simon43

In other words, during your working career(s), did you ever go to the doctor and get signed off work?  Were you actually sick?

In my 39 years of various jobs in the UK, EU and Asia, I cannot think of any occasion when I have got a sick note.  Yes, I have taken a single day off here and there for flu etc, but never any length of time that would need a sick note.

My question comes after reading of the startling stats from the UK about millions of Brits - young and old - who have diagnosed themselves as in poor mental health (using my good friend Dr Google), and have gone on to get signed off work and onto long-term sick pay.

Are they 'swinging the lead'?.  Are they really in such poor mental health that they are unable to work? Are they just experiencing the normal ups and downs of mental stress, depression etc? Perhaps they are just lazy ****s!

What's your opinion?  And are you/have you been in the same boat?

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Last island trip, we where among a larger group of russians at a bungalow resort, and they where loud, shouting from one bungalow to another, talking laud on phone in the dining area, more louder discussions/talking the more they drank, and had their own bbq party with music with no respect for others. 

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Well, to be honest, that sounds just like Thais, sorry I mean Brits, no actually I mean Ozzies, sorry I mean...

Anyone here from Greenland?

Well, Linkedin seems to suggest that he is a real person living in Bangkok, (unless he is the Tour Guide with the same name living in South Africa).

He has various endorsements from colleagues, but I especially note 4 endorsements for fiction! 🙂

Walking down Sukhumvit Road (in Bangkok) many years ago, one of these guys stopped me and said "Sir, you are wearing lucky shoes"!!!  WTF? I kept on walking 🙂

I recall that when I applied to voluntary top up my NI contributions, I had to provide a detailed list of my employment record since the existence of Adam and Eve... With a lot of effort I was able to list more than 20 different employers, both in the UK and ex-EU, and the decision was made to let me pay NI top-ups at the lower rate (good news!).

Now that I will need to apply for my state pension early next year, I searched for my employment list and can't find it!  I wonder if the pensions department can provide me with the information that I previously gave them.  Would I even need to complete the employment history again since they already have it in their records?

Bit more info about pain in your eye: (from my doctor Dr Google).

Pain is a tricky thing, and it's certainly possible to feel pain when pressing your eyelids against your eyeballs if you press hard enough ("hard enough" in this context is generally quite a lot less hard than is required to cause damage, by the way).

However: Since your eyeballs don't have skin, they also don't have nociception; i.e. they don't have pain receptors in the same way your skin at large does. Eye pains, like headaches, are largely caused by a combination of psychological responses to perceived stimuli and pain responses in associated structures.

Basically, the pain you experience when fingering your eye isn't pain in the same sense as the pain you feel from touching a hot stove or pricking yourself with a needle, it's generated by the brain in response to novel stimulus. Your brain knows what eyelids feel like, and it's okay with them, but once you start introducing fingers into the mix, all sorts of disturbances in salinity and moisture crop up, and your brain freaks out (and rightly so).

The same phenomenon can be seen with regards to swimming in the ocean: If you try to open your eyes under water, you'll find it a painful and disconcerting experience, but if you keep at it and practice holding your eyes open under water, you'll get used to it, and the pain will go away. Similarly, contact lens wearers will soon learn to deal with these stimuli, and be able to handle eye touching.

While I wouldn't advise you to go pawing at your eyeballs, if you for whatever reason have a need to do so, acclimating yourself to the feel of it will make the associated pain go away in short order.

Just now, transam said:

You reckon..........

I had Lasik surgery on both eyes many years ago.  No pain, just the smell of burning eye ball...

"How painful can it be?"

It cannot be!  There are no nerves in your eye to send pain signals to your brain 🙂

Lol, maybe your welding guy is the same idiot (my Thai BIL) who did exactly the same thing with his arc-welder 🙂

That's all that is left of the PEA temporary builder's supply plastic box and switch - the whole lot caught fire...

https://<URL Automatically Removed>.com/construction-in-thailand/96835-building-mini-resort-phuket-country-resort-2.html

Those temporary building supplies are not intended to supply the high current required by an arc-welder! 

Your current white wire uses copper!  It makes no difference if you change the colour of the outside plastic insulation.

The only thing you need to do is to 'shout' at your welding guy and tell him that the temporary electricity supply cannot supply enough current for his arc-welder.

I solved this mental dilemma by having no accrued wealth 🙂  My parents died years ago, my English kids and ex-wife disowned me 25 years ago.  My elder brother (executor of my will), knows full well that there is nothing in the pot for anyone, and therefore his role after my death will be minimal.  I earn my money every day and I spend my money every day 🙂 (putting some aside for my medical insurance, cremation costs etc).

13 hours ago, HauptmannUK said:

...

Guys with good jobs don't plaster themselves with tattoos.

Although I can't claim to have a PhD in Space Physics, I do have an MSc in Space Science from University College London (UCL). I also have tattoos and I worked for 15 years as a rocket scientist.  Is that not a good job? 🙂

One of my online science students is from Ukraine - his family left the country and he lives in Croatia and I teach him Science.  He is a very smart boy and has been building sugar rockets and refining his design (probably going to supply them to the Ukrainian army!).  Then I have 2 Russian students whose families fled Russia and now live in Spain.  Coincidentally, they are also building/designing sugar rockets 🙂

Building sugar rockets and military supplies doesn't feature in the curriculum that I teach them, but their common sense about safety and the risks of their projects means that I encourage them (within safety limits).  Life would be very boring without risk and experimentation (just as some farang risk STDs and experimenting with men wearing frocks!).

7 hours ago, ozimoron said:

It's probably got more to do with property price inflation, over development and illegal business operations than anything else.

 

I last went to Phuket when there wasn't a single hotel on either Nai Harn or Kata. Club Med was under construction. I stayed at Ao Sane in a beach side bungalow for 50 baht a night.

 

 

Those photos look so old that I expect to see King Rama V smoking a cheroot in that middle photo! 🙂

I remember going on a motorbike holiday in France with English wife #1. This was about 40 years ago.  We stayed at a small hotel for the first night.  We jumped into bed, switched on the TV and were met with full-on sex scenes from Canal Plus!  That was an eye-opener when compared to BBC2....

The first '45' I ever bought was 'Sebastian' by Cockney Rebel, way back in early 1973.  Steve was a very talented musician.

1 hour ago, Liverpool Lou said:

You'd be wearing two prescriptions that clash with each other, wouldn't you?  Maybe you can get a new driving prescription done while you still have the contacts in?

Yes, of course I would need to get a new prescription for the driving glasses, but I think I need to pop back to the optician and explain again what I want (perhaps my Lao language skills aren't up to scratch!).

15 minutes ago, transam said:

Yep, Turkish..........

Or a Greek Cypriot who was living in north Cyprus and was kicked out when the island partitioned...

18 hours ago, Danderman123 said:

Because you were vaccinated against measles as a child.

 

Those who are not vaccinated are at risk.

I doubt BMT was vaccinated as a child in the UK because there was no measles vaccination program in those years long ago!  I also had measles, mumps, scarlet fever and whooping cough as a young child because there were no vacs at the time.  I recovered just fine (I think!)  My mum put my elder brothers into my bedroom when I had mumps to try to get them to catch it, but they didn't 🙂

I have been very short-sighted (-12) since about 5 years old (I'm now 65).  About 20 years ago I had Lasik surgery in the UK to correct my short-sightedness.  The doctor totally corrected the vision in one eye and in the other he corrected it to a little long-sighted, since he said this would then come back to perfect vision as I got older and my eye muscles weakened.

Fast forward to nowadays.  I need to wear glasses when reading/using the computer, since both eyes seem to be about -2.5.  But I also have a problem when driving since my eyes 'cross-over' at distance and so I see 2 cars when there is only one!  But when I was in the UK last year, I had a detailed (free) eye test and the opthamologist prescribed driving glasses to correct this problem, and this worked well.  But I have to use 2 different pairs of glasses every day (reading and driving).

I don't like to wear my reading glasses when teaching online with my computer, and I wondered if I could wear contact lenses all the time to provide reading/computer use, and then put on my driving glasses (still wearing the contacts) when driving.  (I wore contact lenses - hard, gas permeable, soft etc for many years and am very used to them).

But my optician in Laos said that this would not work! I cannot wear contact lenses AND then wear driving glasses on top.  I understand that if I wear contacts all the time to correct my vision for reading/computer work, then I would need a new prescription for my driving glasses, but is there a medical reason why I could not wear contacts all the time and then put on driving glasses when I ride my motorbike?

Is it my imagination, but are there more posters with mental health problems nowadays than previously? 

20 years ago NO-ONE on this forum had mental health problems - nowadays you can't read 20 posts without encountering a poster who clearly should either be arrested, sedated or committed to a loony asylum......