Bericht uit Thailand

Vanavond is er geen schaken wegens koninginnedag. Dan kunnen we mooi even de tijd en ruimte vullen met een non-schaak item! Regis reist voor zijn werk de gehele wereld af, en hij stuurde het volgende berichtje:

A quick note to warn you it's not looking good re. the next EPNS 2 game, I'm on a project in Asia and probably won't be back before ~15th May.

I made a stop in Thailand -was supposed to work from there- but we had to leave a bit in a hurry and change plans because I arrived on the day they fired grenades in the crowd (Thursday)!
Turns out my hotel was round the corner from the barricades (the red shirts are occupying a park next to the business district and palace) and my office was on the other side of the park. As the situation was becoming unclear on Friday, we took off (and got stuck on massive traffic jams as the trains/metro were suspended and everybody figured out the army was about to move in).
I did not see anything too dodgy (don't want to make it look like I was in the middle of the riots!) but the trip from hotel to office was crossing the "hot zone".
And there were quite a few soldiers with protections and auto handguns around.
Attached a little souvenir, shot from the cab (in case you want to post a non chess topic on the ENPS blog :-)

Now working out of Sydney, might go back to Singapore or KL or Bangkok at some point.

Good luck with the next match, wish I was around to help secure the promotion

Regis Huc