xylophone

Rewatched a movie I had seen a few years ago (though fairly recent) as I couldn't remember key parts of it, and so pleased that I did. It was called, "Get Out"........very good acting, unusual plot and good ending. If you haven't seen it, then give it a go as it is currently on BBCiPlayer

.....is that it might help understand the mechanism that makes triple-jabbed people more prone to covid-infections. Which turns out not to be case............ Are triple-vaccinated people more likely to be infected by the Omicron variant than the unvaccinated? No. But that is the message television viewers in France apparently got from an interview with Dr. Martin Blachier. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-pseudoscience/are-triple-vaccinated-people-more-likely-be-infected-omicron-variant-unvaccinated

But wasn't it changed to 43??

As the saying goes, "you can't fix stupid".

They obviously didn't visit Rarotonga (Cook Islands) which has beautiful beaches, almost white sand and is a dream.

History is almost always worth knowing, esp if it give a background to current events. Over and out on this thread.

My pleasure, but the link contains information that I would suggest many are not aware of.........or indeed do not want to know about! Anyway enough of my comments on this thread because like others of this ilk, it will go nowhere and if generation upon generation of well-meaning countries/people/governments have tried to solve it, and failed, then it won't be solved here, so therefore most posts will be meaningless.

Don't have to as it is all here........ https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/The-Crusades

Many thanks for this @Nick Carter icp as it gives the background to this mess; and for those who continue to post that, "there was no such place as Palestine in years gone by" then I suggest they read up on the history of the region from the link provided by you.

What I was trying to convey was that both sides have committed atrocities/murders on each other whether by incursions or bombings etc over the years.

I forgot to mention this...............sorry!!!

By both sides of this debacle.

I watched a little gem of a movie last night and one that became available on BBC iPlayer just recently, called, "Official Secrets" and I don't think it's release was heralded with much of a fanfare, however I found it very enjoyable. It starred Keira Knightley, of whom I'm not a great fan, but she played the role (as it was a true story) very well, and Ralph Fiennes was excellent in the smaller part which he played, and Matt Smith was also a driving force in it. They were clips from various news programmes which showed George Bush, Tony Blair and Colin Powell orchestrating things, which put a lot of it into perspective. The ending was a surprise, and just before the final credits rolled, a few snippets of information were shown on screen and they justified what had happened in the movie.

Great result for the ABs, although IMO not as good as last week's game against Ireland...........closer and with two classy sides playing great rugby.

I renewed my retirement extension just a few days ago at the main Phuket immigration office and the list of requirements which has been posted by @phuketcouple was on the mark, although the young officer I was dealing with suggested that I should have come sooner because the bank stamp on the bank statements was 10 days previous, but that was because there was a holiday and a weekend in between me going into the bank and me receiving the printouts on the same day as I visited the office! A point here that I will make is that when I got there at 1 PM, there was around 35 people waiting to go into the office and quite a few Russian agents with stacks of passports to process, so I had to wait about 3 1/2 hours to get my ticket/receipt to come back the next day to pick up my passport – – which I did, only to find that the queue in order to get a re-entry permit had about 60 people in it (including sitting on seats inside the room waiting for their turn to be called) so I wasn't about to wait, and got the re-entry permit at the immigration office in Patong, waiting just five minutes to do so.

Excellent idea and I have thought along similar lines to you...........but being Thailand, good ideas and common sense gain little traction here.

I didn't know where else to post this, despite searching, so I will add/announce my own guidance with regards to immigration at Phuket........ It is packed with all sorts of nationalities, with many being Russian, and when I went there on Monday to try and renew my retirement extension, I had to wait almost 3 1/2 hours to be able to hand the passport in and get the ticket to come back the next day! What made it even worse was that there were about five Russian agents, all women, and between them they had approximately 35+ passports/paperwork to process and once they got inside of course, that one agent, delivering multiple passports and paperwork to the overworked staff added to the long wait outside of the office. It didn't help that one obnoxious Russian agent was arguing with the young woman who was checking the paperwork and wouldn't let it go, and I don't know what happened to her, but she was definitely holding up the other people! After my long wait I was looking forward to going back the next day to pick up my passport and get the re-entry permit, but the next day was even worse than the one previous, with a queue coming out from the re-entry permit office and snaking round the outside of the building, and the chairs inside of the office were full, so I estimated about 60 people in all waiting for re-entry visas/permits. I looked at that mess and decided it wasn't for me and thought that I might be able to get my re-entry permit at the Patong immigration office, which I have just done today, and now that I know that avenue is open to me, I will use it in the future. I can now see why some people use agents, even when they have sufficient money in the bank, because waiting for perhaps a total of more than seven hours, with two return visits over two days to Phuket immigration is not their idea of fun, mine neither. There was one noticeable stand out in amongst all of this melee, when one Russian guy carrying a plastic folder (full of passports and paperwork?) walked past everyone waiting for their turn to be called, went straight into the office, deposited the plastic folder on the desk, and immediately came out and left?? Only guessing here, but I would think the legendary "brown envelope" played a part in this........... So my guidance would be: – get to the immigration office at 8 AM in the morning, on both mornings, or if you are able to find an agent who will cater for your needs, then save yourself time, stress and inconvenience and use him/her. Not something I would have normally said, but then the old adage comes into play, "if you can't beat them, join them" (with regards to using agents that is). For the readers of this post, I do have the full 800,000 baht sitting quietly in my bank here.

I downloaded and watched a movie last night called, "The Burial" and wasn't quite sure what to expect although it did get a rating over seven on IMDb. It was an enjoyable movie, based mainly in the court room, and starring Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx amongst others, and based on a true story. For me the intriguing part was the twists and turns in the court case, with one never being sure quite who was winning and who wasn't! Well worth a watch IMO, with a satisfactory outcome.

I guess I owe a few people an apology after that comment, however I will put forward some mitigating circumstances for it........ I have some posters who decide to put laughing emojis on just about everything I post, and even if I posted that a family member had died, they would put a laughing emoji on it. I believe I know who they are, and on the one hand I usually dismiss them as idiots, but this time I went too far, so my apologies to those whom I offended. Also my post basically asked the question, "xylitol is a natural plant sugar – – so how would that help with sinusitis?". So that in itself should not have garnered laughing emojis IMO, but it did. Some quick research has shown that it can have a beneficial effect: "xylitol has been hypothesized to be beneficial not only for respiratory tract infections but also for the treatment of sinusitis". National Institutes of Health (.gov). Having suffered from sinusitis for many years, I tried saline sinus rinses and that worked extremely well for me. Once again, my apologies to those whom I offended.

Not so but then it really doesn't matter in this case! Adult human urine is not sterile. “Sterile Urine” and the Presence of Bacteria - PMC - NCBI

It was a great game of rugby which reminded me of the games of old, and this one didn't have too much in the way of referee interference, because he did let the play run wherever possible. The fact that the All Blacks were down to 14 men on two occasions makes this win for them even more special because they hung on and battled away regardless of them being a man short. Several of the players had been "bad mouthed" by the NZ press in recent times, but all of them gave everything they had and it all came right at the end. Well done the ABs.

I see that this post of mine was given three laughing emojis, so for the numb nuts who did this, you might want to look up xylitol, because it is indeed a natural sugar alcohol, and can be used to assist in weight loss in place of normal cane sugar. Of course, the lowly educated wouldn't know this, hence the emojis.

Xylitol is a natural sugar alcohol found in plants........how would that help?

Good info, thanks...........so who rejected this proposal?

Israeli forces say they’ve uncovered evidence of brutal killings: ‘They cut heads of children’. Some good posts on this thread and others relating to it, and I have changed my stance a little bit, inasmuch as Hamas is a terrorist organisation whose avowed intent is to kill as many Israeli people as possible and wipe out Israel as a country. It is not fighting on behalf of the Palestinian people, who IMO do have "an axe to grind" against the Israelis, but to achieve its own ends, which I've already stated. They have committed atrocities and will continue to do so I believe, however they consider it to be a war in which anything goes, and the sad part about it is that this is the truth in just about any wall that's ever been fought. The French slaughtered young boys who were nothing more than drummers and servants in the Battle of Agincourt; the Americans slaughtered women and children in "the Sand Creek massacre" and "Wounded Knee" and later on in Vietnam at Mai Lai. The British set up the first "concentration camps" and imprisoned Boers in horrendous conditions, with many dying. In Nanking, the marauding Japanese committed horrendous atrocities, including impaling babies on the end of their bayonets and parading them around the streets; the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not aimed at armaments factories, but intended to destroy the morale of the Japanese, killing many thousands civilians in the process; the Nazis murdered Jewish men, women and children in concentration camps............. and so it goes on. Although what we are hearing about the Hamas incursion into Israel is saddening and sickening, it follows the pattern of many other wars and incursions of this type. Who knows how it will end, but as others have posted, and newspaper reports have said, what is the aim of this for Hamas?? Unfortunately asking Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza is very difficult as there will be many Hamas infiltrators and amongst them, only to start elsewhere. Perhaps razing Gaza to the ground, irrespective of the cost of human lives, will be the end result, who knows, but this madness has to stop. PS. I was in Nigeria at the end of the Biafran war and estimates say that over 1 million people were killed in that "war" and starvation by the Government was a major factor in those deaths, with babies and the young being major casualties. Innocents killed through starvation with no regard for the lives of the defenceless, so it seems that war in all its forms covers atrocities, no matter what.