Talented little 4-year-old girl sings to support her down and out parents

The world’s next Shirley Temple?

Pirapong Chiranai

Four-year-old Kanakawan Danudom, nicknamed "Tak", was recently discovered in Pattaya where she sings in nightclubs to support her unemployed parents. While other children of Tak’s age are turning in for the night preparing for school the next day, little four-year old Tak is belting out the lyrics to Thai love songs and heartbreaking country ballads, delighting her listeners.

Little 4-year-old Kanakawan Danudom sings in nightclubs to support her unemployed parents.

Pattaya Mail recently caught her act in a coffee shop in South Pattaya, and following a song the young singer told us that she enjoyed singing, especially the faster tempo country songs that people can dance to. Tak said she learned the lyrics and performing style from watching TV and from listening to her father sing.

Tak told Pattaya Mail that her father, also a performer, is raising her, but he is now out of work and Tak says she intends to do her best to help both of her parents.

Wutinan Boonpeng, a 42-year old businessman in the audience and a frequent visitor to Pattaya’s nightclub scene, said Tak is a natural singer with enormous talent. He also said that her intentions of helping her parents are admirable.

Tak’s 44-year-old father, Adul Danudom waits off stage when his daughter performs. He explained how three years ago he and his wife were both singing in nightclubs in Bangkok. But when they moved to Pattaya, work became increasingly difficult to find, a turn of events that changed his life. He said about four months ago Tak started supporting the family, and Adul went from being a singer on stage with his daughter watching him perform off to the side, to being Tak’s biggest fan.

"Audiences in different nightclubs are impressed with Tak’s talent," Adul said. "Some customers sympathetically contribute to the family’s situation. We are (usually) able to bring in about 400-500 baht a night."

Adul went on to say that, "Tak is very mature for her young age and unlike other children her behavior is very disciplined. She has a great respect for her parents and constantly wants to help out in anyway possible."

"Her performances are usually well received by the audience, with many people presenting her with flowers and garlands," Adul said, "and I hope she can continue singing her favorite songs and someday go to school just like other children her age."

A motorcycle club and the sisters band together to raise money for underprivileged kids

The Jesters and Good Shepherd Sisters: an unlikely alliance

by Lewis "Woody" Underwood

From the inception of our Jesters Motorcycle Club Thailand in late ’96, until the summer of ’98, we were a group of Harley Davidson enthusiasts meeting weekly, going for rides around the country, and enjoying the camaraderie of each other. In-between these activities, we would also do regular functions with the kids from Banglamung Boys Home and had just recently contributed a pick-up truck full of useful articles to the Home of the Aged, also in Banglamung. We realized besides riding bikes and having fun, that charity was also a part of our agenda.

Jesters in front of the FOL with Niel Poulsen, our perennial Platinum Sponsor (Siam Chonburi Steel Mill Services).

In the meantime, the Pattaya Mail kept track of our activities, constantly giving us good press. And this is how Alice Poulsen found out about us.

Alice had been volunteering her services at the Fountain of Life Center in North Pattaya, an institute for caring and educating the children from broken homes in the slums. Recognizing the fact that the center really needed additional funding and help as well, she approached the Jesters and told us of her aspirations.

When we rode over and saw the center for the first time and met Sister Michelle, we looked at each other and realized that this is what we were looking for: a target charity for the club.

We talked with the Sisters about their needs and they demurred, stating that they needed only some rice and other meager provisions. When we pressed them more, they added that they might need a rice cooker and some fans. Eventually, after giving the premises a real scrutiny, we realized that besides needing lots of fans and rations that some extensive renovation was also required, as well as a new roof over the kitchen, and some more classroom space. And that was just for starters.

We also recognized that the center needed another van for transporting the kids back and forth, and we just happened to have one that we were willing to donate. However, it became apparent that this project was bigger than we first perceived and that we were going to need some outside help.

Retiring to Shenanigans (then Delaney’s) to quaff some Guinness after our inspection tour, Kim Fletcher got into the brainstorming and before we knew it, the idea for a proper charity drive was born. We decided to stage the event exactly where we were sitting and bill it as a Pub Night with raffles and auctions.

Niel Poulsen, Alice’s husband, jumped on board and offered to be our Platinum Sponsor, by donating 100,000 baht on behalf of Chonburi Siam Steel Mill Services, and off we were with our whirlwind planning for the first Jesters Care for Kids Charity Drive in 1998.

Since then we have included a second event in our charity drive: the popular Children’s Fair and have raised a total of 4.6 million baht for the Fountain of Life and their multitude of projects benefiting the unfortunate children thanks to the generous people of Pattaya and the surrounding business community.

We have started in earnest in the planning of this year’s charity drive and would love to have your continued support. Charity has now become the Jesters’ foremost priority. Please check out our website for all details of past and present charity drives: www.care4kids.freeservers.com

Antiques, are they genuine? : American Silver

The Safeguard

Whereas in theory American silver was wide open to abuse, in practice, there is a powerful safeguard. It is that comparatively little silver was produced in America during the Colonial period. Most of it is now in major collections and has been carefully scrutinised and recorded. An unrecorded piece coming into the market would be noticed immediately and would need, if it was not authentic, to be a very good fraud, indeed, if it were to get past the expert assessment it would undoubtedly receive.

Genuine Paul Revere II coffee pot, Boston, dated from 1781

Despite the close regulation of silver in England, oddly enough, it would probably be easier to get rid of a dubious item of 18th century English silver than its exact counterpart from, say, Boston. This is true simply because it could be buried in yet another routine sale of antique silver.

Proper Attribution

Silver should not be assessed from its mark alone. Nor should the mark or marks be the first thing you look at, for they can prejudice a more balanced judgement. The overall design should be the first aspect to consider, followed by condition, and then details of decoration.

In the matter of design, the student of American silver has some interesting and subtle problems with which to contend. New England silver of the 17th century (to all intents and purposes; Boston silver) is instantly recognizable to anyone who is very familiar with English silver of the same period. Many of the 24 goldsmiths working in Boston in 1680 had served their apprenticeship in London and they brought along their own apprentices in the same tradition. Not only were they London trained, but as well as making silver themselves, they regularly imported pieces from London, as the abundance of extant bills and letters prove.

A Paul Revere II teapot, Boston, dated 1787

The prosperity of the Colonies meant more work for silversmiths, and they established themselves in many New England towns, such as Newport and Providence, Rhode Island; New Haven, Hartford and Norwalk, Connecticut; Ipswich, Massachusetts; and many others. From the end of the 17th century the great city of Philadelphia was supporting a large number of goldsmiths, pre-eminent among them the first members of the Richardson dynasty. Outside New York, all these smiths were working in current English styles.

New York was a law unto itself, as it still is in so many respects. The names of smiths alone give one a good idea of what to expect. Cornelius van der Burch, Jacobus van der Spiegel, Cornelius Kierstede, and Peter van Dyke were making items as closely patterned on Dutch models as the Richardsons’ work resembled that of London goldsmiths.

The descendants of these same smiths, however, were within a couple of generations, succumbing to the fashion for English silver that dominated New England. But at the end of the 17th century and during the early years of the 18th, two styles were in production contemporaneously and were sold alongside virtually identical imported wares.

As the 18th century progressed links with London remained strong. But certain features became characteristic of American silver and now help to distinguish it from English wares. The lions rampant and angel-head terminals applied to New York tankards and to the pierced galleries of the vase-shaped sugar bowls of the Neo-classical period are just two examples. Forms changed too. Witness the unusually large, well actually enormous, Philadelphia coffee pots of the late 18th century and early 19th century.

Wine appreciation made simple (Part 2)

by Ranjith Chandrasiri

White wine

The grape

To begin to understand how any wine is made we must first look at the composition of the grape. If you take any grape - black, red or green - and slice it through the middle it looks much the same: the stalk is woody and full of a substance called tannin. Tannin is a preservative with a bitter flavour. The skin is covered in a whitish bloom, which is a dusting of wild yeasts and bacteria. The skin itself contains more tannin and, in black grapes, a colouring pigment. The pips contain bitter oils and are never desirable in white winemaking.

The pulp is the most interesting part of the grape in white wine making. Over 70% of the pulp is just water, but the remaining 30% contains most of the elements which give a wine character, flavour and interest. These elements include various fruit sugars and acids, trace elements absorbed from the earth and pectin, a gelling agent. The pulp of almost all grapes is the same colour: a pale green/yellow. Since the juice of almost all grapes is the same pale, almost clear colour, white wines can be made from any colour of grapes. If using black grapes to make a white wine, the winemaker must separate the juice from the skins immediately after pressing and before the fermentation stage so that no colour is picked up from the skins. Some examples of white wine made from black grapes are Champagne, blanc de noirs and white zinfandel.

Making white wine

The first priority with freshly gathered white wine grapes is to get them to the presses as quickly as possible. This avoids oxidisation of the grapes as they sit on lorries, exposed to the sun and air.

At the winery, the grapes go through a machine called a crusher-destalker. This machine breaks the skins of the grapes but doesn’t press them, and removes all stalks and some of the pips.

The resulting mash of broken grapes is immediately poured into a press. A gentle pressing is required for white wines. The pure juice that is collected from this process is poured directly into the fermentation tank. Some producers will leave the skins in during fermentation to add some extra dimension to the wine, but most do not.

After fermentation most white wines are run into stainless-steel tanks for a period of settling. A few months later they are filtered and bottled. Some wines will undergo a further period of maturation in oak casks before bottling.

Many of the greatest white Burgundies and sweet white Sauternes are fermented in small oak barrels with stunning results. This labour intensive technique is usually reserved for the highest quality wines, especially those built for long ageing.

Once fermentation is complete (taking between 1 and 4 weeks or so) most white wines are considered complete. The wine is simply run off into clean steel containers to settle before bottling.

The alternative is to mature the wine in small oak casks (often referred to as "barriques" - the original Bordeaux name). Maturation in oak is much more common in red wines, but chardonnay and semillon in particular seem to marry very well with the unique vanilla/buttery flavour that oak imparts to wine.

Maturing wine in barrels is an expensive and labour intensive process, as we will see next week when we look more closely at the process in relation to red wines. Often, the taste we notice most in a chardonnay has come from the oak, not from the grapes. In the cheapest chardonnays, handfuls of oak chips are added to the wine to impart a commercially desirable oaky flavour. Whilst tasty, these wines are rarely subtle or sufficiently well balanced for ageing and further development in bottle.

Finally, prior to bottling, the wine must be filtered to leave it crystal clear. This process can be carried out by many methods. Use of filters and centrifuges to eliminate all solid matter are effective, but some people claim these methods also remove body and character from the wine. A more traditional method is fining. Fining uses a gelatinous substance that is stirred into a barrel of wine. The fining agent gradually sinks to the bottom of the barrel, dragging all particles with it. Traditionally, fining is done with whisked egg whites. Other common substances are bentonite (a clay) and isinglass (made from fish bladders!). Once the wine is perfectly clear and bright it can be bottled, labelled and shipped.

Factors affecting the styles of white wine

Clearly, one important factor is grape variety. Whilst some grapes, such as the chardonnay, are "all rounders" - capable of being moulded into a variety of styles - others, such as the gewürztraminer, have a very distinctive and individual taste which asserts itself in every decent bottle. Fermentation and maturation in oak is another important aspect. This is a complicated area: oak trees from different forests impart different flavours; new barrels have more impact than barrels one or two years old; barrels can be toasted on the inside before they are filled and the degree of toast will affect the flavour. Later we will look more closely at oak and barrels in relation to red wine.

White wine and grapes - styles and characteristics

There are many varieties of grape used in the production of white wines. Here is a list of the most important varieties along with a description of their general character and some of the tasting terms commonly applied to them:

Chardonnay - full, soft, buttery, fruity
- peach, pear, pineapple, citrus, melon, butter, vanilla
Sauvignon Blanc - invigorating, dry, grassy, acidic
- grass, gooseberries, asparagus, green beans, cat pee, flint
Riesling - vividly fruity, lively acidity, oily
- apples, limes, passion fruit, minerals, petrol
Semillon - round, smooth, honeyed, toasty
- grass, citrus, lanolin, honey, toast
Gewurztraminer - exotic, spicy, perfumed, oily, rich
- ginger, cinnamon, lychees, nivea cream!

Most of the grapes above are too distinctive to fit the bill. Some other grapes/wines that have been less commonly seen in the past are starting to become more evident on supermarket shelves:

Marsanne & Roussanne - honey, tropical fruit, luscious
Viognier - flowery, peachy, delicate, fresh
Pinot Blanc - oily, perfumed, minerals, citrus, rich
Chenin Blanc - straw, flowers, honey, can be dry or sweet

White wine tasting terms and descriptors

Wine tasters have their own vocabulary or jargon, just like other groups of enthusiasts: computer geeks, ballroom dancers, etc. There can be a certain amount of snobbishness and hints of "one-upmanship" in wine tasting. On the other hand these terms are very useful: the true wine lover will never try to blind you with science, but may well use some common terms and descriptions. A few examples are listed below:

Creamy - often applied to champagne and sometimes to chardonnay
Crisp - clean and sharply flavoured, not sweet or oaky
Flabby - the opposite - a wine without crispness
Green - too acidic (some overly tart sauvignon blancs)
Oily - richly textured wines such as some gewürztraminers or pinot blancs
Steely - crisp and a bit austere, like the best Chablis or Sancerre

Using this jargon for describing and talking about the characteristics of wine isn’t compulsory - if you are more comfortable with simply describing the glass in your hand as "good", "ok" or "bad", then that is quite acceptable!

Next part of the series, we will learn all about red wines.

Ranjith Chandrasiri is the resident manager of the Royal Cliff Grand, Royal Cliff Beach Resort, Pattaya, Thailand. Email; [email protected] or [email protected]

Resurrecting Pearl Harbor

by Barry Kenyon

Fifty six years after World War Two ended we are still fighting. The new US blockbuster on that December day which will forever live in infamy, according to President Roosevelt, is everything you would expect. Excellent special effects, blood and guts galore on the decks, human error (which might have avoided the catastrophe) and an eternal triangle love affair to remind you these were real guys and gals. Pearl Harbor is a must for war movie buffs and for those who need reminding once again that the US of A won the war single-handed, or bits of it anyway. It’s in the tradition of Saving Private Ryan and U571.

The movie’s publicity blurb claims the aim is to present both sides with dignity. With thousands of US veterans dying off every year, this is perhaps the last major movie which can meaningfully pay tribute to their bravery and honor. Pearl Harbor treats the Japanese military with correctness, but can never quite conceal that this was their one and only naval turkey shoot. Nor in fact did any serious Japanese leaders believe they could win an all out conflict with America. Given the tightening oil embargo by the increasingly hostile USA, Japan’s hopes of further imperial expansion were doomed unless she could make a pre-emptive strike and then hope for a stalemate in 1942 or 1943. Japan, after all, had never actually been humbled by an all out defeat for a thousand years. A reassuring thought indeed.

The empire of Japan has had a weak press in Hollywood. Its role in countless movies has been the bad guy who gets his comeuppance sooner or later. Wartime films such as Bataan (1943) and Tokyo Rose (1945) were barely disguised propaganda reels designed to boost morale at home. Thereafter, movies such as Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and Midway (1976) underlined the usual line that a morally superior America inevitably wins through in the end, even with a few human errors thrown in. None of these movies significantly looked at Japanese strategy which was essentially to hold a big enough chunk of land and sea to prevent bombardment of the home islands and to create an area of economic self-sufficiency, howbeit one based on brutal military conquest.

The morality of the war against Japan has been seriously questioned in the movies only in relation to the 1945 atom bomb. In 1990, the film Hiroshima Out Of The Ashes described the experience as seen by the survivors at ground level and was partly based on Michihiko Hachiya’s personal diary. In 1995 a Japanese-Canadian cable production, Hiroshima, sought to assess the decision making process in both Washington and Tokyo. Interestingly, no American actors appeared in senior roles even though there is substantial footage of the Manhattan Project and President Truman’s dilemmas.

In contrast with Japan, there have been a number of movies specifically detailing the German perspective in World War Two. Cross of Iron (1977), Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot (1981) and the more recent Stalingrad fall into this category and deal intelligently with the plight of men on the ‘wrong’ side in more or less impossible situations. But, then modern Germany has largely, admittedly not wholly, come to terms with its gruesome nazi past and the material is seen as legitimate. Japan has not. There, school textbooks continue to maintain that Japan’s conquests were a "liberation", and that atrocities committed in China have been "exaggerated". There has been no significant compensation to Korean comfort women and other civilian victims of various occupations in the early 1940s. Until Japan faces up to its own past as Germany has done, in relation to genocide for instance, she will continue to be historically portrayed well nigh universally in a negative or unfathomable light. Because that’s what we understand the Nips were like. It may take another twenty years before we get a biopic of General Tojo or an account of what it was like to be a Japanese private in Manchuria as the Russians swept forward.

Updated every Friday
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