Days Of Living Nervously: My Flood Diary

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Days of living nervously: My flood diary

Tulsathit Taptim

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Saturday: They say only the paranoid survive.

What about the "lazy" paranoid? And if I'm not the worst kind, it has to be pretty close. Living in Lard Prao, long classified as one of the lesser "risky areas", my flood preparations so far involved the purchase of a dozen boxes of soya bean juice and vague ideas about which sofa had to be moved.

Lazy or not, when the closest neighbour - whose home is relatively higher than mine - locked up and moved his family upcountry, temporarily of course, I thought it was time I did something. Then it took about 200 metres, from my soi to the main road, for the weak resolve to be strengthened. Roadside shophouses had had cement walls erected, although they were clearly on higher ground than my soi.

The newfound resolve morphed into fright when the boy at a nearby shop selling construction materials looked at me as if I was ET. "Sandbags and bricks? People are going to Rayong to buy those, brother," he said. A construction sub-contractor then pulled to a stop near us. He asked for something and the boy said something that ended with "Rayong, perhaps."

Home Pro near my place was bustling. There were the determined customers - the bang-bang-bang shoppers who know exactly what they have to do - and the clueless ones that include you-know-who. The store was having a heyday, showcasing products that I hadn't known existed in this world, and selling them like krispy kreme.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been fun to watch this mass hysteria engulfing the store. I mean, if you raked waterworks into your shopping cart, a frantic trend would start immediately. When I arrived at the store, one man was carting out a bundle of "Future Board". By the time I left an hour and a half later, probably one-third of the shopping carts also had it.

What did I get? A couple of light bulbs, something to plug power sockets into, a plastic bowl that would be as useful as a stick in modern warfare, and a sense of nagging frustration about not having bought that damned Future Board.

Sunday: A Future Board mission ended predictably. "You should have come yesterday," a Home Pro employee told me. "Yeah, busy," I murmured. To prevent the trip from being a complete waste, I grabbed another silicon bottle to add to the one bought ages ago for a purpose I've already forgotten. At least I could shrug smugly when they said I needed a "gun" to use the silicon with. "Nah, have it already."

Twitter was depressing. I had expected politics to show more of its ugly face when the Bangkok situation grew more critical, and how right I was. I tweeted an Abac poll result that showed more than 80 per cent of 1,300 people surveyed felt that politics was rubbing salt in flood victims' wounds. An immediate feedback was: "Only 80 per cent?"

The Bangkok (would be?) versus provincial suffering debate could be in full swing in a day or two. Both sides of polarised Thailand are as guilty. Troops are taunted for their "association" with the Democrats, while Thaksin Shinawatra is linked to why Suphan Buri had not been flooded at the beginning of the central plains' crisis.

It is obvious. What the politicians on both sides may try to do to deflect blame or make themselves look good has been picked up on by some Thais. The resistance to politicisation that we had seen over the past few days was crumbling.

If Saturday was bad, Sunday is … wait … which team in red is that who are getting spanked on TV?

Monday: Polycarbonate here I come. Thanks to someone who knew a taxi-motorcyclist who knew my brother, it turned out that a shop 10 minutes drive from my place still had its last polycarbonate sheets. I made one very respectful phone call to the shop to make a reservation and raced out to grab four sheets of thick plastic that, even in this crisis, didn't look like Bt800 per unit to me. I ordered a few more silicon bottles, proclaiming proudly that I already had the gun.

Just when my anxiety started to ebb a little, the shop-owner asked where I would be parking my car. "I'm driving to a dry place in Chachoengsao," he said. I told him I still had no idea, though in my head at that moment I saw John Cusack racing against disappearing streets, with buildings collapsing all around him, in "2012". That's a hero I wanted to imitate.

TV footage and shared social media photos confirmed that I was among those lucky enough to still be able to panic. Floods were still roof-high in the provinces, many of which had started to be hit by cold spells. Millions have gone far beyond panic, and real struggles for survival and heroism are in abundance out there. There are tales of people fleeing floods from one place to another, and then to another and yet another. At my workplace, some colleagues are frantically finding safe sanctuary for their ill parents. A friend of my wife was losing touch with her elderly father who left home before it was flooded and could not come back.

Tuesday: Special holidays were declared by the government, but all around me, I felt no joy. The overall mood in the office was the same as anywhere in Bangkok, I guess - the feeling that it is getting closer and closer. News about affected colleagues was cascading in. People could still laugh, but within seconds they would pick up a phone and check on their loved ones.

I'm submitting this article Tuesday afternoon. The only bright spot of the day so far has been the upbeat cab-driver who took me to the office. (It's a real mess at the office car park, and I had to leave my car at home.) This taxi driver lives in Nong Chok - far riskier than my place - but his was a whatever-will-be-will-be attitude. "At least we're not hearing complaints that life is boring," he said.

-- The Nation 2011-10-26

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