mfd101

Symbolism is about 80% of politics. No different in The West ...

Over 11 years since the 'incident' ... In at least some Western countries the relevant parts of the statute of limitations could be overruled by a specific one-off law passed by the Parliament.

It was only when I mentioned years ago to my b/f that I thought so many Thai girls but particularly older women (such as his mother) look awful with their straggly long hair hanging down that I learned that short hair on a woman in Thailand is a sure sign of a tomboy. I still got him to cut his mother's (then in her early 70s) long straggly & thin hair and give her a more Western matronly look. She looked so much better and she liked it, but it still got grown out and back to straggles ...

I should have thought the obvious way to smuggle sperm across the border would be to enter on a tourist visa. Clearly his operation was premature.

A job for Fidel & Che and the boys.

And presumably the Chinese goods are on average further up the manufactured/value-added chain than are the Thai goods? So, for example, manufacturing a car & exporting it is going to be worth more than assembling a car and exporting it ...

Yes, certainly the proportion of feckless, hopeless, drunken males I see in my village far outweighs their numbers in my former Falang life. And no-show fathers very common too.

Expensive car.

In my 7 years of living here in little Plasat at the southern end of little ol' Sulin province, change has been uneven: (1) What was a 2- or even 1.5-lane east/west road is now a 4-lane (and in some places 6-lane) highway. And masses of vehicles pouring along them in both directions every day of the week. Local roads all improved; (2) But the price of my haircut (70B) hasn't changed and the price of a splendid brunch sitting outside at PTT hasn't changed (80B for beef larb & papaya salad & greens & rice for me plus assorted Thai chili & rice dishes for b/f). No tips; (3) Twice-weekly shopping at Lotus is twice the price of 7 years ago - used to be up to 1000B, now often over 2000B. Quality is variable. We go to Tops outside Muaeng Surin once a month for the more upmarket & 'Western' things ...

Much the same as it is now - stumbling along in the semi-dark, resistant to change, xenophobic, pretending to reform in 100 different directions at once, unable to start on the basics (education + honest democracy) and work up from there ... It's a 50-year program and they haven't begun.

If the photo's anything to judge by, it could be quite difficult to see a cyclist at night - always depending on glare & angle of approach.

aha .... strange that I can't ... using AIS also. I'm with AIS here and I've never had any problem with receiving OTP, including Citibank and (I think) NAB. But recently, with the NAB takeover of Citi Oz just completed, I've had 2 occasions when NAB said they sent me a secure SMS and I never received them ...

Hear! Hear!

NZ200 = US123 or UK97

Just a courtesy call, as with Hun Sen. Nothing of substance was discussed.

Approximation: a Thai specialty.

Lots of vengeful & spiteful people on AN. Some of them no doubt think of themselves as Christians.

So a 15-year-old's stupid decision & its on'n on consequences are to be held against her forever? On that basis there's barely a 20-year-old anywhere in the whole world who deserves to be alive.

I think a very LARGE proportion of The People might be delighted to see her return, and not in manacles, even if they think she wasn't a great PM. (But of course I was forgetting: Isaan people don't count.)

The point of the discussion however is the small Falang stream, not the wide river of State spending.

He seems well-intentioned & has certainly set a range of long-overdue items in some kind of motion ... Whether they come to fruition depends on a whole lot of 'things' (eg corruption & power deals) that are largely outside of his control (or just about anyone's). In any case there's not much point in people dismissing each new Tryer who comes along as if they are all just criminals. That's both childish & self-defeating. The attitudes of many people on AN - even Usofans! - are astonishingly arrogant and naive. As though their own countries were paragons of virtue.

Always fascinating to read the comments of the haters, unable to understand basic Western judicial concepts like 'Innocent until proven guilty' or to differentiate criminal behaviour from political missteps. (Yawn)

Perhaps 'moving to the right' is an Aussie-only or perhaps (in my case) an Aussie-bureaucratic-only phrase. It means: Pushed off to the never never, or Constantly delayed.

So, we are few but loud, arrogant & anxious. What a shock.

CIA plot: Raise average IQ across Nth America; reduce average IQ in Russia.