September, 2008

State of emergency declared

Submitted by Ben on Tue, 02/09/2008 - 08:02

Life

After violence and a death between anti- and pro-governmment forces overnight, PM Samak has declared a state of emergency and the military has been called in.

Just yesterday I had been telling someone that there were only two ways the situation could be resolved:

Samak steps down
Violence begins and the military gets called in

I knew that Samak was (and remains) too stubborn and selfish to step down though, so assumed #2 would be the path we would tread. I hope Samak is happy with himself. Thais are killing each other because he can't get over his own ego, but at least he's still PM.

Noone would argue that he won the election fair and square (well... square anyway), but desperately holding onto power in the current political climate is an act of stupidity. For his entire political career he has been a personality that deliberately polarised opinion, and now is no exception. His history is littered with the dead bodies of Thais driven to attack each other as a result of him.

Even after the violence last night I know he won't be a man and step down because that would cause him to lose face. He has lost all sense of his role and is clearly power-mad. Maybe that statement is taking it a little far, he could be just mad (ie insane).

I have to confess that I was disgusted by photos of Samak eating during an emergency parliamentary session on Sunday. He is such a sloth.

Skewed view

Submitted by Ben on Tue, 02/09/2008 - 12:59

Life

I know I talk about Thai politics too much, but there's a lot happening and noone but my blog will listen.

Last night Oui was telling me that some aircrew had posted to one of the forums he haunts complaining about how western media were portraying the situation here in Thailand. While I haven't seen any of it myself I expect it was all regarding foreign tourists being stranded when protestors blockaded certain airports in holiday spots outside of Bangkok.

I'm not sure who is deluding themselves, but what I can tell you is that if I was on holiday and got stranded trying to leave because of a protest that:

Has nothing to do with me
I don't care about in the slightest (as a tourist)

I would be pissed too.

The situation in Thailand is bad. I would go as far as saying it is even worse than before they booted Thaksin, if the video here is anything to go by (Look at the second video on the page).

After watching the above video this morning I felt ill. When I later went to Tops at Central Chitlom to buy a bottle of Coke and saw people shopping for perfume I was shocked that they seemed so oblivious to what was going on.

Smaller is better

2008

We're off to Melbourne in just two days and Ben bought me an iPod Nano 8GB. It's so typical, when we went to buy an mp3 player I was thinking of spending maybe 1,000 Baht for some cheap thing, but Ben showed me this one and of course we ended up getting it (for 10x the amount I wanted to spend).

We had to buy the accessories too, the condom cover thingy, hi-so headphones (because the standard ones fall out of my ears), and arm-strap. The stupid arm-strap was 1,500 by itself! Ben just kept saying "Yeah, whatever, just get it", while I kept saying it was too expensive.

I hope it'll go with my trendy new scarf, cap, and sunnies.

What is the best thing to say to start your holiday?

"Woohoo!"

33% (2 votes)

"Yes!"

0% (0 votes)

"Finally!"

0% (0 votes)

Shriek like a girl

67% (4 votes)

Total votes: 6

The sense of trepidation sets in

Submitted by Ben on Thu, 04/09/2008 - 22:05

Life

In just two days I will be meeting face-to-face people I've been playing World of Warcraft with for nearly 3 years and I'm beginning to feel absolutely terrified. I fully expect to massively over-compensate as I usually do when I meet new people, in the process making a complete dick of myself.

Oui is the complete opposite. He probably won't say much and of course won't stop me from being an idiot because it saves him from having to do or say anything.

I don't mean to sound like I'm not looking forward to meeting everyone - I'm super excited, I mainly fear what they will think of me being the over-compensator that I am. Caring so much about what other people think is something I usually don't need to worry about because there are very few people I care for the opinions of. This group though, my guildies, well... you get the idea.