mfd101

So why didn't you go to your doctor first and get his/her recommendation to get a full check at the local public hospital?

If you don't participate, you can't win. Or, as in Usofa, if you vote for those whose interests are the opposite of yours, you still can't win.

Democrat Party? Who dat?

Having spent 41 of my adult years living and working in Oz, I must confess I've never been inside a low class riff-raff pub. But I imagine that if you enter such a place in any country in the world you're likely to meet low class riff-raff types there. Perhaps it's the mirrors.

You could always try wearing a mask yourself. That could help.

Looks like progress. If it works, it'll be a major benefit for the poor people of this benighted land.

Mmmm, an interesting trend line under the previous fascist regime .... A 50-year project. Major cultural change required: feudal hierarchy, democracy/equality, appearances/'face', corruption ...

If that were the outcome, that would be the end of NATO and - with it - the end of US strategic credibility. Taiwan would disappear next. Noone would ever trust the Yanks again. China and its Russian acolyte would run the world. All of which is perfectly obvious to any US administration and to any European or NATO country that has a collective brain (ie probably not Hungary, possibly not Turkey).

So Finland, then Sweden and eventually Ukraine joining up is - in current circumstances - a waste of time, is it?

The Op is a load of codswallop. Why has Finland joined NATO all of a sudden? Why is Sweden going to join as soon as Turkey can get over their tantrums? Why was Ukraine actually invaded & still fighting for its life? Because the key to survival is NATO membership, which obliges ALL members including Usofa to fight.

So, a power struggle within the PHP (Powerless Hasbeen Party).

Yes, much the same as Oz (off a lower base - currently 27M but growing at almost 1M a year). But Thailand? Horror! we're special!!! The reasons for low birth rates everywhere in the world are a combination of economic and cultural as education levels rise. Poor peasants don't have choices, or don't think they have: life is a burden they bare passively. But middle class people or people generally heading towards higher prosperity are not about to ruin their gains by having too many or indeed any babies. Higher education raises people's awareness that they have choices and can aspire to move up the ladder.

Will be a pleasant day like every other for me here. I will stay at home with my books, and b/f will head to the family farm 40km away as always. The only thing that distinguishes Xmas for me here is the leadup, requiring email messages of good cheer to assorted family & friends back in the Antipodes. New Year will be celebrated en famille at the farm. Dinner outside sitting on mats (and a small plastic chair for elderly Falang). What we're really looking forward to is a week in BKK in January. Always enjoy the stay. Always enjoy the return home.

Same here in south Surin. Here on the outskirts of Prasat I look out over surrounding rice paddies. No fires, just combined harvesters doing their annual job and tractors turning over the soil later to finish off. All done now for this year. So why is it so different in the Deep North?

Sounds more like sour grapes than good rice!

We non-Usofans will be waiting breathlessly for the subsequent reports. Not for the details but for the general points about how the US thinks the whole shemozzle will work.

So she's a Thai woman, Thai nationality, speaking (I assume) fluent Thai (which almost no non-Thais ever manage) ... and they thought she was a foreigner? Doesn't make sense.

In principle a good move. KPIs etc. In practice, if 'Western' bureaucracies are anything to go by, it won't make any difference. The only thing that works is governments reducing the numbers of bureaucrats and stopping financing for 1001 projects that have been plodding along for years, or even decades, with no known outcomes. This applies to every country in the world.

Yes. Much of the huge increase in life expectancy in The West in the 20th century was due to the near-elimination of infant mortality by the 1950s. For comparative purposes over time or between countries, it makes much more sense to take expectancy at, say, 25 or 30 (ie post-infancy & post-teenage risk years).

As someone who first visited Thailand in late 2011, I've never been able to work out what the Democrats are supposed to stand for (at least in theory as opposed to practice). Can anyone enlighten me? or is that simply an impossible task?

Diabetic's delight.

I suspect if you live every day like it's your last, there's a good chance it will be.

Look at Kissinger - he was still lucid and articulate at 100.

Not living out here in south Surin. Air is not the pure quality that it was in Canberra but not too bad all the same.

Yes. For most expats it's life expectancy at, say, 60 or 65 that is relevant. I hope - at currently 74 & 95% healthy - to live happily in to my 90s and, barring accidents & violence, I see no obvious reason why not. But, as my best friend (who drowned in Oz at 62) used to say: Noone knows when they're going to die.