Amat victoria curam!

In a recent visit to Siera Leone David was for sale on the local slave market. Here you can see the biding process in action. The guy who sold David has his jersey in his hand and the lucky new owner raised his hand just in time...

I bought the new HAK (raspberry) fruit and read the label. There was this warning: DO NOT use anything else then a plastic or wooden spoon to empty this jar... I was wondering why is this? Will a metal spoon dissolve, will it turn red or what? I wrote to the customer services desk and after 20 hours they told me that the warning was about possible damage to the glass jar while using metal devices...It is now a standard warning on all their jars.
I guess their lawyer gained more power then common sense... :-)

My iLiad got some new fuel in the form of three brand new novels:
Memoirs of a beautiful boy by Robert Leleux “Need I say that, at Beckendorf Junior High, I was the object of mass
violence?” he asks of the era when he went to school sporting pastel
pants and streaked hair, spritzing himself with mineral water. In those
days, he says, he regarded himself as “special, in some way involving
flair and class and heat sensitivity,” without connecting the dots to
realize he was gay...
The bill from my father by Bernard Cooper. A raw memoir where the father really does send the author a bill for his paternal services in the amount of $2 million...
The geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. The operating conceit of this odyssey memoir is that the author, a professed grouch (“My last name is pronounced ‘whiner,’ and I do my best to live up to the name”), will travel to the world’s happier places to explore to what degree an individual’s happiness is intertwined with a shared geography and culture...

A "shocking" picture in the officially censored China Daily a couple of days ago: two kissing gays on the front page. Seems that the good old Olympic Games are helping human rights after all... Or are the Chinese confused and thinking that we are coming to play the Gay Games this summer in Being... :-)
Anyway it is nice to see that what until now only possible in Taiwan now is crossing over to the mainland.

We were invited as Zomoto to have a house warming dinner at Steven's new swell place in Amsterdam. It turned out that Steven is a great Chef and we had a gourmet Italian dinner and a excellent time.

Seth brought out a new book and lucky us: it is a novel. About Broadway naturally and probably we will get lots of insight info about the (musical) theatre  biz... It is called Broadway Nights: A Romp of Life, Love, & Musical Theatre. You can hear the first chapter on his (hilarious) blog.

A novel from Thomas Mallon about the Mad McCarthy years and the struggle of two gay guys to survive. I just strated reading it (on the iLiad of course) and like it right away.

And I thought he was still playing soccer...

Marinus van der Lubbe,
24, was beheaded in 1934 after being convicted of setting fire to the
Reichstag, an event Hitler used as a pretext to suspend civil liberties
and establish a dictatorship.
In 1967 a Berlin court
bizarrely changed the sentence to an eight-year prison term. In 1980
the same court lifted the sentence completely, a decision later
reversed by the federal court. Then in 1981 a West German court
overturned the conviction on the basis that Van der Lubbe was insane (and Gay - or is that the same thing..?),
but campaigners pushed for full state pardon arguing that he had been
convicted by a Nazi court.

It took a special law in 1998 to make the full pardon possible but it is unclear why another 10 years went by before it was granted.

On our very last day in Thailand I was very lucky to have a meeting with my lost friend Wim. I know him from my Prague years and it turned out that he has been living in Bangkok for more then 7 years. If only we had known before... It was great to see him and to hear that he is doing fine. His speaks Thai (and a dozen other languages) and could give us some very last insights of the Thai culture and people.

In Thailand they still use painted movie posters: nice!

Sergeant Darren Manzella is still an Army medic who has suffered no repercussions from his commanders for announcing that he is gay, a violation of military policy. On CBS' 60 Minutes he said that his fellow soldiers knew he was gay and the program aired a home video that showed him kissing a former boyfriend (wow! ;-) )
"They found 'no evidence of homosexuality,' " Manzella says. "They recommended that I just go back and keep doing my job." He soon headed to Kuwait for his second Iraq war deployment... Why don't stop by in Amsterdam Darren???

At our last day in the south of Thailand we went snorkeling at visiting the Phi Phi islands. With plenty of sun block, cool Diet Cokes, warm see-through sea water and a rapid speed boat it was a great day with a nice sun set at the Resort as a farewell from Phuket.

At the end of the day we took a classic long boat (with an even more classic old sailor) to take us to what is called James Bond island (remember "The man with the golden gun"?). It turned out to be a very memorable trip because we were the last boat to leave and were the only guys on and around the island. Just before sunset we returned to the harbor.

The Phuket island is completely commercialized and it was way too crowed when we did a tour. Beaches are like ant colonies and we are happy that our resort is just outside Phuket itself...
They do have a nice aquarium however, so that's where we spend most of our time.

Our resort is right on a beach with miles and miles of pristine white sand. The water is very warm (30+) so the conditions are perfect for a day at the beach...

We had a long drive today. All the way from Hua Hin to Phuket - about 10 hours... Luckily the roads are fine and the Thai (believe it or not) are reasonable drivers. Maybe because of Buddhism? On our way we drove through a huge national park with mountains that resembled the Karst mountains of Guilin (China).