In this second Tuk Kae novel the feisty Thai heroine accompanies her friend Helen Childs on a search for Japanese looted gold from the second world war. Rumours of huge hoards of gold left by the retreating Imperial Army have circulated for years but no real evidence of hidden treasure has ever been found. Then an old Mon man from the border province of Kanchanaburi appears at Helen’s office with an intriguing story and some persuasive gold artefacts. Helen sets out to investigate the old man’s story and asks Tuk Kae to accompany her. At first, they have little to go on and then a map is discovered but its secrets cannot be read as it appears to be written in a strange code. A chance encounter provides the key and Tuk Kae, Helen and her team close in on the location where they hope to find the treasure. Along the way they encounter some suspicious Japanese who are also treasure hunting but by chance they discover that this small Thai lady with the lizard tattoo might be worth more than any hidden gold. Not for the first time Tuk Kae is hunted by the Yakuza who are determined to secure Katakiuchi (Blood Revenge) and secure the treasure as a bonus.
Tuk Kae Stories–(Because she loved climbing and had a fierce temper, everyone called her Tuk Kae after the small Thai gecko). Who would have thought this scruffy daughter of a local rubber farmer would blossom into a sophisticated, resourceful and deadly young woman? The Tuk Kae series of novels of which this is the first, features a Thai girl nicknamed Tuk Kae who unexpectedly befriends an elderly Japanese professor who teaches her about Bushido and martial arts. ‘Mr Sato’s Secret’ tells how Tuk Kae meets retired physics professor Sato in Chumphon, Thailand and grows to love this wonderfully generous old man. When he dies, she inherits everything including a request to make sure his last scientific discovery is used for public good. Thrown into a world of intrigue and violence Tuk Kae strives to honour Sato’s last request and lays the foundation for future adventures.
Fifteen years after the incarceration of the brilliant young computer scientist in a secret cryogenics facility in San Diego, a new Regional Manager, Patrick Calloway discovers the identity of the occupant of cryo vat 75. Carsten Sorensen had been the first recipient of Cybio Inc.’s biocompatible Silex computer chip and the projects lead programmer who broke all the rules by installing his own modified version of the Anthropos operating system with startling results. His secret incarceration was almost forgotten after a tragic accident killed the small group of people who knew he was ‘on ice’. Fascinated by his discovery Calloway learns that under the influence of the rogue operating system Carsten had become almost superhuman, absorbing information at astounding rates and optimising his body including curing his diabetes and developing the ability for self-healing even after being shot and stabbed. Shadowy members of the security forces became concerned that Carsten might leave Cybio to pursue his own agenda or even worse be captured by a foreign Government or criminal organisation. The solution was to secure him in cryostatis until they could work out how to control the scientist and his rogue chip. A decision is made to recover Carsten with the aim of persuading him to cooperate in the extraction of the unique operating system he carried and the development of a new military ‘M’ version that will exploit the endurance and self-healing properties of Carsten’s chip. Dr Mary McClusky, Carsten’s boss at Cybio and the focus of his affections is persuaded to help with recovering Carsten and in return, if the Silex-M project proved successful she could have the opportunity to find a way to disable his chip and return him to normal life. Everything went well with the recovery and Carsten, much to McClusky’s surprise agreed to help the CIA develop the military version of his chip. However, he wanted nothing to do with Mary who he wrongly blamed for his incarceration. Within a few months, Carsten delivered the Silex-M chip and operating system, which was loaded into a special ops team who proved almost invincible in the field. One of the enhancements Carsten added was the ability to withstand severe injury in action and continue to function, with pain, blood loss and shock suppressed until the injured operative reached safety. Then the chip put them into a light coma whilst it implemented rapid healing. The amazing performance of the first team carrying the Silex-M chip came to the attention of Delta Force who wanted control of this project for its own ends. Delta Force Commander in Chief, Tom Carr, would stop at nothing to secure control, even if it meant clearing away some civilian obstacles. With Carr in charge, deployment of the Silex-M technology led to the formation of an elite Delta Force unit called DEFLATT1, who were the envy of all the military services. Then problems began to appear, firstly with Carsten’s health and subsequently with DEFLATT1 team members who had been wounded in action and undergone rapid self-healing. Was this the result of the huge workload placed on Carsten and the massive overclocking of the soldiers endocrine system. In a separate development, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta Centre identified unusual clusters of Graves’ disease or hyperthyroidism. A fluke observation linked these clusters to the roll out of the Silex-DB1 diabetes chip and a race began to discover what was happening and what level of threat this presented to the millions of recipients around the world. Were Carsten Pietersen’s illness, the problems appearing within the Delta Force teams and the threat to the massively successful diabetes chip connected? With the Silex-M project classed as Top Secret and Carsten Pietersen officially dead, it fell to an adhoc team thrown together by circumstances, to find the answers before a worldwide epidemic, national scandal and uncontrolled panic set in.
Buddhism, often described as an austere religion that condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture in Asia. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists have been produced both within and outside of monasteries across the region—in Nepal, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Justin McDaniel looks at the growth of Asia’s culture of Buddhist leisure—what he calls “socially disengaged Buddhism”—through a study of architects responsible for monuments, museums, amusement parks, and other sites. In conversation with noted theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, McDaniel argues that such sites highlight the importance of public, leisure, and spectacle culture from a Buddhist perspective and illustrate how “secular” and “religious,” “public” and “private,” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, places like Lek Wiriyaphan’s Sanctuary of Truth in Thailand, Suối Tiên Amusement Park in Saigon, and Shi Fa Zhao’s multilevel museum/ritual space/tea house in Singapore reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons and sectarian developments. They present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise: Together they form a gathering, not a movement. Despite the ingenuity of lay and ordained visionaries like Wiriyaphan and Zhao and their colleagues Kenzo Tange, Chan-soo Park, Tadao Ando, and others discussed in this book, creators of Buddhist leisure sites often face problems along the way. Parks and museums are complex adaptive systems that are changed and influenced by budgets, available materials, local and global economic conditions, and visitors. Architects must often compromise and settle at local optima, and no matter what they intend, their buildings will develop lives of their own. Provocative and theoretically innovative, Architects of Buddhist Leisure asks readers to question the very category of “religious” architecture. It challenges current methodological approaches in religious studies and speaks to a broad audience interested in modern art, architecture, religion, anthropology, and material culture. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.
Two thousand years ago, the Wu Emperor of China sent south a naval expedition to seek opportunities to increase trade. The leaders encountered a Southeast Asian kingdom, with an established government, laws, cities and flourishing trade with India and Rome. The expedition report survives in the Chinese dynastic archives, and poses a fascinating challenge to archaeologists : what was the nature of this maritime Silk Road, when did it begin, what manner of people ran it, and how did it affect their lives ? Answers to these key questions are now emerging from five years of excavations and a decade of intense analyses that centre on the Kra Isthmus, the narrow neck of land that provides the easiest passage between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Here, the trade route is dominated by the urban centre of Khao Sam Kaeo, a sprawling settlement atop four hills, next to the Tha Tapao River. For the first time in Southeast Asia, a multi disciplinary project involving geoarchaeology, botany and metallurgy, combined with geographical information systems, has been deployed to unravel the timing of the emergence of the maritime Silk Road and its social impact. We have found that its origins are far earlier than suspected, stretching back into the 4th century BC. Over the centuries, Khao Sam Kaeo became a cosmopolitan hub that drew merchants and artisans from India and other Asian horizons. Gold and silver, carnelian and glass jewellery came from new workshops. In the fields beyond the city walls, new crops of Indian origin were grown alongside the traditional rice fields. Chinese ceramics, Vietnamese bronzes, even Roman tradewares made their way to the markets of Southeast Asia. The vital importance of Khao Sam Kaeo in documenting and illuminating the early maritime trade is seen in the later rise of states like Pasai, Banten, Melaka and Ayutthaya. Here again, on a magnified scale, there were highly specialised manufacturing industries controlled by powerful kings. Revealing the deep seated cultural changes that took place at Khao Sam Kaeo thus illuminates for the first time a critical stage in the history of Southeast Asia.
Medieval Europe was a rapidly developing society with a problem of violent disorder. Professor Kaeuper's original and authoritative study reveals that chivalry was just as much a part of this problem as it was its solution. Chivalry praised heroic violence by knights, and fused such displaysof prowess with honour, piety, high-status, and attractiveness to women. Though the vast body of chivalric literature praised chivalry as necessary to civilization, most texts also worried over knightly violence, criticized the ideals and practices of chivalry, and often proposed reforms. Theknights themselves joined the debate, absorbing some reforms, ignoring others, sometimes proposing their own. The interaction of chivalry with major governing institutions ("church" and "state") emerging at that time was similarly complex: kings and clerics both needed and feared the force of theknighthood. This fascinating book lays bare these conflicts and paradoxes which surrounded the concept of chivalry in medieval Europe.
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Europe's place in history is re-assessed in this first comprehensive history of the ancient world, centering on the Indian Ocean and its role in pre-modern globalization. Philippe Beaujard presents an ambitious and comprehensive global history of the Indian Ocean world, from the earliest state formations to 1500 CE. Supported by a wealth of empirical data, full color maps, plates, and figures, he shows how Asia and Africa dominated the economic and cultural landscape and the flow of ideas in the pre-modern world. This led to a trans-regional division of labor and an Afro-Eurasian world economy. Beaujard questions the origins of capitalism and hints at how this world-system may evolve in the future. The result is a reorienting of world history, taking the Indian Ocean, rather than Europe, as the point of departure. Volume I provides in-depth coverage of the period from the fourth millennium BCE to the sixth century CE.
