THE WEEK AHEAD
MONDAY
Chularatchamontri Aziz Pitakkumpon will preside over the opening as Songkhla Muslims host their annual Islamic fair at Ban Nua Mosque in Hat Yai district. The Public Health and Labour Ministries will open offices providing immigration and health services for migrant fishing-boat crews in all provinces with fishing boats.
It’s the last day of Style at Bitec Bangna, featuring fashion for the body and for the home.
Air France and French railway employees begin a two-day strike today against the terrible injustice of it all. French President Emmanuel Macron has fled to Washington for the duration. Google’s parent company Alphabet will announce the obscene profits it made selling your personal data. Facebook will do the same to humiliate you on Wednesday. The Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic will appeal his 40-year sentence at the International Criminal Court tonight.
TUESDAY
Mobile phone operators must begin today to notify customers they can cancel their expensive subscriptions to outside services activated when clicking on deceptive SMS adverts.
A four-day informal film festival featuring “the best movies produced during the reign of the late King Bhumibol” opens today at Scala movie theatre. Greenland votes tonight on whether to be independent of Denmark. Thailand continues in the “deemed unworthy of elections” classification.
The 15 club executives and players known to be involved in Thai Premier League match-fixing are to appear today at the Department of Special Litigation 6 (Office of the Attorney-General) to move the cases along to the courts.
WEDNESDAY
Bupphaesannivas (Love Dynasty) may have ended (happily) but the fadcraze didn’t. Channel 3 premieres the equally dressed-up Neung Dao Fah Diew (One Land, One Sky) period romance-costume drama-faux history-action-comedy-espionage (English translation: soap opera) tonight with (female squeals) Jame (James Jirayu) and Taew in the lead roles. The 2018 Asean summit begins today in Singapore with senior officials and foreign ministers setting the stage for the actual leaders’ meetings on Saturday and Sunday.
Today is World Malaria Day, but contrary to its name, it’s a day not to get malaria, but to fight it.
Australia honours its armed forces at today’s annual ANZAC Day parade. The Auto Show begins this afternoon.
The Champions League is down to the final four. Tonight (actually tomorrow morning) Liverpool host Roma in the first-leg semi-final. Bayern Munich vs Real Madrid is 24 hours later. Both games are at 1.45 Thailand time.
THURSDAY
The world’s biggest eSport, the World Cyber Games 2018, opens today at Impact Muang Thong with (this is not a typo) more than 10,000 participants. If you’re planning a trip to beautiful Boracay in the Philippines … well, no, you’re not. The popular beach resort is closing for six months of rehab from environmental degradation.
Internet pioneers Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf will act like crabby old men and crucify those damned kids today for messing up their world wide web they invented. The Hot Docs Festival opening tonight in Toronto will be excellent because it has reached gender parity, with 46% femalehelmed docs.
FRIDAY
Strip off those Ayutthaya-era duds right now, and slip into one of your best cool cosplay costumes because Bangkok Comic Con x Thailand Comic Con 2018 opens a three-day run today at Paragon Hall, Siam Paragon. “Why?”, you ask, old fellow. Because it’s, and we quote, “the largest pop culture event in Southeast Asia”.
Sony will hand out brand-new, Xperia XZ2 flagship smartphones beginning today to anyone who can prove he has already given 25,990 baht to his or her Sony dealer.
You’ll see a headline that today is “the hottest day of the year in Bangkok”. That headline will be wrong. However, it is the day the sun is the highest and most direct.
SATURDAY
Today is World Cube Day and therefore automatically Bangkok Cube Day. The World Cube Association is taking registrations at goo.gl/aWRozm. We have registered for the 3x3x3 blindfolded event at Fortune Town, with places still available in the one-handed event.
K-pop concert of the week is Nu’est W’s Double You at 6pm at Impact Muang Thong. C’mon dad, be a sport, tickets are only 1,800 to 5,800 baht.
There are just two Premier League matches today: West Brom-Liverpool at 6.30pm and Watford vs Palace at 9. But the big game is the FA Cup semi-final at 11.15, Man United vs Spurs. Tomorrow at 9pm, the other semi-final pits Chelsea against Southampton. The final is at Wembley on May 19.