mfd101

5 hours ago, webfact said:

Thailand was also placed sixth for export of creative goods, eighth in terms of high technology exports and eleventh for patent registrations. WIPO and its partners also placed Thailand first out of 20 nations for innovation development potential. 

It's WIPO, not the Thai government, that has made these calls. OK, so it would be nice to have some real-world examples - 'export of creative goods'? 'high tech exports'? 'patent registrations'?

Ideology meets reality. Guess which one wins.

41 minutes ago, weegee said:

Remember I said November ....

I'll try not to forget.

17 minutes ago, weegee said:

Big rise in the AUD coming...maybe November.

 

Maybe next year, I think, as interest rates begin to rise. Not much action before then, I'm afraid.

35 minutes ago, Mr Smoothex said:

I normally do the transfer at noon on a Monday and the money is in my Kasikorn account mid Wednesday morning.

In the past I have done over 30 transfers with Transferwise and they were getting transfers to me in about 6 hours. Then they increased there fees so I switched to Instarem.

To transfer $1,000 with Transferwise is $10.44 and Instarem is only $5. Their exchange rates are nearly the same. they both use the mid market rate

My last transfer was even better than the cash rate in the TT exchange booths in Pattaya

OK, thanks. Slightly cheaper than my Citibank debit card and only VERY slightly cheaper when I'm in BKK & can use Citibank atm so no BKKBk fee to pay.

The advantage of Citibank is use of atm whether here in the boondocks or in BKK or anywhere else outside Thailand: ie time. Instant withdrawal & the flexibility that provides. Not much in it though, and the larger the amounts one transfers, the greater the small Instarem advantage becomes ... Will keep in mind for the future. Would have been handy 2 or 3 years ago when we were building our house here and bringing large sums across (sigh).

1 hour ago, Mr Smoothex said:

I sent some on Monday with Instarem and got 24.70. Instarem charge only $1 for every $200 sent. So send $1,000 and pay $5 to transfer it. The receiving bank fee was 0. So if you sent $1,000. After fees you would have roughly 22,852 baht.  I got 24,600 baht after fees.  1,748 baht extra in my pocket. Thank you..!! 

 

If you want to save lots of money on fees, then forget the banks. They are a complete ripoff.

 

Instarem are running a referral program at the moment. You can transfer up to $4000 fee free. Just drop me a PM for the code.

Sounds interesting. How long does each transfer take? Say I request $A1000 worth of ฿ at 0900 this morning Thai-time. In the broad, when would I expect to see the ฿ in my BKKBk account here in Thailand?

Last Monday 9th I withdrew 24220฿ [ie including BKKBk 220฿ fee] from BKKBk atm here in Surin. I used my Oz Citibank debit card. It cost me $A985-43. No Citibank fee (ever). Midrate at the time (within 5 minutes) was 24.77. I got xrate 24.57, or 24.59 if you take out the 220฿ fee & adjust accordingly.

Best way to do it, as far as I can tell. When I'm in BKK, I use the Citibank atms at Asoke so there's no BKKBk fee and the rate received is even closer to the midrate at the time (on one occasion a few months ago I actually got better than the midrate, for some reason). Keeping $A10K+ in my non-interest Citibank account in Oz no doubt helps. [Given the low rates of interest to be earned in a savings account + the tax to pay on it, I figure that non-interest + excellent xrate is the way to go.]

1 minute ago, fantom said:

Has anyone ordered a new Kindle from Amazon recently? The price on Lazada is much too high. Would appreciate any comments.

As an alternative, you can always use their Kindle for Mac or Kindle for PC software, which comes free. I've been using the former for several years and have some 1500 books in the Kindle cloud to which I have access as I choose on my MacBook Air.

1 hour ago, jak2002003 said:

This is great news and has made my day.

 

We have been married for 11 years with a same sex partnership from the UK.  It will put my mind a rest about legal, financial and other implications here for the future, and hopefully make things a little easier with the immigration visa things too.

 

The poster saying about how it will fit into a Buddhist country?  It will fit in very well.  Buddhist religion does not have anything against homosexuality.  In fact, it is seen a better to not to have any sex or relationships... gay or straight in that religion.   It teaches that people should act with compassion and see the consequences of their actions.. good or bad.  So, so long as people try to be the best they can, it would not matter what their sexuality was.

 

 

Yes, there do seem to be different views of what Buddhism - and particularly Thai Buddhism - do or don't say on the subject. I suspect the differences in people's attitudes more generally - and at the political level - are based on socio-economic or 'class' factors as much as anything. In many countries that were colonized by C19th Europeans (eg Uganda), the C19th moral & religious attitudes have been frozen in place, I guess as part of the post-colonial ruling classes' status seeking. But of course, as we all know, Thailand was never colonized ...

As for the peasants, attitudes are entirely different. When I married into a poor Khmer family near the border here in south Surin 5 years ago, I asked about attitudes to gay marriage etc and was told - by the family - that Buddhism simply says that marriage is for 2 people who love each other. When I asked whether we would be married by a monk, they laughed and said: No, monks are for deaths. We'll have the oldest man in the village who's still got his marbles to marry you. I asked about registering the marriage with government agencies. They laughed and said: No we never do that. Too complicated and anyway it makes getting a divorce more difficult. [Which is a version of: The king is far away and there are many paddy fields. Or: We don't care about them. They don't care about us.]

And so we proceeded. With half the village present and the old ladies correcting the old man whenever he forgot the words of the prayers. Hilarity all round and a great time was had by all.

All happening as predicted & on time. Clockwork precision.

Initiative remains with NK. Usofa's only options are to reimpose strong economic sanctions (including Chinese ones, if still possible!) or reinstate military exercises with SK - either or both of which would mean loss of face for DT. Allround fiasco for Usofa.

Yes, or a remarkably vague version of Brexit in a soft sort of way.

5 minutes ago, bristolboy said:

If it's going to take 10 years to find out, that means very poor verification would be in place. In other words, it would have already failed. 

If Kim has learned from his father - and all indications are that he has - then he can play Usofa & others along for quite some years, with promises, 1 step forward, 1 step back, vagueness, some progress, more demands for trade & funds, threats and so on. Given that he now - apparently - has operational nuclear weapons & weaponized missiles, he can draw all this out for a decade at least I should think.

What, after all, is Usofa's real alternative (putting aside childish trumpetings)? An all-out attack with conventional weapons? or with nukes? I don't think so.

Either Trump is a foolish mouse being played with by a rather unpleasant cat, or he has - mostly despite himself - managed with some basic dealmaking techniques to pull off an amazing coup that noone has managed for the last several decades.

Either way, Kim is entirely in control of the situation. All initiative now lies with N Korea.

As to which alternative it is, time will tell, at least 10 years I should think, long after Trump's exit from office.

All fairly typical of Thais: Pretty good at recovering from catastrophe but hopeless at preventing them in the first place.

1 hour ago, Puwa said:

I don't understand what the first half  of the headline has to do with the second. 

The usual journalistic shortcut. My observation is that the subtleties of the English language escape more and more native speakers (not to mention the non-natives).

She needs to call everyone's bluff (at least amongst the Tories). "Here's the deal. Agree it now or I resign/call an election."

The only useful contribution most of us can make individually to the future of the planet is not to reproduce for the next 50 years.

5 hours ago, Expatthailover said:

That a huge portion of these cuts will go to the big 4 banks who have been ripping the oz public off for years is an utter disgrace.

These cuts to big business rates have been sold on the premise that businesses will lift wage rates and hire more people is the biggest con perpetrated on the oz public since the stolen generation

What has just passed thru the Parliament is a bill - now an Act - for cuts in personal income tax.

The matter of company tax cuts is entirely separate and, at this point, unlikely to procede (unfortunately, in my opinion).

17 hours ago, webfact said:

25 percent incorrectly thought the British government would cover medical bills abroad.

Ha ha. Presumably they got that from their very own Mummies and Daddies. "Never mind, the government will look after you."

This is where the welfare state ends up. Noone responsible for anything.

1 hour ago, maddox41 said:

I'm Australian and China and chines have been buying up Australia for decades  

And the Australian government is to blame all the way back to  Gough Whitlam 

Most universities are funded by Chinese students  most of everythng you buy is chinese made as Whitlam said in the 70 s we don'

Well, we have plenty of experience. First it was British imperialism, then Yankee imperialism, and now it's the Chinese. I'm confident we can handle them if we have our eyes wide open & our brains switched on. Gently gently catchee cake all round.

8 hours ago, keith101 said:

I believe the Chinese are out to buy up as much as they can everywhere in the Asia Pacific region to extend their military to all of the region and using their Huawei Technologies to spy on everyone in the process .

Yes, that's the broad view of things in Canberra.

Yes, it's quite appalling. My b/f and I are going to have to go along to make sure it really is as awful as we think

Right, so where does that leave the government's plan to increase milk consumption? As far as I can tell, it's not even half rational (maybe 20%!).