{"id":9844,"date":"2022-03-06T04:12:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-06T12:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/?p=9844"},"modified":"2022-03-05T20:31:54","modified_gmt":"2022-03-06T04:31:54","slug":"the-seventh-coup-attempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/philippines\/the-seventh-coup-attempt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Seventh Coup Attempt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You would think that after failing six times, the plotters would have given up. But they didn\u2019t. Maybe there\u2019s something about the excitement of the whole thing that appeals to certain people. Whatever their reasons were, the seventh coup attempt was the biggest and most deadly of them all. It lasted for nine days, and by the end of it, ninety-nine people were dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was in Manila when it broke out, not far from where the insurgents were marching and shooting. Many of my friends lived much closer. And since the rebel forces were on the move, we were advised to stay inside. It was sort of like a COVID lockdown except this was 1989 not 2020. We didn\u2019t have cell phones or Zoom or Netflix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how did we entertain ourselves? We called each other, and we watched TV news, and we looked out the window. In my apartment building, we stood on our balconies and went up on the roof. Since our building was twenty stories high, we had a good view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing about human beings: we’re incurably curious, even when it might be a bad idea. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n