Showing 1 - 10 of 14
Against all odds
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 03/02/2019
» Kru June is perpetually late for school. She is the first to admit it, and the last to arrive. On this particular morning, the teachers and students of Baan Kui school have already begun morning assembly as she arrives, hurrying across the arid sports field where the morning ritual takes place.
Within a whisker of success
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 13/05/2018
» The news about the burgeoning fake cosmetics industry -- and the celebrities risking arrest for being presenters -- reminds me of an incident last year in my own office.
A bad case of Farrah Syndrome
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 08/10/2017
» Talk about bad timing. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha's visit to the United States couldn't have come at a worse time. Watching the seven-minute hurried press conference wasn't just cringeworthy; in a weird way, I even felt sorry for our PM.
A larger-than-life Aussie lit up Thailand
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 07/05/2017
» The annual Australian TV awards called The Logies were on last week. Having been away from Australia for nearly three decades I can't get too excited about them, primarily because most of the winners were born after I left. Watching excerpts of the shows up for awards does remind me that one cannot confine a discussion about bad TV to Thailand only.
Buddhist signs point wrong way
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 12/02/2017
» The billboard rises, like a Buddhist temple, up ahead on the right-hand side of the airport highway. "BUDDHA IS NOT FOR DECORATION," it shouts at me alongside a decoration of a Buddha's head with an ugly red cross on top of it. Why desecrate a Buddha's head with an ugly red cross on a billboard that tells us not to desecrate Buddhas?
An explosion of self-hate
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 19/06/2016
» My heart broke as I watched a CNN anchor read the names of the 49 men and women shot dead in Orlando, while their happy faces flashed up on screen.
When your number comes up
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 20/03/2016
» The worsening drought in Thailand has taken a toll on the Mekong River, where water levels have dropped drastically.
Where there's smoke
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 06/03/2016
» I have a staff member whose name is Jerd. Jerd is one of my information channels into the Thai working class. He used to raise his family on the minimum wage of 300 baht a day as a rubber plantation worker. Being a benevolent employee I naturally raised that figure substantially when I hired him, and these days he is earning that amount plus an extra four or five percent; the joys of a foreign employer.
Tee-ing up for the draft
B Magazine, Andrew Biggs, Published on 19/04/2015
» I haven’t seen Tee and his mother for more than three years, ever since Tee came begging for a loan to help with a down payment on a pickup truck.