simon43

And now (just for a moment), not even me! I was teaching in Yangon, but got struck down with pneumonia. I'm resting in Samui, and hope to return to Myanmar as soon as I have fully recovered. I passed my teaching job to another 'old hand' Myanmar teacher, so now I need to find a new job in Myanmar (which isn't always easy). It's actually a bit of a crazy scenario. I earn more money teaching online than I do teaching in-class at an international school. But I'm keen to do both (in-class during the day and online in the evening/weekends). I found the internet connectivity from Myanmar 'acceptable' for online classes, (not the fastest, not the slowest connection, but OK).

[quote] ... she was definitely marriage material [/quote] Er... sure? Hooker in a bar? I made that mistake with ex #2, and I'm sure that I wasn't the only guy in Thailand to make that mistake.

[quote] The creature that did the biting was 3.5 meters long and undernourished. [/quote] Well, if I were undernourished, I might also feel like taking a bite out of something....

I posted many years ago how my mad ex would try to decipher the markings on the back of toads as numbers. Therefore, one night, I went into our garden, caught a big toad, and wrote some numbers on its back with indelible black marker pen.. The whoops of joy the next day after she found the toad the next day were only tempered the following day after she didn't win! Mad bat!!

Saskatchewan? Now that IS in the middle of nowhere! ????

I'm still a DXer! I guess I'm stuck in a timewarp, but getting the same radio station over the internet is just too easy for this techie! ???? Shortwave listening still has an important role to play in some countries. I remember living in my Yangon (Lamadaw) old apartment in 2012 and going to sleep listening to the sound of the BBC World Service interval signal as the Burmese guy downstairs listened in on his old radio to the news in English.

When I departed from Swampy airport a few weeks ago, my taxi driver dropped me at the VIP parking spot and then I had to walk across the red zebra crossing to the terminal. There is a 'lollipop' man who holds up his hand to stop the traffic. He did so and the cars stopped and I started to wheel my trolley and luggage across the zebra crossing. A 'Do you know who I am' guy in a white Merc didn't want to stop and drove across the zebra crossing, narrowly missing hitting me. Now I'm a Brit and was always taught that everyone must stop at a zebra crossing. So no way was I letting him get away with this. As he drove across the crossing, I rammed my heavy luggage trolley into the side of his nice car, scratching and denting it, which shouting in Thai at the same time 'Stop!', (thus attracting everyone's attention). As he slowed down to park, I ran after the car and pulled open the driver's door, shouting at him and asking in Thai if he was blind. Of course the guy is furious that some foreigner dared to challenge him, but he seemed too fat to get out of the car. I beckoned him to look at the red crossing and shouted again in Thai that it's the law that he must stop. All this was great entertainment for everyone, and I guess that I was lucky that he wasn't carrying a gun. But it does infuriate me when car drivers see a person crossing and speed up! Anyway, trolley cart 1 : white Merc 0 and he has a repair bill ???? (I disappeared into the terminal before his passengers got out of the car to slap me!)

Much happier now! Much, much less stress to deal with (no greedy wives, no fussy customers, no dealing with useless maintenance workers etc). I walked away from all that stress years ago. Now I do everything on my terms and spend my income how I want (my ex-families hate me!)

In the case of my niece, I was stuck in Laos because of Covid restrictions. When I finally managed to get back to Thailand, my niece asked me to visit her and mentioned that she was a bit thin. When I saw her, I knew that I was looking at someone who was going to die soon. Her weight was about 24 Kg, but despite getting her into hospital and on medication, she was too far gone to recover. I don't blame myself at all for not being there earlier when she could have been saved, that's how the cookie crumbles. I can't understand why her family did nothing as she wasted away before their eyes, but they told me that it was karma. Her time was coming and therefore they should not try to avoid this event. Buddhism is a strange belief.... TB is much more prevalent in south-east Asia than some people imagine. My ex had it (and recovered), her brother had it (and recovered).

I still use my shortwave radio every day! Granted that it's my ham radio transceiver, but the receiver part covers all the shortwave broadcast bands, and there are still many interesting stations and world music to listen to.

Indeed, one motto of an educational venture that I established yonks ago is "A little extra goes a long way". For example, the full-colour, illustrated bilingual (English/Burmese) story books that I buy for school kids in Myanmar cost a mere $1 USD each! The local translation of the English language science text books that are used by high school grades at government schools cost just $3 USD (500 pages seemingly written on rice paper!). It's a very small amount, but can make a big difference to someone's life. I personally don't have many material goods. No house, no car, no motorbike, no savings, no share portfolio, no rich uncle etc - just my computer and ham radio gear. Were I to receive a windfall or increase in my monthly income, I wouldn't spend it on myself, because I'm very with what I have already ????

He needs to sell a lot of 1 baht necklaces to fund worldwide travel these days...

I sometimes think of my old dad, who died about 13 years ago. We were never close, but I respect him for his values. More recent, I think every day about my 18 year old Thai niece who died in my arms from TB just 3 months ago. I am comforted by considering her passing from a Buddhist perspective, in that she has moved on to another life. I have a photo on my table of her just a few days before she died, when I carried her into a local restaurant and she ate some moo gata with me. It's a good memory ????

Although to be fair, the vast, vast majority of foreigners living in Thailand are not immigrants - they are temporarily living here on 12-month visas.

[quote] A 16-year-old Thai-British teen fled his house in Pattaya when a fire suddenly erupted on a sofa in his house.... [/quote] Ah - the amazing spontaneous sofa combustion!

Under Thai law, you are legally entitled to financial compensation from the man involved ????

Why? What's the matter with it? I've owned worse cars than that!

If you're concerned about personal data, then buy a new SIM card for 50 baht, or even a cheapie, throwaway phone for 1,000 baht ????

I used to publish full-page adverts in that 'rag' for my esteemed customers. Featuring a picture of a scantily-clad woman with her jugs out, draped provocatively over a sports car, and with the tag-line "Do you want to sex-chat with me??". My AI chat program had to work overtime to process all the incoming SMS messages ????

Mods, we need a new sub-forum called "Crazy fake stories from crazy trolls".....

Good chap that Enoch. He wasn't afraid to speak the truth. He would have made a good PM.

My 18 year old Thai niece died in my arms of untreated HIV and TB just a few months ago. She and her family were unaware that the medication was free for Thai people. Her local doctor who treated her (before I got involved), sold her a vitamin tonic for 1,000 baht as treatment.... The family were too ashamed because of the stigma of HIV that they didn't seek hospital treatment. Even when I got involved, the doctors initially refused to treat her and also refused to provide me with a prescription for medication (without that prescription, the Red Cross in Bangkok would not sell me the required medication). Finally, when I persisted, the girl was admitted to the local hospital and medication provided. By then, it was too late... ????

Right... so just me then? ????

News just in! Birds fly in the sky ????

For sure, I don't know how you pronounced it, but your spelling (Namu khete), suggests only 3 syllable sounds, whereas the correct pronunciation has 5. Nam (water or juice) is used in a 100 different words (nam som = orange juice etc). I can't think of another Thai word that sounds like ma-kua-tate ???? Anyway, this is going slightly off-topic..