Jonathan Swift

3 hours ago, Emdog said:

When I was a boy..... scouts were totally optional, something you had to seek out, not mandatory by any means. This was in USA. I did cub scouts, but didn't go for boy scouts... whole structure seemed a tad too Nazi for my taste

My scout troop wasn't NAZI, the scoutmaster was a racist redneck ɑsshole, used to talk about n****r camps, which in fact were the temporary housing for the migrant workers who came up from the south to work in the tobacco fields. 

13 minutes ago, Jonnapat said:

No mention of Nakhon Sawan where this week has been horrendous.

Thanks for mentioning it

4 hours ago, jaywalker2 said:

Jeez, get a life

jeez, get an education

18 hours ago, Gottfrid said:

Mad Man! Maybe angry with how things are going in the US.

I'm sure that if an American is in Thailand the last thing he'd be thinking about would be the US. That's why I came here 12 years ago, amongst many reasons, and as far as I'm concerned the US doesn't exist. And if he's a stupid drunk American he's likely not aware of much outside of the drink in his hand. 

Nice topic to read about over my morning (Thai) coffee

54 minutes ago, Peterphuket said:

Overpriced? This week I was in the Makro, Moccona is more than 30% more expensive.

 

There I have little hope that Thailand will allow it, how about Aldi and Lidl, with that they are throwing up their own glasses, not going to happen.
Incidentally, I have noticed that many foreign companies are now all Thai-owned, think Lotus, Makro and many others.

In the case of 7-11, the parent company is, I believe in Japan, the Thai business is a subsidiary owned and run independently. I imagine this is a common model. 

47 minutes ago, Peterphuket said:

It's a matter of taste,  used an expresso machine here for years but stopped using it because I can't get good coffee here, there used to be expresso from DE but after covid no longer available, and do you know what I drink now? Instant coffee from Nestlé.

I don't know how wide a variation there is, but all of the Thai coffee I've ever drunk has been fabulous. I'm drinking my triple latte as I sit here. 

19 hours ago, Will B Good said:

Don't like coffee, but going to start drinking Nestle now.

You can still eat their candy bars as well, and drink their cocoa

You gotta love that dime store novel dramatization style!

4 hours ago, SiamAndy said:

Thailand, the land of smiles flip flops! 🤪

Of course, your home country does nothing of the sort. 

9 hours ago, Jeff Simoneaux said:

Seems to me they don't have a good reason for the price increase except for they hear how the prices of eggs in America have gone up so much. That was due to someone making a scare out of bird flu and destroying so many chickens. 

That's actually not how economics work. Food and commodities are not the stock market, they don't rise and fall because someone scared somebody. Prices drop with less demand because they otherwise would have too much inventory and not enough buyers and they have to move their inventory by dropping prices. With increased demand prices will rise until buying drops off, and then prices and supply/demand bounce back and forth until they reach reach equilibrium. The simple law of supply and demand. That's your economic lesson for today. What happens in America is also more complicated than you think. Did you actually take some time to research this? It might be worth your while. But expect to spend more than 30 seconds skimming through clickbait headlines. Go back and look what happened to the supply chain during Covid. There were many complicated cause and effect events that overlapped and reinforced shortages and price rises. There were then opportunistic greedy distributors in the middle that gamed the system in their favor, but it still boiled down to supply and demand. That's your college education in economics. 

This is price fixing among the chicken cartel, who are deliberately laying smaller eggs to cause prices to rise

11 hours ago, Gsxrnz said:

I'm all for the metric system, but buying eggs in packs of ten is just wrong. 

They also sell 12 packs so as to not traumatize too many farang

3 hours ago, impulse said:

Russian Teacher to Thais: Drop ‘Farang’ if 'Ni Hao' Offends

 

Here's a thought.  Quit being a snowflake. 

 

What happened to the good old days when we jokingly referred to each other as Pollocks, Guineas, WOPs, Rednecks and a hundred other familiar greetings that would trigger a lefty tantrum today?  Back then, we could take a joke.

 

So the world is defined by you as the lefties vs you (and your kind). That is the real problem. Stυpid people who can't understand the world around them who are unable to define that great big baffling world  except through simplifying it into an impossibly one dimensional construct. You see and think in only one dimension while the rest of us live in 3 dimensions, including your enemies the lefties. There is simply no way for you and those like you to even function without your construct full of malice and bigotry. 

Except for the other real problem which is your willful and insensitive  ignorance of the meaning and realities of racism and bigotry, and of the suffering of those ethnic groups. . In the past we (including me) laughed at those jokes because we didn't understand how painful and derogatory it was to the people those terms referred to. Most of us eventually grew up to be responsible, respectful, and compassionate individuals and in so doing we learned why those things have no place in modern society. It makes me sad when I see someone like you stuck in a neanderthal world of 100 years ago. Sad for you because you will never know what it's like to be an evolved person who has chosen to grow rather than live forever in a cave of ignorance, and sad for the people around you near and far who have to take in your poison.

This is my 2¢, admittedly this topic has many nuances and hard to pin down if you weren't actually there. I will address the use of the word farang, because some people have made some pretty stυpid references to it based on this story. My experience with Asians has caused my cultural awareness to evolve by way of similar blunders. My view on this story is only based on my own experience, and my view is therefore limited and probably of little value. I think the bottom line is being sensitive and aware of what might be offensive. Overreacting doesn't help. I've never been told by Asians that anything I said was offensive, I made my own determinations after the fact. I have in fact made some stupid blunders in the past. I did quite a bit of research on the word farang, as well as paid close attention to how it was actually around me for the last 12 years. I have found nothing anywhere that indicates it is a derogatory word in and of itself. 99% of it boils down to how it is used, what context, and what the intent is behind it. I never felt disrespected by it, and I accept that Thai people may use it any way they feel and want. As to ni hau, I've learned not to use greetings in other languages unless I know the proper nationality of the person first. I don't see any reason for someone to have an outwardly hostile reaction to the phrase ni hau under any circumstances. It's not inherently anything but a polite greeting. A dirty look would have been sufficient, or the person could simply have been corrected on the spot. 

3 hours ago, Cameroni said:

So another East European fool aggravated a Thai by thinking he was clever and saying "Ni Hao", thereby making all foreigners look like idiots.

 

Deport all East Europeans from Thailand today and 80% of problems would go away.

 

But yes, farang, is obviously derogatory..

 

Notice the difference, a Russian says Ni Hao because he's a stupid fool, but the deragotary word farang is used with knowing intent.

So, are you one of the ones who cries "racism" every time a farang is pulled over fro a traffic ticket?

1 hour ago, newbee2022 said:

So, actually no evidence of brake failure. 

Pretty straightforward. There are not that many parts that can fail. Brake fluid leak, failed wheel cylinders, ruptured brake line, possibly failed power steering. I've done a lot of brake jobs on all kinds of cars, drum brakes, disk brakes, cylinder replacement, new brake lines. It would be obvious. 

6 hours ago, Gottfrid said:

Threat of defamation in every corner. Shouldn´t be possible to sue someone because they worry about a relative.

This I believe is criminal defamation, that would not be suing someone, that would be a prosecution. You can do both here. I don't know of any other civilized non communist country that allows such a thing.  

9 hours ago, ukrules said:

Now everyone knows, dumb <deleted> at the hospital should have kept their mouths shut

Yeah, right? No news is good news.

Some entrepreneur should design a diIdo as an exact replica of that rocket. 

If it were free, yes. I was a space cadet, sci fi, and Star Trek kid. I would pay maybe $100. I'm 68, so how much time do I have left, really.