autonomous_unit

So whats the best way to get rid of a beer belly with out changing your drinking habbits if possible not that I have a real problem yet but I have put on 10kg in the last 2 years living in Isaan

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Basically, drinking is just another form of high-calorie food intake.

So it's the same way as getting rid of love handles without changing your eating habits: exercise so there are more calories going out than coming in! I know, easier said than done...

Why try to justify the sick behaviour of those in the photo. They are actually posing and smiling for the camera. Is this the real, amazing Thailand people rave about? 

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I'm not trying to justify the picture... I cannot justify why the picture was taken or published either. I don't understand half the photos and reenactments and pointing parades that go on here, but that is a different topic entirely.

I was responding to the other post about people smiling at seemingly inappropriate times, like when relating a story about someone's horrific death. I know people's emotions cannot always be taken at "face value"; that's all I was trying to say.

Falang Pan, how can you determine the presence of this "interior persona" by observing external behavior? (Don't bother answering, I'm just reminding you of Philosophy 101).

You only really can infer this interior/exterior boundary if you can observe someone change behaviors based on context.

Might it be that each of your subjects have left their guard up, so to speak, so you have only observed their "external persona"? Ask one of your subjects to violate the trust of her family, or cause one of them to violate her trust and see how much evidence of a non-transient ego there is then.

It's not the alcohol, so much as all the other carbohydrates that weren't coverted by the yeast in beer or wine that leads to the general blubber. I always try to remember that just like medieval mongs, I am drinking a glass of bread.

What is disturbing, however, is that a weekend binge can cause gross fat content changes to your liver, which actually is due largely to the way your body converts alcohol into carbs (but don't expect me to remember where I read that). Drinking the same amount spread over a week apparently does not accumulate such changes to the liver, meaning the short-term consumption rate does affect you as well as the longer-term average consumption.

Btw, as unpleasant as it is, these sorts of studies can mean that 8 pints in one night is a binge from a health standpoint, even if it doesn't seem that way compared to some social norms. Dismissing it is about as sensible as dismissing that cigarettes are carcinogenic because everybody's doing it.

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Not all Thais are like this though, and it baffles me why for some, horrific casualties are a source of enjoyment.

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Well, a smile doesn't always mean enjoyment. Just like dogs and chimpanzees, I think sometimes people have a smile reaction when in very stressful or frightening social environments. It's a survival mechanism to defuse the situation with your peers.

There is also disbelief in some circumstances; I remember smiling briefly and laughing when first told that my brother had died. It took a few seconds for the concept to sink in and cloud me over.

But that one guy on the left really seems engrossed and happy staring at the head, rather than smiling meekly at the camera.

Maikee: I think you will go around and around this question with no better answers than what have been given. Others have worn the path smooth before you...

If your overseas prospective employer is conservative and wants a legal opinion, the opinion will probably fall into the not covered/not legal category. This is because a conservative immigration/labor lawyer will probably say it is not legal unless there are specific provisions on the books that apply, or they have experience with many clients doing this. It's a bit of a catch-22 for conservative lawyers to have experience with clients doing this sort of thing.

The only way to please a conservative employer like this and have full legitimacy is to incorporate in Thailand so your business can apply for a work permit on your behalf. Then, you would contract with your "real" overseas employer to perform services. The easiest would be to have your wife own over 50% so that it is a Thai company. You would need legal help to know if your line of work has any extra licensing issues, etc., in Thailand. You have to search your own soul to know if this is the kind of financial situation you wish to be in, being a minority shareholder in your wife's company that handles your employment contract and having all your compensation flow into Thailand!

Btw, despite what others may tell you, the above type of company does NOT require 2M baht capital to apply for your work permit if you are here on an O spouse support visa. It still may require a couple of Thai staff and possibly knowledge-transfer depending on how your application is reviewed. The 2M capital requirement is for companies that wish to sponsor a foreign employee's B visa as well as work permit.

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My understanding of what's going on could be completely off but here's what seems to be the situation:  Once a program is loaded my laptop works with it quickly.  But if I keep it in the background for a while (program still open) it seems to be written back to the hard drive so that when I manipulate it again it lags until it goes back into ram.

Does this sound right?  Is this how a computer normally handles data?

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Yes, the OS is always balancing the use of RAM for holding: actual process data, e.g. a modified word doc, undo levels, and screen image; buffers, e.g. in progress reads/writes to disk or network; and regular disk cache, e.g. file data that has been accessed before and might be accessed again. Adding more RAM gives it a bigger playground but does not necessarily solve the problem of a poor balance.

Running Linux on laptops, I found that having more RAM (1 GB) and explicitly turning off virtual memory helps my typical case. This keeps things like mozilla, editors, and terminal screens from getting swapped out and lagging whenever I go back and forth to different windows etc., and it also allows the harddrive spin down for hours at a time.

In this case, the OS does not have the choice of putting process data to disk when it wants to keep more buffers or cache. So, I am favoring programs with which I interact at the expense of even slower access to disk files. However, the risk is that I forget to reenable it and I run out of memory if I happen to start complex digital camera image editing etc. or leave mozilla running for a week or two (it slowly grows over time).

Slower disk access is just one of the unavoidable tradeoffs of using a laptop... although I suppose you could get an external USB2 drive cabinent and put the fastest desktop disk you can find in it. Or even one of those external RAID enclosures and run it in striped (non-redundant) mode!

I think there are a bunch of things going on, from my point of view in western Bangkok...

1) The proxies that True operates seem to be pretty bad, so if I forget to turn back on my proxy to the US I will notice international pages loading much slower instead of the way you would expect, where their local caching proxies should speed things up.

2) My actual observed international bandwidth fluctuates a lot for things besides web pages. I regularly see my whole 1 Mb/s download but other times it is as bad as using GPRS. This seems to follow daily and weekly cycles. When it is bad, I will see high loss rates if I try pinging US hosts, as you would expect from heavy contention.

3) Latency and routing is bad and varies. I have seen times when I could stream large files but interactive use was very poor. Depending on your application, your observed bandwidth will be limited by round-trip latency more than by line speed. The other day, I couldn't reach some US hosts at all while I could still get 1 Mb/s to others (and reach the missing ones from there).

4) Some of the above seems to change abruptly when my ADSL router gets issued a different address via DHCP and my active connections get broken, as if I am getting switched from good to bad equipment in True's network or the reverse.

So, Axel, are you saying they only gave you the color blindness test, not the other two tests that would be almost impossible for a person with monocular vision?

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Just dredging up this old thread to correct something. I got my Thai license at the main department of land transport office in Bangkok today based on IDP. They now require you to do color vision, reaction time, depth perception, and color peripheral vision tests in this case. They said it was a new policy as of August 1. There is still no written or practical driving skills or knowledge test when you hold a valid IDP from another country.

As for the proof of address requirement, they said that a work permit was fine but would mean that the address on the work permit (business location) would be on the license. A sworn statement from your embassy is only required if you have no work permit or if you prefer to list a different address on your license than what is shown on the work permit.

1. Flint's BBQ, Oakland CA.

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My favorite! My dad used to bring that home when he worked swing shift and we'd load up on hot links in middle of the night. I don't think they knew quite what to make of us at the San Pablo Ave. Flint's when he'd take me there and I was this little white kid insisting on hot sauce and my dad would add that he hoped the links weren't in the smoker too long and losing their kick. :-)

Haven't had that in years. Are they still operating? I vaguely remember them being closed from a kitchen fire on more than one occasion.

He was certainly caught with a girl somwhere, but I thought it was in the US.

Strange he should be making a film with the same scenario.

Saves having to act, I suppose.

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Clearly, he was researching the part.

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How about this: Buy a middling laptop (a decent Centrino will put you back around 45k) and use the rest for your desktop.  That way you will be able to have a laptop ready (and setup properly, perhaps synced via LAN with your desktop) for when you do travel and still have a great desktop for use most of the time.

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I can second this too. I would go further and say that you should be conservative in your budgeting and consider the low-end laptop to have a 1-2 year lifetime at most.

Dancali, my experience is that it can take several wrong moves with laptops before you learn what your requirements are. I was lucky enough to be able to do most of this on my employers' dime. My only truly negative experience was with a Dell Inspiron which seemed downright flimsy to hold and use. Plastic parts actually broke off around the screen hinge after a year or so, and the screen eventually lost about 10% along one edge, turning into psychedelic vertical pinstripes. I saw other people in meetings with HPs, Acers, Dells, etc. who periodically had disk crashes, displays that wouldn't work in the middle of a trip, etc.

The rest of my experience was with finding the right size/performance trade-off for the kind of user I was. I swore by small notebooks when I made frequent short trips. I spent almost 2 years with a little Sony VIAO z505 that was very thin and light at the time (about 3 lbs). I used a few IBM X2x series notebooks that were very similar. Light weight makes it easier to carry and easier to protect.

The downside to small laptops, for me, was their XGA screen resolution. As I started using them more exclusively, I moved to the larger T4x series to get 1400x1050 resolution and I tolerated the extra weight (~5 lbs vs 3 lbs).

My most comfortable working environment, however, was a nice extensible deskside workstation and a 21" Dell LCD flat panel running at 1600x1200 over DVI and with "LCD cleartype" font rendering enabled. I think the premium is worth it for the eyes and I would skimp on processor speed to get there. Of course, I was one of those guys who in college used a $3000 21" CRT with a low-range PC and drove a 20 year old, $1700 car.

...The screen is high on the list of what to look at since you can't replace it.  Desktop replacements will have most of what you listed as standard, but remember that the price will not be cheap, probably about 2-3 times more than a comparable desktop, depending on the model and brand. ...

Strange that you would want a laptop if you're not going to travel often.

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I'd second everything said above (including the parts I cut out ). I would add that I've used a lot of laptops with heavy travel in my previous work and saw what many coworkers were using under similar conditions. I've found that there are few solid choices. If you're looking for the laptop lifestyle, you will be picking it up, setting it down, occasionally bumping it, and constantly opening and closing the lid. These actions cause most of the wear and tear that separates good from bad. Even with minimally padded bags, I never damaged one specifically from travel by bicycle, car, or airplane. They just continually got scuffed and slowly "loosened up". If you really won't be operating it as a laptop, there is no point in paying the premium versus buying a nice middle of the road desktop machine and a great big LCD panel with DVI connectors.

If you really want a laptop, I can only recommend spending what it takes to get an IBM thinkpad. They are very well built, so you have a good chance of using it until it is obsolete and you wear the lettering off the keys, rather than having parts break off until the screen stops working! The T4x series is great, with a Pentium M, an optional 1400x1050 screen, and still thin and light enough to carry around a bit. I had one before at work with that screen, a 50 GB drive, 1 GB RAM, a 1.6 GHz processor, built-in 802.11 a/b/g and bluetooth, and built-in DVD-ROM and CD+/-RW drive. As I recall, it sold for around $3200 US in that form.

We also have True's 1024/512 service, opting for the largest outbound speed available for the cheapest price. I have seen full speeds in both directions to the US many times, but have also seen periods with as much useability as my GPRS cell phone and some periods with complete dropouts. I think most traffic problems are inbound to Thailand, because even at times when my downloads are suffering I have seen 50 KB/s upload to the US.

I also found bittorrent (BT) to be too slow. The other day, I ended up using it to fetch a 2.5 GB linux DVD to a friend's machine in the US and then directly transferring the file from there to here. That transfer seemed to stay between 50-100 KB/s while I was watching and completed overnight with no problems.

I think it makes sense that BT would be slow with the asymmetric link speeds. On the US machine's download, it was always serving about twice the bandwidth outbound as inbound... somewhere around 40 Mb/s outbound at the peak. But, with a max 50 KB/s uplink through True, I guess the best BT download speed here would hover around 25 KB/s?

Does anyone know on what continent the thaivisa server is located? The most annoying thing with True is when my local connection gets so bad that I cannot load pages directly. At that point, I can usually switch to using a compressed proxy via the US and get reasonable access again!

I'm happy with our D-Link DSL-G604T with 802.11b/g that we got at Pantip. Comparable to SMC barricade, but has only one antenna. Has all sorts of options I haven't tried. It does not have the print server support that some barricades have in the US.

I do not think we have had any problems with it in 6 months that were not actually due to something being wrong at True or CAT.

dancali's question is how to use his original boot drive with full OS on another computer with minimal fuss.

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I think others are confused by the oddity of the question, given that the data sounds important and required for work, rather than a hobby interest. It would be safest to burn the data and programs to CD or DVD and bring those on the trip in order to install onto the temporary computer. Burn more for the return trip to bring back updated data...

If the data and/or programs installed with the OS are so important that he is considering such a move, I certainly hope he is at least planning to make backups before this adventure.

But if the data is too large, or there is some other reason that a harddisk must be transported, I would recommend buying another drive and using one of the many disk "cloning" utilities to copy the OS and everything. That way, when tinkering with one disk to make it work on the second computer (or damaging it in transit), he at least has a working disk back home on which to fall back.

The other issue, depending on OS version, is that you may run into annoyances where the OS decides it has been moved to a new computer and requires license registration or somesuch nonsense. I'm going by rumor here, as I have mainly used Linux for the last 12 years or so.

I am a swedish citizen who are married to a thai-woman. We joined the holy matrimony in Sweden and now want be registered as a married couple even in Thailand.

Which documents are required and where do we do the paperwork? Does every paper has to be translated from english to thai?

The easy way is to see whether the Thai consulate in your home country can provide a notarized translation of your Swedish legal marriage document. If not, you need a translation of your document into Thai, a sworn affidavit of all this being accurate from the Swedish embassy in Thailand, and finally a certification of the translation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In either case, the resulting certified Thai language document can be taken to your local Amphur to register yourselves as married in Thailand, and to change your wife's registered name to "Mrs." and update her Thai national ID. My wife just completed all of this based on our U.S. marriage certificate, using the second method with our own translation. She was able to do it all while I was out of the country on travel, i.e. there are no new oaths of marriage. It is solely document translation and records keeping.

As to the other question, why would one do this. We did it primarily so that I can get health benefits from my wife's employer. We also thought it would simplify later handling of other official transactions to have available normal Thai documentation of our marriage.

Best to have the IDP before you apply for the Thai licence,

saves having to repeat thewritten and drving tests.

Astral, you mean someone can take their IDP to the the Thai DL office and simply pay the fees, and get a Thai DL? No driving test or written test?

Yes, that is correct. This worked for my wife too, based on her U.S. license, though it took several tries to get directed to the right counter... they kept assuming she already had a Thai license and wanted an IDP instead of the reverse that she kept requesting. :-)

In addition to the IDP, as a foreigner you need a notarized affidavit from your embassy on which you declare your local Thai residence address "for the purpose of obtaining a Thai driving license". If you are registered as an occupant of your house, the normal Thai documents might suffice...

Definitely Tawandeng on Rama 3.

Not really a pub or a gigantic one.

Good food, good beer, good service, good shows, very reasonable prices.

And after 11.00 p.m., it gets pretty wild.

Mostly Thai customers.

I love it...

I second that. My brother-in-law dragged us there and the quality of the beer was a nice surprise. The outside seating was relaxed and nice for conversation. Inside, my ears were bleeding from the volume of the live music. Not sure if that is how it is throughout, or just an odd accoustic effect at the upstairs railing where we were seated and hollering at each other...

It is quite fair.

Why should the sponser pay lots of money only to have no return.

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I claim that a benevolent sponsor should allow a way out that returns costs incurred. I think many students would still return and "work off" the contract instead of exercising the escape clause, due to family, wanting to improve their country, etc.

With a simplified US private education cost model (tuition, fees, and living stipend), I estimate a total expense of around $250,000 US to graduate today with a science or engineering PhD. This includes 1 year of prep-school, growing undergraduate costs for 4 years, and reduced costs in graduate school for 6 years (under the assumption that the student will work as a teaching or research assistant in their field to reduce fees).

As a baseline, assume a fixed-rate, simple interest loan with an APR of 7% and 11 years in school, yielding around $410,000 in principal upon graduation. I think this interest rate is generous, remembering that this is a long-term secured loan with the student's future as collateral.

So I think a fair buyout would be around or slightly over this $410,000 if paid upon graduation. Current contracts apparently use a factor of 2 instead of interest, meaning the student would owe $500,000 (equaling 10% interest). Contracts issued a decade ago used a factor of 3, meaning the student returning today instead owes $725,000 (equaling over 15% interest). I call that exploitive!

I also think a payment plan (rather than lump-sum buyout) should continue to use the same compounding interest model, e.g. 7%, rather than the absurd 20% or more than I have heard about from multiple students with these contracts. Thus, my hypothetical student could choose to remain in the US, but it would cost them $3100 US/month over the same 22 year period they would work for the sponsor. Hardly a free lunch.

As DMV's are administered at a State level, it's going to vary. In Illinois, your license in Thailand would be valid for 30 days.

This question piqued my interest since I left California for Bangkok and plan to drive in Illinois on an upcoming trip using my existing California license. I have not yet obtained a Thai drivers license, but I intend to do so and allow my CA license to expire (I am also keen on terminating my CA residency for tax purposes).

I went to the California and Illinois state websites and followed links to get to driver's license regulations. For California, I was able to find the real motor vehicle code whereas the Illinois website seemed to give me the Cliff Notes version with friendy but ambiguous text. Under their respective Exemptions sections:

California states that a driver holding a license issued by the foreign jurisdiction where the person resides may drive without a California license. I did not notice any limit to the number of days, but I skimmed and imagine the rub would be an interpretation that you have become a California resident by virtue of stay or intentions. A short 10 day limit applies from the time you become a California resident to obtain a California license.

Illinois states that an adult holding a license from their "home" state or country may drive for up to 90 days. But it does not exactly spell out what "home" means, e.g. that it equals country of residence. It also provides other exemptions that last longer than 90 days, e.g. for military duty or attendance of a school by an out of state student.

I did not see any mention of citizenship requirements for using a foreign license OR for obtaining a state license (the latter merely requires lawful residence).

FWIW, an International Driver's Permit is nothing more than a legalized translation of your real license in a form accepted by countries which have adopted the relevant IDP treaty. It is not to be used in lieu of your license and does not appear to be required in many cases.

For those recommending a virtual presence in their last US state, how do you expect this to work with regard to voting? Do you also vote absentee for that state? Having registered using the Federal election form, I would be concerned with creating conflicts between my claimed expatriate voting status and DMV status, given the increased linkage between DMV records and the voter roll. Am I being paranoid?

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They provided the education for her and have expected and received their repayment.

All seems very fair???

It is just your opinion of a tried and tested system that is the problem not the system itself.

Put yourself in the shoe of the employer!

The same argument was surely made in the past to support indentured servitude and slavery. I know those are egregious examples but my point is that the difference is only a matter of degree. It is not that these study contracts are uniquely free of abuse and unfairness. The problem is in deciding what is a fair exchange rate between very different currencies: money and employee value for the sponsor vs. education and liberty for the student.

The cruelest part of these contracts, in my opinion, is when they are signed by 17 year olds who do not have the worldly experience to consider how trapped they may later feel. I would argue that most teenagers do not have enough experience to properly evaluate the benefits and costs of such a long-term contract.

It would be easier for me to accept if there were simple cultural differences in the apparent cost or risk to the individual, but a little question scratching at the back of my mind is whether Thai students accept these contracts for being a "good deal" or more out of desperation. I believe it is the responsibility of the sponsor, who is in a position of extreme power, to formulate a deal that is equitable and ethical, rather than to exploit the students. I am not convinced that this is the case today.

Count yourself lucky if the buy-out cost only has that many zeros in it. Those who went abroad for undergraduate and graduate studies can owe close to $1M US (triple costs w/ private universities) or 20+ years of service (double time away).

This is a missing survey category for the "where did you meet your..." or "what brought you to Thailand..." threads. A small minority of us really are here for reasons other than the usual three trotted out on these forums every week. Three months after our return, my wife is still waiting for an official determination of her buy-out cost... suffice it to say, we expect more trailing zeros than we can muster! Most of our practical belief about her options is from the grapevine of students who have returned ahead of us.

So it is not surprising that she may not know the full details of her contractual obligations. Not only because of the age at which students sign contracts and the "power play" being played against them by their sponsors (as described by Darth Bangkok), but also because the usual (TiT) oddities in interpretation and enforcement are to be found.

All in all, we hear that sponsors have made it very difficult to negotiate or get out in recent years because so many of their strongest scholars chose to bail out before and during the Asian financial crisis. Bear in mind, these contracts usually required cosigning by relatives who stay in Thailand, and as boggling as the debt is to a western pocketbook, it is only moreso to the Thai family.

Does the article describe the coverage area? AIS claims to have rolled out EDGE service in Bangkok for quite some time, but it is only a few small areas of Silom and Sukh., with no apparent plans to expand city wide.

Either those software licenses must be really expensive, or maybe there are other infrastructure upgrades necessary to support the extra EDGE traffic loads? The inaction of AIS leads me to think there is not much of a business model to support the costs outside the areas infested w/ executive and travellers...

Thought I'd add a few films not already mentioned... for some reason these stick

in my mind but I'm not sure they were my absolute favorites.

Chinese Box -- goodbye to Hong Kong w/ Jeremy Irons and Gong Li.

Human Nature -- Tim Robbins as repressed scientist

Being John Malkovich -- admit it, it was funny

Schizopolis -- a student film that defies description

Dark City -- (scifi) might appeal if you liked memento

Pitch Black -- (scifi) accidentally made Vin Diesel popular?

Dark Star -- (scifi comedy) a suicidal smart bomb