jrward42

I am toying with just giving the plasma away. I'm pretty sure I can stretch to a 65 inch OLED. My old TV has such thick bezels that it takes up the same amount of room as a 55 inch TV and there is room to spare. Plus my PS5 outputs at 4K, which is a waste. Thanks for the info.

Interesting, thanks for that. It's amazing how much they have come down in price over the last decade.

Not sure if I am allowed to plug stuff here, but I wrote a short book a while ago about all the ghosts, spirits, magic and so on in Thailand. It was based on an article I wrote for a magazine a while ago and grew into something larger. I mostly just wrote it as I became interested in the topic after researching it. It is only on Kindle though. It's called Haunted Thailand: Ghosts and Spirits in the Land of Smiles. It might be of interest if you enjoyed the above. Apologies if this is not allowed or annoying, it just fits exactly with the topic.

I used to work in broadcast TV in London and asked the engineers which was a good TV to get. This was in 2007, and I ended up with a 42-inch plasma by Panasonic. It is now in my Bangkok condo and is still working great. Unfortunately, it weighs a ton and is only 1080p. I really want to upgrade to an OLED 55" but can't bring myself to chuck out the plasma. Especially as so many seem to report problems after just a couple of years with newer TVs. When it finally dies, I would probably buy another Panasonic or maybe a Sony. Unless others know of a better brand these days?

The problem is that they were hard to get here until recently and so there aren't going to be all that many second hand consoles around. I bought one in the UK last year and brought it in my hand luggage. For the games though, once you get one, you can just download them. There are a ton of sales these days - I don't think I've ever paid full price. And I mostly pay AAA games. The PS5 has pretty decent memory, so it isn't an issue.

My wife is Thai and went through the 5 year process to get a UK passport. You can only get citizenship if you live there. Having said which, she loved living in London and even got another Master's degree while there. We might even move back one day or live 6 months in each country. It gives you a lot of flexibility. The main advantage is if you travel a reasonable amount. We often visit Europe, for example, and it was a pain before.

I post on this site very rarely and 90% of the time it was about visas or official-related stuff. Joe was the one who answered every time and was reliably accurate and incredibly helpful. Seemed a great guy too. Sad news. RIP.

I met him once. Weirdly, it was while having a pee. I used to work at MTV in London and Springer was filming some shows at our studios (late 90s / early 2000s). While at a urinal I heard, "Hey how are doing?" And I immediately thought, it was odd because that sounds just like Jerry Springer. And it was. We chatted while washing hands and then walked to the studios. He was a really smart and nice guy. He then said hi every time we bumped into each other. RIP

I use Glucophage 1000mg and you can find it in a lot of places. Smaller pharmacies seem to stock lower level stuff but you can nearly always order some higher doses if needed. I buy mine from Boots.

I wasn't alive then, but my grandfather told me he took a gas mask with him to work in central London in the early 50s. In places like Chiang Rai we can't be far off that now.

I flew from London on the 8th to Bangkok, landing yesterday. In the UK, there was a piece of paper at check-in mentioning the vaccine checks and the lady asked if we were vaccinated. We were. That was it. Nothing in Bangkok was different at all. Even customs was pretty pleasant. I guess they didn't even have time to set up a vaccine certificate desk!

I did the first ever UK lottery in the 90s and won a tenner. Never won a thing after that and gave up after a few months. I did the Thai lottery and won 2000 baht the first time. Did it a couple more times and nothing. There is clearly a pattern going on, so I stopped.