Raucous Din No Alarm For Asean Delegates

[george]

Raucous din no alarm for Asean delegates

By John Le Fevre

BANGKOK (thaivisa.com) -- Delegates at the 43rd Asean summit underway at the Laguna Phuket Resort might have their proceeding briefly interrupted next week by explosions, and large groups of people banging pots and generally making lots of noise.

However, unlike the events that saw proceedings abandoned in Pattaya earlier this year, the raucous din will be of little concern to security forces guarding the conference and purely reflect some local tradition.

Next Wednesday, at a little after 8am, as much as 20 percent of the Sun will be blocked out by a partial solar eclipse as the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth.

The eclipse is the longest that will occur in the 21st Century, lasting for up to six minutes 39 seconds in China, where it will be a total blackout.

Traditional Thai and Chinese belief is that a solar eclipse is caused by a great celestial dragon attacking the sun and attempting to consume it, and it is the responsibility of all good citizens to try to frighten the giant away by making noise – banging cooking pots, lighting fireworks and, more recently, shooting into the air.

Given the high-level of security that has been thrown up around the Asean meeting, Phuket residents have been advised that discharging firearms into the air, or in any other direction, might not be such a good idea this time around.

Residents of Phuket interested in observing the celestial phenomenon, whether Thai or foreign, have been invited to attend an eclipse viewing at the traffic circle in front of the dean’s office at the campus of Rajabhat Phuket University, with protective eyewear being provided free of charge to those attending.

While Phuket residents will see just a 20 percent eclipse, it will also be visible to people in other parts of Thailand, subject to cloud cover, with those in the north experiencing as much as a 60 percent blackout.

Those interested in viewing the eclipse should not do so without adequate eye protection as looking at the photosphere of the Sun (the bright disk of the Sun itself), even for just a few seconds, can cause permanent damage to the retina of the eye.

-- thaivisa.com 2009-07-18

[jamesjdaly]

....... Phuket residents have been advised that discharging firearms into the air, or in any other direction, might not be such a good idea this time around......

So any other time is acceptable? Pathetic!