Showing 1 - 10 of 19
The bubbling cauldron
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 23/03/2015
» On April 22 last year, at the Western Pacific Naval Symposium in Qingdao, China, 21 Pacific countries signed the "Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (Cues)" to generate mutual understanding and international co-operation in regards to the use of the seas. Cues is not legally binding but its role is clear: to reduce tension that results from maritime conflicts arising out of overlapping interests of member nations. It doesn't apply specifically to particular nations or particular areas. Its timing, however, is crucially relevant to one particular body of water in the Indo-Pacific: the South China Sea.
Not universally applicable
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 03/08/2015
» In 1992, political economist Francis Fukuyama published a book that elevated him to the level of intellectual stardom. The End of History And The Last Man investigates the patterns of human and societal evolutions, which, according to Fukuyama, may find itself in the form of society and state that resembles Western liberal democracy in the final stage. History ends because we are going to live more or less the same way, that is in the form of Western government with basic life conditions determined by varying degrees of democracy. Philosophically controversial it was, given that it came out in the aftermath of two world wars, the fall of Berlin Wall, the demise of the Soviet Union and an emergence of "East Asia miracle", The End Of History, to many, was a prophetic prediction of the world we lived in. Not West, not East, but the world.
The good part is ... Prabda, in English
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 07/04/2017
» Loneliness is a quiet dilemma. Many of Edward Hopper's celebrated paintings are a testament to this truism. In New York Movie, for example, the painting splits into halves. The left side depicts a movie theatre with silhouettes of viewers and what's being shown on the screen. We are, however, drawn to the right: An usherette, tall, lean, blonde, has her left hand supporting her elbow, her chin touching her right hand. Her pensive gesture suggests she is far away from the wall that separates her from the moviegoers. She probably has seen the movie countless times but her countenance compels us to wonder what is taking place in her mind.
Encountering the 'other'
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 22/09/2017
» The essayist Tzvetan Todorov writes in The Conquest Of America: The Question Of The Other that the history of the world is made up of conquests and defeats, of colonisations and discoveries of others. He argues that at the beginning of the 16th century, the native Americans of the New World were present but nothing was known about them. The discovery of America was therefore crucial because it brought white European settlers to an encounter with the natives from the onset. And with this encounter, a projection of what the Other would be. Knowledge and images were for the first time being sent "back home" of what the savage might be.
Taking the long view
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 19/10/2017
» In Greek mythology, Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory. Impregnated by Zeus, she gave birth to the nine muses with whom artists, poets, musicians, writers and historians are familiar. As a daughter of Uranus, Mnemosyne is also a goddess of time; she provides the role of rote memorisation and invents language and words where her daughters, the muses, pick up and render them. She is a goddess that makes memory alive and is often acquainted with vivid remembrance.
Overcoming the racial divide
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 26/04/2018
» Shakespeare writes in The Winter's Tale that "there were no age between 10 and three-and-20, or that youth would sleep out the rest". Adolescence, or the marked "teenage years", encompass elements of biological growth and major social transformation, both of which are decidedly products of nature and culture. The time between youth and maturity can be sorrowful, hard, fun, sad and amazing. It never fails to inspire writers of fiction, to attempt to unravel the complexities of this concept of life. Charting into the unknown is always a favourite subject of those who write.
An accessible yet enchanting reimagination of Romeo & Juliet
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 31/08/2018
» "Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale." Romeo And Juliet, William Shakespeare
City of angels and demons
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 22/03/2019
» You can leave the place where you were born, but it never truly leaves you. It's always there, calling you home.
A shady underworld
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 03/05/2019
» We, The Survivors, the fourth novel by the Malaysian-British Tash Aw, is a compelling account of the life of a working-class lad named Lee Hock Lye, or known among friends as Ah Hock. It's a vivid tale of an imaginative young man with ideas of setting foot in a better place than a ramshackle village where livelihood depends on fishing and harvesting cockles from the polluted mudflats. Ah Hock isn't an angry young man, nor is he an idler who accepts whatever comes his way as fate. He tries hard with life, changing numbers of jobs to make ends meet, hoping one day he'd move to settle down with a house and family in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or even farther afield. The world that he inhabits, however, is a microcosm of the much larger equilibrium, where society permits a select few to climb the ladder, and the majority -- the ilk of Ah Hock -- remains stuck in poverty, leading a life that's going nowhere.
The lives of others
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 07/06/2019
» Born in 1969 to a farming family in Chon Buri, Pimjai Juklin -- aka Duanwad Pimwana -- is one of Thailand's preeminent writers of contemporary fiction. After briefly working as a journalist, Duanwad started writing short stories. She was first published in 1989 in a local Thai magazine. In 2003, she published her first novel, Chang Samran (Bright), which won the SEA Write Award, making her one of only seven women writers to have won the prestigious award since its inception 40 years ago.