Enzian

This starts out talking about birth rate, but cites absolute figures, which are interesting but they leave out the fertility rate which google gives as 1.51. I think a society's replacement rate is usually given as 2.1 or 2.2. Would births have fallen as much if Covid had not happened? It gives me hope. If in an urban, modern society people just want to have sex and be free to have fun, maybe the world population will finally fall--long after I'm gone.

Yeah, but I'd claim food poisoning as a disease in LOS. It put me in a hospital for 2 days.

Isn't part of the problem with garden variety corruption that some of the most ordinary, otherwise considerate and decent people are totally immersed in it? How do you crack down on them without almost turning their world upside down?

His vest needs to be bigger and longer; and get a helmet, it's not all about the pictures.

The system is not corrupt; corruption is the system. (A borrowed line, but still the best.)

You're obviously right, that's possible. I'm just glad my mind isn't shaped enough that way to immediately see it. But really it's like, Venice is on our bucket list, young as we are, so we gotta see it, and try to have some fun, and maybe eff stuff up to show we exist, or have the right to exist.

Venice should ban all visitors under the age of 60, problem solved. Seriously. I would love it even more if they did. As for the vandalism, Venice is expensive to visit (as well as a bit of a pain to get in), and is noted for its strong Christian legacy--why would one bother to go there if they hate that element?

Are you guys being straight about this? Because I've been thinking seriously about a trip there in June for a change of scene, to get out of Dodge (Bangkok) for a while. I've been in LOS about half time for over 10 years and never even been to Hua Hin, let alone anywhere further south. My gf has a bar-girl friend there who is unhappy with it at this time, but that doesn't tell me much.

I had Covid a month and a half after my 4th (one AZ, two Pfizer, one Moderna) and it was mild: sore throat for two days, unnatural fatigue for next two days, by day 9 or 10 it was over. I'm over 80. As for Thailand's record, I still lean toward the climate theory, that the virus doesn't do as well in heat. Meaning Thailand was lucky on the whole.

So my tax dollars follow me here. Where else can we waste some money?

Like a NO SEX sign on the wall of a typical massage shop; it's all in the interpretation. But I would never call a government employee a... well, you know...

Portugal is looking better all the time.

I noted the statement that there has been an increase of household debt AT 15%, whereas I think they mean OF 15%. What is household debt as a % of annual GDP now, approaching 95%?

Those boxes of Cialis sitting out in the sun on card tables, for sale on Sukhumvit Road, those are all real, right?

It seemed to me also that he was something of a disappointment. Smart as he is, he seemed limited by his class identity and inability to think outside the box. But I'm no expert on these matters.

He was educated in the west, and his English is perfect, better than yours or mine maybe; this might give him ideas. And he has the background in government, though it's a complex picture. He's right of course, but TIT.

I’ll go one better, taken recently by the entrance to soi 11 Sukhumvit. Feel free to use the number.

I've seen that also, though it should be added that Ashkenazi Jews as a group have an average IQ of around 115; but they are only 0.25% of the world population so are often ignored.

CNBC online yesterday had an article about the (mostly political) risks associated with rising food and other inflation in SE Asia, and the push this will give to central banks thinking of raising rates. However, they don't see Thailand raising rates soon, "because it has been a big laggard in terms of the growth of recovery". Computer dumb me doesn't know how to easily include a link, but the article is titled 'Southeast Asia may Face a "big risk" of social unrest if food prices keep surging'. My guess is this means there is a lot of potential for negative outcomes remaining, including in the RE market. But I just follow these things out of curiosity from having a degree in Econ I never directly used; I'll never buy here.

These kinds of things are a Trojan horse, entirely appropriate. Just look at the progress of the issue in California from around 1980 to the present; odds are this will be similar.

The dollar seems to be the prettiest pig in a pen of uglies at the moment, but for me that 's hard to understand; the rest of the world must be really bad. In December I changed my FCD dollars into baht at the virtual insistence of Immigration (officer wanted to see a paper bank book) at 33.1. At the rate this is going I'll lose a couple of grand, but compared to what my business in California burns through every month (not to say every year) that's almost nothing, so I guess it's all relative.

Meaning MORE than 15 days before, or AFTER the date resulting from counting 15 days back from the reporting date including the reporting date. My last 90 report was my first done successfully online, and the receipt says "notify your address again on 26 May 2022". And if it's AFTER, can it be right up to the day before, or in a window ending 7 days before or something? Thanks, and sorry if I'm being obtuse.

I just spent 10 minutes trying to find the relevant part of the report, and gave up. Articles like this should have an exact link to the source, and I may have missed it, but I don't see it. Asia is on p. 34 of the 2019 Report, I only found summaries, sketches, of the 2022. I was reading yesterday what Buffett said about the recent performance of his insurance business, so I wanted to look. It seems from what I could find not to be very knowledgeable of local conditions.

A hooker at a resort in Salzburg told me that Thai women are only nice to me because of my money. I hardly knew how to answer.

Long ago a Japanese American friend who was involved in divorce with a Thai woman cautioned everyone in his circle of friends that, in Thailand, always arrange matters so that you are worth more to everyone by being alive than dead, and I've lived by those words.