onionluke

If i , had been a high flying exec , had travelled on some kind of special boat , had survived masturbation group therapy , had time to read a lot of books , had a direct line with the deceased , a natural danger revealing sense and bullet proof skin , I would be well happy with that and probably looking for a new hobby like playing the uke or whatever .

News flash !!! These photos just in .

...faced up to my cultural responsibilities.

Is it that time already ?

I had better get the bagpipes out for a bit of trans cultural noodling .

Anyone remember Hale Bop ? It orbited right past without even a hallo .

It was only a few months back that ol Charlie and Cammella were attacked in dear old London town , by English people .

No but seriously , at least the visit went without noteable incident . What's a small demo, a bit of stone throwing and a bomb going to change . I hope the peace process in NI will continue to succed despite this . It is my belief these splinter groups do not have any substantial support from the public . Peace .

Luke

Why are you giving us all this American crap ? This is Asia man , people struggle to feed their families .

I shipped some stuff from HK a few years back, old electronic stuff , some household, books , music and childrens toys, and the customs in BK held it until we gave them 14000 bhat .We live up country and they knew it . The guy on the phone, over 3 weeks as we negotiated trying to get our general household junk was a bit sneaky .

We had to pay in the end even after my wife sending her passport to BK . There were no stamps stating she had been entering Hk as she has residence status . So the guy said she hadn't been there . When she explained the HK status he said , see your not really Thai then . They sent us my packing list with their bill with their fee price beside it .

Childrens Plastic Table - 500 bhat

I box of kitchen ware - 800 bhat

and so on . <deleted> we paid . Mrs Onions explained this is the way of it .

I am only glad they weren't familiar with rare vinyl records and they were lumped in with the cd's.

Luke

I also love the Rubaiyat..

"'tis all a chequer board of nights and days,

where destiny with men for pieces plays,

hither and thither moves and mates and slays,

and one by one, back in the closet lays."

to the OP... your first sentence..."i have been reading and meditating on and off for years

but feel like an absolute beginner".....

it is the 'on and off' which is why you feel you have made no real progress.

If we try to boil a kettle and keep unplugging it it will never boil.

Intensive practice is the key.....which is why intensive retreats are the best.

I also love the Rubiyat and it reapears every now and then , thank you .

Come fill the glass

and in the fire of spring

the winter garment of repentence fling.

Ask the electric company to come out and read your meter and then evaluate your bill on how many units you have used and then show them the bill from the condo management company . Then offer that amount to the management company in the presence of the electric company guy .

I knew the day was coming where the word 'Mexican" was gonna be a pejorative.

"Yes waiter I'll have some 'South of the Border' food"

And do you have onion bhadjis ?

Bhadjis !! Bhadjis !! We don need no steenking bhadjis

I tried the little living shrimp douced in lime and fish sauce once .Great beer food ! They were all jumping around , what a party .

Hello ,

Do have one contractor or are you paying tradesmen for the diffrent works. It makes sense to finish the job while the men are up there. Start by pointing out the welds out to the fella in charge .

You should clean the slag off the welds , clean up with a wire brush and coat the area in primer . While you have men up there you should also clean up any obvious rust and then primer . This will protect the welds from future corrosion and hopefully prevent unsightly rusty water runs appearing at a later date . What kind of tiles are you installing ? I am only asking because the roof I had built 3 years ago has become a roost for lots of little birds due to the space left by the contour .

Yeeeaaah !! I'm still here !! Get it right up yeez ya bunch of christian fundamentalist nutters !!! Iam away for ma morning debau c h rryyyy fizzcracklebanfizzzzzpopopopo ploop............................... ssssssssssssss...................... (vaporising noises)... .

One thing that COULD happen by the end of this comming summer is the United States might be in financial ruin... similar to other countries who spent more than they brought in. The USA is on the brink of bankruptcy and are printing money to fill the voids. Price of goods (including food) could shoot through the roof and the fall out could take a lot of other countries with it.

True, but I'm not sure that this is what Mr Camping had in mind, Ian.

An intelligent and sensitive Thai colleague (MEd Chula and all that) spoke to me in a rather anxious tone yesterday about this. A fairly new Christian, I think, she wanted to know if the Bible really did provide grounds for belief in 21 May 2011 as the Rapture. It was hard to explain the prophetic books to her without wounding her new-found faith, so I just said there are no timetables in the Bible (Daniel and Revelation included).

I suspect Thai Christians do worry about these things. At another school I was at before Y2K the senior assistant director used to get kids and staff together and show them videos about how we'd all be off to h_ll in a handcart because of Y2K.

People like Harold Camping, Pastor Terry Jones and others really do have a lot to answer for.

"At least the world will end , an event anticipated with great joy by many. It will end very soon , but not in the year 2000 , which has come and gone . From that I conclude that God was not heavily into numerology. "

Kurt Vonnegut . Hocus Pocus 1990

I enjoy home cooking and eating in town . I would say that the quality of the food in an eatery varies on a daily basis just as much as homemade . Some of my favourites are tom pla , om gai , larb phet , som tam tua with the green beans. I occasionaly cook some western pasta for my son . We make bread and sun dry tomatoes . Aaaargh it must be dinner time .

I was looking for similar stuff up in Ubon - old LP's in particular - any info for a fellow womble ?

Hard to find. cassette tape was the favourite media type in the past. Old vinyl is really are rare item and you are not the first collector searching for it. So there are not really established stores for it, but maybe a lucky find in some kind of garage sale or any other kind of second hand sales.

Consider also the population size and how many people could afford a record player back these days.

Keep your eyes open, my dream is to spot an old dusty music box loaded with 7inches and top hits of the 50's/60's in the backside of some roadside restaurant and the owner more than happy that someone offers to take that finally away.

That's the one . I hope there is enough to go around . I will be working in HK later this year and there are some good stalls at Sham Shui Po market . I would like to find some Thai music - country or whatever really . There was a thread about old juke boxes , I remember one I used to chuck money into in Samsen soi 2 in Banglampu ,it was just a hole in the wall across from the restaurant where the guy used to wistle at passers buy to come eat . I don't know what medim the songs were on . I would be interested in one that could play 45's .

Luke

I was blissfully unaware .

Remember it's a jungle out there

If I was having trouble turning down my biological mechanism I would just have wank before I went out hunting .

Hoorah

The post was not to express whether speaking Thaiglish is right or wrong but to allow people to know that Thai (some) people, who do actually have a decent grasp of English think that when a farang starts to speak to them in Thaiglish they make themselves sound stupid.

Why do it? If you actually listen to how others speak to Thai people, you may agree that they do sound quite ridiculous. I know I do.

Plus, as my wife states, as well as her mates who discussed it, many Thai people are quietly laughing behind your back without you knowing what they think of you. They also speak about you in Thai! You lose respect by speaking in this way of which, I have to agree with my wife (for once).

As mentioned, they think you sound like complete plonkers!

Don't do it!!!

How you speak to the Thai people has to depend on where you are in Thailand. We have not all frequented areas where English is well known and understood.

Your example of ' where you go? Rather than saying where are you going?'

That is too complex a structure for many Thai people out in the sticks who have a very basic understanding of English.

This idea of everyone speaking perfect English to a Thai out in the sticks is, frankly, pathetic. It is the same as expecting us all to speak perfect thai with little or no previous teaching / learning in the language.

So a mixture works and if it works use it until such times as we can get the people we are talking to to understand better syntax.

Rome was not built in a day.

Did you do it and they were all laughing at you and you couldn't handle it because you are usually the one telling all and sundry what they should and shouldn't be doing and saying because they sound like plonkers ?

Just bark like a dog and then say " I Doolittle "

I was looking for similar stuff up in Ubon - old LP's in particular - any info for a fellow womble ?

Do you collect Nazi paraphernalia ?

I am 40 years old . My wife, son and I moved to Thailand in September 2008 in the midst of the financial crisis . I had no idea about visa regulations and believed I could come in on a tourist and suss it out later . I found out by trial and error what visa was best for me . I have had a non o multiple based on marriage for the past two years . I am working away in construction and come and go a fair bit . I do call Thailand home and we have built a wee bungalo up country . Home is where your heart is .

"What's that in the shadows ? Don't don't don;t don't don't don't don't don't look around yooo !" Shug.

A Laotian nanny is no threat to the Royal Thai Navy because Laos is landlocked.

Many moons ago I got off the river ferry at Savanakhet with a surf board . The immigration guard in his little wooden hut told me I was not allowed to bring a canoe into Laos . I explained to him it wasn't a canoe but a surf board and I was really only on my way to Vietnam to Charlie's Point or somewhere . I had to leave it there until I had been granted my Vietnam visa . They were very serious about the whole issue . After a few days hanging around the Phantipab hotel I got my visa and surf board and went to Vietnam . The guy remembered me a month later on the way back and sold me a bottle of Bushmills for 5 $ that nearly killed me . Oh i have been rambling on a bit ,happy memories , the point is though Laos had its security issues .The Lao Bao border crossing was another story altogether .