autonomous_unit

I am not sure if we also saw signs of more "strictness" or just ran into an unhappy official, but we ended up wasting an extra morning doing my application for 1-year extension. She sent us away yesterday without accepting the application because she didn't think we had sufficient documentation of my tax payments (for supporting Thai wife "in the case of working"), as she seemed to interpret their list of required tax documents, which says "or" in English (and in Thai according to my wife), as if it said "and".

So, heads up to anybody applying soon. Bring a surplus of documents, even the ones you never thought you needed for your specific case before...

For a while we lived in a condo in Bangkoknoi. The guards there were much like you describe, Kat, though as a large western male I wasn't too concerned about them perving. However, my wife (a Thai) commented that she felt uncomfortable with the male guards and their stares if she arrived home late from work in the evening, and particularly when I was away on travel and she knew she had to go back to the condo by herself.

I will note, in our building it was also obvious that the late night guard shift was drinking on the job. So some of their smiling and staring was more blatant than usual.

There were also plenty of rumors suggesting that the guards were replaced after some burglaries, because it was thought that they were involved.

Being in the VAT system mostly just means more paperwork on business to business transactions, e.g. if your business obtains goods or services from another, you are supposed to pay them part of the VAT on those services and pay the rest directly to the government. There is more accounting to track this, and they can then cross-check that both parties are reporting the same transactions and it adds up to the total VAT due.

If your clients are overseas, your services may be exempt from VAT. A competent accountant should be able to explain the rule, but it comes down to whether your services or products are "re-entering" the Thai economy or not. I do IT consulting w/ foreign customers and haven't had to collect any VAT on my services so far.

Having your company be legal in the VAT system doesn't necessarily increase the amount due to the government. It just means more accounting paperwork. Your qualification for extension of stay will be based on your personal income and income tax documents, and the fact that your company is documented and legal.

I kept browsing the T-Mobile USA coverage site after I posted, and learned that the prepaid "T-Mobile to Go" does not include 850 MHz roaming. It seems to only be for post-paid customers at the moment. Just an FYI, if you were considering picking up a local SIM to do lots of local calling etc.

It is probably good to learn what frequency bands are used in the area(s) you plan to visit, before making any new phone purchase. There are cheap quad-band phones out these days, including some that are advertised as tri-band but can be coaxed into quad-band use with a little help from someone at Panthip or equivalent... I know many Nokia fans cannot stand the menus on Motorola phones, but a Motorola L6 is an example of a contemporary, cheap, slim phone that can operate in quad-band mode. (I cannot confirm this personally, but have read it during online searches.)

There is a website called GSM Arena that I have found to often have useful information about phones on the market, e.g. detailed functional specifications to read before you buy. You should be able to find it via google.

Here is a current coverage map from one of the two main GSM providers (T-Mobile USA):

T-Mobile USA Coverage

it is worth entering local address information, because the national scale map will gloss over a lot of detail.

Those national scale gaps really are places where hardly anybody goes.

You could also check the Cingular website, but I wouldn't be surprised if it showed the same data since they include roaming coverage above. (You actually roam onto Cingular in many parts of California w/ T-Mobile, for example.)

There has been much consolidation of GSM providers lately in the US.

We just had ADSL finally installed at our current place. My initial experiment was that it gives roughly the rated 512/256 speed for some quick tests, but when I tried to run a long upload to a US site, the connection would run full speed for less than a minute, then completely stop, then run full speed, etc. a few times before losing the TCP connection. I repeated the test several times, and most of the time the IP address of the router changed as well, but at least one time it did not.

Does this sound like typical behavior of TOT lines, or should I assume this is something to do with them bringing up service into a new area in Nonthaburi? There were few times that my previous True ADSL in Bangkok was so unstable, even when it was slow. My GPRS is more reliable at this point, because as slow as it is, a transfer can keep running for many hours unattended!

Here, I thought someone would answer with how it works... It is basically a tiny computer, battery, and laptop hard-drive inside that little case. The nano and shuffle use flash memory instead of a hard-drive.

But seriously, if you have functional ears, you'll get better sound with a real hifi receiver and some decent speakers, plus any of the simple "iPod docks" that have line out plugs. The iPod generates a line output signal on its dock connector that is much higher quality than the signal out of the headphone socket, so this is much preferred for driving a real amplifier.

Any value hifi should allow you to tell the difference between a "good" and a "too compressed" MP3 file... something that is hard to do with most headphones that people use on portables, or with the crappy little speakers in integrated stereos or PC sound systems.

Nobody is saying that Thailand's internet link to the world is a modem, so measure a transfer above modem speed does not prove by contradiction that the network is fast.

When I had 1024/512 Kb/s ADSL in Bangkok, I routinely saw the download speed from North America to my laptop severely limited, e.g. 100 Kb/s when it was working, and lots of total dropouts. At the very same time, I could upload at very close to the maximum 512 Kb/s back to North America. This is because too many people are trying to pull data into Thailand from overseas, and the international link is a congestion point. The effect is most noticeable in the evening on weeknights, say 6-10pm (6-10am US central daylight-savings time).

At these times, regular (cheap) phone calls from overseas also have many strange distortions and artifacts, probably because they are VOIP-based and getting stuck in the same congested network. The distortions were always on the audio I was hearing on this end, while people could hear me clearly back in North America.

So, downloading data from a server in Thailand to North America will not approximate what end-users here experience going the other way. Also, a real server quite likely has a better QoS package than your average home user on cheap ADSL.

...

Darn!....I thought she will be helping me adjusting to my new life in Thailand….but in fact I might be the one helping her to do that instead. Life is so unpredictable!

...

Don't sell yourself short. I am sure you'll need more adjustment than her. You just don't realize it yet.

My wife spent 12 years in the US after graduating highschool in Thailand, and we've been back in Bangkok for two years now.

Her experience mirrors what other have said above to some degree, but I think it is worth pointing out some details. Your wife will not have culture shock the same way you might upon first arriving in Thailand! That is reserved for people who did not grow up in the culture. There will be plenty of day to day things she can handle without much trouble if she grew up here and can communicate in basic Thai. The things we westerners get culture shocked about should be innately understandable to someone who grew up here (whether they like these things anymore or not). Some things she may be worried about might not even exist anymore.

If the last time she spent much time with the family was as a youth, I am sure they will take some time to find a new way to interact as older adults. This experience may have a lot in common with the country encounter at large. Some people may have trouble taking her as she is now, while others might seem surprisingly adaptable. She may have similar problems herself, if she expects too many things to be as they once were.

I think "identity" thing eventually works itself out as: you are international people and pretty much know what you like and don't like. Once you've taken some reasonable time to reexperience Thailand, you can easily figure out how to get the most out of the place and avoid the aspects you don't really enjoy. (Or, decide you want to go on to greener pastures...) I think the situation would be a lot different if you are independently employed/retired versus still trying to climb the ladder in some corporate environment.

I think the going wisdom is that buying separates will usually result in a better quality scan and a better quality print. Some people say that the reliability also goes up with separates, either because they put better parts in or because at least you only have to replace one function if it fails in a separate.

But I guess it really depends what kind of workload (not just how much)? We went on the expensive side for a home printer, with an HP 7140 all-in-one. Duplex scanning and printing with max US legal size scans. Standalone photocopy and fax machine. I think it cost close to 30k THB. It has an ethernet card that makes it easy to share among multiple computers, any of which may be on or off at a certain time, including Linux computers.

We've been happy with it for "office work" and visa/work permit documentation. In other words, mostly standalone photo-copying and lots of paperwork scanned for posterity. I think in two years we've replaced the ink twice and run only 2 or 3 reams of plain paper through it. I agree that ours is not ideal for photo printing, but for documents and copies, it works just fine.

American re-entering America log:

reminds me of those dumb math sequence test questions in grade school...

"Based on the above information, will I be stamped or not stamped in 2006?"

Do you only do it once or twice a year?

I think I have been stamped at least once every year I have re-entered the US. But, my best tally of all the stamps just now (one pass w/ a pencil and scratch paper) is that out of about 20 re-entries to the US, I have 10 entry stamps. This is in the range 2001-present in this passport. However, there are a couple years I did not cross the border at all, so I cannot say I was stamped every year.

I wonder if it depends what airports you went through. I think all of my stamps are from LAX and ORD.

Yes, I just got stamped in at Chicago last month. I am not sure I see a stamp for every entry I've made in the past few years... but I just noticed one very faint stamp in a margin that I'd never noticed before. If I wasn't so lazy, I might try to find a blacklight and see what else might be stamped in there.

Edit: I'll also add that I've never been searched on the way into the US, even though I am almost always travelling alone, at least a half dozen times per year from Thailand as an expat male in his early 30s. It makes me wonder how they do this profiling... there must be plenty of other data they are using.

The other thing US citizens might not notice is that your passport data is being entered electronically when you check in to depart the US. There may be no "stamp out", but it is being recorded that you are leaving on a specific flight. The airlines are required to share quite a bit of data with the countries involved in the flight.

I noticed one time my passport number was printed on the boarding pass among all the other random digits at the bottom. I also was encouraged on one hectic day at Chicago O'Hare to use the self-checkin even though I was flying internationally. The guy even told me I would have to type in my name and passport data on the touch-screen, or get the roving counter attendant to help. They are planning to add passport readers to these checkin consoles (if they haven't already).

If you want to travel unobserved, I think you'd better build yourself a sailboat and try to launch off some deserted beach. Please let us know how far you get before the coast guard intercepts you.

If you use AIS or DTAC when you get here, a plain old 900/1800 phone will work just fine (like in Europe). There is a 1900 band provider here, but I don't know anything about it since my AIS and DTAC SIMs will stick to AIS and DTAC towers.

Practically any unlocked phone should give you this 900/1800 service, unless it is a cheapie from the US in which case it might be 1900 only.

I'd get 1GB of RAM before upgrading the hard-drive speed, though if the hard-drive space upgrade is important to you that might be more important than the RAM...

There are three ways a disk can feel faster (the third usually only applies in a laptop):

1) Higher bandwidth when working on large files. Most newer and higher RPM disks will also have higher bandwidth, but as mentioned above, a smaller diameter laptop disk is at a disadvantage (on average) compared to a desktop disk of the same RPM. An older laptop might also have other components which limit bandwidth, e.g. disk controller speed, memory speed. (Bandwidth depends on how fast "i.e. meters/second" the disk surface flies under the heads... the larger the diameter, the faster the bits fly by at a given RPM on the outermost tracks. The inner part of the desktop disk will perform just like the laptop disk since the tracks have the same diameter.)

2) Shorter seek time when jumping around to small files (or very fragmented files). A big part of the seek time is spent waiting for the disk to come back around for the next try to read data after moving the heads. A faster RPM rating means this happens in less time, so subjectively you can get to your files more quickly.

3) Drive spin-up time. If you have your laptop aggressively turning off the hard drive when idle, you will have to wait for it to get back up to speed to access files. This is MUCH greater time wasting than the seek time above. I think you would have to compare specific drive specifications to compare their spin-up times, as there is no strong correlation to RPM. (A higher RPM should take longer to reach, all else being equal, but a higher RPM drive might also be made with lighter components and a stronger motor that can get up to speed with less effort than a slower, heavier drive.)

My subjective experience is that it feels fast when the drive is already running, and any time spent spinning up drives me almost as crazy as the slow Internet here. However, I do have it spinning down because it keeps the drive a lot cooler in this hot climate, which I think may benefit me in the end.

I had a similar situation in 2004 on an initial application for extension (but starting w/ an O visa). It worked out for me, but we got the impression that the most they could normally do is stamp "under consideration" for about 45 days total from the date of original application. After that, there would have to be a visit to get the passport stamped again, whether with the full year or another 30 days under consideration.

So, it seems like the most flexibility you have is to choose your application date to position that return date 30 days out, and then ask if they can add the extra 15 days based on your travel requirements.

However, this might have changed since then, and I get the distinct impression that there is some vague flexibility there, if you speak to the right person by accident.

Your other option might be to cancel the "B" like they said, and obtain a new single-entry "O" during your travel? Then, restart your wife-support extension application after the first 90 days are up. You just have to make sure you can link all the permissions to stay together and avoid having your work permit invalidated.

From your post, I am assuming you are already aware that you can get a reentry permit against the "under consideration" stamp and come and go during that period. The only trick is getting the passport to visit them for another stamp on the correct day. You also have the added pleasure of getting your work permit stamped at each of these dates to match the new passport stamp, unless it is already stamped further due to your previous B visa...

No, it only stores the last "screenful" or so, plus any scrollback buffer if you use that feature.

I often used it to run "yum update" on a remote Fedora server over GPRS modem, where too much text prints out with status bars etc. I would do this:

% screen -S yum -d -R

% sleep 5 ; yum update -y

and hit <ctl>-<a> <d> to detach (before the 5 seconds of sleep had finished)

when I re-attached later, it would show the end of the yum output, after all of the expensive and "noisy" download and install progress barse were finished. much much less information was sent to my screen, which suited me since it would be a large amount of useless output just to tell me things were OK. I only needed to see if there was an abnormal exit and error message at the end...

Yes, I am telling you exactly that. It will still be there when you ssh in again, unless the machine reboots or you explicitly kill the processes from another shell.

The only problem is that I meant the "%" as just my representation of a unix command prompt, like the "#" in your message. Don't type it, but start with the word "screen"!

Screen is a GNU utility that is often installed by default on more recent Linux systems, but you should also be able to add it easily with the package manager if it is missing.

Also, you might pick a better keyword than "some-keyword", for example "vi" if you want to remember that it will allow you to reattach to your vi session. (You can have many sessions at once, but their session names should be different. It works best if you use session names that are not substrings of one another, e.g. you will run into problems if you say "vi" in one and "vim" in another, but no problem if you say "vi1" and "vi2" since neither can ever match the other...

Have fun with your new resilient sessions.

I assume your network connection to this server is pretty bad (ipstar) and you need the download to run for some length of time.

You should learn to use the "screen" utility. Here is the basic magic, read the manpage for more:

% screen -S some-keyword -d -R

this will launch a new screen session named "some-keyword" and give you another shell prompt. run your command-line download from there, and if your connection is broken, the download will keep running undisturbed. When you ssh back into the server again, just run the exact same command above (with the same keyword of your choice) and it will reattach to the same ongoing session so you can see where it is at in its progress.

If you want to go offline intentionally, you can type <ctl>-<a> followed by <d> to "detach". This is the nice clean way to disconnect and get back to the shell where you ran the screen command. You can also just kill off your ssh connection if you get lost or if it freezes due to network problems.

When you are finally finished with your screen session, doing a normal "exit" in its shell prompt will get rid of it, rather than detaching and leaving it running.

Thanks, I looked into it a bit more, and it seems it is just a lot easier to go with the flow and get separate components and a standard (cavernous) ATX case... as you say, I guess there just isn't enough demand or volume to bring in the more unusual combinations.

Too bad there isn't some Asia-wide mail-order supplier you can order the latest from, like you can get the latest stuff shipped to your door even in any backwater state in the US.

I am very interested in getting one of the newest Shuttle XPC small form-factor computers, e.g. one that uses the new AMD AM2 socket or perhaps the latest that has been announced to support Intel Core 2 Duo chips as well as current socket 775 chips. However, the only supplier listed on Shuttle's website seems to carry a set of old obsolete Shuttle models...

Have any Shuttle aficionado here already investigated this issue? Are there any easy and legitimate ways to get the newest models here? I don't want the top of the line expensive chip, but a system that can take a mid-range chip now and be upgraded to "next year's value chip" as well... so the newer socket and memory systems, etc.

Alternatively, do people have experience carrying a small computer in their luggage on arrival in BKK? It is a little too big for carry-on comfort, so do they (customs) xray checked bags on arrival? Do you have to declare a $500 computer? What would the duty fees/fines be like... maybe I should just try to get one my next trip abroad? I've never been stopped in the green lane, but there is always room for a first time...

I guess one other option is to see if enough of you are interested to propose a group buy to the official reseller at Pantip, in case he can special order the latest models with enough units ear-marked for customers? I am not sure we understood him correctly, but he seemed to suggest he can special order when there are at least 5 units... not sure if it has to be quantity five of the same unit, or just 5 new units from Shuttle. These are nice little "toaster sized" barebones computers that take a CPU, a video card, a couple sticks of RAM and 2-3 disk drives. He seems to sell the models he has for around 15-16k THB, which is a modest markup over western prices for the same models...

The point to consider about evaluating coincidence is that we are usually not prepared to evaluate things from an objective, statistically-meaningful standpoint. We make at least two common mistakes: first, we are usually biased and remember "positive" occurrences more than "negative", so things seem to happen more than they really do, relative to the background level of random sh*t going on; second, we make the understandably self-centered observation that what happens to us is special... we do not properly delineate the boundaries of the "experiment".

A statistician's view would have to look at all occurrences of apparent coincidences and false positives (people having a "funny feeling" that doesn't actually pan out with any coinciding event of note; but they would also have to look at a population and not an individual. This is due to a variant of the birthday paradox wherein things that seem unlikely from a particularly person's perspective are actually quite likely to happen to someone within a larger group. So a skeptic looks at all spooky moments and false spooky moments and decides whether they happen more than can be attributable to chance.

To play devil's advocate, I would attribute your door-knocking experience to a waking dream. I've had dreams where I incorporate sounds from the waking world, and also just-waking moments where I "sense" the last sounds of a dream, such as my wife's voice even though she has already left for work, or the sound of a vehicle in my dream. Similarly, I could attribute some hair-raising experiences to the cultural expectations and/or suggestibility of people. Is it a spooky presence, or just a draft through a leaky wall? Hanging around with paranoid and jumpy people will usually make you a bit jumpy too...

Things like having an intuition and then correlating it to your cousin's friend's aunt are great examples of distorted analysis. Kind of like the "7 degrees of Kevin Bacon", you have to look at all the relationships with a similar strength, multiplied by all the distinct or meaningful events in all these persons' lives, and then decide if anyone is really predicting or sensing any of this at a rate above the noise level. That is the analytical criteria: that these experiences happen more often than can be explained by chance events coinciding with chance sensations.

Note, I am not trying to convert anyone's beliefs, but adding to the earlier skeptical statement since an interest in a more analytical point of view was expressed. A purposeless, uncaring universe is not everyone's cup of tea.

I don't know what typical usage is, but in the past month I estimate I have used about 1300 MB from my laptop, including lots of email, web browsing, and downloading of software updates!

I think you can get a post-paid, flat-rate DTAC GPRS with no usage limit for under 2000 THB including a basic voice plan on the same SIM. If you are paying more than that, you should switch!

I think that much of the telco profit comes from people who underestimage their usage patterns and choose a plan that looks inexpensive but has these tiered prices...

Even 4-5 years ago, it was possible to get 12 MB/s (96 Mb/s) throughput over SSH between two workstation-class Pentium III or Xeon PCs, e.g. enough to saturate a 100baseT network interface in full-duplex mode. My current Pentium-M laptop has a much faster processor than those did.

Ever since I left behind my multi-gigabit employers, I have never seen SSH be the bottleneck in a WAN transfer.

edit: I have to add that my Linux manpage for rsync has --acls and --xattrs options to preserve ACLs and extended attributes. I don't know if these are available in a modern Windows port...