As the long-awaited Thailand Futures Exchange made its debut trading session last Friday, dozens of key financial honchos flocked to the SET building on Ratchadaphisek Road. Reporters frantically pumped these all-important sources. Then in the afternoon, they crowded into the press room to clear a pile of stories to meet their deadlines.

If it had been a normal day, reporters would have been happy to attend a press conference presided over by SET president Kittiratt Na Ranong and mobbed the conference hall well before time.

But with loads of work to submit before the long weekend and the press conference scheduled to take place in the late afternoon, they were reluctant to move from their computers.

So Kittiratt needed extra help to drum up attendance.

The SET public-relations team was dispatched down to the second-floor press room to encourage and cajole the reporters to appear at the press conference up on the 11th floor.

Minutes ticked by, but there was no sign of movement. Desperate, the team beseeched the reporters to leave right then, because Kittiratt had just phoned them to say he was ready to take the podium.

The reporters were reluctant at first, because the press conference was supposed to be only an announcement of arrangements for the SET's annual fair. But in the end, they were all quite happy, because Kittiratt dropped a big bombshell about the hot-ticket Thai Petrochemical Industry case.

The lesson is: don't break protocol, even for a long weekend.