By Agneta de Bekassy
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The place is buzzing with new galleries, restaurants and events thanks to new MD Linda Cheng
By Ruth Gerson 

Linda Cheng, Managing Director of River City Bangkok, has injected new life into the famous venue after losing some of its shine since opening 35 years ago.
 
This highly engaging and approachable lady tells of the circuitous route that has taken her from Taiwan at the young age of 12 to study in the United States, and later to Thailand to work in her family’s business. Linda’s father had owned a business in Taiwan manufacturing Christmas lights and moved its base to Thailand, establishing a factory in Bang Na. In 1989, following graduation from UCLA in Los Angeles, Linda joined her family business in Thailand while pursuing an MBA degree at the newly opened and prestigious SASIN business school at Chulalongkorn University. “It was my father’s way of keeping me here,” she says. And indeed he succeeded, as it was in Bangkok that Linda met her husband and put down roots in the City of Angels.
 
Linda’s husband’s story runs parallel to hers. Also of Taiwanese origin, his parents invested in ceramic tile manufacturing in Thailand. While Linda had studied on west coast USA her husband finished his studies in New York and was already employed there when he was summoned to return to Asia to his family’s business. The two met in Bangkok and married in 1994. Linda continued to work in the family’s business in marketing and sales with the US as a major market, while her husband’s ceramic tile business took them to Europe, mostly to Italy and Spain from where the tile-manufacturing machines were imported.

To achieve her ambition, this amazing doctor had pass exams written in Thai
 
By Ruth Gerson

Understandably, not all husbands or wives of expats in full-time employment in Thailand are content just to stay at home and look after the house and kids. This is especially when they have enjoyed careers of their own in the past and want to find suitable employment.
 
Such is the case with Dr Donna Robinson, a now well-known Briton who had to overcome obstacles that would deter all but the most determined in order to be able to practice her profession in Thailand.
 
Not only did she have to learn the Thai language to be able to communicate with patients, she also had to master medical Thai terminology to be licensed to work here – and she succeeded!
 
Born and educated in Newcastle in northern England, Dr Donna trained as general practitioner, and holds a diploma in gynecology and occupational medicine, the latter focusing on maintaining health at the workplace.
 
Feeling that life was passing her by, at the age of 26 she looked eastward and went to work in New Zealand while getting higher medical qualifications. On her journey, she stopped for one night in Singapore, her first encounter with the Far East, and she liked it. “Asia is a pretty good place,” she thought.
 
When it was time for Dr Donna to leave New Zealand she did not rush back to the UK but rather sought out Asian destinations, landing a job in Hong Kong. Although she spent a mere six months there, it changed the course of her life, as it is where she met her husband – on a cross country run organized by the Hash House Harriers run, romantically enough, on the Chinese Moon Festival!

The Russian embassy in Bangkok has become a centre of ballet excellence, thanks to the young and beautiful Julia Tutarskya, a former prima donna who is working wonders as a dance teacher at the in-house school.
 
Opened in 2014, the ballet school was the brainchild of former Russian Ambassador to Thailand, Mr Kirill Barsky. Since then it has attracted students from many nationalities, including Thais and Russians.
 
Julia was born in Michurinsk, a town named after the great biologist Ivan Vladimirivich Michurin, located in the Tambov region of Russia.
 
When Julia was just four years old, her parents took her and her elder sister to the Michurinsk Choreography School for ballet classes. “At that young age, I already knew I wanted to become a ballet dancer,” says Julia.
 
With support from her parents and the school, Julia pursued her dream, which eventually led to her current profession.

Julia’s childhood was filled with exciting concerts, daily dance lessons, and both classic ballet and traditional folkdance. She began piano lessons at the same age as she started dancing and wanted to become as good a piano player as her mother. Julia was a dedicated student and loved history, literature and foreign languages.
 
She talks fondly about her first teacher, Mrs Lyubov Viktorovna Benderskaya, who not only taught her students a perfect ‘pas de deux’ but also instilled a love and appreciation of ballet.
 
“I started to explore classic ballet and learned a lot from her. In this school, choreography became a part of the students’ lives. Russia is known for supporting children with a certain gift - ballet, gymnastics, music or anything else.

 From making an enchanting video giving make-up tips when she was just three years old to participating in the London Fashion Week aged only ten – that’s the amazing life story so far of Natthanan ‘Pear’ Sanunrat, an extraordinarily smart little lady from Chantaburi.  It’s easy to see why the cute four-minute video, which is still available on youtube, has garnered an aston­ishing seven millions views. It shows an angelic Pear offering advice while carefully rubbing in and dabbing on various cosmetics, totally oblivious of the impact it would have.
 
For it set her on a path to fame, which continues to this day.

​ In the male-dominated world of information technology, a young woman from Kazakhstan, a state in the former Soviet Union, has made her mark. Irina Afonina owns and runs Cresittel, headquartered in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which she visits on a regular basis while she and her family reside in Bangkok.
 
Irina’s company provides software development for mobile applications as well as human resource systems – one of the largest Cambodia.
 
Irina’s story begins in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, where she studied IT at a technical university. Despite her high marks, IT was not her first career choice. She wanted to study psychological therapy and help people with deep rooted problems.
 
This was influenced by personal experiences as a number of friends had come to her for help with their emotional difficulties, some quite serious. Her mother, however, a strong and practical woman, steered Irina in a different direction – towards IT which was just taking off in Kazakhstan. “She is such a strong and stubborn woman that it was just easier to listen to her,” Irina says.
 
Her mother was acting from knowledge, having been employed by the German embassy in Almaty, with exposure beyond the borders of Kazakhstan. She noticed through her work that Germany in the late 1990s was outsourcing much of its electronic work to India, and that gave her ideas for her daughter’s future.
 
Irina did not waste any time, enrolling in IT courses and working for one of the first internet providers in the country while studying.
 
When that company failed, she began working nights at a call center that served Kazakhstan only, where she experienced and learned mobile technology from the ground up that was to serve her well in her future endeavors.
 
Her employers recognized Irina’s natural intelligence and found more challenging positions for her within their business concern, and so began a rotation of work roles, most of them lasting a few months.
 
The real breakthrough came when the business purchased a billing solution from Israel. It was Irina’s first taste of what lay outside in the wide world, and at the age of 22 she wanted  to be part of it. When Amdocs, the Israeli company, offered her a working position in Bangladesh she jumped at the opportunity. 

It started as a six-page story. A young girl, Snow Flake, transfers to a new school and wants to fit in. The story paralleled the young author’s situation. Natchariya “Mai” was transferring from Thai school to an international school in Bangkok. Her dominant language at the time was Thai and her father thought she might have trouble adjusting.

Instead of making language the challenge in the story, Snow Flake has large and unusual feet. She attempts to hide them, but sits next to the class bully, Cannon Ball. Thus, begins the conflict.

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​Once a nurse, always a nurse. This is how Debbie Thompson views herself. If not ministering to the sick, then imparting her knowledge in that very valuable area of healthcare.

Today Debbie runs her own small business here in Thailand called First Aid Solutions, with aims to spread the knowledge and expertise of first aid to help in cases of emergency. These are valuable services that can save lives. Over coffee, Debbie smiles as she recalls her adventures, venturing to Saudi Arabia as a single foreign woman to work in the country’s healthcare.
 
Born and trained in Liverpool, England, Debbie was recruited in 1988 from a burns hospital to work in a Saudi military hospital. Young and fair haired, she must have been somewhat of a sensation there. This is where she met her husband whose work was building network systems and logistics. It was the type of work that took him from place to place, including back to the UK and abroad again, then back to Saudi Arabia when Debbie returned to hospital work there (1992-1995), this time as supervisor in the hospital burns unit, in which she had specialized in the UK.
 
Debbie followed her husband wherever his work took him, leaving Saudi Arabis in 1995 for Malaysia and from there to Taiwan and Australia, a good deal of moving around. She describes these years as the hiatus in her working life, a time when her children were born, being able to spend time with them.
 
It seems however that her guiding light continued to be healing and caring for people. Upon returning once again to Saudi Arabia in 2002 for two-year stay, Debbie held the position of school nurse and health educator. The flexibility of her work suited her nomadic life style of moving back and forth between countries and continents.