HANDY SKILLS WHEN CHALLENGE ARISES

It’s a good idea having a woman among your flood-relief volunteers. Actress-model Cholada “Kay” Mekratree wades into the wet with the Por Tek Tueng Foundation and reports some amusing “girl talk” moments. She totes a supply of sanitary napkins.

“Because I’m a woman I can just shout out and ask if anyone needs some,” she told Channel 3. Some ask what kind she’s got – does she have the ones with wings?
Actor Bin Banluerit, who’s been helping the Ruam Kantanyoo Foundation for 22 years, admitted he wouldn’t know one sanitary napkin from another, but he’s good at the muscular work.
Recently, for example, he was at the flood-threatened Charan Pattana film lab, which stores the negatives of many Thai movies. “I got there at 9am and had to carry out almost 700 movies!”
Kay said she’s now 33 and has never felt more fulfilled than she does helping the flood victims.

A quiet exit
Chamlong Srimuang knows exactly what will happen when his colourful and often controversial life comes to an end. “If I die in the morning, my body will be cremated in the evening,” he said on Thai PBS the other day.
Having risen to prominence as one of the “Young Turks” military clique and then serving as Bangkok’s governor, Chamlong was on the frontlines of the 1992 Black May uprising and then a leader of the People’s Alliance for Democracy.
He’s still keen on politics but says his personal life is as complete as could be. “I own no land. My wife has a rice field that we plan to donate to charity,” he said. Asked how he wants to be remembered when he dies, he said not at all. He embraces the Buddhist view that all things must pass.
He even refused to let Madame Tussauds depict him in wax. “They said I’d be the youngest of the three military figures on view, and I was flattered – but no, I don’t want anything like that!”