cooked

Well, not quite, before Covid a communication went out that traffic check points couldn't just be set up on a whim by local, end of the month police, but needed authorisation. Around here at least, we noticed an immediate effect. I sort of missed those cops that got to know me and just waved me through. I once got stopped for 'weaving along the road' which I couldn't deny as that road was full of potholes. I gave him ฿200 for creativity.

I consider getting on a plane to be stressful enough without worrying about getting a re-entry visa. Always do it at my local immigration, one less thing to worry about.

Why do you imagine that driving legally would prevent you from being stopped?

I believe that the idea was that the police were no longer allowed to organise end of the month tea money checks without approval from higher up. I used to remark on a certain stretch of road when there were no checks. The check points that you do see now seem to be definitely looking for someone or something special, as long as you have your tax and insurance proof you can go on through.

In a previous life I would speak German to my Swiss wife, she would reply in English. This is the way engineers do it when dealing with international partners. Without realising it, this affects the children that are passively listening, and learning. I remember coming home and moaning "where are my bloody slippers?" and my three year old went to get them. The worst example I saw was the brother-in-law, family real Swiss German farming stock, with his kids they decided to speak French and a pretty f**ed up version of French it was too. So they were deprived of the usage of their mother tongue, Swiss German. Result: both kids grew up with a communications impediment, due, as far as I can see, to this. Bil;ingual kids tend to start speaking later. My two sons grew up trilingual with a smattering of Spanish and Italian thrown in for good measure.

How strange. Even stranger, I find, is that if it isn't plastic wrapped and full of additives, Farangs won't buy meat and vegetables. You could replace the word 'traipsing' with 'leisurely taking your time to stroll around the local market, possibly looking for stuff that you don't recognise and finding out what it is'. But people don't come to Thailand for that, do they? You can take a wheelchair around most markets.

I'm not sure what you intend to do with it but experience suggests that there will be a plant in the Thai Pharmacopoeia or Ayurvedic medicine that grows better here and is probably better at the job.

It took me two years to find out that someone had swapped the wire colours halfway along the cable run.

Well after 40 years as a landscape gardener, maybe I did. In the tropics it takes about 6 months max for any pathogens to make their way through the new soil and establish itself. I now expect Drtreelove to come along telling people that they are indulging in poor soil management and advising the use of some obscure expensive product only to be found South of the Pecos. A bit rude, sorry.

We had figs, the first crop in the second year also dropped before ripening. We then had bumper crops for three years, the figs then all decided to die.

The intense heat of Isaan, along with deficient soil riddled with pathogens, prevents me from growing a lot of stuff. I can just about get away with growing cherry tomatoes in pots on bought in soil. Otherwise, none of the members of that family (aubergines, peppers, etc) will grow here. Onions and garlic won't do much either, in fact many in the village have given up growing anything at all. We do have an impressive chili pepper growing near the compost heap between paving stones. These days I just let a lot of stuff grow wherever birds or my wife have scattered seeds, this includes papaya, pumpkins, basil, tomatoes, coriander, and thankfully I can't seem to get rid of ginger and turmeric. I sow Pak Choi, increasingly rely on perennials, such as peppercorn, Ya Nang, Chai-ya, Moringa (an important veg, worth looking at), Pak bung as well as elephant foot yams and the like, a lot of which feeds the ducks. These can be a little difficult to grow well but I enjoy learning. I got past the stage of trying to grow the stuff I was growing up in the Swiss mountains and will buy brocolli and red cabbage.

I tried the online application right at the beginning. When I later went for a visa extension they told me I hadn't done my 90 days, despite my getting confirmation. Turned out that their internet was down, and eventually I got them to admit this. They told me that they prefer I turn up in person, which I now do, as local immigration is only 15 minutes away from the school I go to each day. I might try again but my wife is fearful of my being hung, drawn and quartered, or at least facing a heavy fine and deportation.

ANY education for ANY nationality will be the better for a year schooling in another country. My granddaughter will certainly be going to the UK for at least a few months when she has finished her technical school here. Her English is very good but needs rounding off with a taste of every day English usage. I sent one son abroad from Switzerland (to Spain) during their formal education and despite not using Spanish much the experience was valuable.

Sigh, so you know it all and will never take a step back to examine arguments. This is easy: the aptly named SAD diet (Standard American Diet) recommends you get 43 - 50 % of your caloric needs from carbohydrates. Apart from the small part that will be fibre and pass on through without being digested, this will ALL be transformed into some form of sugar, which your liver and pancreas will work overtime to get out of your blood. If it doesn't get used immediately for energy it gets transformed into fat. To avoid this ( as diabetics do need to) many go on a Keto diet, which has great success in reversing (impossible) diabetes or at least reducing meds.. It keeps being attacked as a weight loss diet not much better than others, and therefore a fad diet, but it improves health enormously. This isn't a N+1 story: I lost 13 Kg, stopped taking meds for blood pressure and sugar, no more acid reflux, no more joint pains, run 35 - 50 K weekly, I'm 75 and ran a marathon last year. I was wreck before I started Keto. Keto comprises 5 - 10% carbs (sugar) not 45% +. Plenty more stories like this, and none of them involve claims that sugar is healthy in certain forms.

I beg your pardon? Healthline will give you results stating anything you want if you care to look. Fructose is a part of sugar and does harm in one way (most important of which, for some people, is that it feeds cancer cells. It also negatively affects mitochondrial activity). Sugar contains fructose AND glucose. Glucose, if present in more quantities than can immediately be used for energy, rapidly go to increasing the size of the adipose fat tissues. You get fat, which causes a host of other metabolic problems. I don't go by what somebody in a bar told me, thanks, I actually go to and read the scientific reports themselves, and have become quite good at working out which ones have been sponsored by processed food (sugar) corporations. Finding out that they have been lied to all their lives quite upsets some people and they turn their ire towards the messenger. Try: https://usrtk.org/ultra-processed-foods/academy-of-nutrition-and-dietetics-corporate-capture-of-the-nutrition-profession/

Basically, no they certainly aren't the same.

So you can't even give us a link to your 'most informative vid about sugar'. Doesn't sound like a scientific approach. I suggest: people that are addicted to sugar will avidly go through Google until they find stuff that confirms their reluctance to give it up. I do watch a lot of Youtube stuff but I would say that at least half of it is clickbait and unless it is a serious discussion of a recent research paper I don't bother. You must have worked quite assiduously to find a vid that claimed that sugar is good for you.

Living longer, but how? The last 10 years of your life spent in a wheelchair or in bed? Costing the health service a fortune.. My plan is to stay healthy until the day I die.. I don't est muesli either.

Yes, agreed. But you said you had done research, let's see it.

Sugar is a lot worse than it's made out to be. You might want to do some research first, but of course if you are so addicted to it that you can't imagine life without it, nothing will dissuade you from your unscientific opinion.

Thai street food is praised highly. However, it is a fact that sugar and sometimes salt is often surreptitiously scattered on food, obviously because people like it whether they know it or not. Then there is the use of vegetable oils (seed oils) just like in the West. Evidence is mounting that these are a major part of the diabetes (metabolic syndrome) epidemic that we have and didn't exist 100 years ago before the invention of seed oils. AND: used oil is sold, not to use in combustion motors but to be recycled, using bleach, and sold back to the restaurants. Most diabetics and pre-diabetics that take their diet seriously, as they should, cook at home, I can't remember the last time I went to a restaurant or ate street food.

What a silly thing, not to say rude, thing to say. I'm 75, running 40 +K (up to 70 K) weekly and only ever had one injury, off running for 10 days. "About one in every 3 recreational runners will have a running-related injury at some stage in their life." ... isn't the same as 79% every year. Your stat refers to beginner runners I think, that will just stop running thus augmenting the stats. As I was saying, I'm 75 and am taking NO meds, never have since I started running and I intend to continue running for as long as possible. To me, it looks like you just hate exercise and probably are fat and waiting for the onset (worsening) of diabetes, cardiac arrest, take your choice.

I run marathons and I still got gout.

If it's gout then you won't get rid of an accumulation of uric acid in the joint through exercise.

I'd rather drink camel urine than that muck.