It would seem Edinburgh’s restaurant scene is weathering the recession better than most. Yet there’s little evidence of resilience on the city’s Brougham Place. A usually cheerful street curving from the Meadows to Tollcross, it enjoys a steady throughflow of students and professionals, and has offered a wide range of international cuisine – from East African to Thai to French – for years. Sadly, it’s suffering from a severe outbreak of toletsignitis and has clearly seen better days.

Things are pretty much full steam ahead at the moment. Having only recently agreed to take on the premises, Cindy will pick up the keys and sign a new contract this Friday. She tells me she feels “stressed” because of a new UK Border Agency rule requiring her to obtain a special permit before she can sponsor workers from Thailand. “My business has been put back by about eight weeks because of it,” she sighs.

Cindy - Sirapassorn Srisotorn to family and friends in Thailand - is 35, single and a native of Bangkok. She arrived in Scotland about six years ago with her fiance from Edinburgh (they’ve since split up). If anyone can help revive Brougham Place, it’s her. She’s a brilliant cook. She’s also ambitious, determined and smart, and holds a degree in Communications from one of Bangkok’s top universities. Previously, after studying English at Telford College, she worked for the distribution arm of a well-known Scottish social affairs magazine, helping to increase sales by 40% in the first half-year of her employment.

She has vivid memories of her father protesting on the streets of Bangkok in support of ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra,

Rioting in Thailand

As she peers enthusiastically through the window of her restaurant, discussing new furniture she hopes to buy, it  seems that Scotland has treated Cindy well. Sadly, this isn’t the case. She’s certainly quick to acknowledge the warmth of the individuals she’s made friends with. However, having worked for DTAC, one of Thailand’s biggest mobile phone companies, and enjoyed numerous employment perks, her ambitions for life in Scotland extend well beyond the restaurant trade. She feels there is little prospect of realising them.

“I wanted to go abroad, speak English, see things,” she says. “I wanted to do a postgraduate marketing degree at Strathclyde – but it wouldn’t have worked.

“Scottish people are quite conservative. It’s not easy to affect their social life. You have to do something that Scottish people like. If you do something they expect, that relates to their social life, you can succeed.

“I know some Thai people who tried to run furniture import/export businesses from Scotland but they never succeed. It seems Scottish people can’t accept something that’s unusual to them.”

Being female hasn’t helped either. “I know I am a business woman. I have much determination to run a business. I am accurate; I can drive things. But life’s not easy here. Not many British people accept a South East Asian woman as leader of the team.”

A new opening with new possibilities. Yet the decision of this woman to open a Thai restaurant also feels like a restriction, an indictment, a waste. What would Cindy be doing now if she’d decided to make her home in London or America?

Hello everyone - welcome to my blog!!  

A bit about me to kick things off. I’m 30 and a journalism student at Glasgow Caledonian University. It’s been a roundabout sort of journey so far. I was an undergraduate student in English Literature and Italian at St Andrews University from 1997 to 2002 (yep, occasionally had the privilege of sharing oxygen with the future king – pretty difficult to avoid in a town that size). I thought the scholarly life might be for me so headed down to London to do a postgraduate degree in Comparative Literature at University College. Things didn’t really work out. Perhaps unsurprisingly after four years in a bubble-town like St Andrews, concentration and focus didn’t come easily in the Smoke. And then the academic life, particularly in the arts, seemed too cut off from the surrounding world.    

I think I can date my interest in journalism from an encounter with a bunch of hardy, hearty souls camped out in the woods next to my home town of Dalkeith. It was the middle of a pretty foul winter at the beginning of 2006 and the ’wood people’ were protesting against the construction of a bypass that would cut through the meadows and forests of a centuries-old country park.

I wanted to be involved somehow – partly because of ego (the protestors had attracted a fairly vigorous media scrum and I wanted a piece of the action); partly as a result of almost falling off the side of a hill during a night-time trek with food to one of the eco-camps. I remember feeling deep admiration for this small group (numbering at most a few  dozen) for making their stand in such exposed, gloomy conditions. I wanted to investigate, interview and write about them. At that point I didn’t have the time, wherewithal or courage.

Things have built from there and I now have the beginnings of a track record in journalism, particularly arts journalism. This is my first ever blog so don’t expect wonders. Most of it will be random, rambling nonsense about nothing in particular. However, there will be plenty of posts about writers, books and related issues. I’m also hoping to write about the many individuals I’ve been privileged to meet who have come here from across the world. I’m interested in what their individual experiences – good and bad – say about today’s Scotland.

And I’ll try not to be too serious - maybe there’ll even be a bit of humour once in a while…