Sixteen plus plus years of printing tales about this town,

Its shops, bars and restaurants and all that’s going down,

Xcitement (and typos!) on every last page,

Hanging out down at Zouk, trying not to show our age.

Unless we’re mistaken, that’s cause for celebration:

Name of party venue, telephone and service information.

Days past we’d have written about the weekend’s one gig,

You did not die in a car accident, from a water-borne disease or as a result of seeing too many topless ladyboys this Songkran. For this, we congratulate you. Furthermore, we hope your first week back at the office was as unpleasant as ours (TGIF, right?).Technically, Songkran marks a new year, meaning that four months after the farang-sanctioned drunk driving week, our own week of merrymaking signals that it is time to reset our mental calendars all over again and embark on some brand new resolutions.

Producer’s Pitch Notes:

1. It is the distant future. Ridiculous—Singaporeans simply won’t wait that long.

2. The post-apocalyptic state of Panem is presided over from the power base of the Capitol. Can we work some corporate sponsorship in here please? Someone talk to CapitoLand?

Welcome to BK’s Celebrity Reconciliation Smackdown. This week’s match will feature two front-page news heavyweights. In the blue corner, a woman with more Thai Rath front pages than any other celebrity wife, who shot to fame after posting Facebook pictures of her husband smoking meth. In the red corner, the brave general who brought his tanks onto the streets of Bangkok, making him the perfect guy to lead a national reconciliation committee.

This weekend, ASEAN finance ministers are playing golf in Cambodia. Our delegation will have much to discuss with our Khmer friends. In particular, now that Phreah Vihear is less of a touchy subject, Cambodia is asking if we could possibly help train their cheap-but-willing labor force by sending over some of our skilled workers. Who us? Really? Why yes, come to think of it, Thailand is home to some leading experts on tough topics. Sign up for one of these three seminars and unlock the power of our ancient Siamese wisdom.1.

Dear Bangkok,This is our anniversary issue. We’re 11. Eleven years spent lurking in your shadow, loving you, hating you, wishing you cleaned up your act, wishing you’d take notice, wishing you’d learn how to fix a proper drink (at least you’ve managed that last one). Yeah, sure, you’re sexy, good in bed, not very picky; you like to party, you’re pretty uncomplicated... But you’re not that hot. You’ve developed some nasty fine-particle halitosis over the years and some serious transit issues (BTS included) that have become pretty embarrassing.

As Yingluck was coming back from her lovely visit to Japan, we ran across an article in the International Herald Tribune about a very similar trip. A Japanese delegation had just returned from China, asking if the Chinese would kindly consider building a few little factories in the tsunami-stricken regions of Northern Japan. Suddenly, we had this horrible feeling that Yingluck had been Lost in Translation.We feel for her. Have you ever been on a business trip to Japan?

Reports filtering in from the furthest heartlands speak of a terrible new plague. The first victims have barely three years left to enjoy the premium views from their condo windows and can do nothing but bitch and moan as construction sites erupt like buboes around them, as mature trees are felled to make space for…whisper it…mature people. Rumors are spreading of marauding hordes of the elderly descending on remote hawker centers and sitting there for upwards of an hour, just talking. The horror of it all!How long it will be before the sickness spreads we can only guess. Six months?

To ensure that all our politicians really are fit and proper people to help run our nation (we know, why bother) we decided to devise an O-NET examination for them based on the one given to M6 students.If you have a sexual urge, what must you do?a. Buy a football club, hang out in the locker room and get off on all the glory.b. Call your brother in Dubai for a Skype chat.c. Tell an MP of the opposite sex that you’re “drunk on love.”d.

You ever think Singapore’s standards might be just a little too high? In a country that tops out at six inches above sea level we understand the need to get high somehow, someway. But this really isn’t the way to go about it. If it’s not a temporary and entirely ordinary subway breakdown causing nationwide tut-tutting, it’s a crisp packet somewhere in the heartlands being held up as an example of how the whole country is going to the dogs.