PeterRS

Naturally sailors, rowers, skateboarders, javelin throwers and their ilk require equipment. But with all respect they are individuals with a piece of equipment necessary for their sport. If you take your argument to its logical conclusion, soccer would be out as it requires a ball! I suppose it's all down to individual preference. You like dressage. I loathe it. I hate to think how much training a horse requires to go through that routine. And you cannot name me any other sport - sport(?) - that requires a non human to compete! It makes no sense. If you have horses, why not camel racing? Why not sled dog racing? Why not rodeo riding? Having horses involved happens only because their events were one of the first to be included in the early Olympics when the organisers were desperate to find any sports at all? I believe one criterion should definitely be popularity of a sport. My nieces are both horse crazy. Oddly they have no interest in the Olympic equestrian events! Incidentally equestrian events were not included in the Melbourne 1956 Olympics due to Australia's strict 6-month quarantine policy. So it is not as though they have always been part of the programme. So I am curious. Given that some sports are kicked out at every Olympics, which ones would you drop out for Paris and Los Angeles?

On my hobby horse (sic) again. In addition to all the events involving horses, there are others whose inclusion in future Games I would like to see ended. We live in an era when the whole idea of sport is changing quite rapidly with young people leading that change. A couple of decades or so ago, who would have thought that skateboarding, surfing, karate and the incredibly difficult (and gripping to watch) sport climbing would be included in the Olympics? What new sports will emerge in the next few years. Many of the traditional sports were introduced a century or so ago, I assume because they harked back to the olden days in Greece. Why do we still have a javelin throwing competition? Who throws javelins today? Same with shot putting. It seems to me near pointless. Then there are more modern sports introduced because someone or some group had too much influence. How many countries in the world play baseball. Dozens, but only six compete in the Olympics. Why not more? At least that will be one sport not featured in Paris. A lot of athletes now earn a lot of cash as a result of their excellence in their sport and from winning medals. I have no issue with that. But why are the top professional golfers and professional tennis players, many of whom make tens of millions in their normal careers, be permitted to play in the Olympics? Surely it would be far better to restrict the participants to genuine amateurs. i'm fed up with he likes of Novak Djokovic, a player estimated to be worth US$220 million, have hissy fits on the tennis court because he was not good enough to take home even a bronze medal. He and his like should be forced to stick to the professional tennis grounds of the world. Lastly, in Paris the surfing competition cannot be held in the city because it is not on the sea. So, Instead of locating it off Biarritz or Marseilles, or even seek to move it to Portugal where the waves at Nazare are some of the finest in the world, what will the organisers do? Locate it 16,000 kms away in Tahiti! So what happens to the concept of an Olympics village where all the athletes of the world congregate and socialise? Zero sense. Once they have got rid of some traditional events, the whole idea of host cities must surely be the next on the agenda. If a city cannot accommodate all the events, why should it be a host?

With China backing the military and the mandarins in Beijing nervous of any revolutionary movements anywhere on their border, the supply of arms will continue flowing to the military. If there is to be a revolution, some other country/counries will have to side with those with those fighting against the present junta. So far it seems those fighting the government are on their own.

I just saw perfection again. The 14 year old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan won the women's 10m high diving. She was peerless, even beating into second place her 15-year old compatriot who is the World Record holder. Rarely have I ever seen so many top marks of 10 from diving judges. Quan was unbelievable to watch! As the commentators said, she was "sensational". And this was her first ever international competition! How can she possibly improve for Paris in 3 years time, I wonder?

Judging by the fact that soldiers have been escaping to neighbouring Bangladesh, that is probably very true. I have a dear friend who is half Thai and half Burmese. His Burmese father lives in the Shan States. For decades the central government has been fighting the rebel states which mostly border Thailand. Now my friend tells me the Shan army is calling up a lot of young men to fight the junta. As in Thailand, lads can buy their way out of army duty with what for Burmese will be an impossible amount of cash. Thankfully my friend has a job here in Thailand and has been able to send enough money to his father to buy out his younger brother and himself.

I watched him on the horizontal bar yesterday. He was the last to do his routine and half those before him had fallen at some point. He looked so secure throughout and seemed a sure thing for the gold. I don't think that photo does him justice. He is much cuter!! 😃

I find all the business of "I have a right not to wear a mask and not to get vaccinated - I have my rights under the American constitution blah blah" not just childish but anti-Constitution. Didn't the one good phrase Trump say to Bob Woodward in their various discussions about Woodward's book, "It's a war." Well, in a war, does the Constitution take precedence over fighting that war? is free speech still allowed? I very much doubt it. I used to get really worked up about the non-mask wearers and the antivaxers. Now I'd rather laugh about them. If they die, I'll not mourn.

Spurred by the hotel promo vdo under Gay Asia, this is an ad prepared by students from one of Bangkok's Universities. The gay overtones are very clear! Not sure who developed this also very gay ad.

The hotel looks nice - the Taiwan boys much nicer. I'm with Lonnie. If even one of those boys comes with the room, I'll stay there on my next trip. I see that rates around the annual Gay Pride Parade at the end of October (not that we'll be able to travel then, alas!) come in at around NT$4,200 or so. Quite pricey compared to many unless it comes with the benefits.

Optimistic PM? Huh!

Wow! And Wow again! Norway's Karsten Warholm's smashing his own world record way out of the park in the 400 m hurdles surely has to be this Olympics greatest moment. I understand that after each Olympics the Committee decides which new sports to add and which to drop. One event I was partially able to see last night was the equestrian jumping. I did not watch for long. I find it so boring. The three equestrian disciplines have been part of the Olympics since 1912 and surely they should be the first to be sent packing. Is there any other sport that requires an animal before it can happen? The cost of the equestrian events must be far higher than most other sports given the need to fly in so many horses and have an arena exclusively for them.

Absolutely no need for any excuse whatever. The photos are quite lovely.

With so much gloom at present, more and more posters are hoping against hope that the pandemic in Thailand will be under control much sooner rather than later and their visits to this Paradise can continue. It started me thinking about Paradise and how different the word can mean for different people. When we were growing up, did we really buy into the idea of Paradise as an idyllic nirvana, a place where the vicissitudes and pettiness of daily life would be replaced by perfect peace, love and harmony? A Garden of Eden where there are no serpents hidden in the apples (as envisioned below by William Blake) and we can bask in its glory amongst gorgeous flowers, sumptuous fruits and an endless supply of beautiful guys? For some adherents of a certain religion there will be an abundance of virgins ready to fulfill their every wish. Another interpretation of that particular religion, I understand, suggests that there may instead be youths attending to them, presumably also fulfilling their intimate desires. Seriously, though, is Paradise, in Hamlet’s words, the life-ending experience “a consummation devoutly to be wished?” After all, getting there is no certainty. It’s either up or down for us. There is of course a middle path, but then who wants to spend years zooming around Purgatory desperately trying to find that exit to Paradise? Does Purgatory exist? Does an exit exist? Is it purifying or punitive? As for Hell, well that excision of part of our proud dicks as mandated by certain religions is certainly not as practiced here on earth. Down there, they lop off the whole damn organ as well as a great deal more, leaving our never-ending supply of blood continuously oozing forth as illustrated on this painting from the door of a Buddhist temple I saw near Tibet. But before leaving the horrors of Hell, there is a rather interesting little tale in the Preface of an amusing book titled SEX: Who’s Had Who. Written a few decades ago it is a lighthearted summary of who might just have had sex with whom over a period of years. Having sex is called “rogering” and each chapter is a series of who might just have rogered whom – rather like getting from A to Z by taking short cuts. Some rogers are historical. More modern rogers included are from GETRUDE STEIN to CLINT EASTWOOD in 8 rogers and from PRESIDENT FERDINAND MARCOS to PRINCESS DIANA in 7 rogers. Naturally it’s all just a bit of fun. In the Preface is this thought. “What if God knows everything except ONE THING. What if He has a blind spot: there is no one around as intelligent as Him to put Him right, and He doesn't know He doesn't know it because that is the one thing He doesn't know . . . “What, for instance, if God has always pushed a red button to send people to Hell, and a blue one to send them to Heaven. And what if the one thing God doesn't know is that He is colour-blind. And sees red for blue and vice-versa.” * OMG! After reading that, I wondered what God would do if instead of being colour-blind He was suffering from a touch of dementia, to the point where His short-term memory would be unable to recall which button He had last pressed. And thinking that it had been red, he continuously was pressing blue. Wonder of wonders! A Paradise with one section filled only with huge numbers of all manner of young men. Could I find here all the boys and men I have loved and lusted after during my time on earth just waiting for me without their having aged and just as I have always remembered them? How many boys from my later years at school and at University whom I was desperate to bed but much too shy to do so? Since life up there will presumably be without end, perhaps Hamlet was right. I wonder how many realise that the word ‘Paradise’ comes not from Christianity or Islam. It does have a religious background, though. It was coined much earlier in Persia when Zoroastrianism, the world’s oldest monotheistic religion, was the state religion for more than a millennium. The God worshiped by the Zoroastrians was Ahura Mazda – yes, the Japanese car company did indeed appropriate the name for their Mazda cars. The prophet Zoroaster is better known to us today through Nietzsche’s novel and the Richard Strauss tone poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra (whose first 100 seconds is featured not only in the opening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but also as the prelude for years to innumerable sex shows in Thailand’s go-go bars). Pop singer Freddie Mercury was one of the religion’s adherents. Even today some 25,000 still worship the religion in Iran’s desert city of Yazd. The Ancient Symbol of Zoroastrianism The root of the word essentially means Garden. Not one with beautiful lawns, manicured hedges and perfumed flowers like Versailles or Hampton Court. Rather, Persian Gardens. These were and still are enclosed spaces with tall trees providing shade filled with orange and pomegranate trees but where water flowing in narrow channels and fountains, often with a pavilion in the centre, plays almost the most prominent role. A Persian Garden in Kashan Over time Paradise has graduated to become a much more mundane term. Nowadays anything that gives us a lift from our everyday lives tends to be termed Paradise. It can be cocktails on a fine sandy tropical beach at sunset, nuzzling up to our partner after the most intense orgasm of the year, speeding down an open road in a sparkling new red Ferrari . . . Even our gay community is associated with the word. Phuket is no longer very gay but most of Patong’s few remaining gay venues are clustered near the Paradise Complex. More recently I discovered another Paradise. From time to time I used to tune in to a light classical station when working. Some years ago I was listening to a rather pleasant piece of music quite unknown to me. The composer, too, was a name I had never heard before, Frederick Delius, an Englishman who composed around 100 years ago. The music sounded vaguely like a cross between the impressionism of Debussy with hints of the Germanic nationalism of Richard Wagner. I was quite surprised when the announcer informed listeners that the title of the piece was Walk to the Paradise Garden. Enchanted by its perfumed harmonies and sultry textures, I could imagine being led through shimmering golden fields of wheat and then towards a magical stairway to present myself to my Creator in the most beautiful of all gardens. My Angel Awaits Imagine, then, the comedown when, far from being a second Eden, the announcer informed listeners that Paradise Garden as envisioned by Delius in fact refers to a common or garden (oops) rather seedy country pub! Paradise – a pub? Oh well! I suppose in some parts of the world, a regular gay pub may be as close as many will ever get to Paradise down here on earth. But I still like the idea of all those youths up in the hereafter ready to look after my every need! Ah! But then I worry. What if I don’t end up by going up, as it were? What if I go down? What if the Creator is indeed colour blind? Clearly time for another drink. If thoughts of Paradise can’t cheer me up in these times of covid19, hopefully another large vodka martini will! Perhaps Delius was right after all. * from SEX Who Had Who by Simon Bell, Richard Curtis and Helen Fielding originally published by Faber & Faber, London

In the immortal words of Albert Einstein, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one!"

Given the rate at which several other expat-oriented websites set up by the government have crashed or been offline for many weeks, I wonder who holds out much hope this one will not go the same way.

From The Guardian newspaper "The Thai government has outlawed sharing news that “causes public fear”, even if such reports are true, as officials face mounting criticism over their handling of the pandemic. On Thursday, the government tightened an emergency decree imposed more than a year ago that initially targeted false news. "The latest restrictions forbid people from distributing “information causing public fear”, or from sharing “distorted information causing misunderstanding which affects national stability”. The measures have been widely condemned by media groups and rights experts as attempts to shut down negative news reports and silence debate. Sunai Phasuk, senior researcher on Thailand in Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, described it as a “serious blow” to press freedom in the country. “I think the government realises it is now facing a credibility crisis because of this disastrous response to the Covid situation, but instead of trying to find better solutions, more efficient solutions, it chooses to gag anyone from speaking about its failures,” he said. “This provision doesn’t care about accuracy or whether it is true or false.” "Under the regulations, if false content is spread online, the country’s broadcasting regulator will contact internet service providers to identify the individual’s IP address and block their internet access. "Internet providers who fail to comply will be deemed to have breached the requirements of their operating licences, and action will be taken against them." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/30/thailand-bans-sharing-of-news-that-causes-public-fear-amid-pandemic-criticism

It already has. The name is Trump. Keep well away!

CNN is reporting this morning about a new variant that is called the Columbian variant. It has not yet been given a Greek letter but it has already spread to Florida.

Aha! And obviously that is where the passengers and crew of MH 370 will be found. But I still want to know who killed JFK and why! I could make a fortune on the book, movie and tv series.

If I knew or had any reasonable conclusion I would have specified a time. I'm sure you realise I am grasping at straws as much as everyone else. I have no idea when Thailand will get to 70% vaccinated or whatever other percentage of the population is regarded as ideal for opening up. For your infomraion, the interval for the locally made AZ vaccine is 12 weeks. I just know that with the Prime Minister only a few weeks ago having revealed what he should have told the public many months ago - that the roughly 70 million AZ vaccine doses being manufactured locally and due for delivery between June and December will not in fact all be for Thailand since over 50% are earmarked for overseas (I believe negotiations are underway to have the Thailand amount increased but have seen no result) - and, so far as we know, not a great many other millions of doses are scheduled to come into the country soon with the exception of the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, the government has a huge problem. The Prime Minster has even admitted this. In April and May he was saying publicly that the 70% would be reached by September. By early June that had been moved back to the end of December. Even that now seems very overoptimistic. Young people still remain very much at the back of the queue and they seem just as prone to the delta variant as older people. I know of about a dozen guys in their 20s who cannot get a date for vaccinations. One has got an August date for his first Sinopharm vaccination but only because he knows a nurse at a hospital. Even then he has to pay 3,200 baht for both. Having been jobless for many months he has had to beg and borrow that sum. What of all the boys in Pattaya, I wonder? I thought the organisation bringing in Sinopharm was doing at as a charitable exercise since a great many Thais will find it hard to pay that price. That apart, as you rightly point out, the Chinese vaccines do not seem to be as effective as the others. I think you have discounted the point made in my earlier post about the CDC's latest pronouncement. So we really do not know how effective present vaccines are other than keeping many people out of hospital. But surely the CDC's comment about vaccinated people still being contagious with the delta variant, does that not throw a rather big spanner into predictions for the future? And what if, as is surely likely, more variants appear? I wish. But you know the background to the awarding of the contract for AZ vaccines. Do you seriously believe that the Prime Minister is going to change the rules given the principals involved with the AZ production - and these include his dreadful Minister of Health, Anutin, who is from an opposition party? Anutin could have involved the government's own department which for years has manufactured various vaccines, some for the WHO. But he elected not to. Changing the rules now would be politically dangerous in my view. As for yet another lockdown, since the Prime Minister was terrified of the effect on his public image if he accepted the advice from all his medical experts to cancel Songkran this year, I cannot see him shutting down the country more than he already has. So I remain unconvinced that this country will be able to open up for a long time. I'll hazard a guess. Mid 2022. Sadly!

I definitely agree that wait and see is not only the best strategy, it is the only one. With nearly 18,000 new cases yesterday - and those are only the ones we know about; the chances are there are a lot more - the government is nowhere near in control of the virus. Add the lack of vaccines and the very deep unrest being expressed on Thai social media, I would stay clear of Thailand for quite a long time. Worse, the CDC in the USA today claims that the delta variant is more dangerous that they have been aware to date. One chart on a CDC presentation yesterday shows that it is "as contagious as chickenpox . . . and spreads more easily than the common cold, the 1918 flu and small pox." Worryingly, it then states that in one recent outbreak in Massachusetts "vaccinated and unvaccinated people had nearly the same amount of virus recovered from test samples, indicating that vaccinated people are just as contagious as unvaccinated people when it comes to the delta variant." A summary slide states that the CDC should "acknowledge that the war has changed." This is just one variant. How many more variants are likely to appear over the next 6 - 9 months? The CDC presentation first appeared in The Washington Post. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/29/1022580439/a-cdc-internal-report-says-the-delta-variant-is-more-transmissible-than-a-cold

The movie The Most Beautiful Boy has received mostly excellent reviews. On a limited release so far, it has a 76% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The film has been sold for distribution in several countries. No idea if it will ever appear in Thailand. The Guardian: A desperately unhappy story, sympathetically told The Scotsman: Though full of sadness, it's ultimately a portrait of just how resilient a person can be in the face of so much pain. Ian Thomas Malone: a harrowing, deeply moving experience that captures a star as gravity forces it back to earth IndieWire: A crushing story of innocence destroyed by stardom Financial Times: A deeply sad documentary about fame, its casualties and exploitation of children.

The spy mission theory fits in with my belief. I forgot that CIA agents wore badges advertising their profession. Besides, if the aircraft had indeed landed safely, where is the plane now and where are the passengers? And who concocted the recordings of the Soviet fighter pilots and their ground controllers? Don't most of us just love conspiracy theories? Perhaps it's time we opened a thread about who actually killed JFK and why. I know, but i'm not telling! 🤣

It definitely is. Not sure about Pattaya but room rents in Bangkok have come down considerably in the last few months. A friend of mine recently moved to a large two-room condo in a nice area with a pool for 4,000 baht a month. He shares it with two other friends. He says modest rooms in Pattaya should presently be available for about 2,000 baht per month.

Spurred on by a couple of questions from readers, I’ll add what little more I know/speculate about the mystery of KAL007. Even with files being opened up after the Cold War, it still remains the stuff of conspiracy theories with many many issues, most crucial, still unsolved. Here are just a few. 1. Prior to the downing of the 747, there had been five documented cases of incursion by non-Soviet aircraft into Soviet airspace since the first in 1952. Perhaps ironically the last of these incidents also involved Korean Airlines when a flight intruded into Soviet airspace above a restricted military area south of Murmansk. The Korean plane was shot down but was able to land with two just deaths. Surprisingly there was almost no adverse international reaction. Indeed, the president of South Korea thanked the Soviet Union for the speedy return of the surviving passengers and crew. As a result, international norms suggested the prohibiting of shooting an intruding aircraft just because it was in one’s airspace. In other words, “exclusive sovereignty” was no excuse. But in November 1982, the Soviet Union enacted a law authorising the Soviet Air Defence Forces to use armed force “against violators of the USSR state border”, whether they threaten violence or not. The USA disagreed with this law claiming that mere suspicion about intent does not justify military action. 2. Why was the Anchorage VOR beacon (very high frequency omni-directional beacon) providing location information to aircraft and enabling it to keep on course out of action when KAL007 took off? This provides information for up to 200 miles distance. Such equipment requires annual maintenance. Allegedly it was being maintained on that night. Might that have been deliberate? 3. Why did the USA have its RC-135 Surveillance aircraft flying very near an off-course passenger airliner heading for Soviet airspace? At one point they were so close that their radio images merged for ten minutes. 4. Why did the captain of KAL007 radio Tokyo flight control centre “We have safely passed over southern Kamchatka. The plane is proceeding normally”? The words “safely over” are deeply suspicious. This recording allegedly proves that the captain knew perfectly well he had flown over Soviet airspace. 5. US and subsequently Japanese air traffic controllers were responsible for the flight of KAL007. Why did neither group of controllers even once attempt to warn the plane that it was not just off course, but massively off course? 6. Following the crash, the USA and Japan disclosed tape recordings of the radio transmissions of the Soviet fighter pilots. Thus both were perfectly well aware of KAL007’s perilous position. Yet again neither communicated any concern to the doomed plane. 7. While denying that KAL007 was on a spying mission, the USA conceded that it had violated Soviet airspace. 8. When the US Ambassador to the UN disputed the Soviet’s account, her presentation relied heavily on the recordings of radio conversations between the Soviet fighter pilots and their three ground control stations. These covered the last 30 minutes of KAL007’s flight. The Soviet Ambassador did not dispute these, although later Soviet commentators claimed they had been falsified. Yet despite this knowledge about the plane’s location, Ambassador Kirkpatrick never explained the lack of warning to the airline or its pilots. 9. The Report made public on 30 December 1983 by the technical experts of ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) came to the conclusion that the route deviation was a result of pilot error re an incorrect computer input after leaving Anchorage. Strangely, and controversially, it concluded that civilian air traffic controllers could not have known about its major deviation and that military authorities who might have detected the deviation were not responsible for it https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1477&context=yjil 10. The last and most intriguing part of the mystery is that the world still does not know where the bodies and the remains of the aircraft are. Absolutely nothing was found. This is unlike any other aircraft lost over water – with the more recent exception of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. The Soviets agreed that the location of the crash was Moneron Island. This is little more than 300 kms north of Hokkaido. Japanese ships were reasonably quickly at the scene. How is it even remotely possible that not one tiny piece of debris, not one body nor even one body part has ever been found? It belies belief that the Soviets could have farmed up all the wreckage in such a short period of time. And the Soviets always denied they had recovered any bodies. Yet two months after the crash, their divers were able to locate the black boxes. They find the black boxes but not one tiny scrap of wreckage? Even a US Navy-led search of the area revealed absolutely nothing. True? Or deliberately false? Relatives of the passengers and crew remained convinced for years that the only explanation is the aircraft must have landed intact somewhere on Soviet soil. Yet Soviet files opened years later revealed nothing. I agree with those South African pilots I met who believe KAL007 had to have been on a spying mission prompted by the US. But in the absence of so much detail, that can only be speculation. Curiouser and curiouser!