Suphoth Sublom was until very recently the Transport Ministry permanent secretary. An important government post which probably carries a reasonable if not excessive salary. So it must have been a terrible shock when 5 million baht in cash, earmarked for his daughter’s wedding, was stolen from his house earlier this month.

Luckily for Suphoth, the police were quickly on the case, arrested some of the perpetrators, and retrieved his 5 million. Unluckily for Suptoth, the police recovered a good deal more than the 5 million, 17.5 million so far; with estimates that as much as 100 million may have been removed from the house. Oh dear.

She who must be obeyed wanted to “browse” the shops yesterday evening, which always means that I spend an hour or so playing games on my phone in a dark corner, while she lays waste to various retail outlets.

Yesterday the target was cosmetics, and I knew this long before being shown the contents of her shopping bags. To persuade her towards a purchase, the cosmetics staff had troweled on layers of gunk, and then added a rainbow of colours to her face, before finishing it all off with a coating of black tar around the eyes. She looked like a novelty drag act, and I was brave enough to tell her so. This came as no surprise as she knows my preference is for a touch of lip gloss and little else when it comes to make-up, and I would not be seen dead with her looking like she did.

Neighbour Nic has been on one of his travels, this time to the south of Thailand; and as is often the case he returned with gifts. A pineapple, some rather excellent Thai cakes, assorted other snacks and a bag of food colouring of dubious parentage sprayed onto some crackers.

He saw me looking at the latter item with concern and assured me he had only bought it for me because he thought I might like to photograph it. So I did.

A nasty head cold has meant I have not felt like doing much over the past couple of days. Just as well, because there was the small matter of 2,453 polo photos taken over the weekend which needed attention.

Not finished yet, but progress has been made and I am quite proud that I have had the willpower to only stick one photo on here.

So let’s make it two….

Even the most occasional reader will be aware that I enjoy photography. I would define myself as being technically competent; but not at all artistic. I have yet to produce a photo of such beauty that I would hang it on the wall and be proud of it; and I probably never will because I am not sufficiently creative.

If I need any confirmation of this, then a quick visit to 1x.com will remind me how far I am from the real photographers. 1X is a wonderful place to browse magnificent photography, like this:

I am a great admirer of people with passions. I don’t really care what they are passionate about, just to have a consuming interest in something is enough to gain my respect. But I don’t understand the excitement over tattoos. For a start, it hurts; or at least I assume it does; and and if I wanted pain I would have married a German. Plus, once you are sick of the tattoo hobby, or the subjects thereof; you can’t just walk away from it. “I love Sarah Jane” is going to be emblazoned across your arse crack for ever.

But it clearly has an interest to some, because the annual tattoo festival was attracting crowds at Royal Garden Mall today. Took a few shots with the Fuji X100 at ISO3200.

The Thailand floods do seem to be diminishing at last, although several areas remain underwater and cleaning up is going to occupy many people for some time. Still, with the problem slowing draining into the Gulf, it’s time for the blame game to start and the Democrats have kicked things off by demanding the impeachment of various ministers for screwing up the relief effort.

Has the government, led by puppet Yingluck, screwed things up? Of course they have, massively. But would a Democrat government, led by puppet Abhisit, have done any better? Of course they wouldn’t. They both have figureheads capable of smiling, but the MPs of both parties are the usual self-serving rabble who would be initially surprised, and then spectacularly incompetent, when faced with any challenge that required putting the needs of the country before their own self-interest (and it has always been so, in every country. Katrina anyone?).

I put a significant dent in my credit card this week with the acquisition of a new camera. Today was the day I was to find out whether it was worth the money.

Yes, sorry, but it was polo again, where I would estimate a previous success rate of around 70% sharp enough photos, and about 20% “make your eyes bleed they are so sharp” sharpness.

Today I took 825 polo shots. Having had a first look on the computer I would estimate 100% sharp enough photos, and at least 95% in the eyes bleeding category. Lovely colours, perfect exposure; great shots.

Here’s an example, click on it should you wish to see a larger than normal version.

Just over a week ago I took the proprietor of PattayaDaze for an outing to Silverlake. We were delighted to find a large collection of sunflowers, less delighted that the sun was behind them so we had to use flash to get some shots.

We decided a return trip was in order, at a time when the sun would be shining on the sunflowers, and we duly presented ourselves at the ticket office at 0830 this morning. The place had been open since 0800, but there was nobody in the ticket office to take our fifty baht; so we wandered down to the park and were duly stopped at the gate.

*Need ticket. No have, office empty. Need ticket. How can? Office empty. Need ticket. We’ll buy it on the way back. Need ticket. Here, have a hundred baht and you can buy the ticket for us; or keep the money, we just want to enter your park of loveliness. Need ticket. Oh fuck. * So we walked back up the hill and eventually extracted a young lady from the toilets who gave us our tickets in between examining the contents of her nose.

Not a good start and it was about to get worse. Last week there had been a huge bank of sunflowers, now there was just a mound of soil and some shoots of something that wasn’t a sunflower. Someone had killed all the sunflowers. I collared a gardener.

Where are the sunflowers? All gone. You do realise that this is ethnic cleansing and I will have to report you to the Flowers Rights Tribunal in the Hague? And let me tell you, I have lived in the Hague and there is dog poo everywhere and they put mayonnaise on their chips. You won’t like it. Eh? Oh fuck.

Sensing my disappointment, and fearful of twenty years sharing a cell with Radovan Karadžić, the gardener offered to show me some blue flowers. They were indeed quite pretty, but they did not make up for the sunflower massacre. It’ll be a while before I go to Silverlake again, just to spend half an hour trying to find someone to give me a ticket, only to discover that they have ripped up all the previous attractions and replaced them with soil.

She who must be obeyed was off work today and the wind was blowing. So after a morning of photo processing, some windsurfing was in order.

We go to the noodle restaurant not far from the club. Their noodles are cheap and tasty, as is their iced coffee; so the place is usually packed. The owners respond to this popularity in the only sensible way; they close the shop randomly several days a week.