Computer Crash Spoils Thai Valentine Weddings

[george]

Computer crash spoils Thai Valentine weddings

BANGKOK - Love's labours were lost for hundreds of Thai couples hoping to tie the knot on Valentine's Day, as a computer glitch left lovebirds broken-hearted at the altar, reports said Sunday.

The online marriage registration system of central Phitsanulok province crashed Saturday on the most inopportune of days, as several hundred couples lined up outside district offices only to learn that a malfunction would leave them single for at least another 24 hours.

Phitsanulok officials were not reachable Sunday for comment, but couples expressed their indignation at being turned away on the most romantic day of the year.

"We're really disappointed," Sampan Unanan and Sutharat Bureang, who had waited since last March to get hitched, told the Nation newspaper after waiting in vain at a district office.

Phitsanulok is one of eight Thai provinces which have begun using an online marriage registration system, the English-language daily reported.

Despite the glitch, hundreds of other couples managed to exchange vows in adventurous or bizarre ways on Valentine's Day, a love commemoration which has exploded in popularity in the kingdom in recent years.

Thirteen couples donned wetsuits and diving gear to take their vows deep in the Andaman sea off the coast of southern Trang province, while seven other couples reportedly cast off into the sky in hot air balloons over northern Thailand to say "I do."

Thailand's corrections department organised its own ode to the institution of marriage, allowing its first-ever Valentine's Day group wedding.

The so-called "Walls cannot separate our love" ceremony saw five convicts, all serving one to three years on drugs charges, marry their non-prisoner brides at Nonthaburi jail. A trio of couples in Prachin Buri province east of Bangkok climbed a cliff at a picturesque waterfall and signed their marriage papers 70 metres (77 yards) above ground, the Bangkok Post reported.

Over 100 couples were married in a mass ceremony conducted by a revered Buddhist monk in Nakhon Ratchasima, and nine pairs in Nakhon Si Thammarat province exchanged their vows in front of 2,000 witnesses before enduring a five-hour trek to the top of a mountain, where they spent a one-night honeymoon, it said.

Hundreds of couples who tied the knot at Chiang Mai's district office had perhaps the most adventurous weddings of all, reportedly receiving eggs as wedding gifts from a government struggling to rid the country of the bird flu virus and convince a wary population that poultry products are safe to eat.

--AFP 2004-02-16

[francois]

you bet it was a windoz server

better use your feet and go to city-hall, the streets do not crash ... unless an inopportune earthquake happens

francois

badluck for the unfortunate inmates due to marriage too