break the ankles of a dickhead kite surfer who had no idea of the basic rules of sailing, and I had a spectacular somersault over the front of the board when I hit something below the water line. But it did feel good to be out on the water and in the fresh air, even if some of the basics of motion are a little difficult this morning due to stiffness.

James Ashton was a typical Aussie; laid back, friendly and always sporting a smile. He had played polo all his life and was the president of the International Federation of Polo.

At seventy years of age, he was long past the time when most people would have stopped playing; but he loved the game and turned up for the tournament at Polo Escape this weekend. I chatted to him before the final game yesterday. He said he was looking forward to the match and, flashing one of his big grins, he climbed onto his horse.

Less than two minutes later he suffered the most appalling fall and died in hospital.

James died doing what he loved, but that is of little consolation for his family and many friends around the world. Rest in peace James.

It’s Valentine’s Day apparently, so I head here to find something that truly expresses my feelings.

I think that this is appropriate: