xylophone

Yes I did this when I had my Panasonic breadmaker, but not deliberately I may add. You see very often after a dinner party or a night out I would fancy some fresh bread in the morning, so I would put all the ingredients in the breadmaker, set it for the morning and go to bed........only to find that when I went to get it out of the breadmaker it resembled something like a house brick. Due to a slightly inebriated state I'd often miss out the yeast component, or I would pour in far too much of another ingredient (like oats or millet) thereby ruining the end product. The lesson I learned was not to make bread after a few too many drinks!

I've just noticed on another thread that the tourist numbers in Phuket have improved markedly and that by the end of the year they should be back to the high season norms. Just a couple of bits of information from a couple of friends, the first being a lawyer, who said that they had been fairly busy with the opening of marijuana shops (and similar) and the other piece of information from a friend who is living near Laguna, states that real estate is going very well there and many Russians are buying condos and villas with bags full of cash! (according to his friends in real estate there). That has been supported by a French guy I know here, who manages the small property booths in the likes of Jungceylon, where he said business is very slow, but is brisk in the Laguna area! So, as I said in an earlier post, some areas/businesses appear to be doing well, whilst others aren't.

I had a Panasonic Bread Maker a few years back and it was great. Didn't bring it here with me though! Seems like Panasonic is available here but is expensive, but there are cheaper models available.

I was told it was 2:30 AM LL, and when I left Red Hot at around 2 AM, it was still going strong, or relatively strongly compared to earlier in the evening. Soi Freedom still looks to be a Soi which is struggling for patronage, but Bangla itself was still pretty busy and I didn't go into Soi Sea Dragon to see if the gogo bars were open again, but a couple of friends did venture therein and said everything was back up and running again. Overall Patong is still struggling, but it's a struggle which seems to pit the haves against the have-nots with smaller shops/establishments under financial pressure and a few of them closing down. In fact a row of small shops in Soi Banzaan may soon have to be vacated because the building which houses the shops is being repossessed by the bank so the future of these businesses is uncertain. Into Nanai and the previous 555 restaurant/café which closed down about Covid time and which has showed signs of a resurrection, still seems to be stalled, and although the new owner has renamed it "Verdi", and there is a sign in the window asking for Thai workers/waitresses, nothing has moved in that place for months! Further down, the empty large store which was previously "Tesco Lotus" is being made into something else, but what, is not obvious at the moment. Even further down, the Italian restaurant called "The Loft" is still empty and looking like a very sad place, however that pales into insignificance when one rounds the corner to find that the very large social area of the "Chang Residence Hotel" looks like a bomb has hit it, because the ceiling has collapsed and inside it is un-inhabitable, and it has been like that for some time now. So on the one hand things seem to be looking up, but all is not as it seems I believe. Even the café's are nowhere near what they used to be, and the service at the "Coffee Club" at the front of Jungceylon is absolutely abysmal, and Starbucks at the other side of Jungceylon is only marginally better. I did hear from a former manager of the "Wine Connection" that the restaurant/wine shop would be open early May and at this moment in time the premises are being made ready for that opening. So obviously some of the larger stores are banking on a uplift in Patong's fortunes, but again, I believe Patong is still going through a bit of a rollercoaster ride in that respect.

That's about my vit tablet intake and another poster has said that you don't need vitamin tablets if you have a balanced diet, but then again I don't have a balanced diet these days. I rarely cook vegetables for myself, nor do I eat much if any fruit (don't ask me why, it's just that I never fancy it) although I do have salads with many dishes I cook, and of course my wine intake is probably just over what it should be on a daily basis, so as I've said I don't have a balanced diet, so a multivitamin with an additional vitamin C tablet, as well as a coenzyme Q 10 capsule is my daily intake, and I've been doing this or similar for 40 years or so.

I think that's just lazy reporting because the bar was in a Soi, adjoining Bangla – – Soi Sea Dragon in fact.

Just the sort that Putin needs on the front line as "canon fodder"!!

You can't cure stupid.

Yes it did annoy me that someone who knows nothing about me or my eating habits decided to come to that conclusion. However looking back on my post I can see how you might have come to that because I did mention eating spicy food in Nigeria, however that was in 1970 and then only very occasionally, after the enforced famine. Back in England I really didn't taste any spicy food or crave it, and moreover one could not find chilis in the local supermarket, even if one wanted to. So it wasn't until the late 70s that I happened upon Indian curries and one a week would be sufficient, so hardly a craving. BUT I always had a penchant for strong tasting foods, not spicy, but with flavours that stood out and that's probably why I stopped eating my mum's cooking at the age of about 14. She was an awful cook. In New Zealand in the late 80s I would hold dinner parties (and match wine to the food) and again there was never any spicy food involved, although strong tasting foods were the feature – – lamb shanks slow cooked in red wine, garlic and rosemary, finished with a port wine reduction; or venison sausages on peppered brie, with a blackberry and portwine sauce......I'm sure you get the drift. Now in Thailand and I do cook Italian and Thai food amongst others, and tend towards the spicy side of life (food-wise) and the recent experience with a chicken and mushroom pie and tasteless mashed potatoes really cemented in my mind that I need to experience more Thai food. And the quip about "giving up your day job" is just an old English expression which basically means that you should not consider becoming a food critic! But then again I'm sure you know that anyway. As it happens, during the day I am mostly lazy and spent far too much time on the computer, however I do spend a bit of time investing in property in New Zealand, through a peer-to-peer lending medium and following some shares I have.

Item 1). SHOULD mean that Ukraine gets its land back, but will Russia agree to that; not a chance!

Yes, me too and I've always quite liked Keira Knightley in whatever she has appeared in, however in this movie she took another "step forward" IMO and I found it a good and interesting watch, as you did.

An assumption on your part based on what you have read about chilis, however I also like other spicy foods like black pepper (nothing to do with Capsaicin) and also mild foods without too much spicy taste in them, for example onions and ginger – – not to mention the fact that I like cheeses ranging from mild to strong. And there is absolutely no way that my tastebuds are dead because I appreciate many different wines and the flavours therein. Not to mention other foods of varying descriptions, but when I think about it, what sort of taste is there in a chicken and mushroom pie with no other flavouring/additives whatsoever? Nice try but don't give up your day job. PS. You might want to substitute the "your tastebuds are probably dead" with something along the lines of, that I appreciate flavours that I can get wonderful taste sensations from, such as a beef bourguignon, paella, pork in a garlic and wine marinade and so on.....many and varied taste sensations are what I thrive on.

I have liked spicy food since way back when (probably when I was in Nigeria at the end of the Biafran war, when whatever "meat" you got was steeped in a hot sauce, probably so you couldn't tell that it was either full of maggots or rotten) – – but I digress. I have mainly stuck to farang food since I've been here with the occasional effort at cooking Thai food, but I'm leaning more towards making the majority of my meals, Thai, mainly because I do like spicy food and I can eat green chilis if I want, and I often sprinkle them on my home-made pizzas. And just to cement my thought process onto leaning much more towards cooking Thai food, just yesterday I had a chicken and mushroom pie which a friend's wife had cooked for me, and I had it with mashed potato and brussels sprouts, with some very weak chicken Bisto gravy. I then realised that it was all very bland and damn near tasteless, so no more of that stuff for me, and although I do make the occasional Italian dish with some chili in it, Thai food will gradually take over my menu, apart from the fact that I do like a good tenderloin steak with some stilton on it (accompanied by a nice bottle of red wine) on occasion. So I will be experimenting with more Thai dishes and the next in line will be a Panang chicken curry!!!! Thank you to whoever started the thread because it's tickled my tastebuds.

He is lucky to have a life left to talk about this experience!! I did a bungeejump in Australia when I was in my mid 40s, but only because my son promised that he would do it if I did it first, but after seeing me hurtle towards a very shallow pool of water he chickened out, and I can't say that I blame him. Here in Patong there was a guy killed in a bungeejumping facility and when the depth of the water was examined it was no more than about 2 feet deep, so it was practically useless to stop an injury, which I believe it supposedly designed to do.

Not only that, the majority of Russian girls/women I have seen here, apart from never smiling, have the pouty/rubber plunger lips, so perhaps that is why they don't smile, or can't smile perhaps! I don't find them attractive at all.

There's nothing like a good curry........ Indian curry video.mp4

I did test drive the Nissan Almera, but wasn't impressed with it and it is a larger car than I wanted, and I don't think I've ever had four people in my Swift since I bought it all those years ago!! It would be great if they bought out an updated Nissan March or a similar vehicle, however as I said previously, I was quite taken with the Suzuki Celerio, so will give that a look when the time comes

Yes I do appreciate what SATIRE is, however it was the IMDb website which described the movie as "wickedly funny" so perhaps my expectations were primed for laughter? And satire is ok but when a movie depends upon it and plays it out to the "n-th" degree then IMO it can become tiresome .

I did watch it few weeks back, and I don't recall it being like a "gay fetish film", however online the movie was described as "wickedly funny", however I didn't find it wickedly funny at all and I think I got about halfway through it before I switched it off.

From the little that was reported a short while ago, regarding a potential "peace plan", it would seem that this particular plan really is in Russia's favour, given that they want to retain the parts of Ukraine which they have currently raided/destroyed as part of that plan. I sincerely hope that the Russian invaders are defeated and pushed back, as they are the aggressors, and once this sort of thing starts, where does it end?

Absolutely spot on @KhaoYai. Nailed it.

It seems par for course for that poster as I got a couple of insulting responses from him a while back, that's why I have put him on "ignore", so can't see anything he posts!

Well no real surprises because Port originates in Portugal and the distributor I mentioned from my location in Phuket, actually has a centre in Pattaya, so will deliver there..........and as for Chiang Mai, not so sure about that!!

New evidence seems to implicate "Racoon dogs" sold in Wuhan market.......... .......findings reported last week bolstered the market theory. Mining a trove of genetic data taken from swabs at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan in early 2020, virus experts said they found samples containing genetic material from both the coronavirus and illegally traded raccoon dogs. The finding, while hardly conclusive, pointed to an infected animal. The study also said the virus was unlikely to have evolved in the course of certain laboratory experiments. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world

I entirely agree with you, but unfortunately there are a lot of nut jobs in the US (and around the world) who believe in the sort of rubbish about the creation of earth 6000 years ago and that God created everything, and so on, but just how far will they go?? Climate change is just one of another example which they have hooked onto and it really perturbs me somewhat to think that there are these mindless individuals who think that way, and in some cases can change fact into fiction because they have the power to do so – – what on earth is the world coming to?