Some Bad Cooking, Some bad food and a Bowl of Cricket
Here’s what we’re talking about this lovely Saturday, the 13th day of September:
Out of Thailand: The Thai Prime Minister, Samak Sundaravej, will not be remoninated by his party after his outster from power over his paid appearance on a cooking show. It’s hard to believe that the people of Thailand don’t want their leaders doing their best Rachel Ray impersonations. It could be the people of Thailand are peeved he didn’t get more creative than dumplings. Or maybe they’re just encouraging Samak to come to the U.S. and run for office, what with his extensive executive experience. He had been PM for 7 months. Is that John McCain calling?
Cooking, of course, isn’t that only problem Samak has had as of late. He’s been facing protestors street protestors since May. But since that didn’t seem to be working, the protestors formed a blockade to his office in late August. And when the protests turned violent, what did the Samak-led military do? Standard protocol – they ignored they ordered.
Anyway, here’s some video of Samak cooking…Hard to imagine why he only lasted seven months:
Here’s the whole story from the IHT: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/12/asia/thai.php
Out of China: The nationwide inquiry into tainted baby formula is under way. Sanlu Group, the producer of the suspect formula had to recall 700 tons of this stuff, which has caused, sadly, one death of a baby and kidney problems in 50 others. We don’t really have anything witty to say here since that would be rude. We will, however, offer our prayers the family of the baby that died and hope that the “serious punishment” that Chinese officials intend to levy against those responsible for this involves more than the blocking of Yahoo.com – oh wait.
Link to the story from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/world/asia/13milk.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
And finally, out of Mumbai, India, we turn to sports: ESPN has jumped on the cricket bandwagon. For those of you who have seen a cricket match and are saying, “oh that’s the sport that’s like baseball,” think again – baseball is like cricket. Sort of. The story is basically that an ESPN Star Sports, which is owned by Disney and NewsCorp, has won rights to for a new international cricket league. The league will feature matches of 20 overs (no, that’s not a typo, it’s cricket lingo), which takes about three hours to play. This, of course, is compared to a 90 or 100 over match, which can take five days to play and, in many cases, especially when played in the UK, involves tea breaks.
ESPN Star Sports beat out Abu Dhabi Sports Club and the Dubai Investment Council for the rights to the eight team tournament. What makes this special is the fact that it’s the first time any company from the UAE hasn’t won something or doesn’t control something.
Oh, and to prove that cricket isn’t just for British royalty and guys named “Bob” who play when they aren’t providing Americans with technical support, here’s some footage of Mel Gibson enjoying a match. (FYI – It’s 5:04 in length, which makes it 5:03 too long.)
For some real info on cricket, check out http://www.iplt20.com/index.html.
Here’s the link from the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122115734549624325.html?mod=hpp_europe_whats_news
