Buoyant

Thailand’s mood these days may be more downcast than usual, but nobody seems to have told Jip. Her brand of drunk-on-life cheerfulness is delightful. It doesn’t take much to start her chuckling, a little bit like that film character played by Dudley Moore who used to say, “Sometimes I just think funny things.”

Consider this anecdote from last night. As a former nurse, Jip insists that her caregivers wash their hands often. She even loudly counts to ten as they’re scrubbing. That length of time (or about long enough to sing Happy Birthday twice) is thought to be effective at decreasing viruses.

Jip’s regular caregivers hear her count several times a day, and have probably tuned it out. During my turn on Sunday nights, I still listen for her to reach the end, because I know she’ll ask me to do it again if I finish too early. Last night, thinking of my birthday the day before, she switched from counting to singing. She only got through the song once, stopped by her own ripples of laughter.

Words on the Street

I’ve been asking Thai friends if they've heard any good jokes about the situation here. Nobody has, and nobody even thinks the question is funny. Everyone seems discouraged about the non-outcome of the protests and the government’s disappointing non-response to the grievances.

Most of these people call Bangkok home. Their feelings range from “freaked out” to “violated.” It’s a tender time. Nobody says they are optimistic about the current leaders’ ability to heal the country’s wounds. I’m not as tapped in to what people are saying in the provinces, but I can guess the mindset there is even more distrustful.

Even if this government were to last until the end of next year, when by law new elections must be called, it certainly has an uphill climb. There will be legal clashes, PR games, lots of money spent, and probably even more violence. Mixed all that together and you get a potent cocktail.

That said, it’s still hard for me to imagine the country disintegrating into “civil war,” a term that all of the various parties in the current conflicts have bandied about over recent weeks. I interpret the use of that phrase as mostly posturing (by the side that doesn’t have any big weapons), and justifying repressive measures (by the side that does).

Day After

Usually international news accounts make things look worse than they really are. Today the reports I read about last night’s many arsons don’t seem strong enough. The fires were so widespread, so efficient, and so simultaneous that it’s hard to believe they were the work of random mob members acting alone.

When the smoke finally cleared today, I couldn’t see any sign that the political dialogue had advanced from where things stood before the current round of protests began.

The public mood is a mixture of denial, depression, and disbelief. Over and over I hear, referring to the self-destructive forms that mass protest has taken here during the past couple of years, “this isn’t Thailand.” Perhaps the country has weathered worse identity crises in the past, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch this time.

Jip’s sensitive nose is confused by all the new smells in the air.

Devastating Day for Thailand

Bangkok is on fire. Outside, smoke from a few miles away hides the downtown high-rises. Inside, the smell of burning plastic has started to cling to our clothes.

Another way of measuring how nerve-wracking today was: the U.S. Embassy sends text messages to suggest avoiding certain areas. Since last Thursday I've received two or three per day. Today I got ten. The number of texts each day for the previous week:

May 13 – 2
May 14 – 3
May 15 – 2
May 16 – 0
May 17 – 3
May 18 – 2
May 19 – 10

Jip and I are safe.

Crackdown

Today is Day 2 of an effort by the government to clear protesters out of the area they have dominated for about two months. Things are not good.

I keep thinking about two books I’ve been reading recently. Team of Rivals is an American Civil War history about President Lincoln’s cabinet, which he carefully constructed to give him diverse opinions and to represent many factions. The book highlights Lincoln’s leadership style, emphasizing how in touch he was with the public mood and with the troops. Finding a Lincoln to lead Thailand during this time of trouble might be asking too much. Making sure that Abhisit is surrounded by varied voices would seem to be a smart strategy. I wonder how good his information is, as he holes up at an army base north of town.

The Coldest Winter recounts the story of the Korean War. With 20/20 hindsight, the author suggests several missed opportunities for ending the conflict that ultimately ended in a draw. Those moments came and went, says the author, because so many of the leaders were true believers, overly convinced of the rightness of their cause.

Jip and I are safe.

Cell Number Remote Sensing

A report came my way of a new technology being used in the area of the red-shirt protests. Somebody I know claims he was sitting in a café not far from the center of the action, when his phone alerted him that he had a text message. He was surprised to read that the military was recommending that he leave the area immediately.

“How do they know where I am?” he thought. A few calls to friends in other parts of the city convinced him that the text was indeed only being sent to people in the vicinity of the several city blocks that have been under the control of the red shirts for going on 50 days already. Presumably some GPS-like device had detected his phone and generated the text.

Since then I’ve spoken to two other people who got similar text messages while riding the sky train through the affected area. Most likely a record of their phone numbers is now stored in some government computer, thus allowing some government official to cooperate with the phone companies to look up who was where when. Video surveillance is one thing, but this kind of remote sensing technique brings new meaning to the term Big Brother.

Jip’s Feisty Self Returns

She is now up to her same old rascal-y ways. The relatively docile, sleep-though-the-night Jip who was discharged from the hospital just under a month ago seems to have been nothing more than an avatar. I knew that the Jip we’re all used to had returned when I realized a few days ago that she was again insisting on pre-sniffing all of her clothing, on supervising in the kitchen, and on generally running the show around here.

Welcome back!

Limbo Time

On Monday night the prime minister went on TV with a road map. Now it’s limbo time. Have the protesters decided to begin negotiating seriously? Will the barricades they’ve set up begin to come down? Will the threatened counter-protests now be called off? Are the government’s offers to call elections serious?

Those three reputed Chinese curses come to mind:

May you live in interesting times
May you come to the attention of those in authority
May you find what you are looking for

This is Not About Issues

Thailand’s political crisis boils down to rich against poor, right? Whose turn it is to get how much power? How far democracy will be allowed to go in Thailand? The role of the royal family? At least those are some of the questions Westerners might ask in trying to understand the latest events here. We are taught to think first of causes.

Thais see the headlines differently, I suspect. Through their eyes the current struggle is about the relationships between the various red and yellow personalities. Some of the stuff that has gone down over the past couple of years amounts to settling old scores, saving face, and following the lead of the “phuu yai,” a term in Thai that translates as chief, superior, principal, or head man. In Thailand historically there’s lots of precedent for doing what the phuu yai says, regardless of whether or not he’s right. Loyalty to him today will pay dividends tomorrow.

Conspicuously absent in the dialogue are issues, at least in the sense that the term is traditionally used in Western politics. Speeches revolve around how bad the other guys are, not around specifically how things will be better under us.

Further complicating the conflict is the emphasis on national unity that is instilled in most Thai people from an early age. The Thai nation is a relatively young concept—some would say less than 100 years old. As borders have been better defined, successive governments have sought to also define who is Thai. That effort led to a change in the country’s name from Siam (circa 1939) and to national school curricula that promote a common language, history, and religion. To watch Thailand split apart is therefore especially uncomfortable for many people who grew up here. Little wonder that Westerners and Thais hear different things when Thai leaders speak.

Pray for Rain

On Wednesday a potentially deadly confrontation flared up in the middle of a blocked highway near the old airport. Tensions were so high that some bystanders began calling loved ones to say goodbye, fearing that they would be caught in crossfire.

Thai soldiers stopped a large procession of red-shirt protesters from driving north out of town. The army leadership said later that they thought the convoy of red-shirt vehicles was likely planning to prevent groups of soldiers from upcountry from reaching Bangkok. Earlier in the week, troop trains had been temporarily been halted in the provinces by people sympathetic to the anti-government point of view.

So now here was another altercation, less than a week after rockets had been fired from who-knows-where, landing at a downtown sky train station and injuring several people. Everyone knew that the bullets on both sides of the highway standoff weren’t likely to be made of just rubber.

Our office was holding a meeting several hours south of Bangkok. A woman from my group, whose father had been sent to the highway scene for reasons connected to his civilian job, only learned how scared he had been when she saw several missed calls on her cell phone.

In the end, one soldier died, reportedly from friendly fire. The situation was only defused by a sudden heavy rainfall.

New Violence

Nobody died of protest-related violence for several days following the night of April 10, when twenty-plus (the original estimates were 8-18) protesters and soldiers were shot dead near Democracy Monument. The tension hasn’t lessened, but people’s nervousness has unfortunately started to seem normal. Nobody I know has been hurt, but nearly everyone I know expresses a mixture of discouragement and fright.

The number of protesters and soldiers standing off against each other have risen and fallen daily, but by and large they’re now concentrating in a known part of Bangkok. For most people who prefer not to be involved, that consolidation means clashes are easy to avoid. This part of town is several miles from where we live, and it’s not on the way to where I work.

Then last night explosions hurt several people, and killed one. I happened to be at a book club gathering. The host’s apartment was walking distance from the place where the person died. We didn’t hear any loud sounds, but in the middle of our meeting, suddenly everyone began to get text messages at the same time. We stopped talking and turned on the TV.

It emerged that the trouble was also quite close to the apartment of one of our members. She had left the meeting early because she wasn’t feeling well. A quick call reassured us that she had reached home safely, but there was definitely no going back to discussing the book we had all read.

Not since September 11th do I recall a topic being so close to the surface. The red-yellow-multicolor conflict is the kind of all-encompassing, unavoidable subject that you wake up to and fall asleep to. With a mixture of fascination and dread, you are lured to check the news often. Nearly all conversations here now eventually find their way to the question, “How will this all end?”

Improvement at Home

Jip’s low sodium episode ten days ago was unfortunately the worst one she has ever had, so she has taken longer than usual a while to bounce back. Luckily, it looks as if she will be as good as new, perhaps even better. The caregivers all report that she seems happier than before, and less married to her routines. Clearly the rough episode caused changes to Jip’s brain. The next few weeks will tell if they’re permanent changes, and if they’re as positive as they now appear.

Water Cooler

First day back at the office today after a trip to the U.S. and a long series of days off connected to Thai New Year. Politics of course dominated the water cooler conversations. Everyone I spoke to wishes that things would just return to normal, even though they know that there’s no longer such a thing. The balance of power has probably changed forever in Thailand.

Everyone is affected this time, unlike the other tumultuous episodes over the past couple years. There’s a heightened jumpiness, and more black humor than usual. Nobody wants a crackdown, but we all expect it. People’s feelings yo-yo between hope and dread.

Here’s another discouraging side to the standoff: lots of families are split over which side is right. I’ve heard several stories of adult children who can’t stand to talk politics with their parents ever since the protests began in earnest last month. One woman I know decided to go on a week-long meditation retreat rather than face her dad’s rants.

It’s another measure of how passionate people have become about the seismic societal shifts taking place. Everybody in this country is taught to respect mom and dad. Arguments, when they happened at all, used to be caused by money or love or alcohol—not by political affairs.

Recon

The sky train was up and running again today, allowing me the chance to get a bird’s-eye view of the site that for several days has been the center of red shirt activity. Very weird to ride past the big malls and see them shuttered. Normally the plazas outside these commercial centers are bustling with teenagers and tourists. Now they are packed with swaying protesters listening to round-the-clock speeches. Camped in the shady doorways of the malls are people resting on mats, taking a break from the sun.