Navin Tar is all grown up - and slimmed down
Having returned home with a doctorate in economics from the University of California at Davis, former teen idol Navin "Navin Tar" Yaowaponkool is lecturing at Kasetsart University and, yes, still doing some acting.
Tar tells GM magazine that he’s busy as a bee, juggling his academic career with running his restaurant, Aston, and shooting a TV drama series. Somehow (and we find this difficult to believe) he still finds time to squeeze in heavy-duty physical workouts that would have a professional athlete weeping for mercy.
The 34-year-old was hoisting 100 kilograms around when he got back to Thailand in 2010 – which doesn’t sound so bad to us, but he was mortified. He hit the fitness clubs, got into cycling and moved on to the triathlon, and he’s very strict about what he eats, too.
Tar is not just kidding around here. He does three-hour sessions three times a week. He always has his running kit handy when on location filming and any spare moments are spent on his bicycle or some other form of beating himself up.
Status report: His body fat is 7 per cent, well under half the 16 or 17 per cent that the average person (yes, you) jiggles around with. Of course, the average person might consider Tar’s training regimen a little extreme, but he says he feels like a walking/running/cycling success story – and the happiness it gives him feels even better than having a toned torso.
Our health should be a long-term project, Tar says. We shouldn’t just exercise when we need to lose weight and stop exercising once we have. It should be an ongoing lifetime habit, backed by the knowledge that the reward isn’t just a fit and trim body but also that great feeling of self-satisfaction.
A salute to … whatever
Thailand is getting its share of the world’s headlines thanks to the coup and it’s not all sweetness, but we can take some consolation in the fact that the world seems more interested in that three-fingered salute than anything else.
The hand gesture used by those furtive anti-coup protesters was borrowed from the “Hunger Games” films. No it wasn’t. Yes it was. Do the protesters even know where they got it and what it means? Obviously the military junta does, because it’s vowed to arrest anyone making the salute.
Meanwhile Sky News reports that the stars of “The Hunger Games” have voiced support for Thailand’s anti-coup protesters. (Well, they would, wouldn’t they? It’s free publicity.) Actress Natalie Dormer has called the political saluting in Bangkok “incredible”. “Anything that galvanises people in a positive way to fight against oppression cannot be criticised in any shape or form,” she says. “If it’s helping them, then it can only be a positive.”
Sam Claflin, who plays Finnick Odair in the movies, points out that it’s easy to forget “how big these films are and how many people do hear every word that’s spoken”.
Actually we’re not seeing the salute on the streets so much these days – due to that threat from the people with tanks, no doubt – but a few brave/reckless souls, including Thaksin Shinawatra’s daughter Pinthongta, have posted their photos online flashing three fingers. This is what the generals were worried about from the start, of course. Once this stuff gets rolling on the social media, there’s just no stopping it.
