YOU'RE FIRED

Oh great, last year when I mailed some New Year's cards for a friend who was vacationing in Singapore, some of his friends thought he returned early just to mail the cards. Ha! No it was just me trying to help out but this year I forgot. Don gave me the cards in mid-December and I placed them with the rest of my Christmas bags only to be forgotten. December 26th came and went and on Dec. 30th at 3:30 PM, thirty minutes AFTER the post office closed I remembered the cards and probably only because I received a late Christmas card from a friend in Boston. When I placed it with the rest of the cards I had received I spotted Don's bag of New Years cards. YIKES! This time his friends will wonder why the cards were late.

Troubling news out of Bangkok today as a number of explosions on New Years Eve, possibly the work of anti-coup people (P.M. Thaksin supporters) killed two and injured a number of others. These occurred in areas of the city that I am familiar with. I will have to monitor this situation closely as I leave next week for Thailand although Bangkok is the final stop of a three city visit. Hopefully things will have settled down by then and that these New Years incidents were only intended to create mass chaos. Heck, the celebrants at World Central Plaza where I go frequently did not seem to be too concerned and did not want to leave when the police told them to do so for their own safety, so could things be as bad as some people might think? The King and the interim P.M. have a touchy situation on their hands anyway. If I have to skip Bangkok and extend my stay in Pattaya or Chiang Mai I am not going to be too upset.