Gecko123

I don't think it is fair to say that Thai parents are any less concerned about child welfare than parents in the West. And while more pressing financial priorities may explain a lot of this, what I chalk it up to is that Thais often do a very superficial cost benefit analysis in general when it comes to safety, and that there is something about the ruminating nature of risk analysis that cuts against the grain of Thai culture and the Thai mindset.

Although the quality may be suspect, I have to admit I was not aware that low-end children's motorcycle helmets are as inexpensive as they appear to be.

Thought you'd be amused to know I've started feeding a stray dog which showed up at my back door a few days ago. Despite me chasing it off several times, it kept coming back. Very vocal. Starts barking the second I set foot out of the house. Kind of has this attitude like 'You no get memo? I stay here now. This my new home."

That's a good point. My guess is he was either using an overseas debit/credit card and/or transferring funds from an overseas account into a trusted third party's domestic account.

Nearly 70% of Gaza war dead verified by UN are women and children. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo

It is genocide. It's as if a government decided to raze an entire city to the ground trying to root out a terrorist or guerrilla insurgency with no regard for civilian casualties. It's shocking that anyone who speaks out against these clear war crimes is labeled anti-Semitic.

That's another reason why I'm not a big fan of the marriage visa if other options, i.e., a retirement visa, are available. The marriage visa, besides oftentimes subjecting people to intrusive interviews and home visits, requires your spouse's attendance at visa renewals, and by necessity, requires her to become intimately familiar with immigration rules and procedures. It is far preferable to keep immigration matters close to one's chest, and to manage this as independently as possible, which is yet another good reason for people to learn as much Thai as possible. I'm sure someone will be alone shortly to tell me how sad it is that one cannot trust one's spouse, but the truth is that that may sound hunky dory when things are going smoothly, but when marriages crash in Thailand, it seems to happen suddenly and unexpectedly (like a hang gliding accident) and having someone know you have irregularities with your visa is not something you would want your spouse to know heading into a divorce. Plus, Thai women love intrigue, and at the risk of sounding sexist, they also love gossip, and foreigners, because they're often perceived as outsiders who can be gossiped about with impunity, are juicy gossip topics. Visa irregularities is up there with "I'm wanted in my home country for armed robbery and killing a cop" on the list of secrets you want to keep to yourself if at all possible.

tip off = someone knew. Not necessarily someone with a grudge against foreigner; could be someone jealous or harboring a grudge against foreigner's girlfriend/wife, especially if he was her meal ticket. If I was on overstay or had any irregularities about my visa status, I would keep it secret from absolutely everyone, including my significant other.

OP: Do you live in Alicante? Town looks very livable, great pedestrian and cycle infrastructure, and very clean. Downtown looks very walkable/livable. I imagine air quality must be quite good being on the coast. Is it easy to get around on public transportation? What do people say about potential for the type of catastrophic flooding experienced in Valencia? Might just have to check it out. Thanks for sharing.

Forgive me, but I have to ask. Are you saying you've taken in 20 stray dogs in the past 20 years? That's a remarkable number of stray dogs. I live out in the countryside too, and even if I took in every single stray or even possibly stray dog I came across, I don't think I've encountered 20 in the past 20 years. Do you slam on the brakes when you pass stray dogs padding alongside the road? Stray dogs are usually extremely leery of strangers, and it usually takes an extended period of time to get them to accept food much less allow themselves to be touched. What is the acculturation process like? You said you had 12 dogs right now. Most of the time when a stray dog wanders into a moo ban the resident dogs don't exactly roll out the welcome mat, do they? More like, try to rip them a new you-know-what and chase it out of town, wouldn't you say? I'm wondering if you haven't developed a reputation as the local patron saint of stray dogs and people aren't dumping all their unwanted dogs on your doorstep. The problem I have in my area is stray cats which quickly accept food and are happy to start hanging around. On nocturnal bike rides out in the countryside I see them all over the place, and they can live without much human contact pretty easily. But they're feral to the bone, and almost always refuse to be kept indoors, and will tear your window screens to shreds if you try to domesticate them, and left outside all the time, they usually end up disappearing as mysteriously as they first appeared. Blood tests usually come back positive for either kitty leukemia, kitty aids, distemper, rabies or some other disease you never knew existed. I applaud your canine outreach but the level of vet service in my area isn't that good, and I've been happy with my decision to not go down the animal welfare rabbit hole in Thailand.

It's been my experience that dogs that show up unexpectedly out of the blue seemingly looking for a new home are often not runaways but are unwanted pets or remnants of litters which have been surreptitiously dumped far enough away from the owner's home so that they can't find their way back home. Obviously, there could be many reasons why a pet could be unwanted, but the possibility of behavioral and health problems (biting, chewing, incessant barking, incontinence, aggressiveness) have led me to be cautious about adopting "stray" animals.

Dogs aggressively chasing after motorcycle might have been a motive. Hard to believe owners have absolutely no idea what could have motivated someone to do this.

@KhunLA Got it. Never pass up the opportunity to try and make another guy feel like a simp, eh?

Well I would say a lot would depend on how small the community is. In a big city, the straight forward approachmay be fine, but in a small town if you're awkwardly turned down, options for finding another pharmacy might be limited. There's also the potential that your overture might be subject to gossip ("she's always flirting"), the stigma associated with being hit on by a foreigner, some insanely jealous boyfriend/husband lurking in the background, or you being perceived as a total loser for thinking she would go out with you in the first place. Over the years, I've been approached a number of times by third parties conveying romantic interest from women in town. I think using an intermediary to make the overture is often the Thai way of saving face, not only for the person making the overture in case they're rejected, but it allows the person approached to be more honest about their level of interest. Getting a scouting report ahead of time is highly recommended too. Not only could she be romantically involved, any details about her family life might quickly be reason to lose interest. At 30, there's a very good chance she has had kids already.

Should be able to find someone local who can give you the skinny on whether she's romantically involved with anyone. If that hurdle is cleared, send an emissary to feel her out about her interest in you. That way, if there's no interest, you can pretend you don't know anything about it, and won't have to worry about any awkwardness in the future.

News report really captures the devastating impact of events like these not only on the entire community but on the immediate family of the shooter as well. Really tragic that the guy seems to have snapped over such a small sum of money, and especially tragic considering the police could have peacefully resolved the matter if the guy had been just a little bit more patient.

Everybody wants to control immigration better, bolster domestic manufacturing, lower inflation, and end the military conflicts in Ukraine and the middle East. It's a question of how you go about accomplishing these goals, and I can assure you that not everyone supports Trump's approach to solving these problems, so, no, I don't think he has a mandate. Mass deportations may sound great until you start hearing about families being ripped apart and labor shortages. Tariffs sound great when you're misled into believing foreign countries and not American consumers will end up paying them resulting in higher inflation. Ending the war in Ukraine sounds great until you consider Russia's bellicosity and growing threat to Western Europe. Drill baby drill sounds great until you consider environmental damage and extreme weather events. Anti-woke-ism and marginalizing fringe communities sounds great until you consider the toll on social cohesion, and the economic cost of not using human capital to its fullest potential. All of Trump's policies, like the man himself, suffer from the same flaw: short-sightedness. His electoral popularity can in large part be explained by the electorate's willingness to be seduced by his simplistic solutions to complex problems. The true costs of these policies are just beginning to become apparent in the form of higher inflation (tariffs/labor costs), greater geopolitical instability, greater financial system and monetary instability (deregulation), degradation of the social fabric (more racial/class tensions), greater income and wealth inequality (corporate taxes, oligarchical control of the government) runaway costs of extreme weather events (climate change is a hoax mentality), impaired response to threats from future epidemics, and abdication of America's moral leadership in the world. Trump's promises have an understandably seductive populist appeal, but as has been pointed out, the devil is in the details. In my opinion, Trump's base is about to find out that there's a lot of devil in the details of Trump's plans. Those who voted against him already had that figured out. The frustration that led to him being re-elected is understandable, but, in my opinion, the American people should have known better.

Same province that the 2022 day care mass shooting occurred. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nong_Bua_Lamphu_attack

She's not talking about giving you custody of one of her daughters is she? Just joking, sort of. "Agreed to give me a kid" is a pretty weird way to describe starting a family. I agree with Ben Zioner that 100K is such a small amount for sin sot that it smacks of financial desperation. Tell him whatever he wants to hear in order to get your hands on the cash. Beware of entering into agreements (anywhere, but especially here) where you perform your side of the agreement first based on the promise of future performance by the other party.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/fiber/art-20043983

It sounds like the two Thai guys were interviewed together, and I'm willing to bet if they had been interviewed separately cracks and inconsistencies in their account of what happened would likely have emerged.

A factoid which may surprise you as much as it surprised me when I first heard it... meat contains zero fiber. @Luuk Chaai

Bullet point summary of PBS interview with Financial Times business columnist Rana Foroohar. 1. Trump is proposing to bolster an already strong economy through debt and deficit spending which is a very risky dynamic. She points out that at the time of the election the US had the strongest recovery of all G-20 countries, and with recessions occurring on average about every 10 years, the US is overdue for an economic recession. The reason this is a risky dynamic is because goosing an already strong economy through debt and deficit spending will make it more difficult to respond to any downturn or crisis of any other type which crops up. 2. Tariffs have a potentially inflationary impact and could weaken the dollar. 3. The impact of cutting corporate tax rates (as proposed by Trump) would mainly benefit high income/high wealth households as 85% of stock wealth in the US is owned by approx 10-12% of the population. 4. The only reason why the US's profligate spending is able to be sustained as it has been for many decades is because the US dollar is a global reserve currency. However, there are many challenges to the dollar as a reserve currency, and as the US debt and deficit continues to grow, more and more investors are tiptoeing away from US debt. 5. Were there to be a major recession or drop in the stock market, this could generate a situation where the US government was unable to pay its debt without slashing entitlement and defense spending. The only other way it could solve this problem would be to print more money, which would further devalue the currency to the point where potentially no one wanted to hold dollars, which would trigger a currency crisis, i.e., turning the US into a "distressed asset" because of its excessive debt. 6. Trump's proposals to reduce regulation would likely trigger a mergers and acquisitions boom. Good for the stock market (which benefits the super wealthy), but M&A activity often results in layoffs and reduced marketplace competition. She also reminds viewers that Artificial Intelligence is projected to eat further and further up the employment food chain, as Larry Summer's described it, AI is coming for the cognitive class, potentially further hollowing out the middle class. Editorial comment from me: It should be pointed out that a great deal of regulation Trump is determined to eliminate is designed to protect the environment, workplace safety and to protect the proverbial "little guy." Just today, it was announced that Trump was in favor of relaxing regulations on self-driving vehicles. Who do you suppose this helps, and who will pay the price for these relaxed regulations? 7. No taxes on tips is a very cynical ploy as most people earning tips are so low on the income scale that they are already paying minimal income taxes. 8. Trump paints immigration as having only negative economic and social costs, but it should be pointed out that immigration contributed to downward pressure on wages without which inflationary pressures would have been higher.

Don't know if you have mobility issues, but exercise is key component for bowel regularity. Green tea for its soluble fiber might also be helpful.

Trump's policies on fossil fuel production and fracking weren't referenced a single time in the interview so It's highly doubtful that you watched it. Fossil fuel production may stimulate economic growth in the short term, but when you factor in the economic costs of extreme weather caused by reliance on fossil fuels, the economic benefits are greatly diminished. Are you familiar with the concepts of hidden economic costs and shifting costs from one generation to the next? A scholarly analysis of proposed economic policies is now being dismissed out of hand as propaganda and resented as condescension coming from egghead elites? If that's the case, we're in deep trouble people.