Friday, April 2, 2010

...and now the Pink Shirts....


Well, Thais do have a love of uniforms.  University students take great pride in all looking alike (can you imagine students at Berkeley agreeing to wear a uniform?) and at my local bank, all the tellers have pretty purple outfits so that sometimes I feel more like I'm on a plane than trying to cash a check.

So it comes as no surprise that the anti-red, anti-yellow, anti-blue, anti-demonstration demonstrators will all turn up in PINK shirts this Saturday, much to the chagrin of the people's liberation front.

The choice of pink is rather special for me, even though I don't like it much.  You see, I was born on a Tuesday.  In Thailand, every day has its own color and there was a time when in the royal court, it was actually compulsory to wear the official color of the day.  So I could pretend they were all wearing it my honour, but in fact the color is a tribute to a far higher entity.

Although the red shirts gained much from appearing on the same stage as the government and being seen to state their case on nationwide television, some of their gains are being wiped away by a sort of demagogic truculence, and by the fact that other factions in other shirts are popping up everywhere, somewhat belying the idea that there is a sort of unified Vox Populi of whom the reds are the anointed spokespersons.  The yellows have been making pronouncements, and then there were the business suits, and now the pinks.  I am holding out for purple because that's the official color of the Bangkok Opera ...

... and, of course, the color of Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, whose birthday is today and in whose honour we're performing the Rossini tonight....

A very happy birthday to her royal highness....

No comments:

Post a Comment