Showing 1 - 10 of 19
A sonic bang for your bucks
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 18/08/2013
» Among the stars arriving for Bangkok's inaugural Sonic Bang festival on Saturday is one band that is no stranger to Southeast Asia. Frequent visitors to the region, Placebo have brought their reflective, gender-twisting or drug-exploring lyrics, their androgynous look, their dark, melodic instrumentals around the world, and now to Bangkok for the third time.
Bean there, Done that: Bangkok's best cafes
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 17/03/2013
» Bangkok's coffee houses offer more than just an air-conditioned escape from the overheated rigours of life in the capital. They are human petrol stations _ places to refuel, snack and reorder the mind amid the chaos. Coffee houses also serve as surrogate offices or libraries, places to meet business clients, study for exams or polish off a book. And, yes, the air-conditioning doesn't hurt either.
From Cold War to the 'Tor Chor Dor'
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 10/02/2013
» At the height of the nuclear arms race during the Cold War, US military strategists theorised that if tensions escalated, controlled nuclear strikes against the Soviets could force them to back down.
Literary gems found in translation
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 03/02/2013
» Translation is a time-consuming, arduous and often thankless task. Literary translation also involves suppressing some natural impulses to interpret, edit and impose a personal style, while remaining in the background and allowing the tale to take root in another language.
Dead child walking
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 22/07/2012
» Just returned from a visit to Bangkok's notorious Bang Kwang prison, Toshi Kazama is ready to talk about criminal justice. On a rainy evening at the Foreign Correspondents' Club last week, the Japanese-born photographer shows slides of his photographs of juvenile offenders and speaks about the complexities of capital punishment. He has been photographing young people on death row since 1996, mostly in the US, where he has lived since the age of 15, and more recently across Asia.
Reaching out to the people languishing in nowhere land
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 10/06/2012
» Fongchan Suksaneh says she was in a "quasi-stateless" situation for 25 years and applied numerous times for citizenship, before finally receiving it following promulgation of the fourth Nationality Act in 2008. "I was told many times, 'We don't need people like you. Go to a different country!' ... I wasn't considered a Thai person even though I couldn't tell the difference myself."
An open invite to access all arias
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 20/05/2012
» Interminable arias, incomprehensible stories, deadly boredom _ these are some of the apprehensions people might have when approaching opera, says Anette Pollner, director of Who Is Afraid of the Opera?, a new Bangkok Music Society production.
Reality Check
B Magazine, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 13/05/2012
» She was a part-time musician working in a New York coffee shop when a friend pressured her to audition for an obscure new reality TV show. She reluctantly gave it a shot and two months later was singing to more than 12 million television viewers in the finals of The Voice.
Dragons & butterflies, an inmate finds inner peace
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 13/05/2012
» South African Alexander Krebs, known to friends and family as "Shani", arrived in Bangkok in April 1994 on a 10 day holiday. He was 34 at the time and writing a novel, but was also a 15-year-long drug addict who had a sporadic wild streak in him and had just broken up with his fiancee. His family thought the time away would do him good.
A mercenary's tale
Spectrum, Ezra Kyrill Erker, Published on 06/05/2012
» Peter Slade was once in prison for five years on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit another murder and attempting to overthrow a foreign government _ partly a victim, he says, of a corrupt Australian judicial system. He fought in the Vietnam War, was a security contractor in 1973 Rhodesia, a debt collector at home in Melbourne and as far afield as Nigeria, and arrived in reconstruction-era Cambodia and Iraq without connections but a desire to start anew, in stints that would last some seven years each. He witnessed first-hand the Bangkok coup that killed journalists Neil Davis and Bill Latch in 1985 and was on the beach in Patong the morning the tsunami struck Phuket in 2004.