Thursday 12 February 2009

The start of my connection issues, the crunch begins to bite

No internet now for 7 days. I hate being off line. I can’t phone anyone. I can’t email, I can’t check my mails. I haven’t been able to do my last minute Xmas shopping and get my mum to post it out for us. I am on strict instructions not to spend the 2 days we get in Bangkok shopping (and frankly I would rather spend the time as a family having a holiday than haring around trying to arrange stocking fillers etc), but since the airport there is pretty majorly infested with Anti government protestors, the chances of us actually making it to Bangkok in the next two weeks are slim.

My friend in Bangkok, the Mighty L, reports that protestors have even ripped apart images of the Queen of Thailand in the Northern provinces (in response to her attending the funeral of a pro-government rally victim) which is quite out of character for Thailand and quite worrying for the future of the monarchy there. The monarchy in Thailand being not quite as kosher as one might like, but definitely better than the utter crack pots who would otherwise be in charge of the political spectrum. The fact that the airport has been occupied for more than a week and, umm, the army have not been ordered in by the government to empty it says quite a lot about who is in charge there. Or about the power stalemate. Why is the government not just sending the army in? Why do the BBC reporters keep referring to the “military” levels of organization of the protestors etc?! Perhaps because the government is no longer in charge of the army, and the army are helping the anti-government rallies. I am glad we don’t live there any more.

Having said that, the continuing gloom in the global recession is not at all good either. God. I am not sure if you want to be miserable in places like London and kind of grieve along with all the others as people lose their jobs, and all the fun in life is removed with financial constraints. Or whether one is better off living somewhere utterly bonkers anyway, where things will likely remain fairly bonkers and the possible solutions to a down turn will be interesting to see. I don’t know. We still have skiing 20 minutes away, but not if the lift operator goes out of business. But surely the super-rich Kazakhs would not want to be embarrassed in front of their Asian neighbours and admit poverty to the extent that the 2001 Asian winter games would have to be cancelled for a lack of lift facilities.

The worlds largest outdoor ice rink (until Mexico city unveiled a very wet-looking one on the news today which is apparently bigger) at Medeu, which is just outside town, was open all summer with no ice on it.  Now that it is cold enough for everyone to want to go skating on it, they have shut it to prepare for the 2011 Asian games and it is surrounded by 20-foot metal fences like everywhere else in town (to cover up non-working credit-crunch-quiet building sites.

One of the big plant storage areas next to the biggest development site in town caught on fire a week or so ago at the weekend and we passed it as we were heading off to a shop somewhere while the fire engines were there. And the first thing that came to my mind was, “Oh, XXX Development company’s  plant and materials depot is on fire. I wonder if that was an arson attack/insurance claim then.”

Off to watch the news to check the status of the Thai airport again then bed.

Tomorrow we begin to move into our new house. I should be sounding much more chipper.

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