Thailand 2010 - Farewell To A Year Of Calamity And Chaos

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Farewell to a year of calamity and chaos

By Tulsathit Taptim

The Nation

No, time does not fly. Its Facebook status for 2010 is: "I'm on a warp drive." Which is good, because there are things that we don't want to linger on, and the quicker they pass, the better. Thank you, 2010 for your merciful, speed-of-light passage, which enabled us to endure one painful experience after another in rapid succession.

Thank you, 2010, for the tough tests you gave us. The learning process is ongoing, but hey, what doesn't kill people can only make them stronger, or so we have been led to believe. It has been a remarkable education so far, and we hope all the blood, tears and lost lives will make this lesson impossible to forget.

Thank you for fine-tuning the role of Twitter. As a reporter, I had never thought that a major car crash would have a life span of about 10 minutes before it became old news. This brave new world gives people like me big challenges and opportunities, as well as some new friendships.

Dizzying local events cured my Farmville addiction, 2010. Again, thank you for that, as it would have been too much to plant watermelons, raise the cows, build stables, fulfil cooperative obligations and cover the failed peace talks between the government and the red shirts and Arisman Pongruangrong's Spider Man stunts all at the same time.

Thank you for the influx of Liars' Cameras. They turn Facebook walls into fashion Web pages and Twitter avatars college photos (although the catch is that when your fellow "tweetple" meet you in the flesh for the first time and they frown, it hurts a little). My not-so-young female colleagues also had something to cheer about every other day, and there is nothing like woman co-workers in a good mood.

Thank you for exposing (or confirming?) the greed of Steve Jobs and all his competitors. The daily arrivals of new smart phones and tablet models tell us their producers could have easily waited two weeks and combined "2" and "3" into one version. We have learned a valuable lesson: The second mouse has the cheese.

I can't thank you enough for bringing Krispy Kreme to Bangkok, but Inception and The Social Network were great. And the Thai women's 4 x 100 metres relay sprinters who beat host China to win the Asian Games gold medal were your most pleasant surprise. (I'll try to forget what you did to Liverpool and Thailand's national soccer team.)

The massive flooding wasn't nice, but it made the political "colours" temporarily converge, and at least for a while we felt like a strongly bonded nation once again. Thanks for that, and also for making the world come together for Haiti and the Chilean miners. You reminded us that we can be decent creatures during natural calamities. All we have to do is keep it up when it comes to trivial matters like ideological divisions.

Thank you for letting newspapers live for yet another year, and for having Julian Assange challenge conventional thinking on freedom of information and confirm what we always suspected about American diplomats. Thanks for having Victor Bout extradited to the United States without a single nuclear missile fired, and for turning Abhisit Vejjajiva and Hun Sen into Jack and Rose in "Titanic".

What you have done to the Thai economy is beyond me. I mean, 7.8 per cent or higher GDP growth in a year like this is insane. We'll take it, however, because it's not every day that you can demonstrate utter contempt for friends who get paid in US dollars. Here's hoping something huge will not spectacularly burst when your friend, 2011, takes over.

Thank you for all the celebrity scandals. This may sound inconsiderate, but one secret that nobody will ever tell you is that when someone as gorgeous as Rattapoom "Film" Tokongsap has that kind of problem, one that put him on suicide watch, you are somewhat inspired to carry on with your life.

Thank you for floating the concept of the "Juno Bill" and backing it up with the dead foetus horror at Phai Ngern Temple. We Thais need a real smack in the head more often.

And thank you for whatever I've failed to mention here. Oh, and the T-shirts sent to us by the mysterious "Not The Nation" team were cool (I assume it was a "team", because my boss said if it was a solo effort, I would be in danger of losing my job). We hope it will be tablet covers next year.

Will miss you, 2010. Goodbye.

-- The Nation 2010-12-30

[asiawatcher]

A good read... let's hope a few will learn from it. Later - 2010.