Situation Briefing

Nobody is very happy with the verdict. (Though it is hard to see how the judges could have done less badly than the messy compromise they produced.) But after two years, a lot of disruptive protests and two extremely embarrassing fracas, most of the players are wary of being very disruptive. The only ones who are keen on violence or turmoil are probably people who are trying to stir up tensions to further their own ends. 浑水摸鱼的人。In a way, such people are like terrorists. Their objective is to create panic, to make people nervous. Usually they don't have enough resources to do this without the aid of their most helpful allies, natural flightiness and a media focused on bad news. So while there is a risk of disruption and possibly violence, it is smaller than the news might suggest.
To abort would be to give in, but you must be aware that by going ahead you are taking a small but very real risk. The situation on the ground will be complex and subtle. Large parts of the city will be as safe as ever; some parts may be at a slight risk of more grenade attacks; a few select locations may be evident targets.
You are not entering a war zone: far from it. It is still a country at peace. You just need to keep your eyes and ears wide open, your brain switched on, your schedule flexible and durable enough, and you'll be fine.
(Also, remember that in some situations running away from the grenade is more effective than the SAF anti-grenade drill.)

Best Workplace Introduction Ever

"Everyone in this school is failing. Nobody cares. It's okay." [big smile]

The Buck Stops There

The magic number is 21,100. In the interests of this overpopulated, overcrowded Earth, I actually hope there doesn't need to be a second time.
Update. Day 1 and there's a constitutional crisis. Awesome.

Signs of Independence

The Roman script on the road signs in Laos and Cambodia (where they exist) reads "Rue", "Avenue" or "Quai". Thailand's signs just say "Thanon". It's a tiny but persistent reminder that while Siam may have waned and waxed, it has managed to maintain a subtle but unmistakeable independence from the prevailing Powers.
That's what genuine independence is like: quiet, understated and confident. Not brash and loud like what newly-independent nation-states tend to do.

Good Morning

... from as far from the busywork-preoccupied global village as could possibly be.

I wonder what it was meant to say.

May all that could possibly be bad go away, and everything good come to you ... and thank you for coming ...

We need to talk about your stopover

Either I have very strong nerves, or I am just an extremely blockheaded idiot. I suppose I'll find out which view shall prevail when the plane touches down at Suvarnabhumi. Maybe earlier, but I hope not.

Daily Dose of Perspective

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
-- Carl Sagan 

"Is it your country?"

Well, no. Because I don't have a country in the same palpable sense that you do. Countries are mere legal fictions; passports are only bureaucratic conveniences.
Home is other people. There isn't a place I call home. There are bits of home scattered around. Some places happen to have a slightly higher concentration of them, but that's all there is to it. It doesn't really make those places special in any (other) way.
At the moment, there happen to be some faint bits of home where you would rather not schedule any stopovers. But never mind. You'll never understand what I'm talking about.

Corollary to Riposte

So, if you haven't realised it yet, failure is not an option. You can either work hard, or die horribly. (Well, not literally. Maybe not.) Good luck.

Riposte, Part Two

And no, I will not prepare a contingency plan for this. If you're planning an Everest ascent, you don't usually put in a contingency plan to scale an easier peak somewhere else just in case you couldn't make your original target. Well, you could, but it would be terribly lame.

Riposte

Someone said (today) that mathematicians are usually intensely concentrated people who, to put it bluntly, do not really have a life. I say, look at von Neumann.

Sunset over Jurong Island

The Monster of Concrete

Vientiane has no pretensions to being Paris. That's probably just a colourful lie told by foreigners. With enough imagination (or Beerlao, or preferably both), Avenue Lane Xang could conceivably vaguely resemble the Avenue Champs-Elysees, and Patuxai the Arc de Triomphe. Just in case somebody does actually try to imagine that, though, the introduction to the Patuxai, on a concrete slab on the ground floor, tells us that, because construction was "never complete due to the country's turbulent history", "[f]rom a closer distance, it appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete." In this age of slick overmarketing of tourist non-attractions, that kind of frankness deserves some credit.