All across the country people are mourning for the late HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana. The PM's office announced last Wednesday that officials of government agencies and state enterprises dress in black for 15 days to mourn her death including flags to be lowered to half-mast. So everyday this week and probably next week we will be men and ladies in black. Someone told me that it is some sort of a requirement especially those who works in the government or other sectors. According to the source, if you fail to abide with the rules, you could sleep behind bars for 25 days! Imagine a news headline that goes "So and so was arrested due to dress-code offense" or "A XXX citizen was arrested for wearing yellow"...

Hobbit and I were watching news on several Thai channels a couple of days ago and noticed that certain programs were in B&W. We looked at each other and tried different solutions to fix the problem but hey, there was nothing wrong with the telly! When we switch to Australian channel and other Korean channels, color resolution worked perfectly fine. 'Til later on I found out that some Thai channels joined in the mourning period too! Except for some advertisement. *_*

Another experience was at a restaurant. How do the chefs, waiters and waitress whose normal uniforms are white in color join the mourn? Well, they pin a small piece of black cloth to their left sleeve to show the intention.

The time I remembered having a black piece of cloth pinned to my left sleeve was when my 'Ah Gong',maternal grandfather, passed away. One of my brother, a little kid at that time, lost his piece during the burning ceremony (we had to burn all the black pieces together in a special ceremony after 100 days) and we couldn't find it. A few days past and mom found the piece still pinned to Mitch's shirt. So mom consulted 'Ah Po' grandmother and was told that she needed to burn the piece immediately together with my brother's shirt! The wearing of black mourning clothes is a local Chinese custom with no religious significance. Wearing 'boon tar cloth is a Confucian practice. Whew traditions...