kdvsn

Ok, here goes at a request for advice and this seems to be the best place to ask as it seems you ladies will have a better insight into this.

I am confused. Easy done at times, I admit that.

A little background would help, I suppose, so here goes.

For the last 6 weeks or so I have been seeing a lady. Met her in a night club after offering her ice for her drink when I saw she had none and then talking to her in my limited Thai and telling her she is beautiful. Gave her a card with my phone number on it and left it to her to call or not. She did.

It may or may not be of relevence that she is Thai/Chinese. 25 years old (I now discover and about 10 years younger than I would normally look for, but in half light of a club, it can be hard to discern a persons real age and Thais rarely seem to look their age).

She has since bought 2 books to help her speak English as she spoke little no English at all when we met. An offer to help with the cost of the books was refused.

So, we have been out quite a few times, to the park for a walk (first date where she took my hand), restaurants and coffees and clubs.

On telling her I was going to BKK to see an old friend from the UK she asked if she could come along. We had seperate rooms and the only time I entered her room was to show her how to use the key fob to activate the electrics when she tried to turn on the lights and came knocking at my door for help.

Valentine's she got chocolates, a meal and then taken home.

A little over a week ago I met the parents when we all went for lunch. Here, she openly took my hand in front of her parents inside the restaurant, at the table and when out walking afterwards.

She will put her arm round me, hold hands openly, put her head on my shoulder and even drape her leg over mine as well as 'playing' with my body with her fingers. All this is reciprocated except when she touches my chest, I refrain from doing the same to her

Bought her flowers in the restaurant the other night too.

Taken her to her parents home in the car and then gone on home myself.

Each time we arrive at her parents house it is a quick exit and 'goodnight'.

Now, my confusion is in the fact she will not let me kiss her, I tried twice and have not done so since. Considering the open way she is with me in all other respects maybe you can understand my confusion. I am certainly no Adonis but with all this hand holding etc., in public I get the 'feeling' I am being shown off.

This is not the first Thai lady I have dated, if that helps, but their attitudes were totally different. The new g/f gained a lot of respect in my eyes when wanting seperate rooms when we went to BKK and I do care a lot about her. She is affectionate and insists - upon my asking - that she does not want to be 'just friends', yet that is what we seem to be, albeit very affectionate friends.

A couple of odd things, not sure if they are relevent :-

She has told me she does not like my friend in BKK or his long term Thai g/f and if I go back to see them, she does not want to go.

She will, while walking or in clubs, restaurants and other places, make strange gestures. These can be one word utterances or the sticking out of her tongue and similar strange behaviour.

I am old enough to know that some will kiss first date or a little while later, but, considering how open and affectionate she is in other respects, 6 weeks or so and still no kiss? A variety of reasons spring to mind as to why this is. Am I expecting too much too fast in the desire for this to progress? But I am also wondering if there is something more cultural or otherwise that I am not seeing here. And am asking - especially you ladies - for some opinion or insight, if that is Ok.

Have you tried asking her why she will not let you kiss her?

can anyone explain why when using photoshop cs on my powerbook i cant save files as jpegs?

the only options i have are: photoshop, photoshop rdf, photoshop raw or tiff. i cant import jpegs either.

basically jpegs seem to be a no go.

Most likely it is because your file is 16 bits and jpeg only supports 8 bits. In Photoshop, try doing "Image" "Mode" "8 bits/channel" and then saving the file a a jpeg.

The key is your last phrase, 'with the right employment package'. It's the most expensive place in SE Asia so you need to be making good money to enjoy Singapore.

That's about right, but if you are making enough money to regularly drink US$10 draft beers with investment bankers then Singapore is a perfectly pleasant place to live. But for younger folk in search of adventure, Singapore is probably not be best place. Singapore's more for new expats of the "accidental tourist" variety who are relunctantly moving to Asia or for old Asia hands who have "been there, done that" and have reached a point in their lives where they'd rather have a comfortable lifestyle than move to a 3rd world country just so that they can be richer than their neighbors.

Just curious if it is possible to cash some old US savings bonds here in Thailand? I have no idea where it would be done if it were possible. I'll do it in the US sometime inthe future if necessary. Anyone know about this? The bonds are just for a thousand bucks or so each.

One way to do it is that you can open an account at Treasury Direct (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/indiv.htm) and convert those bonds to electronic form, then cash them.

Presumably the OP is looking for a legal copy since discussion of where to find illegal pirated copies of software is against forum rules

thank's SBK for your info, what is a legal copy? I think we have to asking that Bill Gates directly....

You mean a real Windows-Version (CD) with a new Product-Key from Microsoft,

but if the OP really looking for that, he will have 2 License....but just need one for use

In my mind......a copy is a copy (never mind from what) and a copy isn't a original.

Every "original Windows-CD" in a store is an original, and no copy.

Everybody know, what type of software is most selling in Thailand.......copy.....not original.

thank's

Chayaphum

PS: for buy a real Windows-CD (original) just go to some Computershop, ask them and pay them....

no reason for start a new thread in this forum....it's so easy....same, to buy a copy of something......TIT

As a general rule, if it costs 150 Baht or less it's going to be an illegal copy. No need to check with Bill Gates to figure that out.

Big Nigel is doing an "all-you-can-eat" american buffet breakfast for 299bht.

How much for "all-you-can-drink"

Whats in an American breakfast buffet?

In the context of Thailand, it's usually things like buttermilk pancakes, waffles, bacon, hash browns, fried eggs, and cereal.

Method Man - Tical

Nas - It was written

Nirvana - Nevermind

Greenday - Dookie

BIG - Life After Death

Jay-Z - Resonable Doubt

Redman - Muddy Waters

Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine

1. Never Mind the <deleted>

2. This Year's Model

3. The Velvet Underground & Nico

the good news is that the aliens who abducted Jim Sinclair released him again. he nearly drove them mad with his bla-bla

The markets in the US haven't opened yet but Sinclair's call of a 1000 point drop in the DOW looks like a reasonable at this point in time even though he called it one trading day early. Gold is down versus Friday, so I suppose one could argue that he was only half right. So do we still believe that Sinclair was abducted by aliens? This call, coupled with his call of the top in gold in 1980, makes me think that he mgiht be considerable richer than me and than the average Thai Visa enthusiast.

Hi, we are staying in BKK on our last night in Thailand (end of April) and we have been recommened to vist the Tawandang brew house aka Beer German on Rama 3rd road. Does anyone know of a good hotel nearby.

Many thanks. M

I think that you are setting yourself up for disappointed if your objective in going there is to drink reasonably good German-style beer, Brewpubs in Thailand just aren't up to snuff. You'd do better going someplace like Bulley's that has two different Paulaners & a couple of British/Irish ales on tap plus a number of other imports in bottles.

Entertainment is good however (for certain age groups).

You're leaving me wondering whether I am too young or too old for the place.

The ales on tap at Bulley's has as much in keeping with a good conditioned ale than ditch water has. Clearly a person of exceptional poor taste and genuine experience illustrated all to clearly by you advising the poster a way from GTB to that alternative. By the way the ales that you have been drinking can damage your eyesight as the OP was asking about hotels in the area, not your opinion of the beer being sold.

FOAD. Perhaps, but you must compare the the rest of the offerings in Thailand. Even Paulaner out of a bottle is better than what Tawandang brews. Did you grow up in a barn, or are you just a natural born asshol_e?

Hi, we are staying in BKK on our last night in Thailand (end of April) and we have been recommened to vist the Tawandang brew house aka Beer German on Rama 3rd road. Does anyone know of a good hotel nearby.

Many thanks. M

I think that you are setting yourself up for disappointed if your objective in going there is to drink reasonably good German-style beer, Brewpubs in Thailand just aren't up to snuff. You'd do better going someplace like Bulley's that has two different Paulaners & a couple of British/Irish ales on tap plus a number of other imports in bottles.

Entertainment is good however (for certain age groups).

You're leaving me wondering whether I am too young or too old for the place.

Hi, we are staying in BKK on our last night in Thailand (end of April) and we have been recommened to vist the Tawandang brew house aka Beer German on Rama 3rd road. Does anyone know of a good hotel nearby.

Many thanks. M

I think that you are setting yourself up for disappointed if your objective in going there is to drink reasonably good German-style beer, Brewpubs in Thailand just aren't up to snuff. You'd do better going someplace like Bulley's that has two different Paulaners & a couple of British/Irish ales on tap plus a number of other imports in bottles.

I was hoping for replies from REAL people, not a website

Most people have a favourite haunt, hotel , pub they would like to share with others, these are usually a lot more upto date than a website

I agree with you; you deserved much more.

If I had that kind of money, i would turn it all into cash and deposit to StGeorge Bank in Australia into "Direct Saver Account".

It would be about 780K A$, 7% interest rate would bring in 55,000K a year, 1.55 mil baht, or almost 130K baht per month. Minus 10% that they take as tax for non-resident citizens, still makes it nice money.

I would do the same... But in Singapore. You get between 6 and 7 % on AUD time deposits. But without any TAXES.

Any suggestions about how an American living in Thailand can avoid paying taxes to the US government on interest earned in Singapore without meeting the same fate as Wesley Snipes?

There now must be EMERGENCY ACTION because the Chairman of the Fed has BOMBED OUT PUBLICLY and a PANIC is about to occur. Expect EMERGENCY ACTION in days, not weeks.

Yawn...the Thaivisa bears have been predicting the collapse of the Thai economy (and now the end of the world US) for years. It's boring guys, but cheer up statistically speaking one day you'll get it right. This particular panic has largely run its course in my view, so you'd be better off buying some quality stocks than gold.

Yeah and we have been right !!! Easy to call it boring but far more profitable to act on it in time.

I was not always bearish, only how I have been since 2002ish.. I was bullish and tech heavy all through late 90's.. I got out of most early enough (hung on to some tech unit trusts too long) but the low interest 'greenspan put' that was done to stave off a recession then when it was required to flush excess liquidity out of the system and generate an appreciation of risk again was quite obvious in creating other bubbles..

Someone needs to take the punchbowl away from the party.. and at some stage people have to live with the hangover.. Once thats happened then I can get back to bullishness.

It's well established that you are the ultimate genius when it comes to investing, but how does that help the rest of us?

You did not really do that table did you? Why don't you try saving 1/15 of your disposable income from the first year forward and see what you table looks like then?

Point taken. But actually that's a pretty good example of why retirement planning is so difficut. When you are looking out over a 30, 40, or 50 year period, even a small lack of accuracy in estimating either your annual returns, the annual inflation rates, or your annual rate of spending can have a dramatic effect on whether your retirement plan will work or whether you will be destined to be sky-diving off a balcony of a 20 storey building in Pattaya.

I agree. If you cannot live on 30K US something is wrong. I agree about planning for inflation, and balancing your investments in stocks and bonds. If you would like further information, please IM me.

As of 2003, the average annual expidenture of the average family of 2.5 people in the US was a shade over $40,000 excluding income taxes, so I suppose that it must be true to it's possibile to live on $30,000 in the US. But whether there is something wrong with the people who spend more than $30K or something wrong with the finances of those who spend less than $30,000 or something wrong with the finances of someone who spends more than $30,000 is open to interpretation. You can live plenty cheap in a slum but yet slum dwellers are seldom the most financially saavy people.

I'm surprised when people talk of pensions - because most of my friends and I pretty much assume they will no longer exist in the not too distant future - by the time we are supposed to benefit.

This totally depends on your current age and country. If you are talking about the US and you are over 40, there is no major crisis at all. Only minor tweaking is required (stop the social security tax welfare for the rich). Also, the US, unlike western European countries, is not an aging country.

I would also second that you still need to be somewhat aggressive and continue to take at least moderate investment risks if you are going to retire early without millions.

If you are talking about Social Security, you are probably right that's safe for people over 40 though I wouldn't put it past to government to put "means testing" on the payouts at some point. It's different for private pensions though and I know this from personal experience. I worked more than 20 years for a large company that had what appeared to be a generous pension plan that one could start collecting on when they reach 50 years of age. The company cashed out the pension plan when I hit 45 years of age, effectively gving me 25 cents on the dollar compared to what I would have gotten at age 50 had they not tampered with the pension plan. And it was all perfectly legal. By now, few private companies in the US offer defined benefit pernsions at all, meaning that the only guaranteed payouts that most retiress get are from Social Security, and the fact of the matter is that Social Security is not a very generous program, it's basically poverty wages. Couple that with the negative savings rates that most Americans have, and it becomes hard to imagine that their will not be a retirement crisis when the post-baby boom generation reaches retirement age.

I bought into the gold rush in the early 80's and paid in the low $800 for it then. Would not have done much worse off burying my money in a can. Still have it, well some of it and I'm waiting for the big run up. If it goes up to $3,000 or so it will not have been a bad investment. Thanks but I will go with something that works for me a bit.

Amazing.. I thought it was only over 750 for a 5 day window ?? You must have timed it almost to the day !!

4 trading days, six calendar days. january 16 till january 21, 1980.

Aside from being a notoriious doomsayer, the "nutter" Sinclair's claim to fame is that he liquidated his gold position during that small window that marked the peak of the 1980 blow-off. Other gold bugs considered him to be a traitor at the time and the more fanatatical present day gold bugs look at him as a sage, apparently assuming that if we was able to call the peak once that he'll be able to do it again.

I have a question related to gold investing which I hope someone can help me out.

I own GLD and CEF but I also own Newmont Mining (NEM). I wonder why NEM - an unhedged miner - performs so badly relatively to the price of gold.

Newmont has all the signs of being a bloated, poorly run company. I gave up on them a couple of years ago and shifting into the FSAGX (a mutual fund) and the GDX (an ETF fund that tracks the AMEX Gold Miners Index) so that I wouldn't be at risk when any individual mining stock misses thier earnings target or has crminal charges filed against them by the Indonesians (both of which were going with NEM while I held it)

Are they generally most in favor of left wing economics like taxing the wealthy & powerful, more equal resources, etc? I'm left wing myself! so I'm just wondering if Isan is generally known as the most left wing bloc of Thailand?

The error that you are making is try to characterize Thai political thought by binning it into contempary Western categories of Left and Right. Sure, Isaan is very poor and poor people are almost always in favor of taxing the rich more, but that doesn't make them "left wing" in the western sense.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to get a mine into operation ?? 5 - 10 years time delay behind the market..

It won't take that long, but you can be sure that some older pre-existing and previously unprofortable mines will be kicking back into operation. Escpecially in South Africa.

I bet that the US Treasury is able to ramp up money supply much quicker than any miner is able to ramp up gold production.

It's recession, do seriously think you get more for the dollar at home?!

It depends where in the US his home is. Living costs in Appalachia are quite cheap; in places like Boston and San Francisco they are quite high.

If you can afford it retiring at 50 is great. If you can have enough money for your principle to grow by 10% per year you should do fine. I find that adjusting the spending to insure the 10% growth is not that big a deal. That should handle most anything that comes along. You can't say it takes x amount of dollars to retire because it depends on the spending habits of the person retiring.

I retired on my 50th birthday and just celebrated (well I didn't really celebrate, I tried to ignore it) my 74th birthday. After 24 years of retirement I have more $ now than when I retired. So the saving 10% rule has worked nicely for me.

I'm taking the same approach next year at 41. If the stock market performs as it has during your retirement, I'll die with much more in todays dollars than when I retired. The plan is to keep 125k in fixed inome investments and the rest in stocks. The fixed income investments will put me in the position to endure most market downturns.

I'll try to ask this in such a way that you can answer without divuldging how much money you have in total. If your planning to retire next year, I presume that you must have a rough estimate of how much you expect your annual living expenses will be once retired. If you divide your present net worth by your estimated annual expenses (excluding income taxes) during your couple of years of retirement, what figure to you get? In case it matters, I'm not just being nosey, I'm interested because I'm also contemplating an early retirement but am unsure that I have enough money to do it.

KD, I have heard Cramer mention Yamana recently (and obviously I disagree with him on where gold is going from here) now that it is a high flyer, however I am not so sure that Cramer was talking about Yamana when I mentioned it on one of the thaivisa gold threads back in the middle of August, when it was at $9 and change. I have to admitt that I am not much of a cramer fan, but if he was talking about Yamana back then I give him kudos (it just goes to show that even Cramer is right once in a while). There may very well still be a trade in gold left, but given the rapid rise, the weak fundamentals and the overall euphoria and hysteria in the gold markets I see the downside risk (and gold has a very substantial downside risk once it is out of favor again) outweighing any possible upside potential from its current level. The one negative long term thing about gold that I failed to mention in my previous post is that one of the reasons that gold has been so sought after over the milenia is that gold does not corrode or decay in any way, so every ounce of gold ever mined in the history of the world is still with us and there are millions of new ounces of gold mined every year hitting the market and with the price at current levels there are hundreds of both old and new mines that are being opened and reoped. This market has been driven up on pure speculation with no regard to underlying fundamentals, and as history tells us situations like this have a very bad endings. The gold bugs will likely hold on and watch as gold moves back to the $400/ounce range, but its the people that have been roped in during the recent frenzy in the gold market thinking that gold is actually a good investment that will get hurt, I just hope some of them get out in time when gold begins its downturn.

Vic,

Also, I take your point about gold the amount of gold on the market increasing over time but it's not actually true that every ounce of gold ever mined is still with us and that it does not corrode or decay in any way. A fair amount of gold is used in manufacturing and is not economical to recycle afterwards. For example, there is gold bonding wire inside the majority of integrated circuit packages and it's widely used on surfaces of electrical contacts. Most of that gold heads straight to a landfill at the end of the life of whatever electronic product it's inside. Also, while not many things attack gold and it doesn't oxidize, it's not that case that it doesn't react with anything. Using the electronics example again, one of the common reliability problems in integrated circuits is aluminum diffusing into the gold bonding wires and forming one or more AuAl compouds and becoming brittle and in some cases corroding. There's plenty of other things that it will react to, do a google search and you'll find quite a few phase diagrams of gold vs various other metals. Or, try a little experiment and pour some potassium cyanide on on of your Krugerrands and observe happens to it. Probably though it is true that most of the gold that is mined reamains in circulation, but certainly not all.

To the close minded people who think you can't get world class pizza in the US, check out this video:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate...26&cat=1398

And yes I have eaten there. It is probably the best pizza I have ever had, including in New York, Chicago, Italy, and Argentina. I really don't think world class pizzas are available in Thailand though, but there are some pretty good ones.

The one that I think is really in a league of it's own Pepe's in New Haven, CT:

http://www.pepespizzeria.com/buzz.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Pepe_Pizzeria_Napoletana

The place got it's start long before the word "pizza" was part of the American vocabulary -- to this day Pepe's menu calls the food "tomato pies" rather than pizza. Generally there is a long line out on the street of people waiting for a table in Pepe's no matter on what day of the week that you go there.