MunterHunter

Are these some of the same people who condemn the red MPs for being critical of Constitutional Court now making even worse or more outlandish criticisms against Yingluck. A bit of a double standard, especially when arguing that the former should actually be jailed for you guys classify as criminal defamation.

Last time i checked, it wasn't illegal to be critical of the PM in this country... yet...

Give it a few more years of this red government, and i am sure they will squeeze that into the Constitution somewhere... probably somewhere between it being illegal to oppose the Red Political view and it being Illegal to be critical of Lord Thaksin.

But i could be wrong here, they might slip it in near the part where its illegal to resist the secret police force, you know.. the one that will be headed by Charlem's son.

and having to spend 20 minutes a week attending house sessions....

C'mon now... i think your exaggerating a little there... i don't think shes spent 20mins in the house ever!

Please show me the MP Job description you refer to.... thanks!

outrageous curtailment of civil liberty

The "right to tell lies"?

The right to do anything they god dam_n please, after all they bought won the election!

Definitely not crooks

Would appear the courts disagree with you...

Bleh, suspended sentences... i will cheer the day these crooks start serving actual time!

They are too rich to serve.....Rich people don't go in jail. Not in Thailand and not in other countries.

Jutaporn served time...

/Edit: No where near enough, i agree... short by about 70-80 years IMHO

Ahhh, with a bit of luck he will fall foul of one of the attacks down south and that will be the end of one of Thailand's problems...

Doesn't take any skill or bravery at all to shoot a person sized target less than a meter away. A trained chimp could do it.

Looking at the Headlines, I think one did...

Can anyone recommend a good company to translate the Embassy approved Affirmation of Freedom to Marry?

I know the Ministry can be quite Anal about the translation etc, so would prefer to spend a few extra Baht and get it done right first time. Please don't just say "There are translators near your embassy" as i know people who have used these in the past (near British Embassy) and when they got to the Ministry they were rejected as the translations were not good quality.

Thanks in Advance!

Guess one of their Mia-noi's got caught with a 8" Rubber love-warrior and now the copper in question is all insecure and looking to extract revenge...?

We really really really want to change the Charter... but we don't know what we want to change yet.

Left hand, meet the right hand... the right hand is scratching the arse-hole, the left hand is picking the nose... now that everyone has been introduced and knows what each other is doing, perhaps we can get on with running the country now? Perhaps? maybe? Please!?!

Can we in turn write a letter to Starbucks asking them to stop serving overpriced garbage?

Where do you drink coffee or do you prefer to make it at home. Starbucks is on the high side but they don't serve "garbage."

The 84 likes on my OP say otherwise

Wonder how many cups of coffee (or other beverages) Starbucks serve on a daily... or even hourly basis? Worldwide or even Thailand... or to make it fair, lets just say within Bangkok...

How does your 84 'likes' compare then?

Try some of the natural/herbal sleep medicines... just goto any pharmacy and ask, they all carry it... wont make you fuzzy like the chemical sleepers do and might be enough to help you sleep.

The actual number of hours sleep you get isnt the important factor, its the amount of REM sleep you get thats important

Thanks for the advice, i will get a quote from the other place you mention - is that the pet hospital close to Thong Lor Pet Hospital?

The Animals have been serviced by Thong Lor all their lives, vaccinations, neutering, emergencies etc - so that vet has a full medical history of the little buggers - don't know if that helps having all that medical history or not... i don't suppose it can hurt at all

Quick Update - Thong Lor Pet Hospital have quoted me 18,000 per Animal for the Vaccination/Blood work, then 800b for the Microchip and 800b for something else - bringing me to the 20,000b figure... as expected.

That just leaves the TG (BKK-LON Route) question - does anyone have any advise on that?

Does anyone have a rough, ballpark figure for the cost of the Rabies vaccination and the blood work needed afterwards to prepare animals for relocation to the UK?

I am preparing to move back to the UK, possibly next year, and i am trying to get the estiamted costs together. We have been in touch with a company that will handle all of the travel arrangements for the animals (2 cats, 1 dog) and based on the information i have provided them, and using TG as the airline, they have quoted me 80,000 thb to relocate the animals (all airline/airport paperwork, travel expenses etc - but i need to provide the travel crates and get the vaccinations etc done myself)

I remember reading somewhere someone said around 20k per animal, but i cant find the post anymore so was wondering if anyone had any first hand experience (or even second hand) - i will of course contact the local vets to get figures from them but i am curious as to your experiences etc

Lastly, are there any restrictions or considerations i should take into account with regard to airlines? The benefit of TG is its a direct flight to London, which i feel would be better for the animals, but will the British customs allow the animals to by-pass quarantine (with the correct paperwork, of course) if they come direct from Asia?

Any help and advise is greatly appreciated, this is all quite confusing and a little daunting!

300 baht policy is a failure. It should be removed.

Why should I pay my maid 300 Baht / day for doing almost nothing. It is not my problem that she has an aggressive out of work drunk husband and 5 kids.

120 Baht, in my opinion is already too much, as she did not contribute much; just do a little house work.

Before we have the maid, I don't remember paying anything to my wife for doing the same, plus warm my bed at night.

So fire the Maid, that's what all the other employers are doing when they feel they can't/don't want to pay that level of wages...

So the govt will have implemented their 300b minimum wage (in a few provinces) but watch the unemployment figures explode

Just a quickie, was talking to my friend about GW2 and he came back with this epic story/post

Convincing someone who's primary interest is level progression may be challenging, because this game is meant to strip a lot of that grind away. However with that said there still is progression in the sense of skill points for utility skills and traits which further define the way your character uses the skills he has.

Part of the challenge with many is letting go of the mindset that years of MMO's have ingrained into us. Most of us did not start an MMO for that sense of progression... we started because it was a cool and fun way to adventure in another world with our friends. I am certain that most of us remember our first MMO's with a certain type of nostalgia, a feeling that you want to recapture, but the games through the years have instead focused us on this "carrot dangling" whether that is through character progression or gear progression. Many of us (speaking for myself) have lost the sense of exploration and simple enjoyment of adventuring with friends online.

Guild Wars 2 seems to me to be designed around shedding that mindset that many of us have, but how have they done that... well there is enough to likely write a novel about (or at least a short story), so I will try to summarize a few things that are important to me.

First and foremost, do what is fun for you! This is the pervasive theme of the game. Pretty much everything in game allows you to progress your character, so do you like exploration and zone completions? GW2 has an amazing amount of this! Do you enjoy gathering, crafting, and discovering new recipes? GW2 has a lot of this! Do you enjoy participating in events? GW2 has tons and tons of these. Do you enjoy balanced competitive PvP? GW2 has some great stuff here with Glory as a form of progression. Do you love open world PvP (WvW)? GW2 has probably the best implementation of it since the days of DAoC. Hopefully you get the picture though, you can do what you feel is fun in this game and it will essentially move you through the level progression. Even if all you did was craft (with materials gathered by others or an alt) leveling 4 crafting skills to max will get you to maximum level.

Second, content is never trivialized! Due to the way that you dynamically leveled based on the content, that content is never truly trivialized the same way that it is in previous MMO. This means that there will be a ton of available content throughout the lifetime of your character and even if you participate in events in the lower levels, rewards are always scaled to your level. So if you missed the Epic Swamp Monster battle in Queensdale and are already level 80... no worries jump back there and experience it, you won't ruin it for other people and it won't be a stroll through the park for you either. This also means that any and all content can help you progress your character, so if this type of epic content is fun for you, do it!

Third, they have added competition where it should be and removed from where it should not be! How frustrating is it to fight through 10 mobs to the back of a cave to get the mining node only to have a dirty stealther walk right past you and grab it while you are fighting the last mob? Well in GW2, no worries as everyone has a shot to mine that node individually. How annoying was it to have to kill 10 rats and have someone max level grouped with a friend pull every rat in the area and one shot them leaving you waiting for them to respawn? Well in GW2 there is no kill 10 rat quests... but content is never trivialized and even if you get 1 hit on the rat before it drops you get full EXP and rewards. The design is such that competition with your own realm mates is eliminated and teamwork is rewarded!

Along the same line competition has been added in the areas of WvW, but it's not a competition with your realm mates, it a competition with other servers, helping to further teamwork within your realm. The more that your realm succeeds the more bonuses that you get for your entire realm! Oh and if your team is losing... well don't worry the servers are matched against each other on a ladder system, so every two weeks you will be reseeded to fight against servers that more closely match your realms WvW abillity. In sPvP (competitive PvP) you fight for glory against people from other realms or even your own realm for Glory and bragging rights individually, but because it doesn't directly impact any other game mode it doesn't hurt your realms spirit or sense of teamwork.

Finally, the game is 60 bucks with no subscription! You get a huge PvE environment with 1000s of events and 5 racial storylines (each with multiple combinations), truly epic WvW that promotes server pride, competitive PvP for individual glory and bragging rights... This is just the a tip of the iceberg as well...achievements, crafting, mini-games and activities... all of this for 60 bucks with no subscription. Hundreds of hours worth of playtime for as much or as little as you are able. The reality is most new single player games charge this and are lucky to provide 30hours of play time, but people will consume them without thinking twice... I know I am a bit of a fanboi... that I admit (particularly after 3 amazing BWE), but I find it truly hard to believe that you can't find 60 bucks worth of entertainment value in this game.

Seems only the weapon/spell based skills are easy to come by, there are 'slottable' skills you gain after that, the first of which you get around lvl7(ish) the second at 10 - then again at 20, 30 and 40 - these are the ones that bind to the keys 6-7-8-9-0 - you can chose those via the Hero menu and you get a skill point per level... but i hear what your saying, after around lvl10ish there doesnt seem to be much skill progression - but as i didnt get past lvl11 i could be totaly wrong - i will ask one of my Auzzie mates whos been playing closed beta for a while about that

Ok so i played GW2 for a lot of the weekend and here is my "Review"

The game itself is quite good, plays smooth, i found there wasnt really enough 'tutorial' and often wondered what i should do next/where i should go next. The traditional questing model seems to have been abandoned as you seem to have only one main quest line that jumps up in level very quickly... i often found myself wondering how i was going to complete a level 8 quest (my only quest) when i was only lvl4.

Grinding out levels isnt really an option, as even at levels 2, 3 or 4 you need several thousand XP to get to the next level and each equal level mob gives you only 2 or 3 xp points. This is a little frustrating.

Took me a while to figure out that the traditional questing model had been replaced by more "rift style" events. Basically you are encouraged to explore the map and find the settlements around the map, here you will discover mini quests that you need to complete, that give excellent Experience. By doing this you also stumble across "events" which appear to be public group style things (think Warhammer public quests) - not all quests were "kill X rats" i did find some that were puzzles and collect/gather quests and a number of mini quests that simply needed a group in order to complete, fortuantely the game encourages people to help each other out and work together, i never actually made it into a 'group' but often found myself helping (and being helped) by random groups of people running around.

The skill system seems to be a slightly cut down version of MMO skills, you appear to have a maximum of 10 skill slots (Think Diablo3 here).

You learn skills by using the skills you have, so say for instance you are a Mage and you start with a small Firebolt spell, in order to learn your second spell you need to use the firebolt spell 20 times (on enemies), then your second spell gets unlocked, use that and your third spell gets unlocked etc. The Skills/Spells you have are all tied into equipment, so if you are a warrior you will have a different set of skills if you are using a sword or a hammer, and you need to 'level' up each of these skills... this seems ot give you some interesting combinations and a different angle on the traditional MMO model. I really enjoyed this part of the game and often found myself trying out new equipment so i could level up my skills

Dieing in the game was different, when you get taken 'down' by a monster, you have a small chance of being able to survive it, having a 'death throws' kind of thing where you can try to bandage youself, throw (feeble) attacks at the monster or use a couple of class specific skills to damamge the enemy, move your body somewhere safe etc - also gives your team mates a chance to bandage you up and bring you back to the fight. A different twist on the traditional "Die, respawn at the spawn point" model. Equipment still takes damage and can get broken (and the item model disappears from your character when something is broken, i noticed my leg armour was broken when i saw myself running around with bare legs!)

I iddnt get to any dungeons so i cant comment on those, neither did i play any PvP instances or World PvP - i just wanted to play some of the races/class combinations in the low levels to get a feel for the game.

Overall i think this game seems to be a simplified MMO model, which plays a little more 'arcade' style, i often found myself dodging away, running around and using tactics in a battle instead of stood in one spot and 'button mashing' So imagine Rift/Warhammer meets Diablo3, but without the 'hack and slash, wade through millions of monsters' feel of the Diablo series. I really enjoyed the concept/feel of the game and once i figured out where i was going wrong and 'got on track' the game became very enjoyable.

Game client seemed fairly stable, i did get a couple of disconnects through the weekend, maybe 4-5 which for a closed beta isnt too bad i guess.

Interesting game, and no monthly subscription fees! Buy the game and then never have to spend another penny on it, you can buy some stuff in game apparently, but from what a buddy told me this is mostly cosmetic stuff or Gems that allow you to do things like switch servers etc.

I wil ldefiantely be playing at release... offical release is the end of August.