Tarragona

Silver Machine - Hawkwind

Questions:

1) What percentage of Thailand's fuel is IMPORTED?

Heard that on the radio this morning. 90%

I was looking at some of the words in the Macquarie Dictionary database for items of Thai English.

This consists of

1)Thai words and phrases that have been taken into English use in Thailand e.g farang, tuktuk, sanuk, lamyai;

2)English words and phrases that are specific to the context of Thailand e.g. minor wife, hill tribe.

This does not refer to words that are used in mixed English/Thai conversation between husband/wife, for example, but words that can be used in acceptable spoken or written English between Thai-foreigner or foreigner-foreigner in Thailand.

In addition to those above a few others from the database include:

acharn

longtail boat

pad thai

krengjai

A couple of my own suggestions:

mai pen rai as in a 'mai-pen-rai attitude'

somtam

What others can the board come up with?

(Could be a lot of food items but let's try to stick with ones that might commonly crop up for use in English)

They're not really introducing friends as relatives, it's just that in Thai those words also cover relationships that are not blood relationships. So, it can be confusing if you assign a strict English meaning to the words. It reflects the way Thais view their relationships.

Actually Payap University in Chiang Mai is the oldest private university in Thailand...

I thought it was Bangkok University...

Tiger was awarded honorary Thai citizenship by royal decree.He just doesn't use his thai citizenship. He also has an honorary degree from a thai university.

I remember reading somewhere that another reason for Thais not liking him was his attitude towards this degree or the attitude he showed when recieving the degree. I can't remember what he actually did, but apparently is was not to polite in the eyes of the Thais................

Rather than go and receive it at a university ceremony, he had them come and present it at his hotel. Though to be fair, there was quite a lot of criticism of the university (not sure, was it Kasetsart?) for awarding it in the first place - it looked a lot like jumping on the publicity bandwagon.

Ferguson has said that he'll play his stongest side. Which suits us just fine really. None of them will want to risk getting injured or suspended before the Cup Final.

Exactly.

That's why the team Liverpool sent out at Fulham would have been a more competitive match than a full set of regulars.

You really do believe everything should be handed to West Ham on a platedon't you?

But again I re-ittrate...would Liverpool have fielded such a weak team against Fulham in other circumstances?

The circumstances are everything. Benitez picks his team based on his circumstances. The team he picked should have been a couple of goals up by half time. The team he picked were trying to win.

7 of the team are 'proper' first teamers in a squad assembled for a rotation policy: Reina, Arbeloa, Hyypia, Pennant, Sissoko, Alonso, Bellamy.

Fowler is a man with huge experience, Gonzalez a player who would have been involved a lot more this season but for injury. That leaves Paletta and Insua, both very highly thought of - and they hardly fell apart did they? The bench was weak though.

If Liverpool were still going for the title he wouldn't have picked that team. If Liverpool had been playing West Ham or any other team that day, he would have picked that team.

Anyone who has seen some of Liverpool's recent league performances could tell you that even putting out a stronger team could well have brought the same result. At least here you had players looking to make their claim for a Champions League place (Pennant, Sissoko, Alonso, Bellamy) and a couple of youngsters anxious to impress. Much more likely to put in some effort than Stevie G strolling around with his mind on Athens.

If West Ham go down it's because of their own failings, not Liverpool's.

In almost 20 years only one item has failed to reach me. That was a magazine from the UK, although it was also around a time I had a change of address so I wasn't sure if that was the PO's fault.

Nothing else has ever gone missing, letters or parcels. I would never get anyone to send me money by mail though.

Liverpool could have beaten Fulham with better finishing - and finishing is a problem that occurs even when the real first team is playing.

Most of the Liverpool players that started have plenty of first-team experience and one or two would have been looking to impress for the European game.

A bit much for a West Ham supporter to talk about unfair advantages when 23 of their 38 points have come in games in which Tevez, an ineligible player, has been on the field. To be honest though, I don't feel the points should be deducted simply because the club itself brought the irregularities to the authorities' attention when ownership changed. The League is just digging a hole for itself with some of its reasoning.

I saw it on the TV news. He didn't look like he was really intending to hurt the elephant and on the TV they didn't seem particularly upset about it.

It also said he agreed to pay for the damage he'd caused so maybe the police couldn't put anything heavier on him?

An old edition of the Thai "Art and Culture" magazine (December 1996) suggests that rice was being cultivated in the area at least 5,000 years ago, with evidence of 2 different types of 'khao niaw'.

There's also a reference to Non Nok Tha, Khon Kaen, going back at least 5,500 years, though it seems unclear whether the rice here was wild or cultivated.

There's a list of "100 good books that every Thai should read". I have it as a pdf download which I thought came from the Sarakadee website but I can't find it on there now.

It's a good mix of material and oddly enough includes books that every Thai would have found hard to read at times because they were on the banned list.

Here's a different link to the list:

หนังสือดี 100 เล่ม ที่คนไทยควรอ่าน

For my daughter, her Thai BC was translated into English, certified, and with that, we could get her Australian passport.

Having done something similar for my daughter at the British Embassy (plus a couple of other things recently), it seems to me that as far as the UK is concerned there is no need for any MFA certification. "Certified" is simply having the translator's stamp saying something along the lines that they certify the translation is good and correct.

This has been true for daughter's Thai birth certificate, wife's Thai ID card and our Thai marriage certificate in recent months. I have no idea if they actually checked out who the translator was.

Is this something peculiar to the British or is it only for certain matters? I'd be interested to know.

I think he's recommending Thai Life Insurance (Thai Prakan Chewit in his post). I've had good experiences with them too.

On the deleted Al-Jazeera news post, I know the guy didn't make his case very well but in his original post he was referring to a news channel freely available in Thailand (well I get it in Samutprakan) and the panel consisted of a member of the appointed assembly giving his views, as well as an ITV journalist and Kraisak Choonhavan who made the statement in title of the deleted thread.

As has been suggested, I think you would need to talk to the officials at the amphur office where the birth was registered.

On registering my daughter's birth, they first of all wrote my nationality as Thai (force of habit, I suppose) but then crossed it out, amended and initialed it. That was done right at the time though.

This is Thailand, so I suspect it could be done. You could perhaps make it obvious that you are willing to show your gratitude in some way.

Home page is not blocked by the way, neither are many other sub-sections, e.g. weather, history, children, etc. But if you click into anywhere in the news or sports areas, so that the address has new.bbc.co.uk at the beginning, then it becomes blocked.

Not for me (I've just gone to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6543951.stm).

Navigating news and sports pages without problem (CNN and Google are fine too).

I've been on the BBC site for a while.

Not blocked for Samutprakan, True.

It sounds like they're practising just in case.

Works for me and I'm in Thailand.

It took me 15 years from ceremony to registration.

The ceremony is what counts socially and what makes you man and wife to family and friends.

I've never heard that the amphur will backdate the marriage

Its a good idea to learn when and where (and with who) to use the Thai you know

Indeed.

And although it's perhaps not directly related to 'fluency' as such, it's perhaps worth considering that an 'advanced' user of the language should be able to adjust their register and language use to suit different situations and people - just as we all do in own first languages.

My wife's first reaction to this was that it will be just another way for the BiB to squeeze people.

Second reaction was to wonder how people in rural areas will get around and then how half of the people trying to get home for Songkran would get there.

The thinking behind such a law is sound. Some good measures have been implemented recently like banning pickups with passengers in the back from using the elevated tollways.

But you also have to think of the practicalities and the alternatives that are available to people. Not many in a lot of cases.

I hope they clarify the situation and put the numbers in the right categories so people can judge just how serious the problems are.

The Mirror Foundation, an NGO working against human trafficking, have figures of around 400 children missing between 2003 and now, about 30 aged below 11 and the rest 11-18. This is all missing children, not just kidnap victims. I'm not sure how they have got the figures but I think that they've tried to collate this from police records around the country.