CORRECTION (in response to the comment below): I made a typo when entering the Thai text on the sign. It should read วันนี้รวย not วันนี้รวม. Regardless, my translation of “Today you’ll be rich” was correct.

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วันจันทร์ที่ 17 พฤษภาคม พ.ศ. 2553

I’ve been in my apartment for five days now.

The thing is, I had to stop and think for a moment before I could come up with that number. At first I told people that I was bored, but I think what I really meant was that I was bored with Thai politics and situations like this. My apartment is right on the edge of the Ratchaprasong area which – in addition to Rama 4, Din Deang, and Klong Toei – has seen the bulk of the violence, so I mostly just sit in my apartment with the blinds closed. I practice yoga and pranayama, I read books, I work on the book that I’m writing, I work on the screenplay that I’m writing with a friend, but mostly I spend hours and hours reading Twitter.

Today I told myself that I’d keep myself off news from 11am until 5pm, but then around 2pm I heard bombs (or gunfire) in the distance so I plopped myself down in front of the computer and spend the next three hours reading the endless stream that comes out of Twitter. I did get a good chunk of writing on my screenplay done in advance, but once I shifted my brain over to news-mode, my ability to do anything creative was lost.

Even though my neighborhood is totally safe, it is just a 10 minute walk away from an area where live bullets are being used, so I rarely venture out. About once every two days, I’ll bring some plastic containers to the restaurant down the street and have them fill me up with enough to last two days. In front of my apt, at the intersection of Phaya Thai road (which runs to MBK) and Petchabury (which runs to Pantip plaza and then the Ratchaprasong area), the military has had a checkpoint setup since Thursday. Anyone who lives or works in that area has to register before they are allowed access. When I went to work on Thursday morning, I had to take a motorcycle taxi from that point to Thong Loh. At first, the soldiers told me that I would have to leave my driver’s license while I was at work but eventually they let me through. I think they may have been confused as to how to deal with a foreign ID.

On Saturday when I went out, this industrious woman had setup a stand selling tickets for the twice-monthly lottery. Her sign วันนี้รวย means “today you’ll be rich”. It’s the normal sign that lottery vendors display, however today it seemed a bit unsettling. Richness isn’t what we need right now.

I stocked up on yogurt and chocolate from 7-11 when this started, today when I walked down to see if they had anything else I needed, I found that the windows were covered with newspaper and the shelves were practically empty. All of the instant noodles were long gone, all that remained was some ice-cream and some CP meals which looked too gross for people to consider eating.

I’m trying to figure out if time feel like it is speeding-up or slowing-up. I feel the acceleration when I realize that five days have past in the blink of an eye, and I feel the deceleration when I watch my adopted home fall to pieces in front of my eyes. It really makes me sad to watch protestors beating soldiers, soldiers shooting people, friends on facebook advocating violence, etc …

I bought this painting a couple of years ago from an artist who had spent time with the PAD at the government house protests and at the airport closure. Even though I disagreed with his politics, I bought it because I liked the meaning behind it. He told me that in his months out with the PAD, he saw people driven to do and say horrible things that the normally wouldn’t. That the environment we’re in can play a huge role in what we think and do, and that the most important thing we can do is to step back and calmly think before we do anything.