Led Lolly Yellow Lolly

Water gun fight at Chana Songkhram police station tonight.

She won't be forced into anything. If she feels an obligation, I see that as a good thing. We make a joke out of what may or may not come to pass. My kids have a great sense of humour, and I pat myself on the back for that. As per the premise of this topic, I believe children SHOULD have a responsibility to care for the older generations and I'm yet to read any compelling reason they should not. I feel obliged to spend time with my wife's mother, who I now view as my own. I feel good about that. I feel trusted by the family. I feel trusted by her. I only feel good about it. I only feel good someone else isn't paid to do it. We all share the load. I only feel this is good for everyone. . . I view anything else as being deleterious and burdensome to society. Loneliness is a cancer in the west. I only hope it doesn't take hold here. If you would prefer to spend your last days alone looking out of a window, I only wish you luck.

And who are the customers, westerners? Sure, Thailand is an attractive option for the lonely that can afford it. Like I said, I'd prefer to be with my loved ones. I already explained to my daughter she'll be wiping up my s#:t and mopping the drool from my chin in years to come. She's British, but not that British. She has lots of practise, we already pick up lumps of poo left by my mother in law as she shuffles around. None of us feel burdened by this.

Just a point of pedantry, there's nothing stopping you becoming a Thai citizen if you want to own land. There are rules and regulations for that, of course.

I anticipated some comment like this. I had a kind of unique access to elderly care in the UK before I left, my mother worked night shifts in a care home and I'd visit regularly for a late night cup of tea. This one was government, later they attempted to privatise it, or semi-privatise it, or some such bull. This kind of place is the reality for the majority that don't have significant wealth or a house to sell. I always left with the stench of ammonia in my nose, and my bum spelling of urine from sitting on the chairs. They just didn't have the budget to replace them. That's not to say the staff didn't do the best they could. In any case, whatever the cost, state operated or 5 star, I've seen enough to know it's not what I want for me or mine.

Sounds like you've been watching Adam Curtis documentaries. Not a criticism, your comments remind me of his excellent Century of the Self series, in which he describes how westerners have been tricked and manipulated into their individual lifestyles of want and greed. So just your imaginings then, kind of like the anticipation of a blind date.

That's an interesting comment so I'll bite. What is it you perceive me to be angry and unhappy about, being in a real marriage rather than a pretend one? Do you feel folk like me are angry and sad we can't be folk like you?

I'd rather the topic stayed on topic.

I think you kind of understand what I'm saying. To me, all taxation is fraudulent, and none more fraudulent than making tax payers pay for the elderly of others.

You see, this is precisely why I spend little time on these forums, people like you, attitudes like this. TVF is full of bitter old men. People marry into Thailand without understanding the people they are marrying. That's their fault. When my money ran out, I was thrown a lifeline by Thai family and I'm not going to be the farang that ran out when things go bad. . . Everyone's experience of life is different of course.

I was skimming through this topic and some comments raised an eyebrow. One of the things that attracts me to Thai culture is the family structure. For myself, the thought of rotting in some old folks home stinking of stale p:$$ with strangers horrifies me, I'd rather croak before that happened. One of the things I can look forward to here is care from my loved ones and the regular presence of my children. . . I've been here for a long time, and the love and appreciation I get from my extended Thai family has completed my life. No one is quite sure how old my mother in law is but she's very, very old. I try to spend as much time with her as I can, she holds my hand, talks to me, loves me. . . This matriarch of the family that has loved me like she loves her own sons. I love her back. My life in Thailand could not have been cemented into place without the pecuniary support of this family. Likewise the money flows from me in emergencies. To me it's this emotional and financial support that makes families strong. The very idea of going back to the isolated, island life that some folk seem to think is the way forward for society sends a chill down my spine. So you tell me, what's wrong with filial piety, because I'm not getting it . . .

Unfortunately I must respectfully disagree with this. You cannot even rely on the PEA to get things right. I'll post something to illustrate. Recently my sister in law asked me to rewire her house, so I obliged. Within minutes of doing some basic checks, I found the following gross errors. The house has a 3-phase supply. The PEA marked the individual cables to discern the three phases and the neutral, which is good. Unfortunately they marked them incorrectly. The only reason this was missed for years and didn't kill anyone was because the house is all hardwood, was wired as TT and had no ground rod. . . See my video. . . signal-2022-04-09-164201.mp4 I also noted this abandoned cable. It's the type used by the PEA to connect meters, so this was from the previous single phase meter, now removed. . . why you should always gives power poles a wide berth. . . So no, you can't rely on the PEA to do things right. Not by a long, long way. About the topic, I will only use Siemens or ABB residual current devices. I have had many Schneider devices fail. I'm interested to see where you're finding 100+ milliamp devices, hopefully with time delay, I need some of these but haven't found any supplier yet.

Frankly speaking, your options are getting pretty narrow in 2022. You can't shove banknotes down the wire. . . and how do you perceive virtual cards to be less of a risk? I used Kasikorn's web card once or twice something like 15 years ago. It seems a bit pointless to me unless for some reason you can't get issued with a physical card.

It's great, I have it linked to my credit card so never have to refill... My only gripe with TMW is it takes ages to log in, 30 or 40 seconds, so if I forget to login in advance, everyone's waiting uncomfortably at the counter for my phone to login. Does anyone else have this problem? My phone is top end, not underpowered in any way.

. . . Forgot to mention, you will find many TNC-S MEN systems in Thailand that only have overcurrent protection. It is legal requirement now to have residual current protection installed with TNC-S MEN. If you take the TT route, residual current protection is and always has been prerequisite. DO NOT skip the RCD protection with TT. Switching between TT and TNC-S-MEN is trivial if you know what you're doing, so if you take one route it's not hard to change to the other.

I nearly ALL cases in Thailand (99.9999999999 percent (made up figure)) you'll be wiring up as TNC-S with MEN but you absolutely MUST be sure that your local supply is set up in this way because the consequences can be disaterous if you do TNC-S with MEN but your local system is something else. If you already passed the PEA/MEA check, you can basically do whatever you want (within safe reasoning of course). Personally I have my own home wired as TT for a couple of reasons. I object to the risk of a broken neutral and I prefer the low noise of such a system (I have a lot of audio and IT stuff running). Kudos to you for trying to sort things out yourself, you won't find much competent help otherwise.

Contrived sob stories like this don't impress me at all.

Used car prices are absurdly high here. For this reason alone I would never, ever buy a used car. I buy from a showroom. Thais also have a tendency to run them until the oil turns to road tar before changing it, and then they'll use chip fat as a replacement lubricant. The red oil pressure light is treated like a red light at a junction i.e. only for guidance rather than a mandatory stop, so they just keep driving. . . They treat their cars like little temples, even into high mileage, so when they do eventually want rid of it, something's wrong, very, very wrong.

My point us I think it fascile to suggest 'traditional' investments are less of a gamble than crypto. So yes, put balls on your aunt, she's your uncle. Full disclosure, I'm heavily invested in JASMY Token. I got in at 0.02 last month. I haven't been invested in anything since I purchased Arcadia and M&S shares in the late 90s.

So what would you do in the event your bricks and mortar investment collapses, go and claim your brick? Shall we have a conversation about bricks and mortar banks being hacked, or the effects of an EMP on the traditional banking system?

You can use anything, it doesn't have to be a Pi. It can be anything that'll run some flavour of Linux. Rocky Linux (the de facto replacement for CentOS) even have an aarch64 version as standard, which you can run on single board computers such as Pis. You can use an old desktop, anything you have laying around. Just set the motherboard to boot automatically in the case of power failure and it'll reliably operate autonomously. The tunnel is the logical link between the Pi (or whatever) in Thailand, and the Pi in your home in the UK. You can imagine it as very long cable from Thailand to your house in the UK. When you plug your computer into the LAN port at the Thailand end, you're effectively plugging into your router in the UK. This can be achieved with open source solutions such as the extremely reliable OpenVPN software. It's very simple for someone like me, but I understand it may be challenging for those without a background in IT.

None of this is relevant if you're routing with hardware (software and VPN apps are for amateurs), you just put a Pi at each end of the tunnel and plug in your LAN cable. It's essentially no different from a 10,000 kilometre long cable. There is nothing on the OS that can even come close to figuring out where it is. . . and it's trivial to change your timezone.

Then why do you need a British Driver's License? You're not really supposed to have one if you're not ordinarily resident in the UK. For visits to the UK, you can legally drive on your Thai issued license for up to one year. Sounds crazy, but it's true. You live in Thailand, it's entirely reasonable to use your Thai license.

Hint: OpenWRT