Please Be Careful Today

[poldebol]

This morning, I made a big tour with my motorbike, using mainly the back roads around Arunyaprtathet and Sa Kaeo. At almost every place where I stopped, drunk people were celebrating Happy New Year. At one of the army roadblocks I was offered a whisky by a Ranger. If people are already drunk at noon, they will be drunk on the road in a few hours. Please be careful and come home in one piece.

Nevertheless: a happy New Year to all TV-users.

[SeanMoran]

Thank you Poldebol. I will remember your wise advice tonight when I am sitting here at the apartments' swimming pool celebrating NYE quietly with a friend and try not to lament the fact that almost everyone else is out there tonight living it up to the max, while we stay here with nitnoy sanuk. She told me yesterday that she can't swim but I reckon I've got Buckley's of getting her into a pair of bathers for dog-paddle lessons tonight, even after a few Singhas.

I returned a phone-call that came through during a lunchtime English lesson (I never even look at the Nokia mid-lesson to discourage students from it) just after 2pm and it was a new friend of mine who would appear to be one of the senior constables from here in the village who has kindly encouraged me not to even venture up the street to the minimart on my Honda if there is the slightest whiff of booze on my breath, and when he eventually worked out who was returning his phone-call, I picked by the jovial slurring and foreground/background laughter that he is having an impromptu day off today, as a good start to his two official days off tomorrow.

I went to the little minimart just next door to the apartments (that still doesn't sell Chang Lite) and the folks across the road (around a dozen) were getting into it already with the whiskey and Sangsom, and it was rude of me, but I had to regretfully turn down the offer of a glass of it, to try to stay reasonably lucid until midnight.

It's certainly looking like a lucky night to stay off the roads when you're on a bike and half the other drunkards around are driving pickups.

Thanks for the wise advice and please remember to be maintain the best level of situational awareness to all who find the necessity to leave home tonight.

Chook Dee Maak, Kap, and Happy New Year for tomorrow.

(Don't start it off in a body bag.)

[Credo]

I enjoy staying home on New Years. Going to bed early. Getting woken up by Happy New's greetings and SMSs. Then getting up early. It's just too big of a hassle to go out and too crowded.