albro

I was there and made this hike less than 24h after she did. According to the Bhutanese guide standing by and monitoring the spot, she was not taking a selfie when she fell.

It's sad to me how many people leap to this wrong assumption, which has strong undercurrents of condescension and judgment in it. It's a tragedy for her and for those with her when it happened, it makes no difference at all whether she was taking a selfie or not.

One other thing that just occurred to me - when you have a hard time being with your breath during meditation, it can be very helpful to switch to doing mettha for a while instead.

You don't want to use this as an excuse for not trying hard to sit through your emotions, because that's part of the process of breath meditation. But if you have tried and cannot stay with your breath, mettha gives you something more 'active' to do. The purposefulness of it, and the good emotion that usually accompanies giving mettha, helps to release you from your negative thoughts and keep you from grasping back onto them long enough for them to pass. That's especially true if you can remember to allow some mettha for yourself during the process. When the negative thoughts have crested and receded, you can simply return your mindfulness to the breath.

Great post, I think you are not by any means alone in having this problem.

One simple thing that should be brought up, is meditating in the mornings. I think the rationale is that your mind should be more clear after rest and the environment should be quieter and more conducive to concentration, but also that morning meditation easier to "schedule" - as long as you are willing to get up early, there's nothing stopping you because you won't have anything else planned or anything else calling for your attention at that time. That helps avoid the problem of meditating in the evenings, when you just got out of traffic and the phone may be ringing, your loved ones may be needing things, you may be tempted to try paying the bills or fixing the clogged sink, etc. Of course, the price you pay for morning meditation is the risk of a 'sinking mind', i.e. sleepiness. A lot of people find that overall the trade is worth it, however.

I wish I could offer a success story, but I still struggle with this a lot myself. So I can offer only what I said, and the idea that the purpose of mindfulness early on is not necessarily to reach deep concentration every time. You just need to be aware of all the craziness in your head, and watch the pattern of how it comes, how it affects your mind and body, and then how it always disappears. If you're aware of the barriers you are having during meditation, you are already on a fruitful path. Just try to observe them long enough to watch them go away, and that pattern will eventually sink into your brain and be a comfort to you during the rest of the day.

Good luck!

The OP hints at this, but I think a lot of people aren't considering the impact of issuing the death penalty for rape. Wouldn't that just incentivize rapists to kill the victim/witness, since the penalty would be the same for them either way?

It's too late to help the poor girl who was killed, but it's not too late to help the next girl. Long-term imprisonment in a Thai prison for a rapist is a pretty severe punishment already, IMHO we don't need to push these creeps to take it any further.

I don't know how well informed the Editor of The Nation is, but during my time with an American neutricutical company in the 90's the US government FDA released Formaldehyde to be used in and on American foods. I dont know if it has changed since but it puts loads of pressure on the Editor to qualify statements like "carcinogenic" etc!!!

http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/NewsEvents/CVMUpdates/ucm127665.htm

Not sure if this was the article you intended, it only described approval of formaldehyde solution for chicken feed. Maybe there's a similar release for human food?

This may be a bit like go and have a cuppa with the old codger down the road as you may be the only person they speak to all week.

My mam has been on her own for 14 years now, and the more time I spend with her, the more I realise just what loneliness is. It must be a terrible way to feel.

May I suggest that if anyone has a neighbour who is alone, invite them for a couple of beers or a cup of coffee. Even if they are a pain or talk rubbish, just for an hour or so. It may save their life.

Well said, Konini.

I rarely hear anyone talk about this, but in my experience one of the big contributors to traffic is overloaded trucks. Sometimes it's because the truck is old and in poor condition, but sometimes the truck looks fine but is just carrying too much weight; either way, such a truck slows to a crawl any time the ground slopes upward, including all overpasses and elevated u-turns, as well as any time it needs to pull out from a stop, such as a light or u-turn.

As a result, truck drivers frequently pull into the right lane when they see a somewhat slower truck, in order to conserve momentum and avoid spending the next 2 km ramping back up to their desired speed. Effectively, then, the slowest/most overloaded truck sets the speed of the left lane, and the second slowest truck sets the speed of the right lane. If I had a baht for every time I got stuck behind one truck moving at 31 kph and another moving at 33 kph, I'd be Thaksin.

If load limits were enforced, perhaps this wouldn't happen. Just my $0.02.

Thanks for a positive topic, it is greatly appreciated around here. I have been with my Thai wife for 7 years, we met in grad school overseas and I followed her back. Couldn't imagine myself happier with anyone, she'd be a gem in any country. If you found someone who fits that bill for you, then good on you, mate.

Don't be stupid or complacent about any relationship, but also don't assume that every mixed relationship ends up in the 'depressed Pattaya drunk lamenting runaway bar girl' model.

The unfortunate part of the story is that the work permit renewal is being used as a weapon in what should be an internal AIT dispute. If this guy bungled the management, get rid of him using the proper channels like anyone else; don't use the work permit system as a back door to get rid of any farang you don't like.

If this is the way things work, how many of us could find our own permits pulled by a disgruntled colleague using such a back door approach?