Wednesday's Window

This was probably one of the creepiest window displays I've ever seen. I photographed this in China - Beijing, I think but I'd have to check my holiday diary to be sure - in 2006. 

It was a case of the double take/You've Been Framed...

These aren't mannequins but real, live girls. 

Ewwwgh.

Christmas tree for charity

Today’s the day where I come begging for your help. 

Central and Zen department stores are having a competition this Christmas season to highlight charitable giving. They have invited embassies in Bangkok to take part by decorating a Christmas tree. The British Women’s Group decorated a tree on behalf of the British Embassy. The tree with the most votes will win 100,000 Baht for their chosen charity.

We wanted our tree to be different. (I think we achieved that!)

There are ten lovely trees in the competition and I don’t doubt for a second that all the charities will be worthy causes but I would be grateful for ever if you would go and vote for the UK tree!

Our charity, the SET Foundation is very close to my heart. It’s a wonderful charity that sponsors Thai students through high school and university. It makes a huge difference to the young people who without funds would have to leave school and contribute to the family income, often in dead end jobs on building sites or in paddy fields. I don’t know about you but I took my education for granted. Have a look at the What It Costs page; to us in the west, making a difference doesn’t cost as much as you think.

Please click here to see the trees. Click on the UK tree for details on voting (Click LIKE then add your name to the list.) PLEASE. It’ll only take a minute and SET really does change lives. Bangkok folks can also vote in Zen in Centralworld.

Thank you.

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Cakes, pies and festive fascinators

Radio silence again! It’s a bit daft to announce that I shall be quietly blogging away without any fuss only to disappear for another (nearly) week. 



It’s just that it’s that time of year again…. There are some gigs that I’ve done over and over, that I haven’t been asked to do (quiet sigh of relief) only to find they’ve been replaced with other new gigs. Some partners in crime and I were invited to decorate a Christmas tree for charity and Monday and Tuesday last week were the ‘decorate day’ and launch. More to come on that in a day or two when I come begging for YOU for votes! On Thursday night I went to the Foreign Correspondents Club to listen to Amitav Ghosh talk. While some of the politics was interesting, I was more interested in his writing, which was barely touched upon. Still, the gins were big and cheap and it was lovely to be out with friends. On Friday I was part of a group that was cutting up donated cakes and pies for Ye Olde Tarte Shop at the Ploenchit Fair, an annual event that raises lots of money for charity. 



This weekend my time has been taken up by the construction of some Christmas headwear. Obviously, for anyone that knows me, there’s nothing frivolous about making festive fascinators; this is a High Priority activity and the coming weeks would be less without them. Right from the beginning they were very fiddly little buggers; lots of cutting out in fraying type fabrics which turned me goggle eyed. And in the construction of them, I’m ashamed to report that I turned the language blue. On the first occasion, family members within earshot rushed in to see if I'd sewn my fingers together. After they saw I was simply cursing like a sailor in frustration, they ignored me. (Harumph.) Still, they’re done now and there’s only a similar headpiece to make for a teddy bear (yes, honestly) a costume to make for Husband and four Christmas Creatures. In the next ten days. Yikes.








(While I was checking out some visuals for the picture to illustrate this, I came across this post which made me laugh out loud. PLEASE DO NOT visit this link if swearing offends you. [It's not big and it's not clever; it simply demonstrates your lack of vocabulary... I do however like a bit of Anglo Saxon.])

Missing October 2012

I write blog posts in my head all the time. (I try not to think about whether this is normal. I get on well with the voices in my head and since they don’t tell me to do bad things, I’m assuming they’re relatively benign.) Still, it distresses me that I’ve stopped being able to put the blog posts down on ‘paper.’

Poor old October didn’t get a mention on the blog and it was a pretty wonderful one with a trip to the UK, friends, family and millinery. I just noticed that November was in great danger of being missed as well, so… here I am.

I could write in a paper diary and therefore keep my inanities to myself but I’ve never kept that up. Failed by January 13th. There is something about blogging - publicity? Commenting? Interaction? – that has enabled me to keep going. We might have had an uppy and downy few months (year?) here at Tea Stains but we are approaching our 6th birthday; much, much more success than a paper journal. (I have had many an attempt at writing a diary primarily because I need to write but also because I love the way that paper that has been written on both sides, begins to curl and crinkle like it’s almost changed its chemical make up.)

The truth of the matter is this: while you are most welcome here and I love it if you enjoy what I write, I blog for me. It’s giving a voice to the voices; remembering our conversations. Concocting them in my head seems to be enough at the moment but I get a good deal of pleasure going back over past posts and rereading things I’d forgotten.

So I’m just going to get quietly on with putting them down on ‘paper’ again.