Enzian

Why is it that every time I see "DPM Prawit" the word "dimwit" comes to mind? Seriously, not joking.

I don't share that sentiment but can understand it. Boredom is relative as much or more than anything. A friend pre-Covid said of the go-gos that looking at naked girls never gets boring; who can disagree? Some maybe. Dr Johnson said that the man who is bored with London is bored with life. London was his world and home. Everywhere has something new to learn. For me Europe is where it's at; I feel Thailand is stuck at the moment, but not boring.

Yingluck said way back that officers should be prohibited from buying their promotions. Has that happened? We could have a debate society meeting with the theme, Which is worse, being unqualified for the job, or outright corruption?

I know western Europe fairly well, but I could spend another lifetime there and not get bored. Italy alone would do it. Or France. I hope to spend this entire Fall on the continent.

What matters is how many hours per day it stays uncomfortably hot, not so much the numerical highs. Joe's chart above shows that the highs and lows don't really vary as much as the seasonal differences make us think. In "winter" there might be two uncomfortable hours in the early afternoon. Right now in Bangkok it can be "hot" at 9 am and last till 7 to 11 pm. I normally walk an hour or two right after dark. But now I walk on the treadmill in the air con gym at noon and take a much shorter walk after dark. In 2016 I swore I would never spend another April in LOS, but the complexities of Covid screwed that up.

It's always funny when the bad guys in the mix call for peace talks in order to have time to think what the hell to do next. This will never be over until one of the sides is eliminated. As for religion, the junta is nominally Buddhist and I presume the Karen are animist, could look it up I guess. I do know various Christian NGOs have had an influence on matters in the refugee camps on the Thai side of the border.

Many international insurance companies will sell over 80s travel insurance that will satisfy the TP system. You will just spend more than is reasonably necessary. I've done it.

Isn't it obvious that the answer to "why" is that 1) they don't care about the suffering, and 2) they secretly kind of like it this way. Do you think that guy coming at you in his car through the red light "cares" if you die? Of course he doesn't, it's you not him, his life is fine. And on point #2, it reminds them of the old days, when the natural hierarchy was even more in evidence; that's hard to let go of.

That's why I plan to take just one big trip out and back, and in the second half of the year (my Non-O renews in Dec.). And I'll still be taking a chance on the "things settle down" factor.

Warren Buffett called it all "rat poison" for a reason.

Not a new budget as much as a new brain implant for everyone at the top. Then invest in a modern educational system.

I looked it up and sure enough, factory installed seatbelts were not even mandated in the US for about the first 10 years after I started driving. Dates me. After they started I always believed in them, but here I've become lax, maybe mistaken nostalgia for youth; tho as child of 9 or 10 (or younger?) I swear I once fell out of the back seat a car with suicide doors on a gravel country road at about 35 mph (playing with the door latch) into a soft ditch and survived uninjured.

The oldest and richest always pays the whole bill--at least that is what my Thai friends assure me with a smile. Maybe these guys couldn't decide who qualified.

I almost never put on a belt in the back seat. Time to change.

It's sad really because the way the society is structured, and so hard to change, is going to make it difficult to move into any kind of a positive future with any alacrity. The unwritten policy of keeping a large fraction of the population poor and uneducated will continue to drag on any hope of progress.

With this heat and humidity I would feel the same way were I not retired.

This seems to say that in Thailand at least there has been no recorded case of someone with 4 shots dying. Or do they mean just the people included in the study conducted in Chiang Mai? Six weeks after my 4th shot I got a case that was extremely mild, so mild that if I knew that living it up would result in a similar case again I would hardly care.

One writer called it "reckless eyeballing".

Well, better than a "holiday in Cambodia" in the old days, though sometimes I wonder.

My gf had to at one point tell her parents she couldn't any longer just hand over everything she made in Bangkok to them and the other country relatives, who would never stop asking. She started a business and bought some land. She learned how to say no. She still helps her parents, but expects the other 3 children and certain relatives to chip in. And it doesn't bother her that her parents still live on dirt/gravel floors with the chickens underfoot; in every other way they are comfortable.

As with Covid, nobody knows what's going to be the case with inflation here or anywhere later this year. As with the US Fed and Treasury, predictions are either political or an artifact of incompetence. Uncertainty is the rule, so just turn out the lights and go home for the day.

My official residence is Berkeley CA where 90% of the time the air one breathes just came off the Pacific ocean 30 minutes before, and the average daily high 10 months of the year is around 20 Celsius. So I'm here for the social life (in every sense), and for the times I can't be in Europe. I can take the heat, but don't like it. I can't smell the air, but I know the danger and just accept it.

Thailand will go with the winner, and in the long run that's China, holding Russia as an important client state. Assuming we don't all blow up.

I highly suspect that my taxi driver last night had been one of their customers, holding my seat as he sped down Sukhumvit running red lights. I got home fast but that strange deodorant he had used inside the cab lingered.

My question is, when is the government going to address the obvious price collusion among large grocery retailers? There are occasionally items on sale or two for one, but they are rare. For most things the prices are identical from one business to the next, and that cannot be accidental.