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sprq

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Posts posted by sprq

  1. Just now, sprq said:

    It will be 140,000 baht odd for OPD + IPD without no claim bonus. And believe me, that's a very good deal. If you get prostate cancer, for example, as I did last year, then just the initial IPD treatment is about 400,000 baht, and the cheapest therapy you can get put on will be 160,000 baht a year (hormone therapy). 

     

    Pacific Cross cover is excellent for the money, and the Bangkok office is very good in dealing with claims.

    that is, from 71 to 75 years old, annual premium.

  2. On 5/14/2019 at 9:29 AM, Jen65 said:

    I am with Pacific Cross and a hefty 48,000 baht premium for a 68 year old !!  ( and I have no health problems - pronounced physically fit at my annual medical )   .  Only problem is the premium goes UP once you reach 70 so heaven knows what it will be and after 75 they don't appear to want to insure you as with most .  Health /Medical insurers must be rubbing their hands with glee at the news - can up their charges , rake in huge new income and likely without any government control !    Why can't the government hospitals offer a plan for expat / long stay residents based on an initial/annual medical and give a listing of medical/operation costs and offer a health insurance policy (possibly with suggested bank deposit to cover expected/unexpected medical costs depending on the individual , age and current health) .  The 800,000 in the bank should be made mandatory for all ( after all it is not that much ) and that form the basis of medical cost coverage .   After all what else is it for ?       

    It will be 140,000 baht odd for OPD + IPD without no claim bonus. And believe me, that's a very good deal. If you get prostate cancer, for example, as I did last year, then just the initial IPD treatment is about 400,000 baht, and the cheapest therapy you can get put on will be 160,000 baht a year (hormone therapy). 

     

    Pacific Cross cover is excellent for the money, and the Bangkok office is very good in dealing with claims.

  3. On 3/29/2018 at 2:05 PM, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

     

    One of the good things about PC, relative to other Thai health insurers, is that if you take out a policy with them before a certain age, they'll continue to cover you even as you get older, provided you pay the premiums. A lot of other Thai insurers cut coverage for existing policy holders at a certain age.

     

    Offset's post is interesting because PC has a premiums chart with their rates for each age band and type of policy. But it tops out at age 65. So as far as I know, there's no public document that tells anyone what their premiums will be for policy holders once they get past age 65. I've always wondered how much they'll escalate my premiums once I get past the age 65 point.

     

    They also have two main different types of medical policies, Maxima and the higher coverage level Maxima Plus plans, and then lots of options within those -- having or not having OPD, many options for annual deductibles, no claim discounts, optional dental and eye coverage. So each person's premium situation is going to depend on their age and then also how their configure their policy details.

     

     

    I've been with LMG and then PC for about eight years, since age 65. They do have age bands above 65, which are 66-70, 71-75, and so on, up to 86-90 (as far as I can see), but they do not publicise them.

     

    I have always bought Maxima with no outpatient cover and a 40,000 baht deductible, which always seemed a fair compromise between cover and cost. My latest premium at age 72 was 144,000 baht odd at full cover, which reduced to 70,000 odd including a 20% no-claim bonus for never claiming.

     

    Now I am claiming, for various procedures necessitating In-Patient stays, and PC's response has been just fine, using their pre-authorisation system processed by the hospital (all bureaucracy done by Samitivej, mercifully).

     

    Any questions, just ask!

    • Like 1
  4. On 5/21/2018 at 9:55 PM, Mac98 said:

    Yes, common journalistic mistake. Warship would be proper term. Battleship is a class of warship, as is a minesweeper or destroyer.

    The one that most annoys me is journalists writing "runway" when they mean "taxiway" or "tarmac". I mean, FGS, they take planes all the time but they don't know the simplest airport terminology. It's unforgivable given the circumstances of their job, whereas getting battleship wrong is a lot more excusable. Many have probably never even been to sea.

  5. On 5/21/2018 at 6:15 AM, operator said:

    About as far removed from a Battleship as you can get. Ex HMS Minstrel a 1097 ton "minesweeper" built in Canada.

    Bought by the Royal Thai Navy in 1947. 

    Yes, so many people say "battleship" when they mean "warship". A battleship is the largest warship class of all, and very few exist these days in any navy.

  6. 5 hours ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

     

    English has 205 ways of representing those 44 or so phonemes.

     

    One could argue that one has to memorize a good number of parts of words in English to know how to pronounce them, how to decode them, and to spell them. In fact, I could argue that English is part logographic (like Chinese) and part phonemic (like Spanish). The vowel system is mostly logographic (as I have described in the OP) and the consonant system is mostly phonemic. Not so easy.

     

    Chinese has a huge diaspora and is getting to be a world power. It is already in Africa as mentioned. 

     

    You know what happens to people and civilizations that don't adapt,... they decline. Latin used to be the lingua franca. French was for a while. They probably all felt that they could not possibly be kicked to the curb.

    English will remain the world's lingua franca, even as China rises and America declines.  There is no way that Chinese - the only conceivable rival of English - can replace English in the near future, or any time this century, because English is too well established globally and Chinese is damned difficult by comparison, at least in reading and writing. English also has soft power behind it, all the movies and music and TV shows, etc, etc which the world loves and the Chinese don't ever look like replacing. The world may buy Chinese goods by the shipload but it has no interest in the Chinese language.

     

    I'm not being myopic by saying this, I'm being realistic. 

  7. On 15/01/2017 at 8:33 PM, spidermike007 said:

    Yes, the statement about the lingua franca future of Thai, was astonishing to anyone with an inquiring mind. It is always kind of amazing to me how little Thailand rates on the world stage. Outside of Thailand, few ever mention the country. Once in a while it comes up in conversation since people know I live here. But, how often do you see Thailand spoken of in the media? Now that most Westerners are losing interest in Thailand as a tourist destination, due to two very hard years spent sabotaging the industry, by both the PM, and the TAT, they are not even discussing it as a place to visit anymore.  

     

    So, the very possibility of it becoming a world language would to some extent be based on the presumption that Thailand is becoming more and more important a nation. Perhaps it is all of the Pulitzers, Peabodys, Oscars, Nobel Peace prize awards, Olympic gold medals, World Cup victories, and other international recognitions that Thailand is achieving? 

     

    Talk about myopia. Talk about living within the ivory tower. Talk about being out of touch with his people. Talk about a limited world view. What can one say? 

    I'd say it's simply the arrogance of a powerful man unused to his pronouncements being questioned and who gets in the habit of saying whatever idiocy comes into his mind because nobody ever questions him. Of course, he does get questioned these days, by the media and some others, and gets very riled about it, but still slips back into his usual bubble of spouting inanities without fear of contradiction, such is the mentality of a powerful person in Thailand.

  8. On 15/01/2017 at 1:15 PM, aslimversgwm said:

    yes it b---dy well is! I, and many 'educated' British or US born people do ALL the time for as long as they live! English is NOT an easy language - you really have to believe that or you'll continue knocking poor Thai students who find it horrendously difficult.

    They find it difficult because they're extremely badly taught. It's actually very easy for anybody to pick up basic English if they are well taught, even if their native language is as different as Thai is. To speak English well is another matter - it's a very complex and subtle language at its best - but to speak it at a basic level is much easier than with languages like French or German, for example, to compare other major European languages.

     

    In short, Thai students are extremely badly served by their teachers - and that's why they are so bad at English, not because English at a basic level is difficult. It's not!

  9. The police have excelled themselves. In Soi Thonglor, from Soi 21 all the way down to the canal flyover just before New Phetburi, they have just put dividers. This has to be for one sole reason: to stop drivers doing U-turns in order to go back into Soi 21, where a right turn has been blocked for many years. Drivers are supposed to do U-turns under the flyover, not close to Soi 21 or anywhere in that stretch, but many have been doing it in those places.

     

    Was this a problem? Not really, it only briefly halted the traffic going south along Thonglor from New Phetburi, even when many drivers were too incompetent to do a correct U-turn -- with three lanes of space!!! -- in one go and had to reverse into the traffic in order to get space to continue.

     

    Perhaps that messing about is what has caused the police to do this draconian act of dividing the road and preventing all turns of any kind in that stretch. Now if you’re going north and want to turn into anywhere in that stretch, it won’t be too bad now -- except in jams – to have to go  down to the U-turn under the flyover. But – duh!! – what about for those going south who need to turn right into properties on the west side. They’ll have to do a U-turn somewhere after Soi 21 in order to get back to where they want to go. Duh!!

     

    My god, I could go on and on about the stupidity of the police and/or the city’s traffic engineers – but it’s always seemed to me that the latter have virtually no say in new traffic management moves, it’s the police solely in charge, unlike in developed countries..

     

    What would be done in Europe or North America? For a busy T-junction like Soi 21 and Thonglor, there would be traffic lights or a roundabout (circle for Americans). But the Bangkok police minimise the installation of traffic lights for some reason (probably because they like manual operation and don’t have enough men to manage extra lights) and roundabouts are never ever considered, for reasons I cannot fathom. (The whole of Bangkok has only three roundabouts that I know of, huge ones which only exist to circumvent major monuments, namely DemocracyMonument, VictoryMonument, Wongwian Yai).

     

    So there we have it: another massive over-reaction to a minor traffic issue creating more problems than it solves. Well done, BiB, your dumbness is world class. Meanwhile, I reach for my book of world philosophy for some calming words. You can only survive in this city if you’re philosophical about the rampant idiocy which you can do nothing about.

  10. I'm finally getting down to finding a new home for my Nationwide Intl savings, and am really amazed at the difficulty  of finding anything like an equivalent. Unless you have a total of GBP25,000 or equivalent, there is no bank that I have found so far that has savings accounts in GBP,  USD and EUR for low sums. Having begun offshore banking back in 1979, I find the difference almost impossible to believe. Back then, and for the next three decades, banks were falling over themselves to take your money, and usually without any charges even for a debit card. Now they're not at all interested, so plainly the whole environment has changed so much that there just isn't enough money in it for them, even paying zero interest.

     

    Heigh ho, back to the hunt - but I fear that, as a Brit with no UK address, I'll have no option for foreign currency savings but to bring the moneys into one of my two Thai banks, after opening suitable accounts. I've never felt comfortable about having any large portion of my cash assets  located in Thailand, but - amazingly - it looks like that's the way it has to go.

     

    Things are fine for people with big savings, of course: so-called "wealth management" banks are there waiting for them. But the small saver with under 25k of GBP, USD or EUR, well, is nigh on equivalent to a homeless person in today's offshore banking world. 

  11. On 07/12/2016 at 10:34 AM, pookiki said:

    It was clear a long time ago, mate.  English is also an 'ethnicity', right?  That is the distinction that I was trying to make all along. Just trying to make a distinction between nationality and ethnicity.  Lost in translation! 

     

    English is absolutely not an ethnicity. When referring to people, it is solely a nationality. An English person can be of any ethnicity whatsoever.

  12. On 06/12/2016 at 10:13 PM, Shawn0000 said:

     

    That theory would work if English was a phonetic language, as it is not it is actually way off.  Spelling is obviously not the problem as Thai students ability to spell far exceeds their ability to pronounce and also understand spoken English, the problem lying in the unbalanced teaching of the four skills.

    There is no such thing as a "phonetic language". There are languages that have a spelling system which closely correlates with the spoken language, such as Spanish, and languages where the spelling system is anarchic and so does not correlate very well with the spoken language, with English being an outstanding example.

     

    It's truly tough for students worldwide that the world's lingua franca has such a chaotic spelling system, but there's nothing we can do about it now.

  13. On 06/12/2016 at 3:58 PM, AlQaholic said:

    Are you an English person?

    Are you English?

    Are you an Englishman?

    Are you from England?

    Are your heritage from England by any means?

    Do you stem from England perhaps?

    Is England the Country from where you come?

    Is England you country of origin?

    Are you from that little Island just North of Europe?

    Is it from England that you come?

    Did you come from England?

    Do you count England as your place of origin?

     

     

    None of these is the correct translation, which is "You're English, are you?"

  14. On 06/12/2016 at 3:30 PM, GAZZPA said:

    What? There are no versions of English. English is English. There are some slight differences on some words and some local slang but mostly it is purely accent, nothing more.

     

    From what I observe thai people have a better grasp then the press would have you believe. Of course if you speak too fast then it can be a problem for some but generally its ok for basic things everyday.

     

    However, neighbouring countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and particularly the Philippines are light years away with English language skills.

     

     

     

     

     

    Sheer ignorance. Professional linguists categorise English into many varieties. To name just a few, there are British English, American English, Australian English, Singaporean English, South African English and Jamaican English. They are differentiated because they have differing grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. "Accent", contrary to what you say, is the least of the differences. 

  15. 16 hours ago, Howitzer said:

    just watch internet tv. Nowadays many tv stations broadcast their programs online. Youtube is also pretty good. Most ppl watch cable to see history channel/documentaries etc all which can be found on YT.

     

    Yes, YouTube is vastly superior to TrueVisions as a source of anything except 24 hr news, and even that  is available from Sky (UK) - and it's all free!

     

    Get it on your TV via a Sony Blu-Ray player like I do, or various other methods which somebody will tell you about.

  16. 1 hour ago, NongKhaiKid said:

    A VERY pertinent post however I think we all know that TRUE will not bother responding to any queries on the matter irrespective of the contact method used although anyone phoning in might get a verbal run around and there will be no allowance made for the limited viewing provided.

    The bills will come out as usual and non-payment will eventually result in service being stopped. I have no idea what they do to collect overdue payments.

    They keep reminding you to pay via the post, and then after a few months they start using a debt collector. In the end I paid, just to be safe.

  17. Last week, Bangkok:

     

    Nana Post Office: notice pinned to counter insisting on passport showing for sending all parcels and letters, never knew anything about this ridiculous requirement before I saw that. Fortunately, because it's very rare, I was carrying my passport.

     

    Sukhumvit Soi 38/36 post office:  no notice on the counter but was asked for passport to send a very thin envelope. Had my passport on me just in case, but tried showing my driving licence first. Fine!

  18. Last week, Bangkok:

     

    Nana Post Office: notice pinned to counter insisting on passport showing for sending all parcels and letters, never knew anything about this ridiculous requirement before I saw that. Fortunately, because it's very rare, I was carrying my passport.

     

    Sukhumvit Soi 38/36 post office:  no notice on the counter but was asked for passport to send a very thin envelope. Had my passport on me just in case, but tried showing my driving licence first. Fine!

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