To Bangkok for the weekend to meet up with an old friend who was passing through en route back to chilly England. He is a man of means and has a Porsche Turbo sitting in a garage at home, plus assorted other expensive toys; so I feel it is my duty to encourage him to part with some more of his cash while in Thailand.

First to a camera shop where I tried and failed to make him buy a GF1. Then to an Apple store, on a mission to acquire a 27" Apple Cinema Display for The Pattaya Ghost, who had met nothing but indifference from the morons at iStudio in Central Beach Road. iStudio at Siam Paragon were much more accommodating and I was soon the proud temporary owner of massive, heavy box; which proved somewhat difficult to insert into a taxi.

She who must be obeyed was a little worried by this transaction. What if The Ghost failed to appear to pick up his monitor, what if he fled the country, what if he were fatally assaulted by an ostrich? And the answer of course was that I would suddenly be the proud owner of a 27" monitor without having to work through an internal justification process. Sadly, and to my eternal regret, the ostrich hit did not materialise and The Ghost is now watching Beyonce videos in HD and proclaiming himself very happy.

Anyway, back to the Apple store, where my friend was contemplating a Macbook Air to replace his pile of crap Sony Vaio running Vista. Some price comparisons revealed only a slight saving compared to UK prices; so the purchase was deferred. Having failed to spend someone else’s money, I was in need of a cup of tea; so we visited a very smart little cafe in Central World and drank some very expensive cups of tea which my friend paid for (result!).

Everything was elegantly presented to justify the price. Comfortable chairs and elegant crockery on which the slogan of the clearly tourist oriented company was displayed:

In April I convinced myself and the management that it would be a good idea to acquire an iPad; albeit from the grey market at an inflated price. Arguments that it would be released in Thailand soon, at a lower price, were ignored. Just as well because you have not been able to buy an “official” iPad in this country until today. But now you can, at a very attractive 15,900 baht, compared to the 23,500 baht I paid for the same model.

Never mind, I have had seven months of additional pleasure out of a gadget that has become part of my everyday life. I tend to wake a little later than my beloved, and so start the day alone, in a semi-conscious state with the iPad for company. I check my mails, read twitter and check the latest news; after which I am sufficiently conscious to stagger to the toilet, where my morning constitutional is enlivened by some more web browsing and even quick puzzle or game if I am in a particularly perky mood.

If I want to access the web for any reason during the day, then I turn to the iPad. Slumped in a chair, I have magazines and books to read, movies and TV shows to stream from my computer, and too many games to conquer. It’s a one-stop entertainment shop and it is no wonder that Apple are predicted to sell 13 million iPads by the end of this year.

I vaguely recall justifying the original purchase on the grounds I could take it to polo and display photos to potential clients. Had to wait for the season to start, but it has proved a great tool for showing off. Pick some choice shots from one day and show them as a slideshow the next evening during a social event. They look spectacular and there is always a little huddle of admirers around the iPad. Of course, if I had more than 16GB, I could show even more photos (sorry, just rehearsing for the upgrade next year).

And what new and exciting things did you do with your iPad today, I don’t hear you ask; but I am going to tell you anyway.

Angry Birds! One of the best games ever on any platform. Cute, fun, challenging, clever. I long since finished every challenge on the original game, so delighted to download Angry Birds Seasons yesterday. A Halloween themed game which I had already finished but has now been wiped so will have to play again, plus an advent calendar offering with a level to play for each of the 25 days of Xmas; and you can’t play a level until the appropriate day. Charming, and I will even forgive the festive soundtrack with sleigh bells.

Five years ago we went on a trip to the sunflower fields. There were three car loads of people and I thought the intention was to spend the best part of the day photographing sunflowers. Instead we spent the best part of twenty minutes, before the rest of the party declared it was time for lunch. I recall sulking for the rest of the trip. Ever since then I have vowed to return for an extended sunflower photo session; and yesterday was the day.

Our plans called for an early start; so by 1000 (early for me) we were on the road. We were heading for Lopburi, which requires you to head to Bangkok and then turn right-ish. Fortunately, my navigator fell asleep so we didn’t get lost and arrived at a field full of rather puny sunflowers by around 1400. But lunch was next on the agenda and she who must be obeyed (who had now awoken) announced we would head to a nearby dam for a tasty snack.

True to form, she immediately directed me down the wrong road, but we eventually arrived at a large pond. I had imagined throbbing turbines. sheer cliffs of concrete and rushing waters. None of that, just a lot of water and souvenir stalls selling T-shirts with slogans announcing “I came to the dam and there wasn’t one”. But no restaurants; so back on the road to a shack for a rather overpriced and uninteresting lunch. Now for the sunflowers.

She who must be obeyed had done some research and downloaded a map which indicated the location of various sunflower fields. We drove past a few where the prolonged rains and floods had clearly done nothing to encourage growth. But there were some excellent fields a little further away (I assumed, as the map was not to scale as I was about to discover). After forever we arrived at the spot where a particularly wonderful display was to be found; except now it was a ploughed field. The sun was sinking and I was yet to point my camera at a sunflower; desperate times. So we returned to the field we had arrived at some two hours before.

It turned out to be a perfect location with a few exceptions. The sunflowers were too small, and the sun was setting behind the them as they wilted after a long day in the sunshine. And it was almost dark.

Knocked off a few shots, none of which I am pleased with. She who must be obeyed offered an option to find a resort and then come back in the morning; but I decided to just drive home. Sunflowers are uninteresting little fuckers anyway. Stopped at the service area for some food and I will admit to having a product from MacDonalds. It was like eating the flabby fat from the underarm of Susan Boyle and I thought I might vomit.

2100 and we were home. Six hundred kilometres and a few shitty pics, won’t be doing that again.

Close to 7,000 polo photos over ten days, processed down to around 3,000. Burned to disks and loaded to a website, and by yesterday morning I was feeling pretty damn pleased with myself. All I had left to do was set up some galleries for the patrons.

Patrons in polo are pronounced as if you are French and they are the life blood of a small club. They form a team, purchase horses, and employ Argentinians who were born on a horse to play for them. The club I shoot for has three of them and it reasonable to assume that they each have more money than god. One of them is responsible for the manufacture of most of the world’s pencils, churning out 800 kilometres of pencils per day, or some such ridiculous amount. But, like the others, when you meet him you would be easily convinced that he worked in a small shop that sold a few pencils per year. So, pleasant people who might just want to buy a few photos. Rather than have them trawl through hundreds of shots of other people, I decided to set up a gallery for each of them showing just their photos. Easy job I thought, and as usual I was wrong.

When I lived in Kuala Lumpur I had a fine Aussie boss by the name of Keith. Being an Aussie, he liked a laugh, he liked a beer, and he liked looking at birds; except in his case these were real birds, with feathers and beaks etc. His boss (therefore my boss’s boss, a.k.a. God) was similarly inclined and they would disappear into the jungles of Malaysia and return wide-eyed with excitement having spotted a lesser-crested tit warbler.

A few years ago I met Keith again in Bangkok, about to embark on another bird-watching mission. For many, telling friends that they were going bird-watching in Thailand would be a thinly veiled reference to a carefully planned week of debauchery. But in Keith’s case, he really did intend sitting up to his arse in leeches in some distant swamp for hours on end in the vain hope of spotting a tiny grey bird. Would he photograph it, I enquired? Nope, he would just note his findings in a little notebook and return home happy. Completely bloody nuts.

But there are people who take some really fine photos of birds; and I didn’t see why I should not be one of them. My decision to add my name to the list of whizzo bird snappers was reinforced when I discovered that there is a reservoir at Bang Phra, only 45 minutes away, with a large and varied bird population; and many excellent bird photos from there can be found on the web.

She who must be obeyed ensured we were dressed in suitably camouflaged clothes. She even provided a green scarf to cover my sodding big grey lens. But our efforts were rather spoiled by a friend who joined us wearing a violent blue shirt covering a stomach the size of Singapore. It was like taking a blue-lamped lighthouse for a walk, the birds could see us from kilometres away.

The area we entered was designated a “no-hunting” area, which was reassuring. At least we were unlikely to be shot. But I think that all the birds were refugees from the hunting area, because none of them showed the slightest interest in hanging around to be photographed (or as they probably saw it, to be blown to bits). The place was certainly busy with birds, but at a distance. Once you arrived at a place where there had been flocks of birds; they had all buggered off to somewhere else. We did the “arriving at a place where the birds have already left” activity for a while; before settling down with our camouflage and travelling lighthouse and did the “waiting for the return of the birds to the place they just left” activity. Nothing happened.

A birds did fly in front of the sun, in order to distract the lighthouse in case he had a Gatling gun under his shirt (there was room). This made it impossible to get a reasonable photo:

My haircut requirements are normally attended to by she who must be obeyed. Cutting sessions are tense (for me), as my untrained barber wields a pair of scissors with ill-placed confidence, and the treatment is frequently interrupted by confidence-sapping mutterings of “oh shit” or, even worse, inane giggling. Still, the end result is always tolerable, I also have my nose and ear hairs attended to; and I get a kiss at the end for being a tolerant victim subject.