Northwindhermit

Thanks for the responses, folks.

I appreciate your viewpoints, and it helps me to navigate within this surreal system.

I have been here for a decade on a Retirement Visa, extending it every year, and the next Extension of Stay is coming up soon. This year, my Thai wife suddenly tells me that a new Immigration form is required, one from our household owner. Her father owns the house we have lived in Nonthaburi for 10 years.

So I looked around and found Thai Immigration form Tm30, “Notification from House-Master, Owner or the Possessor of the Residence where Alien Has Stayed,” a form with flawed English grammar and spelling but otherwise understandable.

But my Thai wife insists that this is NOT the right form, since it says “Must notify within 24 hours from the time of arriving at the residence.” But I have lived here for a decade with no problem. She says that I need a Form “Tm23,” which I am unable to locate.

Please tell me who is crazy here: me, my wife, or the system? (In this heat, maybe all three.)

First telescope for a 12-year old? I recommend going with just such an inexpensive refractor. It could get them hooked on star-gazing and a better scope may be justified someday in the future. A small scope makes one learn the sky, expanding your limited choice of targets. But one’s first astronomy tool should be a Star Map of some kind.

As my first scope, I bought a 60mm refractor and used it for decades. I threw Star Parties and enjoyed showing things to people for their first time. The Moon and Jupiter with its moons were always favorites, along with Saturn (small but unique) and the phases of Venus. I’ll never forget showing the night sky to my young niece, sighting in several objects first and then not telling her what I had just zeroed in on, just telling her to take a look, and she gasped: “Is that… is that Saturn?” Priceless.

I really recommend not spoiling the kid’s experience with their first scope by letting them view too much through someone else’s huge expensive scope. Let them discover the skies with a Star Map and their own scope. (Sky and Telescope magazine has a weekly email I get which lets me know what’s up.)

The advertised highest powers a scope can achieve are usually to be ignored. You can magnify that high, but the image will often be blurry. The lower and middle magnifications are the best images.

Happy gazing.

This whole election cycle is disgusting, more than most of them. It makes me ashamed to be an American. There is a “choice” amongst Trump, Clinton, Sanders, and Cruz.

Which would be the least authoritarian and dictatorial? Answer: None of the above.

I have been using the local movie streaming site, Hollywood HDTV, and really like it.

I buy access cards for the service from B2S, TB.199 for 30 days.

Paul Kantner did some great songwriting with Jefferson Airplane: “Volunteers” (with Marty Balin); “Wooden Ships” (with Crosby and Stills); etc., etc. The 1967 Airplane radio song “Somebody to Love” completely won me over.

But it is Kantner’s 1970 concept album “Blows Against the Empire” by the lineup backing him and Grace Slick, and called Jefferson Starship, that really blew me away. I had just returned into civilian life from combat in Vietnam, and I found my beloved country to be a virtual police state under that Nixon creep and the creep before him. Thus: “We are all outlaws in the eyes of Amerika”…. That album is a timeless libertarian statement.

We thank you almighty Nanny State

for protecting us from our very fallible

independent judgment.

One can survive most cold with some technique (and adequate equipment). In the USA I camped out in temps as low as Minus-40 degrees (-40 C = -40 F), and I learned some painfully hard lessons about cold. See link below.

The OP has it right: Cover your head and neck, where we lose most body heat.

Layers: they must not be too tight, i.e., they must not bind and shut off comfortable circulation.

Most importantly, Food: eating calories equals adding body warmth. Just like added wood to a fire. If you are cold, eat calories every 3 hours. (If you are a dogmatic dieter, then freeze your sorry butt!) Here is my hard-won experience:

http://zenwind.blogspot.com/2007/05/minus-40-degrees.html

I bivouacked for 6 nights at Minus-40, the first 4 horribly cold but the last 2 tolerable because I ate food regularly those last 2 nights.

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The only tablets I’ve seen here are Amitriptyline Hydrochloride 25 mg at Bangkok Lab Pharmacy. I don’t know if they are enteric coated or not. I called them my “zonkers” and took them for some years earlier in the States and then in Thailand for my Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS), but I stopped taking them because I was so fogged out. (Between the “brain-fog” of FMS and the fog of the zonkers, it was cheaper to stop the meds.) But Amitriptyline has other legitimate medical uses, and I hope you find what your relative needs.

The 7-inch tablet I use is the Sony Xperia Tablet Z3 Compact. Love it.

It is waterproof – important to me but not necessarily to everyone else.

I like to sit out in a hammock on the veranda during rainstorms.

I stream movies on it and browse -- everything but major typing.

My hatred of fabric softeners stems from them destroying many fine cold-weather/ all-weather fabrics, mainly high tech outdoor synthetics that would otherwise work wonders with their special coatings. These fabrics state: “Do NOT use fabric softeners.”

My dear Thai wife, ever helpful, ruined some Thermax and CoolMax T-shirts by applying fabric softeners to them before I could stop her. These are wicking fabrics that keep you dry and snug in changing temperatures. The CoolMax shirts were excellent in tropical heat. Were, until she ruined them.

During this cold snap, I just pulled out the one high tech item she didn’t ruin, a lightweight wicking zip-turtleneck that I haven’t worn in 10 years. Ah, comfort! (I won’t let the dear wife touch it.)

This episode makes me too angry to comment at length. I’ll just say that it reminds me of arguments with ‘public servants’ who lorded over prime climbing areas on public land in the Alleghenies decades ago. With the help of the Access Fund USA, we often negotiated and re-opened cliffs to climbing, only to lose access again years later when a new chief (from outside the area and ignorant of climbing culture) took over the fiefdom. We climbers rate as third-class folks.

A highly recommended and well cited article on this question is “The Dating of the Historical Buddha: A Review Article” by L. S. Cousins:

http://indology.info/papers/cousins/

In the above linked article, Cousins reported on the conclusions of a major international conference in Germany in 1988 on the Buddha’s historical dates. It was a well-prepared and exhaustive scholarly conference study that summed up the long history of the relevant research, the various chronological methods used by different Buddhist cultures throughout history, and various conclusions the conference eventually arrived at.

Bottom line: The date of the Buddha’s death (at age 80) is now widely thought to be around 400 BC (give or take a couple of decades). A provisional birth date of circa 483 BC has been suggested by some.

The very brief Wikipedia article on “L. S. Cousins” gives a bare glimpse of his career as a leading scholar in Buddhist studies, with a mention of his honorary professorship at Mahamakut Buddhist University, Bangkok. I was sad to discover that he had died earlier this year. Cousins was humble and strived to be as objective as possible, as I had judged him to be from many years of reading his posts on various discussion eLists that focused on Buddhism and ancient Indo-European research. He was kind enough to personally answer me off-list, in my amatuer off-list questions to him about this subject. He will be missed.

Stop the GMO researcher heretics and their farmer lackeys! Burn them! Be a true Conservative and “stand athwart the stream of history and yell ‘Stop!’.” Poverty and hunger are natural human realities, so damn all those who are arrogant enough to try to use science to improve upon Mother Nature and to better feed people. The Frankenstein monster threatens, and we must take up our pitchforks and torches, and follow our herd to kill this scientific beast! Burn them all!

No, I have definitely NOT noticed being able to take a stroll in Bangkok without my shirt dripping with sweat. I walk every day, and I took a (very short) walk this afternoon and came home drenched with sweat blinding my eyes. It is not the Cool Season yet – at least not yet today.

I bought a second powerful fan this week and now have two of them on me at full blast while I am only in swim trunks. After midnight I set them to a slightly lower speed while still half-naked. Sweat City.

I fervently hope that the original article’s author is correct and that some cool relief will come our way, but I’ll only believe it when I have to put on a shirt at home. It is thundering and raining as I type this. I crave that "Blessed coolness, Zen delight."

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I have had great luck with the Jabra system. I like the instant feedback from its heart-rate monitor, and they are sweat-proof/ weather-proof. They are a bit expensive, but then you (the OP) did specify a "good" product, and that they are.

I'm also a big fan of TuneIn Radio.

I have a large range of music tastes, and I have dozens of stations

saved on TuneIn in a variety of genres.

I play it on my PC and my Androids to speakers or headphones.

The Monster Mash (1962) by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers.

(It was a graveyard smash.)

Lab Pharmacy, Siam Paragon, Ground Floor, North end near Gourmet Market and liquor store.

Yes, they repel mosquitoes very well. But common sense tells me that I must be careful about too much inhalation of their smoke. We mainly use them outside. We light one at sundown right outside our door, and it keeps the bugs away from this area and keeps them from coming inside when we open and shut the door.

I also use them when I’m sitting outside (day or night) by putting one under or near my lawn chair. I place it so that the smoke is drifting away from me, so I don’t breathe it in. Also, mosquitoes initially track you by the scent of your down-wind CO2 breath-plume and by following it up-wind to you. The smoke puts them off your scents. I light it as soon as I’m outside, and this works well for me.

For safety and economy, I put the burning coil in a little steel bowl that fits it perfectly, and which I found in the kitchen supply section of a mall. It has a close-fitting lid, so that when I’m done using the coil for the moment I can extinguish it safely by putting on the lid and depriving it of oxygen. When I want to use it again, I simply remove the lid and light the remaining coil for another go.

I have a Kindle Paperwhite and love it. It reads exceptionally well in bright sunlight, the darkest nighttime, and anywhere in between. I sync books and reading progress within a book between the Kindle and my smartphone and tablet, so I can continue reading wherever I am with whichever device I happen to have. But, all other things being equal, I choose to read from the Kindle.

I recommend getting a new one. Amazon sells them at about cost. Get a cover for it, and make sure you have a plug adapter.

Hmm. Reminds me a bit of similar investigative bungles that have been in world news, say, in the last year or so.

Thanks for the video link. Wonderful!

You might keep track of the FB website of The Rock Pub - Bangkok, as well as their affiliated Rock Entertainment site. On 20 September they will have Anti-Flag, and since it is a small pub it will be packed, and one must get tickets early.

If I find out about any other concerts elsewhere, I'll post again.

_{Living here in Thailand, I miss the Perseid showers. They are predictably regular.}

_{August in North America was perfect viewing weather, if skies were clear.}

_{But August in Thailand is often prohibitively cloudy.}

_{Re: light pollution:} the further out of city lights the better,

but wherever you are you can shield your eyes from light by choosing a good spot.

It takes 20 minutes away from lights to bring back your night vision (longer for us old guys),

so be patient and sit/lie with all lights blocked from your view by buildings, walls, or shields.

Bug repellent strategy is advisable.

For Thailand's clear sky opportunities, November's Leonid meteor showers are great,

but these are not anywhere near as reliable as the August Perseids.

Leonids are not as frequent per minute or as reliably bright,

but they sometimes "storm" with astonishingly bright flashes, if it happens to be the right year.

Good viewing!