xylophone

On the rare occasion when I do buy and cook a good steak, I go for the best Aussie tenderloin, but as I said, in the main I go to a restaurant to have a good Aussie tenderloin steak and also take along a nice bottle of red wine to complement it. Slow cooked traditional dishes are best with cheap beef, but, the one in the pic, I wouldn't touch it. Everyone to their own I suppose.

Jeez........that must be over 30% fat and then some with the marbling!! Not my kind of steak!!

I have noticed that the price of meat has gone up quite considerably, however as I am not a big meat eater, it really doesn't bother me, and if I do want a good steak or similar, then I will go to a restaurant! Whenever I do buy meat, it is usually something like cheek, hock or similar that is particularly good for slow cooking in the beef bourguignon I make, and that's not expensive. Very occasionally I buy some ground beef to make a chilli con carne, and because I slow cook that, it can be local Thai beef, and the end result is just the same as if using ground Aussie beef. In actual fact, I have noticed the prices of food in general here, especially in the likes of Big C and Tops have gone up quite markedly, and that's just a sign of the times. Someone mentioned cheese, and I am quite partial to Stilton, and occasionally bought it, however went off it a while back, and when I looked yesterday in Big C, the smallest almost thumb -sized slice of Stilton was 270 baht, and I would buy it if I wanted to, but am not bothered these days. I imagine it could be hard for farangs here living purely on a pension, however there are plenty of Thai options and quite delicious Thai dishes which are very cheap and easy to cook, which I occasionally do, so switching meals and tastes is a good option in Thailand.

The last "watchable" Nicholas Cage movie, for me anyway, was "Lord of War".....not great, but not bad!

Agree LiK, as the sunken drain covers are a hazard to m/c riders, with some of them being many cms/inches deep. Whoever planned this resurfacing didn't think it through...........but then we all know it is not a strength of so-called planners here.

Guinea pig posting!!!!! I watched this Nicholas Cage movie and expected good things because it had a 7.4 IMDb rating (must have from his family and friends). BUT it was a poor movie and I almost switched it off halfway through because Nicholas Cage was boring and the movie premise was one I had seen before on a couple of other movies....but I stayed with it and wasted 90 mins of my life. Much of the movie "action" takes place in a car with Cage overacting badly. But if you want to see a good movie which takes place in a car, then watch "Locke" starring Tom Hardy, because it is great!

SHOCK, HORROR..............trump reads from a prepated script in the latest GOP gathering. According to the trumpies on here, that is akin to a cardinal sin when JB does it, but then again trump has committed so many "cardinal sins" in the past, that this is no surprise LOL............

Ah yes, the evidence of the Biden crimes............and if you would be so kind as to share that evidence, or indeed pass it on to the Republicans who want to put Biden's head on the block, then I'm sure all of the posters here and especially the pro-Trump brigade, would be delighted. Looking forward to seeing it.......or maybe what you have read is pure "scuttlebutt"??

Should have read, "into the air".............having some problems with my voice recognition software, esp now that my sinuses are playing up!! Sorry about that. Perhaps dropping the H Bombs on them was necessary in order to stop these atrocities.

Thank you to whoever recommended a movie called, "The Great Raid" because I watched it last night and thought it was very good, but one thing really does stick in my mind is the Japanese cruelty to others. It has been said that because soldiers who surrendered were considered cowards and not worthy of living, they were treated like animals because they didn't deserve to live. It's not an explanation I can accept, but I have another question to ask regarding the Japanese treatment of others: – – a Filipino lady responded to the questions on this movie stating how great it was to see due recognition given to the Filipino fighters and the Filipino people, because they were treated most cruelly by the Japanese. She described how her grandfather was tied to a post, doused in petrol and set alight! She also mentioned how babies were thrown into the year and impaled on bayonets, and this mirrors the same treatment that the Japanese gave to babies and children in Nanking; graphically described and with photographs, in a book called, "The Rape of Nanking". Why oh why was such behaviour undertaken by Japanese soldiers – – what was it/is it in their psyche which enables them to do this?

Last night I decided to watch one of my favourite movies, "Live by Night", even though it only got IMDb score of 6.4!! Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana and Brendan Gleeson star in this movie about gangsters in the prohibition time in the US, and I have always found it entertaining, hence watching it again last night! Quite why it didn't get a higher score on IMDb is puzzling, however some critics have said that it lacks the, "oomph and raw edge" to be able to take it to the next level. All the same, still one of my favourite movies!

Your comments regarding walking in the middle-of-the-road are somewhat valid, however walking three or four abreast on one half of a narrow road is plain madness/stupidity. And I could forgive them if they were really from a small village somewhere in China, but their whole attitude and actions point to something else? When you look at the experiences here of a Chinese man cutting his toenails on the table of Starbucks, and a woman allowing her child to take a dump on the main thoroughfare outside of the same coffee shop, plus the absolutely annoying habit they have of crowding shopping aisles and not considering any other people, then it leads me to believe they are – – ignorant, stupid, inbred, bad mannered and simply have no idea how the real world works. Take your pick.

I thought the LL movie was good.......worth a look IMO.

UNBELIEVABLE........is probably a good word with which to start this post, and not only because the traffic here is horrendous now that they've taken to digging up the "middle road" (something they had done quite a few years ago to improve the drainage but it obviously didn't work) thereby creating traffic jams all round, but because they've also started to resurface Nanai Road, which is normally quite a busy road and is now at times impassable!! It's not just the roadworks themselves, or the timing thereof, which I would label "unbelievable", but also the idiots on the road, with one man (I shall label him a Russian) deciding to drive out of Makro on the wrong side of the road, heading south, before coming face-to-face with a large truck which had to swerve to miss him. Even then it appears that he didn't realise he was driving on the wrong side of the road, because after the truck had passed, he continued on that side until some cars came the other way and maybe the light came on, or maybe it didn't? I was gone by then. Then I had a couple of experiences with some Chinese people, you know those people who decide to walk four abreast on one half of a narrow road, which a crowd of them did after they spilled out of a side road onto Nanai when I was driving along in my car. Luckily enough I wasn't going very fast and was able to slow up quickly and sound my horn. But did it make a difference – – not one bit, because they continued to walk slowly in front of my car with me behind them tooting my horn to get them to move, but they didn't, so I slowly drove the car into the back of this small mob, hitting one of them with my wing mirror, before she cried out and the rest of them shuffled to one side. This is not the first time this has happened and I doubt it will be the last – – in fact it wasn't the last because just yesterday I was driving with a friend down a small slip/access road to a shop therein, and although it was clearly a vehicle road, with cars parked on one side and motorbikes on the other, a family of three were walking in the middle of the road, and of course I was driving down it, so there were walking towards me and they looked up and saw me but did nothing, absolutely nothing, so I drove at them, whilst my friend was shouting obscenities at them out of the window. What on earth causes these people to be like that – – ignorant, stupid, blind, or just arrogant in thinking that they have the right-of-way?? Reminds me of the time a Chinese guy put his feet on a table in Starbucks and proceeded to clip his toenails.......Jeeezus! SO I will warn fellow posters that if I haven't been heard of for some time, it's probably because I've been locked away after forcefully ploughing into a crowd of Chinese jaywalkers!!! The recently opened Hurricane Rock Bar, which is painted black inside and outside, as well as the furniture, has not been busy at all, in fact I noticed a sign on the roller blind door a couple of days ago which said, "live music and free food tonight" (it doesn't seem to be open during the day). Obviously trying to get some punters into the place, but with a bar which looks as uninviting as the entrance to a coal mine, it doesn't appear to have worked yet. My bet is that it is here for a short time only, unless the owner is very wealthy and doesn't mind losing money! Patong attracts all sorts.........not the liquorice variety!!

I also read it many years ago and I liked it, but I later realised it was a work of fiction. It was all the rage at one time, but the content has been pored over by many scientists and academics and they state that it has no basis in reality. Perhaps he was an early viewer of the movie "Prometheus"!!!!!

I saw the movie, "Once Upon a Time in the West" mentioned somewhere so I decided to download it and watch it, and it has been described as "a 1968 epic Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone….considered the best Western ever made in the history of cinema". So I sat through three hours of spaghetti Western music, dialogue and acting to the finale, which was quite unique, but looking back, in my opinion it comes nowhere close to being the best Western ever made, and I'm not saying these are the best, but for me they are certainly very good westerns: – "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" and "Tombstone" which features a stunning performance by Val Kilmer would have to rate amongst the best for me.

A friend of mine here in Phuket saw the iTind offer price at BNH of 70,000 baht and wanted to go ahead with it after researching Rezum, but his problem with passing water seems to have gotten a lot better so he is not going with any of these procedures at all! Anyway, before he actually cancelled the iTind procedure, the price had shot up to around 200,000 baht, so he wasn't too keen, and was thinking about researching options in India for iTind or Urolift........... As I recall there have been some comments here regarding Rezum and they haven't overall been that complementary.

OOPS........Should have read "Untrustworthy", but then you probably already guessed that!

Meant to put a "fun" emoji after that comment........no disrespect meant Sheryl, just jesting as I value your posts very highly.

For those who like documentaries about nature and similar, then the documentary on BBC iPlayer called, "The Witness is a Whale" is not only extremely interesting but also very sad. Although I know many countries hunted whales in the past, many countries decided against it and ceased it, however Russia decided to carry on and lied consistently about how many whales it had slaughtered and this documentary is quite unnerving in uncovering the number of whales which it killed. However it is not alone in that, because Japan was a hunter of whales, and just a few years ago decided to resume the hunting of whales, supposedly for "scientific purposes" which we know is a load of BS. Trust the Russians – – not on your life, they are a bunch of lying and trustworthy bar stewards, and some, and they are proving it yet again with their invasion of Ukraine.

Have you been on the turps Sheryl.........hard to decipher aspects of your post!!!!!!

Many thanks to you and to @gargamonand @recom273 for the feedback and advice/information, and I actually took Smart DNS on a month trial, after looking at all the others, and I did this mainly because I already had an account with them from years ago, and so far it has worked, but I have only had it for a short while, and the "proof of the pudding" will be when I get to watch something on BBC iPlayer, or indeed the rugby on Stan Sport. After reading up on VPNs and smart DNS, it made me realise that a VPN was not what I was looking for and that Smart DNS or similar would do for what I wanted. Onto movies – – I downloaded and watched one from a while back, called, "Into The Wild" about a guy who decides to explore and rough it in Alaska. I had seen it before, but as is often the case with movies like this, when watched again, it became clearer as to why he was wanting to do this.

The damage which is supposedly being done to the US has been evident and ongoing since trump took office, and it would take something horrendous to even come anywhere near the damage done to the US by Trump and his cohorts, family and followers.........Jewish space lasers anyone? Love letters from Little Kim, and of course Hydroxychloroquine and bleach.........the list is long and painful for the intelligent folk out there, but not so for the trump supporters.

Whoosh.........................sarcasm rules!!

Many thanks @tlcwaterfall, your feedback is much appreciated