Kinnock

Good points, thank you. The only medication is Amiodarone for her heart .... no pain killers.

Thank you for the very helpful and wise advice. We've already arranged for the Mother's house to be improved (basically rebuilt) to make living on the ground floor possible, and if she's coming home we'll order a proper hospital bed etc .... but I think I"m just disappointed that my wife seems to have taken on the total responsibility when there's three older siblings doing nothing to help. I guess I was looking for a valid reason to not let my wife take on the tough challenge of being a carer. I think it may be Thai culture that the youngest daughter does all the work .... or maybe just the daughter with a foreign husband.

I don't have an electric car, but I do have experience of an electric scooter that has put me off an EV. While it's convenient, quiet and fun, it's range has reduced significantly over one year of ownership. It has a lithium battery and a smart charger, and at first an overnight charge would give me about 30km range (claimed range was 40km). After 12 months the range has dropped to about 15km. And the battery behaviour has also changed .... it shows full charge for about 14km, then suddenly drops into the red and stops. It may take longer for an electric car to have the same issue, but my experience with other battery devices such as phones and cameras makes me believe that current battery tech has longevity issues.

Anyone had experience of this, as it's well beyond my own knowledge and I'm unsure about what's practical? The Mother-in-law (73) had a stroke, and while she's gradually recovering use of arms and legs, she's still on a ventilator and cannot swallow, so feeding is via a tube. The hospital Doctor says she will recover slowly, and they will try to remove the ventilator when they think she's strong enough to breathe unassisted. But of even greater concern to me is that she looks (in my amateur view anyway) to have serious dementia. She does not recognise her relatives and is not communicating proactively 2 weeks after the stroke. The Doctor and nurses dismiss my concerns about dementia, but even though she can sit up and look at people, there looks (to me) to be no higher level understanding about what's going on around her, and no attempts at communication. After consulting Dr Google it sounds like vascular dementia to me. My wife has plans for moving her back to her Mother's house and caring for her there .... but is this practical? She's on a ventilator, fed through a tube, suffering from probable dementia and incontinent. Back in my home country that would mean professional care in a nursing home ..... my the Missus thinks she can care for her. Surely this will be a huge strain?

You were misinformed. Probably.

I have a 5 year Thai licence and got an IDP from the Land Transport Office (took about 20 minutes). When I hired a car the UK they only wanted to see the IDP.

Is it wrong that my first thoughts were that I want one of those? Alternative to the bike for 7-11 trips during the monsoon season.

Next we need to cancel the Citizenship of a few more people who are still in the UK.

If I'm paying cashless, and it's the scan a printed barcode (Grab, small restaurants) I add the tip to the amount. If it's the on-screen system with amount, as in bigger restaurants, I'll tip in cash. Locals seem to do the same. When I first arrived I used to tip more, as I was thinking in home currency, but now only 20 THB plus loose change. I try to avoid using taxis now, but for motorcycle taxis I tip, and everytime they try to give me the change and look confused, so I guess locals do not tip the 'Win'.

The Kicks is all electric drive, which reduces any maintenance issue with the ICE drive system, such as the rubber belt CVT. The Kicks also has an ordinary car battery, so no expensive replacement needed in future. The latest Kicks has had an interior upgrade, so it looks more upmarket inside than the first version. Generally Nissan have a better ride than Toyota or Honda, and the Kicks is reasonably quiet at highway speeds. The one pedal system is great in heavy traffic. But a downside of Nissan is higher depreciation than Toyota, although it's new price is slightly lower cost than the Yaris Cross. I'm looking to replace an X-Trail, and as there's no new X-Trail in Thailand, I'm considering downsizing to a Kicks or a Yaris Cross. Also looking at CR-V, but it looks like a chest freezer, and the Subaru Forester, which is currently a great price.

I thought the Yaris Cross had a CVT gearbox in addition to the electric motor? It may rev less when accelerating, as the electric motor provides assistance, but I thought it still had CVT? If you want all electric drive plus an ICE for charging, the Nissan Kicks is an option.

I've found the Google Maps motorcycle setting to be very unreliable - often trying to take me on to the Expressways. Yes, there are some Expressway entrance roads that also lead to normal (non-toll) roads, but usually the non-toll road will also be shown on a green sign amongst all the blue signage. But it can be a lottery. There's also the blue sign entrances to the elevated Expressways with the huge 'No motorcycle' signs painted on the roadway, but some of them lead to a convenient U-turn, whereas others only go onto the Expressway. I try to remember which is which when driving the car, then avoid the wrong ones when on the bike.

There used to be a ThaiVisa bar just off lower Sukhumvit, and there were regular meet-ups. I went a couple of times, but without the common interest of say, a business meeting or a sports club or hobby gathering, the conversations are awkward. Just because you happen to be strangers in a strange land, doesn't mean you're friends.

Perhaps a translation error. Maybe the witness said they were Brigadoonians?

But marathons are a race 😀 There's been several big running events in Chonburi that specifically mentioned the top international runners taking part (won by a Kenyan I think). And this weekend in Bangsaen is an international Iron Man competition. So I guess it depends on the aims of the sponsor rather than any racism.

The discussion was about Asus rather than Acer. At work we have large numbers of auditors travelling with their laptops daily, and both Lenovo and Dell had a very poor reliability record, whereas in our experience Asus was the most reliable. We never tried the cheap Chinese OEM laptops mentooned in the OP as their spec would not meet the IT departments requirements.

I have an Asus dual screen laptop, but it looks different to this 'Mistme' OEM laptop. Is this a Chinese copy? Very pleased with my Asus dual screen, but it wasn't bought off Lazada .... and I think it may be better to go to somewhere like Banana IT and get a genuine Asus on one of their deals. I did notice some very slim, large (single) IPS screen, i5 Asus laptops in Banana on offer and starting from 9,800 THB.

Thanks .... saves me some cash - will wait for streaming, shouldn't be long. I think the best recent Spiderman movie is the animated Into the Spider verse. And over at Disney+ I tried to watch The Marvels .... couldn't even get half way through - looks like they tried to aim a movie at teenage girls, and missed.

But maybe the nuclear element is a reactor to power laser weapons, rather than a bomb?

Any thoughts on the news about Russia launching a nuclear powered anti-satellite system? Bluff of reality? Should the US restart the Star Wars programme in response?

Not sure you need to buy equipment from UK? I bought a consumer unit with ELCB from Homepro, and it included fitting. The guy from Homepro removed the ancient unit with ceramic fuses and fitted the new one. The condo maintenance manager checked the installation after fitting, and said it was OK. That was about 6 months ago, and I'm still here 😄 I had a (cheap Chinese) air fryer short out last month due to over heating and the unit tripped, so it seems to work. Also used a plug-in socket tester and that indicated it was OK.

Post colonial guilt ... an early form of Wokeness. Modern India, or should we call it Borat, has benefitted from the Empire days, although most wouldn't admit that. "What have the English ever done for us"?

I"ve avoided expat gatherings for years because of the expats. You either get the corporate 'Masters of the Universe' with their permanently pregnant wives breeding at the company's expense, or the 'financial advisors' trying to grab a part of people's pensions. The only slight positives were the moderately attractive Thai girls from the relocation companies and the sponsored hotel snacks

Maybe a female Banded Leg Orb Weaver? Impressive looking beast!

Is it even worse than Meg 2 The Stench? That was so bad it wasn't even funny, and to add to the cringe it had a heavy dose of Chinese State Propaganda.