Ikea is finally opening a store in Thailand and Swedish Ambassador Klas Molin can’t even try to ignore it, tells the online media www.nationmultimedia.com
He’s constantly being asked when the giant store full of his country’s most famous exports (apart from Nobel prizes) is opening.
That would be november 3, Molin answers patiently. And of course he adds, “I’ll see you there.”
You’re darn right, say Molin’s three children, not that they particularly miss the furniture back home. “They’re waiting to have some real Swedish food,” Dad the Ambassador explains.
It’s true – along with the DIY bookshelves and tables, the store has a restaurant that does Swedish meatballs and other Scandinavian fare, quite cheap too.
The ambassador, though, is actually going to buy some furniture for the rooms he’s renovating. His staff advised him, for reasons of national security, to hold off buying anything until the Ikea shop opened.
Say ‘Bamboo!’
BEC-Tero boss Brian Marcar has posed for pictures with lots of entertainment stars, so a snapshot with Yanni – who’s onstage at Impact Arena tomorrow – was nothing unusual. Except that the third party in the photo was a panda.
No, it wasn’t Lin Ping, Thailand’s National Animal. Marcar became one of the privileged few allowed into the panda enclosure at the Chinese breeding-research centre in Chengdu.
Yanni had just finished sold-out concerts in four Chinese cities and was told he could “adopt” a famous panda, the three-month-old daughter of Mao Mao, after whom the mascot of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was modelled.
Usually China only lets countries adopt its pandas, but Yanni was singled out for the honour because of the “inspiration and harmony that derives from his music”.
As for Marcar, he just happened to be in the right place at the right time (contract in hand).
He and Yanni had to wear protective gloves and shoes, not to save themselves from a shredding but to safeguard the pandas’ health in their personal pen.
