This is to ease Mama’s concerns a bit.
It seems I got it slightly off-beam last night. When you get a “going to level 5” message, a phone call saying things are going down bad in Delta area and the guards staying for the night (on a piece of carpet on a concrete floor), I assumed that things were going bad.
It seems the Delta thing was nothing more serious than any other rock night, and when you have a bevy of security forces with decent equipment, at the end of the day, they ought to be able to dampen down things, and obviously they did.
Today seemed perfectly calm and for a level 5 (whatever that is), no problems at all.
So sorry for raising the sweat levels, except if you live at Delta 4.
Egads! SOL is on to me. I guess a blog site isn’t exactly private correspondance. My daughter immediately found out that I had been inquiring about the news, weather & sports from your fair corner of the world. Glad to hear things are quiet – for the moment. Hey, what’s a litttle stoning or two. It’s part of the expat adventure. Keep up the good reporting; fatoldsod, too. Mama
P.S. I bet all your Moms & Mums are worried, too! Is Level 5 hopefully a 5 out of 10 or a 5 out of 5, as in have your bags packed, passport clenched between your teeth?
Blissful ignorance is a wonderful thing. So a friend of mine didn’t know about the “level 5” warning, didn’t know about any trouble at all and went walking over the hills Friday morning. No problems, wonderful time had.
And I find out that thanks to a trivial decision to buy food at Tiger Fuel, I didn’t take my preferred beach road route at 1:30pm on the dot. At 1:30pm on the dot, I was told a UN police vehicle (on the beach road route near Pertamina wharf) was attacked by a stone throwing mob yielding all windows broken and considerable body damage. It didn’t seem to matter that there were 3 armed UN police inside.
Moral of the story is firstly that the trivial decision could have gone the other way. And secondly, never pretend to be a UN policeman.
Reuters has it from Reinado that the Aussies are going to attack his fortress tonight (Sat). I guess his talk Friday with the Attorney General did not meet to his satisfaction. Please send an update when you hear anything, if this is indeed true. I may just have to come over there armed with my famous chocolate chip cookies & talk to him myself. Mama
P.S. Hey the truism “Never trust a man who doesn’t drink” is a quip from our very own sot, W.C. Fields.