Who's Bob?

Reopening of Erawan Shrine after the bombing

Everyone must know what happened this week in Bangkok.  On Monday evening, a sizeable bomb exploded in central Bangkok at the well known and well loved Erawan shrine, causing death, injury and destruction.  As you can imagine everyone in Bangkok that night has a story.  What is mine? 

Monday after work, I went to Mega BangNa to buy new shoes.  From there, I went to Om's place for dinner.  When it was time to leave Om's and have him take me to the skytrain station for getting home, I saw that he was taking a long time reading messages on Line. 
So I asked - What is happening? 
He replied - It is 'Bob'. 
In surprise, I asked - Who is Bob? 
To which, he replied - No, bomb.
Bomb!  Where?  He then said that people were killed and I realised it was serious.  We went on from there. 

The point of my story is that when one is firmly part of a local community in a Bangkok of today's world, the news reaches you first and with most impact by means of local friendship and social networks using the social media.  This was my first experience of learning a story of such import in this way.  I found this informal channel of communication to be incredibly quick but if it was to be helpful, there was one big question.  How reliable is their message?  I have to say that I found their news shared to be reliable and also effective in then dealing with the question of how best to get home.  When I got home, I checked it out on both BBC and Aljazeera and there it was. 

It was not Bob but a bomb and very sad and very worrying.