China takes another chunk of the USA

I noticed something funny here the other day when I was going to watch “The legend of Bruce lee” from 2008.

The movie is telling the story of Bruce Lee’s unorthodox life. It shows him to be more than just a martial art hero. He is portrayed as a very intelligent person with great interest in philosophy and scriptwriting in addition to his contribution to marital art scene.

Surprisingly enough I was not able to find a single version of this movie that was not “dubbed” in Mandarin. It was not until I looked up the movie in IMDB (The internet movie database) that I discovered the truth: That this was in fact a Chinese production in USA.

Maybe I’m way off, but that seems to me like a pretty big step forward for the Chinese within the movie and art domain. Don’t get me wrong: I am sure there must have been several Chinese movies recorded in USA the last few years, but this was such a big production and made so well that I thought it was a Hollywood production. The fact that Bruce Lee was an American, more or less, made me anticipate that this movie would be an American production

While this can be seen as an isolated incidence it is pretty obvious to me that Asia in general is slowly rising to challenge Hollywood. There are an increasing numbers of skillful Korean movies hitting the market these days. Hollywood seems to be stuck in the same old pond without really being able to get out of it. They are “stealing” from Scandinavia as well as Asia.

Is this a premonition of what is going to happen to America’s role as a superior power in the near future, or is art and politics not connected? What do you guys think about this? Could a Bruce Lee movie of this proportion have been produced in the same manner ten or twenty years ago? Are the times changing?

Some "undiscovered" metal music you might like

These guys that call themselves Agartha are streaming their whole album. The music is something like progressive black or death metal. It is pretty hard stuff for those who like that.

With Leprous comes a Norwegian progmetal band that has gotten a lot of nice critiques with their last album. It is pretty hard for being melodic prog metal:

Mnemic is a pretty hardcore metal band that has both screaming and mellow vocals:

Here comes a theme based space metal opera about a travel in space and time. It is a very melodic and easy listening piece of metal music:

Here is some pretty catchy, yet rough metal with the Devin Townsend Prjoject - Deconstruction. The video is pretty funny as well: 

If you still have not listened to Myrath I would recommend to do so:



Personally I like their earlier work better.

If you like very catchy and melodic metal that has a similar sound to a lot of pop music you should check out Saint Deamon. They are a great live band:

Pirates House – Feelings versus logic and common sense (Chapter II)

Continues from blog posted in November…

One of the first time I was going to be responsible for Pirates House alone I had some problems adapting to the thai way of doing things. I was in charge of a pretty big group of staff and I did not have much experience on how to manage thai people.

I remember one of the toughest girls among the staff crying out of the blue. Let us call her KK for the sake of this story. I asked myself if I did anything to cause her to cry and I concluded that I did not, so I assumed it was some kind of personal problems she had. Despite of this I could not free myself from the feeling that I was somehow responsible for KK’s weeping.

However, the very next day this whole scenario repeated itself. She cried without any apparent reason, and then I knew instantly that I had done something to cause this, but I knew that she would not dare to tell me.

I asked her friends and colleagues and I finally managed to squeeze out of them why she was crying. Apparently she was crying because I told her to come on time and not change shift unless she consulted me first.

I remembered that I had told KK the two previous days before, very calm, that she had to check with me before she changed shifts, and timings of the shifts, around because I had to know who was going to be there at what time. Even though I did not show the slightest sign of anger this had caused her to cry.

The funny thing is that this is a girl I had to fire a few years later because she hit the cook right in the face while I was watching. Why? Because the cook had let one of the managers know that KK had been drinking while working, and this was something she was reprimanded for.

Establishing Pirates House -The cultural difference between Thailand and Scandinavia (Chapter 1)

In 2008 I opened a guesthouse in Phi Phi Island called pirates House. In 2009 we made it into a restaurant as well. Working there is, of course, mostly Thai people and a few people from Myanmar – which is also referred to as Burma.

The cultural differences from home are huge when running a place like this and it often result in huge misunderstandings and confusion. I want to tell some of these stories in a series of different blogs as it is too much to tell in one blog post. The blogs will appear spread out among the other blog posts. 

I also want to stress that these stories are not meant to humiliate Thai people, and readers should keep in mind that most of the stories are dealing with close to illiterate people, or at least people of very poor education. I certainly could have chosen to tell stories that put these same people in a positive light, but it would probably not be as entertaining.

The cultural difference between Thailand and Europe when it comes to managing people is huge. There are a number of assumptions that most people would bring with them from the west that just doesn’t work in the east.

One of the first lessons that we got to learn was that one cannot trust people to keep their promises. On several occasions, right before we opened our business, we had people promising us to start working, but when it came down to it they just found something else to do or it was not possible to get a hold of them. I also remember one of the remarks that was going to be a premonition of the problems that we were going to have in the future. The first cook we hired said that she just quit her previous job. When we asked why she said: “because the boss was talking to me when I was working”. We both thought this sounded a little strange, but to get the business started we did not have a choice, but to hire what people we could get.

In the beginning it was hard to train people because many Thais with poor education do not have the foundation for the common sense in which we build everything upon in the west. For most waiters in the west it will be common sense to place 1 person on a table for one or two and not on a table for 5. It will be common sense to just give the costumers knife and fork and not wait for the costumer to ask. It will be common sense to clean everything on a floor if asked to clean up a certain stain on the floor and not just that one stain. It will also be common sense that you don’t use the toilet brush to clean the walls and floor in the bathroom. However, in Thailand, this is not always common sense. These are things that has to be taught.

If you are going to Phi Phi Island or have questions about Thailand in General please visit our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/pirates-house/111265477735

TO BE CONTINUED 11 OF DECEMBER...

Eating Italian food is like listening to music

Making it must be like composing music…” This was my thought when eating Italian food in London a few days ago. I felt a little bit like Hannibal Lector when I closed my eyes and enjoyed the food and music in utterly silence, alone in the restaurant. It is quite rare to experience such a sensational feeling when eating.

What is so fascinating about Italian food is that you can go around all of Italy, and other places in the world for that matter, and never get the same Italian pizza or the same Italian pasta twice. The chefs all have different ways of making their food, yet they stick to a core that makes you realize in an instant that you have been served by an Italian cook.

I haven’t gotten the chance to eat a lot of the “pure” Italian food up until now, recently. After a trip to Italy this summer I realized that food is the number one reason to visit Italy. Actually it was better than all the Catholic churches and all the other tourists stuff combined.

So if you still haven’t been to Italy go there to get a taste of the food. There is no other country with such a distinct culture for food. However, if you go to Venice don’t go see the show: “The story of Venice”. And if you go to Corleone don’t talk about the mafia. And if you go to Rimini don’t expect to go out partying. And first and foremost: Don’t buy tickets on first class train thinking you will have a comfortable trip when you in fact have to stand so close to people the whole trip that you cannot even sit down on the floor. But do enjoy your dinner!