cooked

My first reaction is to go to another bank. If this fails and you can't show proof from your embassy of ฿40 000 a month, go back to Immigration and ask what they suggest. You might try a visa agent also, plenty of those rapscallions about.

Some of us lost faith in doctors during and since the Covid panic. I certainly would go to a doctor if I was worried about my health, but collecting anecdotal reports from people you don't know can be useful. Being a sneering, mocking oaf doesn't help anyone. Are you a sneerer?

On what evidence do you base this statement? Most health specialists as well as WHO recommend daily exercise for a healthy longevity. Might do you good too.

Thai Beach Lover seems to think you can increase IQ through social engineering. IQ can be stimulated to some degree, but not much. This is where I (and many scientists) get accused of racism. To survive in Northern Europe you do need a certain amount of intelligence to survive the winters, planning ahead etc. Here, food is available all year round so even the less fit tend to survive.

780 000 illegal immigrants to the UK this year, even if they don't all receive benefits, they consume resources.(3.6 billion a year). No money left. But that's me being racist of course. Compare it to Thai immigration policy.

Not really. I've been using airports for 57 years, and have seen all sorts of mishaps. even a bomb threat one time in London on the same day that my train was delayed by 5 hours, You want a list? ... not forgetting any documents of course..... 1. Getting there on time, which in my case involves an 8 hour bus trip + taxi 2. Finding out how to check in. This seems to have changed again recently 3. getting through pass control 5. Walking, sometimes for what seems miles, to your departure lounge 6. By now you are pretty tired and even there isn't a flight delay, you have a long, boring wait ahead. Of course, some adventure-fatigued, nonchalant James Bond types take all this in their strides and welcome just a bit more bureaucracy on their departure.

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.