นาเดีย นิมิตรวานิช สาวซ่าส์แห่ง “ดาวกระจาย” คยอื่นพูดจาพานมีแต่เรื่องรกหูรกใจ แต่ นาเดีย พูดทีไร มีแต่เรื่องน่าฟัง ยิ่งหนุ่มๆฟังแล้วมันส์ ฟังแล้วเพลิน เป็นอันต้องรอจดจ่อหน้าจอทีวี รอดู นาเดีย โปรยเสน่ห์พร้อมคำพูดและรอยยิ้มอันสดใส ในรายการ “ดาวกระจาย” เกือบทุกวัน

นอกจากพกความสวยเก๋ แบบวัยรุ่นสาวยุคใหม่ นาเดีย ยังโดดเด่นเรื่องการพูดจา เธอโด่งดังในฐานะ “พิธีกรสาว มากความสามารถ” เริ่มต้นเส้นทางดังจากการเป็นวีเจแชนแนล ช่องนี้มีแต่วีเจสาวสวยรวยรูปทรัพย์ ทั้ง จ๋า-ณัฐฐาวีรนุช ทองมี, วุ้นเส้น, พิตต้า, พอลล่า เทเลอร์ เพื่อนร่วมจ้อหน้าจอของ นาเดีย ทั้งนั้น แต่ นาเดีย มาดังสุดๆ ในมาดพิธีกรสาวรายการ “ดาวกระจาย” แต่ความสามารถของเธอไม่ได้หมดลงแค่นั้น นาเดีย ยังแสดงละครแสนเก่ง, เป็นนักเขียนให้นิตยสาร Oops! เรียกว่าคุณสมบัติครบถ้วนของ “ผู้หญิงเก่ง” เรียนจบจากคณะอักษรศาสตร์ จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย

“เพชร” ก็ย่อมเป็น “เพชร” วันยังค่ำ นาเดีย มีแววเป็น “ดาวจรัสแสง” ตั้งแต่สมัยเรียนแล้ว โดยได้เล่นละครเวทีอยู่บ่อยๆ เป็นนักกิจกรรมตัวยง ทั้งกีฬาสี เชียร์ ลีดเดอร์ ฯลฯ

ไม่ใช่เรื่องยากส์ ที่จะกระโจนมาสู่วงการบันเทิง ยิ่งช่วงหลัง นาเดีย ทำให้หัวใจหนุ่มๆซู่ซ่า หลงเสน่ห์สาวหน้าหวาน นามเพราะ ใครๆเห็นชื่อ นาเดีย นึกว่าเป็น “ลูกครึ่งฝรั่ง” กันทั้งนั้น แต่ นาเดีย ยืนยันตัวเองเป็น “ลูกเสี้ยว” พ่อจีน แม่เป็นคนไทย นับถือศาสนาอิสลาม ใครๆต่างคิดว่า นาเดีย เป็น “สาวสองบุคลิก” จะดูเรียบร้อยก็ได้ จะดูเป็นสาวเปรี้ยวเซ็กซี่ก็ได้อีก เป็นที่ฮือฮาในหมู่หนุ่มใจคะนอง เมื่อเห็น นาเดีย ลุกมาสลัดมาดสาวเรียบร้อย เปลี่ยนแนวมาโชว์ “ความสาว ความขาว” ของ สาววัยสะพรั่ง ทำเอาหนุ่มๆครางฮือ ไม่คิดว่า นาเดีย จะซ่อน “ของดีไว้ข้างใน” เป็นเรื่องแซวเล่นกันว่า ขนาดหนุ่มรุ่นน้อง บอลอัศนัย เทียนทอง ยังหลงความสวยที่นับวัน นาเดีย จะเพิ่มดีกรีความเซ็กซี่ ขนาดหยอดคำหวานอยู่บ่อยๆ แต่ บังเอิญ นาเดีย คิดกับ บอล แค่น้องแค่นั้น…ก็จบไป!

พักหลัง นาเดีย ดูสวยอึ๋ม! เลยมีข่าวลือว่าไป “อัพไซส์มา” แต่ นาเดีย ยันไม่เคย “เสริมเต้า” แต่เพราะเล่น “โยคะร้อน” สุขภาพดี แถมอกยังใหญ่ “ไซส์บิ๊ก” อีกเป็นกอง!

เพลง “สามสิบยังแจ๋ว” ไม่รู้ว่าแต่งขึ้นมาเพื่อ นาเดีย รึเปล่า? เพราะเธอสวยโดดเด่น เป็นสาวสะพรั่ง ซึ่งเธอเองก็บอกว่า “ก็ยอมรับความจริงว่าเรื่องวันเวลาห้ามไม่ได้ มีความสุข สนุกให้สมวัยดีกว่า”

เธอพูดถูก “เวลาไม่เคยคอยท่า” มัวแต่เครียดก็ไร้ค่าเสียเวลาเปล่า นาเดีย เลยตั้งหน้าตั้งตากระชากวัย มีวิธีดูแลตัวเองให้สวยสมวัย โดยวิธีแสนง่าย ในเมื่อรู้ตัวเป็น สาวชอบหม่ำ (หมายถึงการกิน ไม่ใช่ หม่ำ จ๊กมก) ทานของโปรดจนหนำใจ เธอก็หาทางระบายไขมันออกด้วย การเต้น “ซูมบ้า” การเต้นสำหรับสาววัยสามสิบ กิจกรรมโปรดที่ นาเดีย กำลังฮิต เพราะไปเห็นผู้ใหญ่ที่เคารพคนหนึ่งหุ่นดีจากการ “เต้นซูมบ้า” นี่แหละ นาเดีย บอกว่า การเต้นเพื่อวัยสามสิบ เต้นเพียงไม่กี่นาที รับรองเหงื่อกระจาย ร่างกายเฟิร์มกระชับฉับพลัน!

สุขภาพของหัวใจ นาเดีย บอกว่า “ไม่มีแฟน โสด เพราะเพื่อนเยอะ ถ้าถามว่ามีคนเข้ามาจีบๆชอบๆไหม ก็มีเรื่อยๆ แต่ที่ยังไม่ได้ตัดสินใจกับใคร เพราะ เดีย ว่า เดีย เข้าใจความต้องการของตัวเอง ว่าจริงๆแล้วชีวิตเดียต้องเดินไปทางไหน ต้อง การอะไรกันแน่ วงการบันเทิงสอนให้มองคนนาน มองลึกหน่อย เลยทำให้เรื่องความรักลงตัวยาก

“สาวเก่ง” ด้านการงาน นาเดีย เลยไม่โด่งดังโดดเด่นในเรื่องรัก ยอมรับว่ามีคนคุยด้วย แต่ถ้าไม่แน่ใจเธอยังไม่ได้ ขยับมาเป็นแฟนแน่ ฐานะนั้นคือ คนที่ต้องใช่และชัวร์ เธอไม่อยากให้คำว่าแฟนฟุ้งเฟ้อ! ในเมื่อเราเป็น “สวยเลือกได้” ก็ค่อยๆเลือก ค่อยตัดสินใจ ไม่ต้องรีบ ระหว่างนี้ก็มีเพื่อนเป็น “หนุ่มตี๋ รุ่นพี่ รุ่นน้อง” ได้ทั้งหมด ทุกคนไม่แตกแถว เพราะไม่ใช่แฟน!

A legendarily exclusive Caribbean hideaway for royals, pop stars and the international jet set, Mustique these days is rather more accessible—welcoming, even.

It was a warm June night at Basil’s bar, on the island of Mustique. The blues were playing, the crowd began to swell, and the concrete dance floor was pulsing. It was the 30th anniversary of what is arguably the most famous beach bar in the Caribbean, as well as the 60th birthday of its proprietor, islander Basil Charles, the unofficial mayor of Mustique and a caftan-clad perpetual party machine, who called this, the penultimate event in a week of nonstop festivities—and the latest in three decades of them—his “best fête yet.”

Early in the evening, the cocktail crowd mingled in Charles’s open-sided, metal-roofed Balinese pavilions set on rocks beside a pier jutting into Britannia Bay. They were longtime denizens of Mustique, a mixed bag of Europeans and North and South Americans, many of them old enough to have partied there often before, almost all of them wealthy enough to own or rent one of the 100 homes on this tiny chunk of volcanic rock smack in the middle of the island-nation chain called St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Once the most private of private islands—where you had to be known and preapproved even to be allowed to fly into the mini-airport (it helped to be royal, too)—Mustique has evolved into the same thing only different, an apparently classless, postcolonial, eco-friendly place that’s open to all. Most of the houses are available to rent, at a wide range of prices.

“It’s hard not to like this island,” says Noel Charles, a close friend but no relation to Basil, who was at the party with his wife, Cynthia Lennon (once married to John Lennon, and mother of Julian Lennon). Scottish baron Colin Tennant originally created the island enclave as a private playpen for pals like Queen Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret; her husband, Lord Snowdon (a.k.a. Anthony Armstrong-Jones); and other swells. Mustique is now run by something resembling a cooperative corporation, owned by shareholding homeowners, that controls almost every aspect of life on the tiny island. And tiny is an understatement.

Mustique is a mere three and a half miles square, gently sprinkled with villas ranging from two-bedroom, breeze-filled hideaways created 40 years ago by stage-set designer Oliver Messel to extravagantly tricked-out, spanking-new air-conditioned dream palaces that could easily pass as boutique über-luxury hotels. There are only two hotels, however: the 17-room Cotton House and the five-room Firefly Mustique. Besides that, there are three restaurants, a handful of shops, nine beaches, and a fleet of golf carts, the only means of guest transportation. There’s no golf, but there are tennis courts, horses, hiking, diving, and snorkeling.

The villa owners are a rarefied group, currently including Mick Jagger and Tommy Hilfiger, and the island also attracts high-profile renters like Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez. But the real appeal of the place isn’t its celebrity pedigree, it’s the pure, unadulterated escape it represents—the timeless, private-island calm that prevails. There are no visible power, telephone, or water lines—all are underground—and houses can’t rise above the tree line. There are excellent roads, adequate electricity and water, and most of, if not all, the comforts of an aristocrat’s home.

Born in Coquimbo, Chile, in 1972, Cristia’n began his musical studies at an early age at the Escuela Experimental de Musica de La Serena, a specialised musical school for young talents.

When he was 16, he was awarded a full scholarship at the Pontificia Universidad Cato’lica de Chile to study classical trumpet in the music conservatory. He then headed to Havana, Cuba, where he studied with the renowned trumpet master, Luis Alimani, founder of the band Ensemble Afro Cuba All Stars.

Since then Cristia’n has taken part in several international festivals in America and Europe.

In 1998 he was invited to the Iceland International Jazz Festival in Reykjavik, sharing the stage with important musicians such as Ray Brown and Put Whitman. In London, he was invited to give a jazz clinic at the Royal Academy of Music and he was also invited to record an album at the BBC studios.

He jammed with Mike Mackenna and Herbie Hancock at the Thelonious Monk Institute. In 2001, he was honoured with the Premio Altazor, Chile’s most important artistic award.

For more information and reservations, please call 02-649-8353.

Rubeth Bumatay’s dad was a musician, and at home in the Philippines he’d start the day playing records so that the family would get up to the sound of music.

“He’d play all kinds, Latin, Top 40 but also jazz, and that was the sound I liked best. Those were the songs I wanted to sing. And maybe I wanted to be different to everyone else.”

But singing wasn’t on the cards for her as yet: it was school, college, getting an education, and her mother only let her sing at competitions. Then her brother, who had a band working in Thailand, called her to ask if she knew a girl singer who could join them. As it happens, she did.

“I told him, why not me?” she said. Her mother didn’t object as she would have a big brother to look after her, so she began her singing career in Chiang Mai. For three years she was doing covers of pop songs while nursing her ambition to sing jazz.

Her chance came at the Sundowner lounge at the Imperial Queen’s Park and led to engagements in other Bangkok hotels and eventually the Plaza Athenee’s Glaz Bar. Originally booked on a three-month contract, she made a hit with the customers singing her own kind of music with a jazz trio and has been the resident singer for four years now.

“I feel at home here. There’s a great working atmosphere, good audiences and a lot of regular customers who I’ve got to know. I know what they like to hear, and when I see them come in, I’ll surprise them by singing their usual requests without telling them.”

Her attitude to requests is welcoming. “I like to sing what people want to hear,” she says. “Sometimes they’re not sure that they like jazz, but I can always find something they’ll enjoy, and they say, ‘That’s jazz? I like it!”‘

It can go the other way, too. Western visitors sometimes ask her if she’ll sing a jazz classic from way back, and when she says yes, they look doubtful. “I can see what they’re thinking,” she said. “They’re wondering if an Asian singer can really do that song. So I show them I can.”

At Glaz Bar she is accompanied by a pianist, Sing, and bassist Long who provide a crisp, swinging background and have plenty of opportunities to step forward and solo.

“It’s always a jam session when we’re on,” says Rubeth. “I like to be spontaneous, and I want them to do whatever they want. I want them to fly.”

They began flying at 8 o’clock, opening with a brisk, uptempo version of a Rodgers and Hart song, My Romance. Rodgers and Hart were a composer/writer duo who in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s who composed many of the songs beloved of jazz and cabaret singers. In this one, the singer enumerates the things her romance doesn’t need: twinkling stars, soft guitars and all the usual songwriter’s trimmings, and the punch like is: “My romance doesn’t need a thing but you.”

Apt, really, because Rubeth describes singing to an audience as a relationship. “I’m not just doing a song,” she says. “I’m singing for them and for myself, and if they smile, or if I see they’re happy, that gives me energy.”

A request for My Funny Valentine came next. Once again the words were by Lorenz Hart and the music by Richard Rodgers, and Rubeth gave it a kind of breathless romantic treatment, but with a smile to keep it from falling over into sentimentality.

“I choose a song because I like it and want to sing it,” she says. “I listen to the words and respond to the emotions. But sometimes the emotion comes first, and I choose a song because it suits the way I feel.”

A family group then sent up a request for a song that is always associated with one artist, and since the artist was Judy Garland you will probably guess that their request was for Over the Rainbow.

Judy Garland was 16 when she sang this as Dorothy in the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz. Everything had gone wrong for Dorothy and she dreams of finding a place “where troubles melt like lemon drops.” The words are by Yip Harburg, music by Harold Arlen and Rubeth caught the wistful longing of the song in her performance. Perhaps we’re all feeling it at the present time.

The tempo surged again with a song from 1943, Speak Low, by the German composer, Kurt Weill and a writer usually known for comic verse, Ogden Nash. The song has an urgent rhythm that propels it forward because it’s all about time and how quickly it passes: “We’re late, darling we’re late - the curtain descends, everything ends too soon, too soon.”

Rubeth, pianist Sing and bassist Long are well in control of the quick changes of mood and style required for each song, so they are always varied and clearly defined.

The next number, however, had no big emotional deal. I Love Paris is not one of Cole Porter’s better songs, but it works as a lively, straight-ahead swinger allowing Rubeth’s outgoing personality to come to the fore. Part of her performance style is coming out to the audience, and that’s much easier when the song is not laden with emotion and she can smile without breaking the mood.

No chance of that with the next one, however. Unashamedly romantic, My Foolish Heart comes from a 1949 movie of the same title and won an Oscar nomination for Best Song. It begins quietly and cautiously but gradually the emotional temperature rises.

Not every one of her songs will be a jazz standard or a ballad from the Great American Song Book. But it’s now known that Glaz Bar is where you can hear these great songs in the appropriate style: neither cool nor intensely hot, but delivered with feeling.

Rubeth Bumatay sings at Glaz Bar, Plaza Athenee Bangkok from 8pm till midnight Wednesday till Saturday. For reservations, please call 02-650-8800 ext 1234.

Siriwimol ‘Mai’ Charoenpura

Don’t put on that red dress tonight
Actress Julajak ”Ying” Kritiyarat is apologising for the revealing dress she wore to the Thai film awards _ and taken a poke at a DJ who likened her in that dress to a prostitute.

On the red carpet at the Suphannahongse awards on Sunday, Ying, recently back from overseas, wore a red dress she bought in Milan. A see-through cutaway across the front revealed the top of her thigh, a red G-string, and if that was not enough, a small tattoo dedicated to her French boyfriend.

Spotting actresses who show the most flesh at the film awards is a national pastime. After getting flak for revealing too much on what is supposed to be a formal occasion, Ying brought out the dress in the daytime to show that, away from camera flashbulbs that illuminated her G-string and tattoo, the dress actually looked respectable.

She chose the red dress, which cost about 10,000 baht, because it was the least sexy on offer. She says it slipped, revealing more of her body than she intended, including her ”David” tattoo, which she had contemplated covering with tape, but then thought better of it.

Some reports called her ”Nong Seaweed the Second”, a reference to actress Chotiros ”Amy” Suriyawong, whose dress caused a scandal at the 2007 film awards.

Amy’s evening gown, which was split up the sides, also slipped, supposedly revealing her pubic hairs (her ‘’seaweed”).

Her horrified film company boss promptly cut her out of a movie she was making, and Thammasat University, where she was studying, called her in for a reprimand.

Ying, 30, denies she wore the dress to create a scandal. She was not some brash newcomer but had been in the industry since her teens.

”We’re supposed to wear something a little sexy on the red carpet _ but if anyone was offended, I apologise,” she said.

Still, Ying is unhappy after a DJ likened her to a woman who sells herself for a living: ”puying yang wa”.

DJ Mod Dum, who is gay, denies calling her a scarlet woman. He merely expressed surprise that she bought the dress overseas.

According to him, he said: ”Oui, tai! Where’d she get that dress _ it looks more like something you’d buy in Patpong!”

Ying says she has an education, and comes from a good family, thanks very much. She told Mod Dum to keep his big mouth under control, or she could start getting personal herself. Mod Dum has since apologised for his Patpong remarks.

Pity the beef noodle vendors

A comically gruesome horror movie by Poj Anon has a new name, at the film censor’s insistence _ though if anything, it is more blood curdling than the original, says its star Siriwimol ”Mai” Charoenpura.

The film also had to be re-edited three times and the poster changed before it was passed.

From Beef Noodles _ With Human Flesh (Kuay Theow Neua Khon), known in English as The Meat Grinder, we now have Chop Before Tasting - A Bloody Recipe So Delicious You’ll Forget You Died For It.

Mai plays a beef noodle vendor at the time of the Oct 14, 1973 student uprising. The censor says the film suggests students who went missing during the uprising ended up being turned into beef noodles.

The trailer shows Mai with a cleaver, soaked in blood. To the calming strains of Srisalai Suchartwut’s version of Saneh Ha, an old Thai love song, she washes down blood-soaked floors. We see screaming victims trapped under glass cases, others with missing limbs and an old guy holding up a bowl of noodles to inspect its strange aroma.

Actress Mai, who admits the drama-horror is gory, is baffled nonetheless by the censor’s reaction. If anything, the fuss has heightened interest in the film _ the change of name is a hot topic at the popular Pantip web forum.

Producer Poj says he was stunned by another complaint raised by the censor _ that no one would eat beef noodles after seeing what Mai puts into her recipe.

”The censor was worried that beef noodle traders would go out of business. Yet this is a work of fiction _ there probably aren’t any traders who use human meat.

”I was stunned, but had no choice but to comply, or the 20 million baht that Phra Nakorn Films spent on the movie would have been wasted, as it would not be allowed to screen.

”Still, even with the cuts, the meat of the film is still there … it is just less strong than it was before.

”I have no idea what standards they use to call themselves censors … but I just wish they’d get to appreciate the word ‘fantasy’ better.”

Ahead of the film’s release next month, outspoken Poj is holding a free screening for audiences who want to see the unedited version. Poj says he wants audiences to see the film as producers intended _ in all its bloody glory.