autonomous_unit

My fantasy was always a high alpine valley rather than an island. But it included a nice cabin with a well-stocked kitchen, warm stove, library, and hifi. I like backpacking trips to "rough it", but I would not want to live on the trail forever. Now I suppose I would include a reasonable Internet connection as well as the hifi...

So, in summary, the gods are toying with me by putting me in BKK. I remember being absolutely floored when I showed my wife paradise on a silent, cold, star-lit night in the Sierra Nevada and she thought it was scary rather than peaceful.

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The responses on the thread to date have not (in general) been so much of a spiritual nature... something that prompts you to examine yourself and perhaps alter your perspective on things....

Reading for pure enjoyment is one thing, but reading to learn more, a hunger for knowledge, a nagging feeling that maybe sub-conscious related... something that you think you should already know about... and maybe a writer has penned the very words that you've been searching for.

That's the type of response I was trying to elicit from the forum. 

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My personality is not to seek metaphysical or "spiritual" truths from others or from books but rather through introspection. Reading compendiums of modern western philosophy in school only reinforced the idea that we all basically bootstrap ourselves through the same ideas that society developed more slowly in the past. I guess I think it is more fun to work it out myself than to read the study guide. I get bored by what I call the Name Droppers and Librarians, i.e. people who greatly value cataloging and reciting others' thoughts over making their own.

I would read novels and poetry for the enterainment and interest in seeing character studies and different takes on the human condition. And also in appreciation of a well turned phrase. So I read not so much for how the universe works but for how the mind works... reading Chaucer and Shakespeare was interesting because it helped reinforce that humanity doesn't change so much despite its technologies and fashions.

I read some non-fiction for facts and so I can spend a little less time reinventing old wheels. I guess I trust scientific/engineering processes more to accept the study guide, while I feel that philosophy is a messy enough job that one had better do it himself.

I read most of my fiction up until part way through university when I got intrigued by computers and dropped my goal of majoring in English lit. and slowly turned into a computer scientist. This was a profound effect not because it changed my thought processes but because it launched a chain of chance encounters that introduced me to my wife. It is a good text book, but really it was just luck that it was the first real computer science text I read.

Since then, my thirst for fiction tapered off dramatically but I did get one last push for cyberpunk fiction after having to read Neuromancer to cap off a gothic themed English lit. class! Before that, I was sort of an English classics snob. I think I am just too spent by my career to want to read recreationally afterwards. But, I am just hitting 31 years old now so I assume it might just be a phase I am going through.

Now I'm not talking about a compilation of esoteric philosophical theories, as I must admit that much of my reading has been for pure escapism... thrills and spills... just for plain enjoyment... but what did you read that changed your thinking... your life?

I tend to think our childhoods affect us a lot, so probably some children's books or science books I ran across had the most profound impact.

Of those I can name though, a college text, "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" had the most profound effect on my life! It made me change majors, find a career, get a job, meet my wife, and move to Thailand in the course of about 13 years, now that I think about it. What a book!

Yes, I think Thailand needs more Fiber to the Country before there is any point in running fiber to consumers.

I meant to add that if your compressor is switching on after only a minute, it must not be too large for your leaky room.

At night in BKK, I have to leave ours w/ a manual fan speed setting or it turns off for a long time and then wakes me when it starts going again on fully automatic mode. I don't notice the temp swing too much when this happens but am bothered by the sudden change in the sound...

I don't have the physics chops to explain it, but I've definitely seen it with a/c for computer equipment rooms. The cooling capacity is in energy/time and should be balanced against the heat introduced to the room through leakage and internal sources like people and equipment. We had a room that didn't have enough gear in it yet for its designed load and the result was a horrible humidity and odor problem from the a/c not running frequently enough. The proposed solutions from the building engineers were to replace the a/c unit with a smaller one or put more heat-generating equipment in the room so that the a/c could operate properly to cool it!

Perhaps there is a difference between slowly cooling (and drying) all the air versus super cooling (and super-drying) a small amount and tossing it back into the room to mix with the humid air? Maybe you can remove the heat energy from the air in a way that is not proportional to how much water you remove...

I wonder if these "inverter" units avoid this problem? If I understand the graphs in the marketing material, they seem to be able to adjust their compressor speed rather than having to turn full on or off based on the thermostat.

The point being made is that the sale is between the buyer and the company. The company converts real property into liquid assets. The sale transaction is taxed at the land office. Profits on the sale may contribute to the profit on the books for the company and be taxable at the end of the year/quarter/whatever.

I'm not sure why you are getting hung up on the sale... the sale is irrelevant in the question of whether a directory may walk away with assets of the company. The answer is yes he probably can and yes the shareholders can get him strung up for doing so if it appears to be fraud. It amounts to the director issuing himself extra compensation which is taxable as personal income. The director does not have the legal freedom to do things that are against the shareholders' financial interests, even if he has the technical ability to do so.

And of course it is not recommended or appropriate to establish a company for the sole purpose of allowing a foreigner to own property, so the director of such a hypothetical company might already be lining himself up for trouble without getting to the point of embezzling...

One thing I noticed was that being with my wife made me more aware of general biases in society than I was before. There are many different shades of bias from overt racism (particularly the mixed race taboo), classism (the assumption your wife is a bargirl), and just plain sexism and objectifcation (the jokes about Thailand). A little more gets directed at you in the West with a Thai wife, but a lot more that was already present might also start to bother you more. It has made me think more about the junk that "non-white-males" have to deal with every day.

Also, it is not true that this problem does not exist here in Thailand. My wife periodically feels the stares and random rude treatment here from other Thais and it definitely seems worse than anything we ever felt in Los Angeles where there is much more racial if not cultural blending. We definitely feel more accepted and "invisible" in urban and suburban California than we do here.

Aside from the naive gawking you can get in parts of Thailand, the most overt racism I have felt due to being with my wife has been in Western Europe. In the Netherlands we met some nice people but got some very evil stares from shopkeepers, and after careful reflection I still think it was because of our races rather than our American clothing. My German isn't very good, but in Munich I am pretty sure someone yelled "how much did you pay?" out a car window at us. We've never traveled together to the UK so I cannot compare that.

I have found it useful to ask my wife questions to help me figure out when we are getting treated the way she, as an Asian, would be by herself and when we are getting treated better or worse because we are together. It is an enlightening look at our societies, but as the other posters have said I wouldn't let it get you down...

Funny you should ask... I've usually noticed the same path via verio.net from thailand->japan->US but today I see one hop from a CAT router to a teleglobe.net router called if-1-0.bb3.LAA-LosAngeles.Teleglobe.net but the big jump in latency happens a few hops earlier as if CAT's IP numbers are being applied to equipment on the US side of the ocean... Then it hands off to verio.net which must all be in Los Angeles because of the short latencies:

12 202.47.254.137 (202.47.254.137) 13.728 ms 13.569 ms 14.269 ms

13 202.47.253.134 (202.47.253.134) 282.471 ms 253.131 ms 235.260 ms

MPLS Label=20 CoS=3 TTL=1 S=0

14 202.47.253.241 (202.47.253.241) 241.576 ms 236.856 ms 240.352 ms

15 if-1-0.bb3.LAA-LosAngeles.Teleglobe.net (209.58.85.17) 278.422 ms 274.355 ms 270.725 ms

16 if-9-0.core1.LAA-LosAngeles.Teleglobe.net (207.45.193.97) 272.794 ms 284.158 ms 274.839 ms

17 ix-10-0.core1.LAA-LosAngeles.Teleglobe.net (207.45.193.66) 294.786 ms 291.477 ms 288.248 ms

18 p16-1-1-0.r21.lsanca01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.2.10) 275.247 ms 275.749 ms 274.678 ms

19 ge-1-0.a01.lsanca02.us.ra.verio.net (129.250.29.131) 279.679 ms 284.779 ms 276.514 ms

20 ge-2-3-0.a02.lsanca02.us.ce.verio.net (198.172.117.163) 280.909 ms 287.723 ms 294.530 ms

Note that through True high speed (consumer) ADSL it takes the first dozen hops just to get to the point where routers stop being called asianet.co.th and start looking more like CAT addresses! I am sure someone better at googling than I should be able to find an overview of Thailand's Internet links. The routes you get will be largely due to ISP peering relationships and less due to actual best path for you.

Do you guys really think it is intentional? I still try to not attribute to malice what can just as easily be explained by incompetence...

With the way my True ADSL is going lately, I thought it was just a national policy to fumble the peering relationships between different datacom networks.

As the others have stated, a multi-entry O can be obtained at home using the local marriage cert. Unless there is an aversion to quarterly travel, this is an easy way to check things out.

The time when the 1-year extension becomes useful (aside from avoiding a bit of travel) is when one wants to get a work permit. The length of a work permit's validity is linked to the entry permit, which is the 90 day stamp on entry rather than the total length of the O visa! So there is this annoying process of getting work permits updated in lockstep with every entry and before the last one expires. You can reduce this to once a year w/ the extension, though it is still a bit silly if you are getting 30 day "under consideration" stamps while the extension is being processed.

We registered our marriage here at the local Amphur based on our US marriage cert and translations. I am not 100% sure they would have rejected my extension without it, but we had other reasons to get it done as well.

What kind of noises? You might want to make sure the shielding in your cables is only grounded on one end or the other to avoid ground-loops between the computer and stereo. I've seen as many advise either way, and it seems like "black magic" to me as to which kind of shielding is best in a given situation.

If you are going to go the route of a new soundcard, you might consider an external USB sound device. This helps isolate the analog portions from the noisy environment of the computer and also would put the device nearer your amplifier (at the end of the USB cable). You might also want to put the cover back on your computer if you care about RFI... the whole thing acts as a shield.

I actually had an adapter like this that put out optical digital audio (toslink) which I could plug into an A/V receiver and let it do the DAC work. Using a laptop, that was the best computer audio I have ever heard, and the adapter only cost me about $80 US from a place specializing in accessories for minidisc players.

And it is generally true that you want the computer audio levels set near the top, so that you get the best signal-to-noise ratio in the source signal. Just make sure the computer audio isn't getting clipped either digitally by having mixer levels set too high or in analog by overdriving the soundcard outputs.

The law in the US also requires foreigners to carry around their passport, and permanent residents to carry their "green card". However, I know many foreigners did not. I think it depends on whether your ethnicity is one that is unofficially profiled in the area you are visiting? There is no US national ID, and a foreigner can get a driver's license just as easily as a US national and there is no indication on the license as to your immigration status. A citizen need not carry his license unless he is driving. Of course, this may vary on a state by state basis and I only know the "blue" states personally.

Here in BKK, I usually carry my passport in an interior pocket and in a little "sandwich" sized ziplock baggie during Songkran. Do many countries issue duplicate passports? I know the UK will as a matter of course, but don't know about my own US state department. But, can you get a duplicate visa stamp in a duplicate passport, I wonder... how useful is the backup passport if you still appear to be violating immigration status?

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When you say "changing rapidly", anything else I may of missed? I know that Singapore ISP's also had a similar proxy configurations to restrict access, but from what I heard they ended up scrapping them owing to traffic problems- That's a densely populated island, not an entire country...

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I mean that every day seems to bring a new and different performance change. For example, the sudden "bittorrent traffic shaping" complaints. For plain old ssh connectivity to the US and basic traceroute/ping stats, I have seen drastic fluctuations from day to day. Somebody is clearly monkeying within the True network and not always for the better!

Yesterday I was getting consistent 4-5 second pings to the US (Los Angeles) all day and now I am getting 240 ms again.

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To me it seems that these multi megabit packages are just a marketing hype. Thailand simply does not have the international bandwidth available to give each broadband user his full speed...

I'm using Ji-net's 256/128 adsl package, which is not lightning fast but at least they can give the speed what they claim (and sell to you!)

My ping times to US servers are consistently between 300 and 400ms, to slow for gaming but hardly noticable when using VOIP.

Huge improvement over the IPSTAR system I was using before though 

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I would mostly agree. What is silly is that they don't offer more symmetric services. I'd much rather have 512/512 or 768/768 than some imaginary number of downstream megabits that cost more just to get the 512 upstream. I _have_ seen full 512 Kb/s upstream to the US on a regular basis. I have to switch to the "true2m" login to get VOIP to work well enough.

Tried using an alternative port but no joy, which lead me on to believe they must use packet sniffing. If you know of a tried and tested way to get around this, please PM me - would be much appreciated.

There's another reason the proxy issue is turning into a massive bind for me - I use Frontpage Server Extensions over HTTP to control the files of a web server remotely. These fall on their arse when running through a proxy, meaning that if the web server isn't on the same LAN as me, I have to find other means of modifying a web servers' content.

Can Frontpage use HTTPS connections? The True proxy should leave HTTPS connections alone because SSL will not work with a man-in-the-middle. Also, maybe there is such thing as an HTTPS proxy to use SSL from client to proxy for regular non-HTTPS web requests?

The other solution, also needing remote support, is to use a VPN of some to connect your client to the proxy network, so that all the traffic is encrypted and True cannot interfere. I do something like this by doing simple port-forwarding to a proxy via SSH... a habit I started to get some compression over GPRS but it usually works nicely over True ADSL too.

But things definitely seem to be changing rapidly with True right now, so it is anybody's guess as to how it will end up in a month or two.

Just wanted to comment that I started seeing very bad performance on our True ADSL today. It is giving 4-6 second ping times to hosts in the US which usually get 200 milliseconds! That completely kills TCP performance and is several times worse than a GPRS connection.

This happens on all subnets I have managed to get by reconnecting the modem, e.g. 61.90, 61.91, and even a 200-something-or-other address I got once. However, it is not happening to all destinations, as thaivisa.com is still around 300 millisecond right now.

This kind of ping delay really only happens with serious routing and/or packet queueing misconfiguration and I wonder if this is what some of the people seeing "traffic shaping" are really experiencing... it is not showing high packet loss on my ping tests, but just this absurd delay.

I am also concerned about by my wife...  Will she be able to travel to America without any hassles because A) she is my wife she is the mother of an American

You see I think her green card will be revoked because she may be out of America for longer than a year at times.

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The maintenance rules for a green card are, according to my British friend who has one, to be physically present in the US on at least one day in every year. I don't know how automatic the revocation is if you miss it, but I am guessing it is all computerized now. If you travel and keep documentation of the trips every year there shouldn't be any problem...

Don't the people who overdose on durian just suffer from a carbohydrate overload? Are there any doctors here who would know why alcohol might intensify that? You don't hear of too many people who die from too many rum cordials...

My mother-in-law goaded me into trying durian, which surprises most people because I have an overly sensitive nose. I won't go near quite a few foods (including a number of tropical fruits) for the stench I perceive. Anyway, while durian is pungent I don't find its odor among the worst one encounters in BKK! I think of it as some sort of cross between bananas and pineapple, both in flavor and texture.

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I am right now going towards the "pringle" can idea,

I need  something I can put in my suitscase and I think a Wok or big strainer will look weird at the airport Xray,

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Take a wok to Thailand!

Here's an idea: bring a print out of the recipe but buy the materials after you arrive? I have heard that you can even find a Pringles can for sale here if you know the right people.

I don't know if you can get one here, but I had a big roach problem years ago in Chicago and got me a small Amazonian frog. I gave it no food, only water, and it got very fat. I could even watch it hunt. It was so small I never noticed the frog's waste, and it had the run of the house.

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But beware, the waste may be more of a problem from the animals you have to bring in to control the frog population.

To answer the original question, I compromised my career to move to Thailand because my wife needed to go back. We would have been perfectly happy settling in somewhere near the Pacific coast of the US.

In fact, I think I would have been content never straying from the western part of North America (west of the continental divide), and due to business travel and this move, I have already seen more of the world than I ever expected. I think I can learn something about other places from reading, and I'd rather learn a few in depth than do the tourist medley to collect postcards or bottle caps. I don't think there is time in life to even get to know all of the areas of my home state, California, with the intimacy I would like!

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Why is it Americans can not laugh at themselves? Take a joke....  [a comedian] was taking the piss of George Bushes policies, spoke the truth with tounge in cheek and they didn't like it. 

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The fact that our languages have so much in common has fooled you into thinking we share the same culture. This makes about as much sense as asking "why is it Thais cannot laugh at themselves" after insulting their religion and slapping them on the forehead!

Over simplifying, there is much less irony in American English. Every Brit or Aussie expat in the US who I ever met would say the same thing. What sounds like playful joking in the Queen's English will ruffle many Americans. I was raised by a very ironic father and have to "think foreign" and bite my tongue to communicate with many other Americans. They do have their own senses of humor, but it varies regionally both in timing, style, and appropriate topics for joking among relative strangers. This is not even considering dialects with different vocabulary.

As someone else stated, many Americans are very optimistic, outgoing, and generous and this mistranslates as demanding, obnoxious, and thick to some other cultures. I remember a complaint that Americans will go to a restaurant and ask for everything to be customized. A European thinks this is offensive to the chef. The American expects a more laid back, tolerant chef who wants to serve his customer rather than enforce his own taste. American politeness is more focused on honesty and directness while other cultures of politeness are focused on half-truths and avoidance. Sometimes I wonder if it is that style of half-truths and avoidance which requires irony in order to escape...

Unfortunately, this value system leads many Americans to vote for leaders who seem honest, direct, and simple rather than for someone who seems to appreciate complex or subtle problems which often seem to require ambivalent and comrpomised solutions. It is easy to hoodwink people who value and expect honesty.

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Of course for plasma and CRT systems which can suffer burn in using this or an orbiting feature is necessary to retain the full life of the set.

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As far as I can tell UBC does not transmit any signal in true widescreen merely letterbox it...

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That's what I thought regarding UBC, so I figure there isn't much point in getting a widescreen display here. Something large enough and with enough definition for playing DVDs once in a while would be sufficient.

I did not realize burn-in was still a problem in this day and age. So it is for device maintenance rather than viewing pleasure that one would stretch an image? All the static "info bars" and logos etc. must cause problems w/ such crude solutions as stretch or floating the image around, right?

BTW, do you know what caused content producers to screw things up so much in the first place? Why can't they always broadcast (or ship, on DVDs) the image field in its correct borderless dimensions w/ aspect ration signaling and leave it to the decoder to scale appropriately for the screen and user preferences? There is no sane reason that people should have to toggle the scaling behavior of multiple devices to sort it all out each time a different movie comes on!

We have UBC digital via satellite in our condo and setting the 16:9 aspect ratio on the UBC box just underscans the apparently 4:3 signal so that the aspect ratio is distorted with black "margins" on the left and right on a 4:3 TV. I tried this on the movie and sports channels and I am extremely confused if someone else is getting real widescreen picture data.

I have seen demonstration screens in malls which were doing that terrible progressive stretching mentioned above. If you were watching a football match, the ball would be circular in the middle of the screen but stretch into an oval as it approached the left or right. Everything else looked equally distorted and I cannot imagine why someone would prefer that to seeing the 4:3 broadcast without distortion! I think I would get sick if I watched that for more than a minute or two...

Unless someone can explain how or when you can get widescreen broadcasts from UBC, I will continue to assume that the only use of a widescreen set would be for watching DVDs without letterboxing.

I got my license in BKK. I watched a lady have serious trouble w/ the peripheral vision test, just sitting there silently when he turned on lights. I think he eventually passed her anyway.

I had a little trouble and wonder if I didn't do the test correctly because I expected to do very well. I actually have very good peripheral vision by most accounts (US optometrists and beer-inspired experiments w/ friends). I often surprise people by being able to judge if they're smiling or what they are doing w/ their hands when sitting off near 90 degrees to the side.

But, as I remember from biology class, the peripheral vision does not have much in the line of color perception. It is mostly just light/dark and our brains fill in the rest. That is why our night vision is better in the periphery... the non-color receptors are more sensitive in low light. A peripheral vision test in the US would use white lights of varying intensity to see if you notice them, placed randomly all around the field of vision (a hemispherical projection screen) at random intervals.

Nonetheless, the tester here expects you to distinguish color of lights in the periphery at just a few fixed positions. I made several mistakes where I had to guess the color. I am not color blind but often notice the green blinking light on my cell phone may seem orange or white for a moment when viewed way off in the periphery. I tried to take the test "fairly" and keep my gaze centered. I wonder if they are expecting you to react to the peripheral light and swivel your eyes to check its color? He really did not give me any instructions and perhaps this is because I do not speak Thai yet?

Yes, you can get an extension with 400K in the bank.

No, you don't need to change the type O to B if you get a job and work permit.  (I have an type O and a work permit).

TH

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This is true and worked for me as well. You will find huge threads on this if you search. Unfortunately, the discussions are huge because 9/10 people seem confused about visas, stays, and work permits and spread disinformation. This is true on the web and in the flesh in Thailand, including w/ prospective employers, agents, lawyers, and even the odd official who would rather repeat some half-truth for decades than to actually know what the other officials in those other offices do every day.

You (we) are in the easiest category for getting work permits. We can get extensions of stay based on "supporting our spouse" and this reduces the requirements on a prospective employer compared to expats who need to get visas and permission to stay based on their employment offer.