Pornthip Luanoi (but known to us all as “Moo”)

by Dr. Iain Corness

Pornthip Luanoi is very slim, very composed, articulate and absolutely charming, so I had to ask her just how she ended up with a nickname like “Moo”, which is literally “pig”, as I have yet to meet a slim, composed, articulate and charming porker. Moo replied with another of those charming smiles, “My nickname was supposed to be ‘Ae’, but when I was a baby I was very fat and my father would call Moo, Moo, and that became my nickname.” So Moo it was and Moo it still is.
Moo works for the Nova Group’s Rony Fineman and Jameson’s Irish Pub’s Kim Fletcher as their pub manager, a difficult enough task for anyone, but “the lovely Moo”, as Kim describes her, comes up smiling every time.
She is the third child in a family of four girls and was born in a small village in Chonburi, but by the time she was three, the family had moved to Samut Prakhan. A pupil at the local government school, she was a good student, though she had a personal set-back when her mother died when Moo was only nine years old. In the traditional Thai family way, her eldest sister took over the maternal parenting role, to assist her father bring up the remaining three girls. And six years later, a step-mother was to enter her life, a woman whom Moo describes as “a very nice person”.
By the time she was 16 she finished secondary school and won a scholarship to go to Silpakorn University to study Arts. This meant leaving home and staying with friends closer to the university. This was also a four year course, but at the end of it all, she emerged with a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in the Thai language. During this four year period she also studied English and French, but not liking English very much, she never thought that one day she might be working with ‘farangs’.
With her bright and shiny new degree she began job hunting in Bangkok. The ‘real’ world was an eye-opener. It was taking her two to three hours in traveling, just to get to the interview. She returned home to help her father, feeling that her four years of study had not prepared her for employment. This is, of course, was not just something that was peculiar to Moo, but a common cry from new graduates all over the world.
After 12 months at home, one of her elder sisters came up with a job opportunity for her. In Pattaya. Her sister was a nurse who worked for the Bangkok Pattaya Hospital and she had found out that the office manager in the Shenanigans Pub needed an assistant. Regulars in the pub scene over the past few years will also know that this was Aum, and the pub was managed by a certain Kim Fletcher. “When my sister called me I just thought OK, I have to try it, and I was lucky that Aum and Kim gave me the chance to do the job.”
Like all new employees, Moo started at the bottom. “I couldn’t do anything, but Aum taught me.” She also found it almost impossible to read Kim’s writing, but after time she now can pre-empt his requests (demands?) saying, “I know already what he wants!” With the emphasis on charity work in Pattaya, Moo also became a regular charity worker, particularly for the Jester’s Children’s Fair and the Charity Bike Ride. “I like to help people and it’s good for me too,” she said simply.
Her next career move was to go to Jameson’s Irish Pub, following her old boss Kim Fletcher to the new pub attached to the Nova Park development. “This was a big step at first. I was worried, but I thought that if I try I can do it. It was a good chance for me to improve myself.” Her job is such that she starts around 11-12 a.m. and she goes home when the work is finished, generally around 7-8 p.m. That work includes being the webmistress for the website, checking bar orders, contacting suppliers, working with bar manager Molly and “everything that Kim needs me to do”. She also said, “Rony Fineman is a businessman, and I can learn a lot from him.” By this stage I was definitely getting the feeling that Moo was like a living, breathing sponge, able to adsorb anything that people were willing to teach her.
With all the knowledge and abilities that she has learned and developed over the past six years, I asked Moo where she was heading in the future. “In my dream I can see a little coffee shop, but maybe it’s just a dream. But if I do the best I can today, the future will be OK.” A kind of ‘what goes around, comes around’ principle, combined with the Thai acceptance of what comes will be.
Being a young and attractive woman (she is only 28 years old) I asked if there was a man lurking somewhere in the shadows, and did she want to be a wife and mother. She admitted that she does have a boyfriend, but she has no great personal need for motherhood and the attendant chores of becoming housebound. No, our Moo is happy where she is, living with her sister the nurse, and working at Jameson’s Irish Pub.
When she is not working, she loves to read (currently going through Harry Potter) or visiting old friends in Bangkok.
After an hour with this young lady, it was easy to see why Kim Fletcher calls her “the lovely Moo”. She has one of the nicest natures, and her unflappable efficiency, all wrapped up in her trim, taught and terrific persona must make her a superb employee. If I didn’t want to fall out with Rony and Kim, I would offer her a job as my PA immediately!