Gsxrnz

If you saw Obama strolling down Walking Street, would you buy him a beer?

Shepherds Pie, I substitute mashed cauliflour for mashed potato because I'm diabetic (it looks and tastes almost the same) - actually I substitute ground pork for ground lamb as well so I guess we can call this the Shepherds Substitute Pie.

Well, this is Thailand....so a fake Shepherd's Pie is perfectly acceptable.

I use Skype to mobile and land from Thailand. $10AUD for unlimited calls to landline and $100AUD for 400 minutes to cellphones in NZ. You can buy worldwide subscriptions too I believe, as opposed to a single country.

Call quality is excellent and if you put an app on your smartphone, you can use it anywhere with wifi more conveniently than dragging your laptop around. No worries using credit card to buy online with Skype - assuming of course you use your own computer/smartphone and are satisfied that its Trojan and phishing free.

I wouldn't consider ever using a public computer for online purchasing.

A Thai speaking English, or an English speaker speaking Thai? - either way, I bet it'll be a laugh a minute.

Look, if one of your requirements is be able to read English, then you should obviously just write it in English....

Agreed - and dumb it down a bit as you have far too many words that even a moderate speaker of English will have difficulty understanding.

Your competitor must be a bit thick. If he really wanted to cause you problems he should be hassling your customers, not your employees (note - not employERS).

You have four choices.

Firstly, accept what is happening and hope/pray it doesn't escalate.

Secondly, find a bigger/badder/meaner mafia import from BKK or Pattaya to put the frighteners on him - up to you how much "frightening" you want dished out.

Thirdly, take the earliest opportunity to vacate/relocate your business in town.

Fourthly, walk away.

"The Building Control Office ordered work stopped on the new building and for the company to prohibit use of the illegal floors in existing hotel."

This seems entirely logical action by the Building Control Officer. He will have astutely determined that the top 4 (illegal) floors will be much more dangerous to occupy than the floors below them........mind boggling!

The muppet is probably only qualified in Lego construction with a degree from the local kindergarten.

Some poor idiot at Paypal will lose their job over this. Similar thing happened in NZ a few years ago - a bank officer accidentally loaded a $10,000-00 overdraft as $10,000,000-00 for a Chinese couple living in NZ.

They transferred most of the $10m overseas and then skipped the country and went on a gambling spree in Macau. They got nabbed in the end - weren't smart enough to keep a low profile and disappear.

Yes.....I was sceptical as well.

The wife's computer had the same issue. I tried the F8 trick but still couldn't start it in safe mode. And it seemed to be awfully hot after only a few minutes running.

Took it to Tuk Com and they replaced the video controller - 3,000B. They reckoned this was the issue - it had cooked, although I initially had my doubts. All fixed though. They said it was because the machine was getting too hot, so I bought one of those fan thingies and it keeps cool now.

My own laptop was also shutting down automatically once or twice a day. I then realised it was due to overheating so I got a fan for underneath it as well - never shuts down now, so I assume it was also getting too hot for comfort.

Could be worse - they could have built a golf course instead of the hydroponics farm.

Hmmm.....where I come from they grow things other than vegetables with hydroponics!

Paint first. If you're worried about the tillers finger marks, grout etc getting on the walls, run shrinkwrap around the walls up to waist height. If you do have to touch up paint, use the paint from the same original can. There is a method of touching up walls using a brush that makes it invisible, assuming the walls are not aged. This method was taught to me by my Welsh brother-in-law, a professional painter for all of his working life.

That method is:

1. Use a 1" or 2" brush. An older brush is preferable - one that's been well used and well worn.

2. Get a very small amount of paint on the tips of the bristles.

3. Paint an old piece of wood, newspaper, any material. The object is to strip as much paint off the brush as possible, leaving the brush nearly empty of paint and almost "dry". Do this several times so the paint is distributed throughout the bristles, but still semi dry.

4. Paint the damaged area of the wall using a quick whisking type motion up/down/left/right/diagonal, with as light a touch as possible. Almost no paint will be applied, leaving no track marks or obvious signs of repair, but the damage will be hidden. Do this several times if necessary to mask the damage.

EDIT: I missed a point. Don't try and make the repair a regular shape, or conform to the damage you're repairing. "Feather" it randomly into the surrounding undamaged area so it looks like a half arsed paint job. Go away for a beer. come back in 10 minutes and you won't be able to find the repair.

If you do it correctly, the repair will be invisible. You can even do this on walls that have had a plaster repair. The trick is to apply the paint from a 99% dry brush - the colour is applied, the damage is covered, but the evidence of the repair is invisible. You can do large areas or small areas using this method - works like a dream even in deep/dark colours.

Otherwise If you dip a brush in the paint (or worse, use a roller) and apply it as though you would when normally painting a wall, it will be obvious to a blind man at 20 paces.

Renovated 4 houses in my lifetime, top to bottom, and only ever had professionals come in to check certifiable works (and issue certs) such as plumbing and electrical. Whoops - I laid carpet in one house but decided the cost of a carpetlayer was cheaper than the cockups I made, so always used them after that.

Never heard of a 100 year ban. Maybe he was blacklisted - but that usually (and I think rarely) happens in really high profile criminal cases or international fugitives etc. Blacklisted means prohibited to ever re-enter Thailand - a lifetime ban by all accounts.

I'd like to see what the stamp says in his passport.

Maybe the OP should have made this a poll.

Unless you're doing the work yourself there is no doubt you will have grief whichever way you do it. The least potential for grief is doing the walls first. The only disadvantage is that yes, a worker may put his hands on the wall and leave a print - easily washed off or retouched.

The worst outcome doing it the other way is that you'll have paint all over the floor that is much harder to deal with. And some dolt will tip a bucket over or put a roller down etc - yes, you can lay drop sheets and everything else, but believe me, tiles and carpet are the last thing to logically go down, even after all the electrical work is done, lights fitted, a/c installed etc.

If I was doing it myself it wouldn't matter because I'd be bloody careful either way. However, painting the walls first would be the better option and less likely to end up in a mess.

Just make sure your tillers are careful with the cement and grout etc. around the edges. If they make the odd flick of stuff on the walls it's easy enough to touch up the paint here and there.

"Most tourists were from ASEAN states at 6.3 million or 28 per cent overall". - So were does the "minority" 72% come from.

They're classifying ASEAN states as one location to get the 28%. I suppose they then classify the rest of the world by individual country, so obviously the ASEAN states will come out as a significant number.

Ouch!! Didn't the British army put bromide in the tea of the soldiers to dampen their sexual desires? Think I'll stay off the rice for a while.

If I saw that plate on a table by itself I'd be asking the staff how much for a breakfast selection from the buffet.

Assuming there was a robust system behind monitoring the RFID's, it might help with inventory management. But there isn't even a database now that records or monitors inventory movements or payments - how the hell will adding the cost of an RFID to the whole cocked up system do any good?

Monthly report to the Ministry - "....we cannot account for 2.5 million RFID tags. However, all the rice that we are supposed to have is still here and we are confident there is no corruption or theft. p.s please send more RFID's urgently as we need to lose some more."