timmyp

Did they set the fat guy on top of the emaciated victim?

Awesome place to pick up chics

Any TV member living near him prepared to go and check out the facts????

Here are photos of the bed. It doesn't look electric at all:

Perhaps fluency of language is the greatest barrier limiting the potential of some interactions, friendships require trust, trust comes from understanding and understanding comes from communication.

Spot on.

For anyone who doubts this: How many people are you friends with in your home country who don't speak the language of your home country? (and if there are any, I'm sure the number drops when you remove the potential for sex)

If anyone knows a bar where you can make Thai male friends in Bangkok I would be very interested. I think culturally there may be no Thai bar where you can socialize individually at, and even better with an international vibe.

There is no concept here of going to a bar to meet new people. You go to a bar with your friends, never alone. That's not a criticism at all, it's only to say that if you are going to a bar to make new friends, you probably won't be meeting any Thai people (obviously I'm not talking about the red light areas).

You have to socialize through a common interest here: futsal, music, volunteer work, etc. Bars will just make you foreign friends, and the Thais there will wonder what is wrong with you that you came by yourself.

What exactly is the point of these ridiculous re-enactments? They add no evidence so I'm guessing a photo-op for top cops.

Reading the article, this guy doesn't strike me as a particularly interesting or mysterious character. Throwing away your life for just $30,000 seems like pretty small time stuff. Perhaps the documentary will show that there is something more interesting here than just small-time crime, and more than a fool who got killed trying to be a tough guy in Asia?

Another climate change nutter bites the dust.

Yes, those climate change nutters are a tiny minority. Good to shut them up and stop spreading those silly rumours so we can all get back to some proper polluting.

>Cambodia is now free of “blue-ear” pig disease,

The world, however, continues to suffer from rampant fat pig disease.

Japan offers something like this. It falls under the "Cultural" visa heading. I never had it, but I have met people that did. Potters, painters, textiles, welding... I never met someone using it for writing in Japan, I haven't a clue if writing is allow for such a visa there.

<removed>

But I am on your side here. The artists I met in Japan on a similar visa were putting out good work, though the cost of living there doesn't really allow one to sit around as it would here.

I mean to say that this short-film was very lakhawn-like and nothing like the more realistic portrayals of Thai society that I have seen by other Thai independent filmmakers, but at least there is some mention of the slavery problem, however clearly hi-so and plastic-surgeried up the actors are.

Like any cheesey lakhawn, I couldn't really sit through it. I scene-skipped. Above all, though, I think we have to commend the filmmakers for attempting to recognize the slavery problem in the fishing industry.

I've seen lots of independent Thai films that do a great job of using "real" people and representing a non-glamorous strata of Thai society. It's always refreshing to see those instead of pasty white plastic surgery actors pretending to cry.

Fascinating photos.

>>Danny High of Funny River

There's a good joke in there somewhere.

why are they drinking milk anyway? Milk is already rotten, it's white because of the pus.

There is more calcium in a cup of broccoli than a cup of milk.

How do the largest animals on the planet with the largest bone structures, aka calcium deposits

get all that calcium? Oh yeah! green plants!!!

Drinking milk is stupid any way you look at it. Pushing lactose on a lactose intolerant society is stupid.

I think the author meant "Ya Ba" pills.... Which for newbies means "crazy drug" ..

It used to be called "yaa máa", and still in is Myanmar.

Even found a link for that on Wikipedia. Gotta love Wikipidea.

Sterilization shots ? What are they talking about? Spay and nueter are the only methods for dogs and cats.

I only heard of these injections recently from my landlord, who had his cats spayed using injections.

He asked me what I did for my cats (he was thinking that they weren't fixed), and he was shocked when I told him that it had been done surgically.

The injections aren't permanent, apparently. Here's a link, looks like they are giving this poor cat a shot right in the hoo-hoo.

http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/reprod/petpop/nonsurg.html

For sure, some serious animal population control is needed. I love cats and dogs, but it's cruel to not do something about their numbers.

That is why there should be a standardized system of transliteration, such as the Hepburn system.

Much easier to type Thai than IPA. Why waste time on IPA?

For those who've learnt IPA for its general utility. Also, normal Thai spelling doesn't unambiguously specify how words sound, and Thai script phonetics are still ambiguous, though much less ambiguous than the normal spelling. Try sounding out เพลา.

Which is relevant if you are doing research in linguistics. If you are merely trying to learn Thai in order to use it, the preferred method of 65 million Thai people is Thai script. Otherwise, you are just wasting time and making learning Thai more difficult.

English also has ambiguities in writing. Try sounding out "through", "thorough", "fought", and "rough." Yet, we don't resort to IPA.

I think IPA is very useful, and not a waste of time at all. It's not like learning a totally different script.

The ambiguities in English you list (through, tough, etc.) are good ones, but we spend hours and years as children learning how to read those words. Learning as an adult needs to speed up the process. People who are learning English as a second or foreign language most definitely fall back on IPA for words like the ones you mention (if not IPA, then they use whatever goofy pronunciation key their dictionary has created, but most likely it is similar IPA).

Even after learning Thai, you're still going to come across plenty of words that you can't read correctly in Thai without a pronunciation a key (maybe you can read them correctly the first time, but it's a guessing game). Using simple Thai works, but you'll probably find more resources aimed at Thai learners showing the pronunciation in IPA than you will finding simple Thai (though the thailanguage.com website nicely lists pronunciation in simple Thai).

IPA is great and universal, and very applicable to Thai. Adults don't have time (or the brain facilities for that matter) to learn a new language as we did our native one, and IPA helps the learning process.

Changes in version 0.05:

- The database is extended by ten times, now consists approx. 50,000 entries.

- The IME is now learnable, the candidates are reordered depending on how often you select them.

- Positioning of the candidate window also working on mouse actions.

Download:

http://thai.riian-thai.com/files/ThaiIME_0.05.zip

"Starbucks to Bring its Unique Coffeehouse Experience"

Very unique, you hardly see them anywhere.