Some folks help, some folks don't

Simple: Jack up a price of life jackets from Bt1,200 to Bt1,800. That’s what some enterprising retailers actually did!
What to do when purveyors of life jackets get that greedy? Also simple: Make your own.
Equally enterprising citizens have contrived life vests from plastic bottles and flood-relief bags (if there are any handy).
Meanwhile businessman Tan Passakornnatee has once again shown he’s not one of the bad guys by making a video on how to make a DIY life jacket and posting it online.
This is also the guy who gave Siam Square shopkeepers a temporary home when the place got torched. But the life-vest video is for Everyman, and now there are calls for Tan to run for prime minister.
Check out the video here – youtu.be/SzPhq7I_tFk – and note that Tan uses all kinds of bottles, not just the ones his Ichitan tea comes in.

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Chinese writer Yu Hua was at the Book Expo in Bangkok last Wednesday for the release of a translation of his latest, “Chinese in Ten Words”, and, since it was the fair’s opening day, Education Minister Woravut Auapinyakul was on hand and scheduled to say something at Yu’s panel discussion.
The minister got there half an hour late, though, after making the rounds at the fair, and all of Yu’s guests were already onstage and chatting.
So everybody had to hold on a minute and clear the decks while Woravut delivered his official remarks. Yu too left the stage and politely listened, though he probably didn’t understand a word of Woravut’s speech.
Finally the minister and his entourage left and Yu returned to his seat of honour. It reminded him, he joked to the audience, of the time he attended a public event in Berlin.
“I was also on the stage there when a big shot from China arrived and the same thing happened – everybody had to get out of the way!”