autonomous_unit

We are looking at a house in BKK with no kitchen in it yet, just a big empty room. There is a tiny outdoor "Thai kitchen" which we think would work best as a laundry area and future barbaque silo. The Thais we've spoken to seem to think an indoor gas cooking range is dangerous, but I grew up w/ natural gas cooking and do not want to settle for electric for a new long-term housing arrangement.

Can you get good quality gas cooking ranges for residences in Thailand? Is it easy to find good quality (safety wise) installers to pipe in gas from a tank placed outdoors? Are there relevant safety codes which signficantly restrict installation and plumbing like this? Are there services to come

refill a fixed tank, or would we be looking at exchanging bottles periodically?

I'd love to hear from folks who've had good experiences getting a western style indoor kitchen w/ a reasonably large 4 or 5-burner gas range and a real vents-to-the-outside exhaust hood...

I visited first around Songkran 2001 to meet my future in-laws and tell them that they were my future in-laws.

In a mad rush free of any soul-searching, we married 2.5 years later, and we moved here about 10 months ago. That began my second trip to Thailand!

We're both about 31 now, and the most I saw of Thailand so far was on that first trip when we drove to the deep south via Hua Hin with her brother. We've been slowly learning about more areas of Bangkok, focusing on places to live, to buy practical things, to eat, and to spend lazy hours in government offices.

Northern Californian - which is slightly different from Southern Californian  .  I grew up closer to cold, wet, foggy San Francisco, than to sunny, smoggy LA.

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Reminds me of the time I was trying to explain to someone that I could distinguish native accents from S.F. peninsula, East Bay hills, Santa Cruz, and East Bay delta, and that's not even considering the various Nth generation ethnic accents of Northern California... but then I realized I was using a West L.A. accent after having worked there too many years!

Once I had a native Sierra foothills waitress demand that I declare my origins at Lake Tahoe because my accent confused her so... and yet the rest of the US think all Californians sound like Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Sounds like the backlight is shot (or more specifically its power supply, since it failed suddenly). It could be an inexpensive repair if there were a good technician to diagnose it without starting to replace every part in sight... I've known people to do this themselves but I have luckily never lost a screen before I got rid of the laptop. I have noticed that after a year or so the screens take longer to "warm up" to full brightness and clear white-balanced colors.

Like harddrives, the backlights have limited total operating hours and limited numbers of power cyclings. So having a screen turn off and on too frequently may kill it long before it would have if kept on steadily; on the other hand, having it on 24 hours a day when you only look at it for a few hours is probably going to wear it out sooner as well. Using very aggressive power-saving modes may give you more time on battery but substantially shortens the life of the other components.

Because of this, I set my screen blanking to a long time (over 12 hours) and decide myself whether to blank it by pressing a hot-key that turns off the backlight. I only blank it if I intend to leave it that way for several hours or overnight. Another issue with some laptops is that the connections to the screen seem to wear out from frequent opening and closing of the lid, but I think the IBMs tend to be pretty tough in this regard.

The motherboard battery keeps time, and powers the initial bios (CMOS) settings.

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I believe that some laptop designs leave out the CMOS battery and require the main battery to keep things alive. Some will have a small capacitor to allow swapping of batteries while the unit is powered off, but this would not help if it was operating until power failure. I had a Dell that warned against

leaving the laptop powered down for too long (many weeks or months); they actually recommended hibernating to disk so that it would restore most CMOS settings (but not time+date of course) from disk when finally powered up again.

The original poster's problem may been prevented by setting the date properly in BIOS the first time, before Windows had a chance to go and confuse itself. This might be a good thing to try if the

laptop is ever forced to reset like this again. BTW, most laptops and modern desktops will power-cycle if you press and hold the power button for an extended period of time (IBMs are around 4 seconds, which may be some standard value from the ACPI specs?). This is preferrable to cutting the power source. Some also have a tiny reset switch hidden in a hole where you have to jab it with a pin, kind of like you're killing a catfish... but avoid sticking pins in random vents and holes, because you may end up killing the catfish.

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I personally know at least two farangs in Pattaya with WP and O Visa.

Strange. Is there any new Rule?

Sunny

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I got a WP for myself in BKK to work for our (Thai majority owned) company last Oct/Nov timeframe, and it was issued against a 90 day entry on a multi-entry O visa. Since then, I got the annual extension of stay based on support of my wife and updated the WP to match, exactly as everyone has described on this website.

It is very confusing to hear of all the different experiences!

Hey, not to go off-topic and talk about the astonishing speed of True ADSL service

but we were having very very slow service again the other day. Once again, I got fed up and forced my modem/router to release its DHCP address from True and get a new one. That immediately resolved the performance problem. Our 1024/512 service returned from the great beyond where it was performing worse than AIS GPRS ever did on its worst day for me.

So, if you are experiencing problems I suggest changing addresses early and often... the problem

may be True's routing for that particular address, rather than overall congestion in your area or the country as a whole.

Can't comment on the appearance, but those XBrite's are mostly very low resolution displays!!! I've been running 1600x1200 or higher for 10 years on 20" monitors and would really be bummed to be stuck with 1280x1024. Laptops tend to be higher res than that. I think today a good CRT is still better than a good LCD in terms of resolution, latency, and color ambiance. Still waiting for this state of affairs to change as the tube's are just so darn big.

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I would agree that CRTs are best in image quality and certainly in quality/cost for purposes of viewing photographs, movies, and video games.

For staring at text all day, there is room for personal taste but I think a good LCD with a DVI connection is much better... you can use cleartype and get exceptionally crisp and stabile fonts. I cannot stand the flickering, lack of sharp pixel boundaries, and wavering of CRTs after having spent work time with 1600x1200 20" desktop LCDs and 1400x1050 laptops. To get similar text quality from a CRT as compared to sub-pixel cleartype rendering on an LCD, I think you need at least ~1.5 times the resolution (figuring dot-pitch against screen size AND actual graphics resolution) and a desk with good clean power and no nearby electic motors or other EMI to distort the screen!

I preferred this because my work is all text based rather than working with images. I'd prefer video-out to a nice CRT television for watching movies and such. As you said, the colors and refresh rate on LCDs can be pretty poor.

The other camp that likes LCDs is just interested in the whiz-bang factor and hardly cares if they can read more than 25 lines of 18 pt fonts and web-grade images.

I guess the trick is learning what your own priorities are...

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The alternative is to set both devices to cable select (C/S), at which point whether they're plugged in at the end or middle of the cable decides which is the master. (i.e. RBO's post only makes sense if he always sets things to cable select).

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Also, the cable must have a "twist" in it between the slave and master drive connectors in order for the cable select to work! Once upon a time there were both twisted and straight cables floating around, although I think almost all have a twist these days.

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Thailand is far from hot, for an Aussie. 

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You don't find the humid heat much more oppressive? I grew up with dry heat: frequent 37 C and 43+ C every few years. To me, humid temps above 32 C are much less comfortable than even 43 when it is dry. I don't think I've ever felt 50 C outside a sauna!

It's funny how I've met Thai people who describe tropical humidity like a comforting hug and who are genuinely distressed by dry air where they've moved in the US. On the other hand, I'd rather be in the desert shooting chunks of salt straight out of my pores than smothered in the humidity here in BKK.

I tend to drink Jasmine tea, which is Green Tea flavored w/ Jasmine leaves and is less sweet and more fragrant than most of the green teas I have tasted. I like them both hot and chilled. My favorites are the yellow tins of tea leaves that say "Jasmine Tea" in English, French, and Chinese and are marked as an import of the Fujian import export company of China, and some Yamamotoyama (?) brand individually foil-wrapped bags exported from Japan.

Most of the straight green teas I have had here are loose leaves in various cans and sacks with Chinese labeling that I cannot read. I think you cannot go terribly wrong w/ reasonable teas like this from Chinatown or any more Asian market, though you have to experiment to find the one that suits you most. As I recall, the "tip" cut green teas tend to be the sweetest, if you can find someone to explain the different types available.

Many of the green teas I have had in Thailand or in Chinese restaurants in the west have turned out more yellowish in the cup, while more of the Japanese green teas steep to a bright green color. I've never really settled on one like I have w/ the Jasmine tea. I tend to only have green teas at random in restaurants.

Most places with long-term weather records seem to show much wider variations than people would assume. Seeing the averages and daily high/low records over years, decades, and centuries can be pretty surprising! I think the safe bet is to think what you have experienced so far is relatively unusual in the larger climatic sense. Only when you live your whole life somewhere, learning what your grandparents have to say about the weather there too, can you really get a sense of what is normal. I am reminded of all the immigrants to California I met who arrived during brutal droughts and then were dismayed when it finally started raining. This repeats itself every major El Nino cycle...

As for this week, it seems to be getting hotter in Bangkok since when I left on a trip last month. It's about what I would expect as we head towards March and April. Now, I was in Chicago on my trip and let me tell you it seemed mild there for this time of year, being only slightly below freezing instead of freakishly Arctic with wind chill cold enough to freeze miscellaneous parts off.

We buy the big Nestle "pure life" jugs by the dozen and have them delivered along with other large and non-perishable supplies by the supermarket at Central (free delivery w/ 1000 baht purchase). I think it's a few baht more per jug than the similar Singha ones, but we found that in comparison the Singha water has an odd after-taste. I grew up drinking very good snow-pack water in California (only problem was chlorine taste if not decanted first) and dislike hard or "minerally" water unless it is fizzy.

I hate the vinyl flavor of some PVC bottles, but most of these thin clear bottles (polycarbonate?) do not bother me at all.

Speaking of water, how many "grades" of water do you keep at home? I was teasing my wife that we have 5 grades available: tap water, boiled tap water, filtered water from those machines, boiled filtered water, and bottled drinking water. These get used for purposes like bathing, cooking, making tea, my mother-in-law making her tea, etc. I don't think we actually use plain boiled tap water for anything, but it was more fun to make the list longer...

I've heard Japan has (or had?) different public water systems for drinking and washing. Imagine a sink w/ 5 taps for different purposes!!

If you are married to a Thai, you could always just travel to your home country and get a new Non-O just by documenting that marriage. Then, you can make visits w/ 90 day permission to stay and no monetary requirements. If you are able to get a job and a work permit before your permission to stay expires, you can then get an extension of stay based on the income to support your Thai spouse. This would not be a "B" visa in any real sense. As I understand it, the B visa is to allow you entry and stay in order to obtain legal work, while the O visa is for family reunion. Either one gives you the status necessary, i.e. non-tourist, to obtain a work permit.

I am guessing that they said you are "converted to a B visa" because they are trying to help you to get your job without first departing for a new Non-O visa. I was not aware they would issue visas here, but TiT and why complain! I don't think the type of visa really matters much, as the future extension to stay will be determined by your marriage and financial conditions. It is slightly easier for an employer to qualify to get a work permit for a foreigner married to a Thai, but I do not know if this decision is impacted by the foreigner's visa status.

I entered on a Non-O and obtained a work permit last year. I got an extension of stay which could have been based on our initial wire transfers or on my new job, as per the requirements to support a Thai wife. It is not clear to me which basis they chose this time, but in future years it will have to be on income. My latest entry stamp is "Non-RE" which I think just means using the re-entry permit associated with my extension of stay. The extension of stay itself says "Thai wife" and has no other codes that I can discern.

Does anyone know why one would get a busy signal when trying to call to a cell phone in Thailand from a cell phone from the States?  It seems everytime I try to use a calling card, it gives me a busy signal.  I've looking through the forum archives, but no solution.  It is very frustrating 

Am I doing something wrong?  Could it be the sim/phone provider he has?  Also, do most cellphones in Thailand charge for receival of SMS?

I dial 011-661-XXX-XXXX, btw.

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As someone stated earlier, you would normally dial an access number for the calling card, e.g. some tollfree US number and then enter an account number and finally dial the Thai number. It should make no difference where you are calling from in the US... if you reach the calling card system prompt, any further problems are because of the connection between the calling card service and the destination.

With cards I have used, the Thai number is entered the same way as a direct-dial from the US: 011 to get international, 66 country code, and then the Thai number but dropping the leading 0 that people use when dialing localling in Thailand. In otherwords, I would dial something like +1-866-xxx-xxxx from the calling card, enter a password, and then enter the sequence you gave 011-66-1-xxx-xxxx to a Thai mobile.

I have seen a calling card give strange circuit-busy errors and such during busy times of day or holidays, because they are overloading their ability to deliver calls to Thailand. I think hat's the price you pay for a cheap rate.

On most, you get more lifetime per baht if you add larger amounts. We added 800 or 1000 baht refills several times to a Happy Dprompt card (you can do it at one of the "counter service" places at a mall) while I was using it for GPRS for a while. It now has an expiration date too far into the future for me to remember. Also, some have loyalty plans built in, where the time extension gets multiplied to a larger amount after your lifetime refill balance on the card exceeds some amount.

After checking the different refill options, just think through the number of times per year you expect to use it and work out the cost per year to keep it alive. Don't just think in terms of how many minutes of talk time you need. If the average cost is low enough, it will be cheaper than activating new cards when you need them. I currently keep a pre-paid card alive for use in the US for this same reason; it gives me a stable number when I travel there, and it ends up costing less than the cheapest subscription plan to top it up a few times a year and keep it active. It is definitely cheaper than buying a new SIM each year or each trip.

Hi,

I currently have a True 2.5mbit connection with True, which @ best can be described as a load of &lt;deleted&gt;.

I decided to get a KSC One card to check how good their service was, I entered all the settings correctly and it would not connect, after over 3 hours on the phone to KSC checkin and double checking settings KSC decided to phone True, and true said I would have to cancel their service before the KSC One card would work.

Is this normal?

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Yes. With a regular modem, you tell it to dial an ISP and then their modem and yours "talk" to each other. Their modem sends data into their network and out to the Internet.

With ADSL, your modem is connected directly by wire to another modem in the nearest telco central office. There is no circuit switching or dialing option as with regular phones or ISDN. In order to switch ISPs, the wire from your house has to be connected to an ADSL modem port in the central office that is configured to send the data on to a particular ISP.

What they mean is that in order to change the office configuration to hook your line to KSC's network, they'd have to disable the current configuration that connects it to True. It is not surprising that they will not do this temporarily for you without cancelling your account. After all, even if it wasn't against their business interest, there is probably no form to fill out or standard procedure to follow.

My girlfriend learned to drive here on Saipan and has a local driver's license. We're moving to Thailand in April. If she got an International Driving Permit would she be able to get a Thai drivers's license without having to take the tests?

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My wife did, based on a US license and IDP. If you search, there are earlier threads describing the current requirements and procedures including the physical tests that are now performed. The procedure is no different for Thais except of course that they use their house registration, i.e. what is on their Thai ID card, instead of an embassy notarized assertion of their address.

Having a desktop instead of a laptop doesn't change anything except that you would need a PCI card to cardbus adapter in order to use a cardbus modem. It's not clear to me that this is worth it unless you already have the modem. Getting a cell phone capable of using the data network and connecting it by USB, bluetooth, or infrared is probably cheaper and easier. I don't know anything about Hutch, but any typical GSM GPRS phone would allow you to try out GPRS service from either AIS or DTAC. I think your experience will depend a lot on where you are located.

I have seen many statements on this board in favor of DTAC, but my own experience using a DTAC happy-dprompt prepaid card and later an AIS post-paid account was that AIS GPRS was much more consistent and speedy for me in a 10th floor unit in Bangkoknoi. I had to use this setup for nearly 4 months until we finally managed to get a True ADSL line (this was 4 months of continuous bureaucratic ###### to get a connection at the central office, not procrastination on my part). It is rare that our True service gets as bad as our typical GPRS speed, but I did have to fall back on it last month when our True service completely dropped (no modem carrier) for a few days.

I understand your question as being about how to get Internet service without a wired phone line of any sort. Otherwise, I would point out that a 56K modem and dial-up ISP will be better than GPRS. It is alluring to think of an ISP connection that goes with you when you move without setup hassle. However, I hope we move soon, and I will try just as hard to get ADSL at our next address, despite how trying it was to subscribe the first time... I would never willingly stay with just GPRS service now, and I don't think we will be moving somewhere within range of DTAC EDGE service.

Of course, the other trick is to find a neighbor who already has ADSL and convince them to upgrade to a good bitrate and then install an 802.11 base station with a WEP key that you accidentally discover while carelessly leaving small amounts of cash in his house. If they are not right next door, you both might need to accidentally connect directional antennae to your routers and point them at each other.

It’s a shame it hasn’t had all the business and technical problems ironed out. I had my hopes up when I posted that report.

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Besides the radio interference problems, I think the insurmountable problem is business and society. There is nothing about broadband over power that would take away the infrastructure costs. The cost/profit ratio for infrastructure in rural (low population density) areas will always make it difficult to justify in a profit-motivated economy. As much as people despise it, the solution to this is government support and not some magical technology.

There will ALWAYS be a bias in the economies of scale in urban versus rural areas. When you get some great new technology to help the rural area, the urban areas will be able to cheaply deploy that too, for even greater benefits. The rural areas will again feel left behind with inadequate service. If this weren't the case, many rural areas would already be satisfied with 56k modems or GPRS service and we wouldn't be having this discussion...

The wires or right-of-way aren't the only expensive part of the infrastructure. It is all the equipment used throughout the network to modulate the signals, split the medium into appropriately sized segments, and route traffic. Throughout the US, there is an abundance of "dark fiber optic lines" that are already in place but not being driven by any equipment because the main service providers do not have enough of a profit motive to bring them online.

For the rural areas without idle infrastructure, it is true that the initial cost of pulling in new lines may seem prohibitive. But there are wireless alternatives that can be used both for long-haul point-to-point links and local area distribution if there is a desire to reduce the up-front costs with slightly higher operating costs. Regular wifi routers for the home can be adapted with directional antennae to transmit point-to-point up to 5km with ease. There are microwave and laser solutions that get longer distances and higher bandwidth for more equipment cost; these can still make sense if shared by enough downstream consumers.

Many people in the US are experimenting with "grassroots wireless mesh" networks to get better service into areas note well served by telcos, but again the problem is getting enough sustained interest and consumer density to break even or profit in the endeavor. At the same time, the entrenched telecom providers are actively lobbying and filing suit to prevent any municipal or state government assistance programs that might endanger their current revenue models.

I think the problem is still just people and economics.

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- I can't help but have a small doubt that a close friend has turned out to be a pervert of the worst kind.

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If it is hard for YOU to accept, imagine how difficult it is for the children who are aware of the perp's trusted position among the adults. This is actually the cause of some of the worst psychological effects of abuse. The kids need counseling as much as a physical exam, to figure out how bad things are and to start mending. From what I know, they stand a better chance of recovery if helped while they still can admit what is going on. If it is left unspoken long enough, they will push it deep down into their psyches too, and counselers will have to dig through this horrible denial to resolve anything later.

From my perspective, you should follow your gut even if it is very impractical, i.e. have an exit strategy for your business and home if it comes to it, and forget about the friendship! These things cannot be tolerated! However, it sounds from your other posts that there should be less intrusive solutions as long as you cover the bases for protection from the angry accused.

As others have said, you may be the only one capable of changing the situation. The biggest risk to the girls, besides continued abuse, is physical retribution if the guy is shamed but not isolated from them. Beware, a typical M.O. for such abuse is for the perp to threaten the victims until they shut up. The threats are likely against them and/or their parents or loved ones, and this further screws them up with guilt and feelings of inadequacy. They need reassurance that other adults can be trusted with the truth and with helping to protect them.

I have read with interest and amusement the posts on this thread, and to keep on the subject of microwaving, can anyone tell me if bacteria is killed off by microwaving? 

Eg. if your cold meat in the fridge is starting to smell a bit off, and you're too lazy to go out and find a 7/11 to buy some more, would it be safe to eat if you microwaved it first? 

From the posts about weevils and grubs etc. I suspect not. 

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Sure, you can kill them by heating the food to a proper safe cooking temperature. Same would hold for the worms, if the original posters had actually heated the food long enough. You can cook a raw chicken in the microwave and reach a safe temperature to eat, though it may not have a very nice texture. People often forget that safe reheating is to return the food to cooking temperature, not just to take the chill out of it. A microwave is better at doing that because it can heat all the way through with less over-cooking of the outsides.

(To answer an earlier question: the ants would die if they were swimming in boiling soup just as well as if it were on the stove. It's not the microwaves that kill them, but the hot water.)

The problem isn't just killing the buggers, but what chemicals they have left behind. For example, if you happen to have a major colony of the kind of bacteria that cause botulism (common in spoiled cans of food), the botulin toxin is still there and ready to cause grief whether the bacteria are killed or not. Because of this, I wouldn't recommend trying to salvage anything that is suspect due to storage or packaging, much less something that fails the sniff test!

If you put a plate of ant infested food out in the sun the ants will abandon ship, I think (OK hope) that is what the OP was trying to do with the micrwave.

I think the nuking time is dependant on fat content and not water content.  Cheese  cooks in 10 seconds,  warming up a cup of coffee takes forever.

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Sorry to contradict, but it is the water molecule that resonates with the microwave frequencies. The cheese has lots of water in it too. Try heating a piece of really stale dry bread and another piece that has been moistened at the same time...

You can also heat other materials that have free electrons, like pieces of metal, but that is due mainly to the current induced in the material.

What you are witnessing is the different specific heat of cheese and water, namely that a certain volume of cheese absorbs less energy than an equal amount of water (plus the fact that you probably had less cheese than water to begin with, unless you frequently microwave cups full of cheese).

I know you are asking about business ISP service, but I have True's home ADSL at 1024/512 service and the outbound bandwidth is very reliable when I have needed it, considering the lack of QoS promises. My file transfers to the US often approach 600 Kb/s, and I have had voip connections where the inbound connection to Thailand was bad due to congestion but the outbound audio was still clear and very low loss/jitter.

So you probably can ftp your data out of Thailand at close to whatever speed you purchase without resorting to a leased line... (not that a leased line necessarily guarantees you bandwidth overseas).

Thankyou for your insight Ravisher......it is this stoicism that makes us Aussies what we are...

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I thought that was what I said, only relating it back to the discussion to stay on topic.