cooked

I was always insanely jealous of my cousins who grew up in Switzerland, where German,French,Italian and English are all spoken and one day at dinner I literally had to pick my jaw up as they literally switched mid sentence through each.

I agree with one parent speaking one language each as it does add consistency, but I would also say to make sure your child never feels under pressure to speak a particular language on command. I have seen it so many times where a parent (often a proud farang father)has demanded their child speak English to me (on the street,in the market or even in 7) and the look of fear in the child's eyes is awful. It's well and good being able to have a conversation at home with family but another in the big bad world.

Also on a side note, having taught in schools here and when Thai teachers find out a child is from a mixed family they assume the child can speak english,German,Norwegian etc as their mother or father does. This can put a lot of pressure on kids and often in my experience they child end up being nervous and not wanting to participate in English class as they feel their level of English isn't as good as it should be or that the teacher will punish them as they should speak it perfectly as a parent speaks it.

Praise and confidence are key.

Hmm, old thread revived, I thought I would add a comment. I have seen two families where the mother tongue, that is to say, the language that the mother used with her very young children, was for some reason done away with. In one case because the parents moved from Canada to Switzerland and decided it was a good idea to speak French with their kids (with an atrocious German accent) and the other because the father decided he hated all things Thai. Difficult to draw conclusions from just two examples but the three children from these families seem to be damaged.

Nobody as mentioned the importance of the mother tongue, it's where you feel at home.My ex wife's great grandmother, living in the German part of Switzerland for 85 years, reverted to speaking French in her last days.

Anyway, at home in Switzerland I spoke Swiss German, my wife, at least initially, spoke English with me, German with the kids. We moved to the French part pre school and just sent them to school when the time arrived. Absolutely no problem for both boys although as mentioned, the younger one did start to speak later. Both have very good jobs that depend on their having the three languages at their finger tips. We also had trilingual conversations at the dinner table.

Switch to Thailand, we are looking after my wife's grand daughter, now 8. 'The brat now understands most of what we say (including my swear words when driving) and we speak a halting English together. She watches that horrible program High Five on TV and I found some good stuff on Youtube. I say halting, but she speaks better than most Thais I meet, including the village school teacher, I have to wean her off using Thai sentence structures.

As mentioned, praise and confidence are essential, but that is the key to good parenting anywhere, isn't it?

Thanks for the info guys. Everyday is a school day.

When you talk about manure, are we talking about fresh cow dung ? If so, there is a guy not far from me who has cows, I'm sure he would donate a bucket load for a small fee !!

Soidog, thanks for the pic, how long have they been growing ? Much bigger than mine.

I stopped by a shop yesterday. The very nice lady tried to sell me 3 - 30 - 30, " very good for tomato " Any thoughts guys ?

Thanks all

I use dried cow manure, completely different in texture and dangerous stuff, lots of nitrogen in there.

3.30.30 is good for tomatoes that are near to flowering but at the beginning they need N to get them moving. (NPK... 3 30 30).

Where did you find allspice? What is it called in Thai?

We have it here in Korat. Ground at The Mall and whole at Klang Plaza.

rice555

Bt.63

Or this in Foodland for 50 baht.

DSCF4108 resized.jpg

(Edit) Sorry, I didn't read the post properly,

I am wondering about this also. Although I have UK nationality, I consider myself Swiss. Our very bright and well adjusted little girl (grandchild) is 8 and I am wondering if I could get her into a school in the UK for one year at the age of 11, not only because of the language (she understands well enough, but doesn't get to use it much) but as you say, to 'wake her up' to other ways of seeing things. No way I can afford an International school in Switzerland.

We live in Buriram and her private school is reasonable and not more dangerous than a school in London, that's for sure. Without hijacking your thread, maybe more comments about this idea, please?

PS The thought of home schooling has crossed my mind but the family is very much against this and I need their cooperation for that. The father is dumb and is a true Thai, that's to say a Farang basher.

I find that all breads are simple although at the beginning things do look complicated, I remember swearing when I couldn't even find yeast anywhere. (in Thai: yeest).

About once a week I make what I call a simple bread, and this is the only one I do in the bread machine start to finish instead of using the thing just for kneading and raising bread. From allrecipes.com,

Light oat bread.

Gets used almost exclusively for making toast. As I make lard I use this instead of margarine or butter now, the difference is well worth it. (by the way, I have started to eat what was a treat in my childhood, toast, dripping and Bovril).

1 and 1/4 cups rain water. (tap water not really drinkable here).

2 tablespoons lard (or margarine or oil)

1/2 cup of rolled oats

3 cups of flour (I don't bother finding bread, all purpose, or whatever kind of flour, doesn't seem to make much difference)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 and 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast.

If you can make the above you can think about making Focaccia with bacon, crumpets and bagels.

Ezzra...or anybody...where do you get your whole wheat flour from?....been looking for it for years.

Have a Nice Day.

Exactly. Many recipes like this have been hoiked directly off a website or out of a book. Stuff like "a packet of yeast, a cup of rye flour, kosher salt, ...." .... We don't all live next door to a Walmart.

I have found that you must improvise, juggle, try again. Not using the correct flour is fun.

I have driven to Sriracha many times from Buriram. The recommended route over Korat is definitely to be avoided when there is traffic, also another part of the route that sends you along a perilous mountain road stuck behind trucks for miles at a time. I tried alternatives suggested by Google, not much better, I eventually found a route with good roads and not much traffic.

What I mean to say is that YOUR GPS DOESN'T HAVE A BRAIN. You do. I now know the specific places where it tells me to take sharp left (into a rice field) when the map shows straight on, the place in Bangkok where it says 'slight right' when it means take a U-turn...

I had a girl friend who constantly said things like 'you should have turned left there', and when I asked her why she didn't tell me before, would say 'I'm telling you'. So to avoid strife I bought a GPS and she got jealous, especially when I decided that I preferred the female voice.

I have tried for years to register the missus and myself (as per their recommendations) with the Embassy and have yet to have the courtesy of a reply. Their business process is flawed. Their management and supervision is invisible. In layspeak, they are a waste of space.

It is quite simple.

The EU has decided national Embassies must concentrate on facilitating trade and business

The service to own nationals is not the reason why Embassies are there any more.

That has become additional secondary business and should be cost effective.

Wake up, lads, people are not important for Governments any more.

The concept of public service has gone from UK government, if it doesn't make money, sell it, ignoring the fact that the postal services, railways and the rest of it were nationalised (with taxpayers' money) because they were loss makers. Only a matter of time until the British Embassy is privatised. The Swiss Embassy has farmed out tourist visa applications to a semi-private firm already.

Anyway a friend that was running a trekking company in Ecuador got no help or advice / feedback from the UK embassy when the excrement hit the fan 20 years ago, He fled on foot with almost nothing and got home with help from his parents. Nothing has changed I guess.

Thanks SoiDog.

With the deftness of a micro surgeon, I carried out some transplants today. It appears they have all survived so far. Not yet finished with transplanting.

The ones that I have transplanted are now in 8in deep pots, which are half full with potting stuff, the plan is to top up the soil as they grow.

Is this correct ?

Or how should I proceed ?

Many thanks.

Your 'potting stuff' is probably spent mushroom 'stuff' not containing adequate nourishment so start thinking about liquid fertilisers or cow manure or whatever. Otherwise they will stagnate in their pots and eventually die. I think...

I wouldn't top up too much at the beginning although tomatoes are pretty hardy as far as that is concerned.

Sounds good, except for the olive oil. I would substitute butter.

Never again butter.

Lard.

I once stopped my car in an immense car park in Switzerland at 5am. Only car there. I just stopped as I pleased as I was only going to be there for a few minutes. Out of nowhere a group appears and a lady says 'just look how he parked'. Reacting like that is going too far.

On the other hand, in Thailand, having driven around following the arrows as mentioned above to get a good parking space only to find that somebody hasleft his shopping cart in there does result in sloppy parking. I have also parked with my wheels over the line because of a huge SUV that just can't manoeuvre properly into the tiny space. Obviously when this has gone, it is easy to take fotos of badly parked cars.

The Thais don't necessarily appreciate this behaviour either, try https://www.facebook.com/pages/I-park-like-an-idiot-Thailand- http://tinyurl.com/lqbpupg

Plenty of pictures of Porsches taking up two spaces,invalid spaces etc, in there.

Ok. So we also get rid of ballet , opera and certain literature. If you want to bring everything down to the level of disco and comic books then what is left to aspire to?

Right, food snob (me) forcing his opinion on others here... 'Bread' that is soft and sweet isn't bread, it is so far down the line of factory processing of what was once a healthy product that it is no longer bread. Hell, I even make my own toast bread.

In every day conversation, the word sandwich can mean something has been squashed between two other things. In fact many men dream of this...

Yeah well, remarks like that make me puke also. It is true that dance in the UK has devolved to bobbing up and down to no particular order or interaction. I led and taught a European dance group for many years and although our standard didn't reach the level shown in this clip, the pure joy of interacting with other dancers while remaining in a strict pattern of steps and movements was very addictive.

I know that this kind of Thai classical dance doesn't involve much interaction / reaction but neither do most Asiatic dances as far as I know. The general Isaan village dance is very similar to the stuff shown above and can be quite flirtatious. There have been threads containing links to local traditional dance ( http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6XsqRD7Y3lH3et0Ra70BtQ ) which were more or less completely ignored by ThaiVisa members.

Lastly, like the old lady towards the end, I occasionally look at fotos and videos of our group in its heyday and I can hardly believe all the stuff we did and places that we visited.

Part of a Global House in Surin recently fell over in strong winds and killed relatives of mine, a family was wiped out. So to you guys that seem to be going off at a tangent supporting nuclear power I think you should be discussing nuclear power in Thailand. It can't be done, the CIA should bomb the place before they start. (Thinking about Iran's little problem with suspected development of nukes). if they do build a plant, I am leaving.

Raising transport costs is always excused with reasons like 'increased revenue will be used to improve public transport'. It never is.

Leaves that have turned yellow will stay that way.

We got an excellent umbrella last year as well as a small suitcase. Quality OK. The kids love this stuff

Not quite. Officially, according to the Cites agreement, you should request the presence of a phyto-sanitary inspector who will certify that the plants etc you are bringing through are what you say they are.

Good luck with that, this is Thailand. I just bung seeds into my hand luggage. I do wonder however, what plants, herbs or seeds you plan to import that can't be found her already. Many people order stuff from firms that are willing to export to Thailand, they don't seem to have any problems.

The recommendation is 20 grains per square meter. Snails are the least of your problems, a beer trap could fix that, the real attacks start later on. Anyway, this is a stagedfoto, isn't it?

I think you can find orchid liquid fertiliser about everywhere in Thailand Small bottle with a picture of orchids on the front (for people that can't read Thai, like me). I used to put a bottle top full in a 4.5 litre watering can every week and the results were very good, always had about 7 - 9 out of 25plants blooming. I also gave them water everyday outside of the rainy season. I unfortunately bought some expensive Osmocote fertiliser which will last 6 months (until November in my case) and the results are disappointing, nice green leaves but fewer flowers. I will revert to weekly dosing soon.

I have found that orchids that I bought in a coconut shell mostly were planted in coir (finely ground coconut husk or something else not suitable). I pot them up in coconut shells using coconut husks. Coconut husk has the curious property of retaining moisture but permitting adequate drainage.

If you have yellow leaves, they are thirsty or hungry or maybe both.

When I worked in a botanical garden in Switzerland we would spray the epiphyte orchids three time a day to keep them in a humid environment. You can't really do that here of course but it's worth bearing in mind that most are rain forest plants.

Difficult to say as we don't know what needs doing. My DIL went to Yanhee International Hospital to have what I thought was an unnecessary job done. ฿17 000.-. In and out without appointment in 4 hours. Looked like a good place to get it done, but maybe there is a Farang price also. Why not just turn up there and get an offer? No skin off my nose...

Amongst many other things I have done, I got a life saver permit at the age of 54. Took some doing. The first thing I was told, 'you must overcome your fear of water' . Me? Ha ha. I had eventually to admit it and learn to swim again.

Later, observing 99% of 'swimmers', I saw that they all tried to keep their head out of the water. You must relax. Lay back, let the water lap over your nose, mouth and eyes, do a back stroke, laying as though you were in bed. Breast stroke/crawl: you have to develop your breathing capacity and cease trying to breath between every stroke, get your head under water.

I can still more easily swim 25 meters under water, on the surface it gets boring as it is much slower and I have to bother about breathing. All about being relaxed in the water.

On top of that, you should feel much better swimming and floating in salt water than in sweet water, buoyancy is in your favour.

Small kids can drown in 10cm of water, so stop worrying about the depth.

We look on scorpions as normal, sometimes the small ones which are really painful, centipedes, cane spiders, nearly stood on a hooded cobra a week or two ago just outside the door (I may have screamed), but the worst are the rats running along above the ceiling.