Showing 1 - 6 of 6
Yingluck gets earful as the play goes on
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/08/2017
» The suspense, then the anticlimax. The adrenaline, then the warrant.
In our Oscar worthy Blah Blah Land
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/02/2017
» The bonbon labelled La La Land is likely to rule the Oscars come Monday morning. While in our Blah Blah Land the drama is bitter, the song muted and the sky inclement.
Our ‘saviours’ say shut up, put up, pay up
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/04/2015
» Death and taxes are the only two sure things in life, so the joke goes. I had a nice time at the tax office last week, three days before the deadline. It wasn’t a “fun time”, which is impossible, but nice enough in my dealings with a courteous tax lady who performed her arithmetic gifts with a pencil and calculator, smiling and helpful in her office full of paper and weary-looking taxpayers — some of them street vendors and odd-jobbers, I gathered. There’s something Kafka-esque about a visit to the Revenue Office: The mild dread (of what?), the anxious wait and, above all, the wild guess about the bureaucratic labyrinth that delivers our payment into the invisible state coffers.
Reaping what they Sow
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/01/2014
» Rice is what has raised Thailand, but our staple crop hasn't raised many smiles in the Land of Smiles lately. When Uruphong Raksasad set out to make Pleng Khong Khao (The Songs Of Rice) two years ago, he didn't imagine that his documentary would acquire a timely resonance now that the epic mess of the government's rice-pledging scheme has become an escalating imbroglio and national embarrassment. Rice, the filmmaker believes, is the soul of the country, but the song it sings has unfortunately turned into a sad one.
Amid protests, line of decency must be drawn
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/12/2013
» In our atmosphere of half-truth, everyone is Cyclops. Or like a pirate, we voluntarily wear an eye patch as we squint into a telescope. We think we see, but in fact we're blind. The world is wide and puzzling, and it's easier to slice it in half. As we sail around with one eye shut, we create our own version of reality that is narrow, exclusive, defined by the confined vision that collectively becomes unwholesome truth.
Airing new agendas
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/10/2012
» The 27-rai compound of low-rise, industrial-chic grey buildings on Vibhavadi Rangsit Road is a picture of calm authority. Nearly 900 people work here in the offices, studios and control rooms of the country's only public television station, the non-profit, four-and-a-half-year-old, largely admired if sometimes embattled TV Thai, better known as Thai PBS.