Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Scary Stuff
Word reached us at work today about the military coup in Thailand. I'll admit, I didn't see this coming, I really thought the military was going to chill out and wait for the November elections. My bad.
It was about noon our time when I heard of it, as the coup happened late Tuesday night Bangkok time (they are 11 hours ahead of us). I didn't have Raberd's number with me so couldn't call, and instead fired off a quick e-mail message of support, not knowing if it would get through (all web servers in Thailand were offline) and of course it was pretty late by then anyway. I waited all day and was happy to see a reply when I got back from Adrian's family's house, about 9:30 here. He said things weren't too bad, though all their news channels had been cut off, but he was able to get news online. I called him right away and we chatted for a few minutes (he wasn't going into work today) but I let him go when the military leaders were coming on TV to make some announcements. He sounded good on the phone, stressed but not scared, there's been no violence and apparently the soldiers and their tanks have left the streets.
One weird element to this is that last night I made reservations to go visit him in 3 weeks. We'll see if that still happens. Why couldn't they have waited a month??? (see, even in international relations, it's ALL about me)
It was about noon our time when I heard of it, as the coup happened late Tuesday night Bangkok time (they are 11 hours ahead of us). I didn't have Raberd's number with me so couldn't call, and instead fired off a quick e-mail message of support, not knowing if it would get through (all web servers in Thailand were offline) and of course it was pretty late by then anyway. I waited all day and was happy to see a reply when I got back from Adrian's family's house, about 9:30 here. He said things weren't too bad, though all their news channels had been cut off, but he was able to get news online. I called him right away and we chatted for a few minutes (he wasn't going into work today) but I let him go when the military leaders were coming on TV to make some announcements. He sounded good on the phone, stressed but not scared, there's been no violence and apparently the soldiers and their tanks have left the streets.
One weird element to this is that last night I made reservations to go visit him in 3 weeks. We'll see if that still happens. Why couldn't they have waited a month??? (see, even in international relations, it's ALL about me)
