RocketDog

You meant that Thais sell defective junk made by non-Thai companies, mostly in China. The warranty issue is a failure of Thai companies to enforce the manufacturers' warranty. It behooves them to wear you down until you give up and just buy a new product. Win-win for the producer and the seller, loss for the buyer. It's ironic that consumer spending is the major driving force in economies now, yet consumers are at the bottom of the ladder in respect. S**t flows downhill. Many international brand products like Dewalt, Bosch, etc are assembled in Thailand, so obviously workmanship issues arise there. And, as others have said, the quality of design and robustness of the design have declined seriously in the past few decades. My experience these days is that if something lasts for two years you're doing good. These things are made to fail early but cost less. Consumers affirmed these decisions by purchasing these products. We've made the tradeoff of quality for lower prices. The manufacturers simply accommodated our desires. We are complicit in this race to the bottom. In the new world of inflationary economies based entirely on fiat currency, product prices can remain low only by decreasing quality commensurately. Be careful what you wish for...... You may get it.

Joining several others here. I got a Fixed deposit acct on advice from an immigration officer I know in Huahin office. Definitely the way to.go.

? Calibre of reporting we've become accustomed to. Sigh........

June 20 re-run. Been there, read that.

And almost never turns out as you expected, has to be replaced /repaired sooner than you think, and is much more difficult to get fixed, etc

In the old days they were napthelene. Not now. The ones my wife buys at Tesco claim to be non-toxic. Check for yourself before using though.

It will be interesting to see how many participants are mowed down and left for dead by the local drivers. Happens every year. Being anywhere in the Kingdom within sight of a road/path /sidewalk/trail is a life-threatening activity.

I've had to do this most of my life in America. Any words of more than two syllables are derided as, '$20 words'. It is a fact that vocabulary not used, especially verbally, is finally lost altogether. Americans speak in strings of cliches, colloquialisms, and idioms so only vague and fuzzy concepts are easily conveyed. Sad actually.

Well, it seems good enough for the English. Folks from other countries might have a different opinion. (ask a silly question, you get a silly answer)

There is a theory that human development took a quantum leap forward when our brains developed the ability to envision/project the course of future events and how a situation might unfold. Planning a bison hunt is an example. However, my observation is that forward thinking is a cultural deficit here. I see it in their their stubborn insistence on living completely in the moment with disdain for conjecture or thought of the future. Clearly this is not an evolutionarily successful adaptation.

Good idea. How do we start? What will you do? Please advise guidance.

Lucky b**tard. One is enough for me but I can dream.

Looks like she was at a paint store when it was bombed. Ugh!

Just another New Year's Resolution that evaporates by January 3. Disregards Rocketdog

The humor of that trope faded decades ago. Let it go already. Now it simply sounds willfully ignorant.

The simple answer is that the people obsessed with running other people's lives seek and obtain the power and money to do just that by any means possible. The people interested in only their own lives don't do that. Money and power attract each other and invite collusion to further their own agendas of control. This is a story as old as humankind. The oppressed and the oppressors, the repressed and the repressors, the bosses and the workers, the politicians and the voters, etc. It will never end and can never end because people are people and it's what we do. We're fundamentally still just large-brained monkeys slinging feces at each other.

I'm more radical than that. I think anybody should be free to do what they want with their own body if not harming others. So hard drugs, abortion, suicide, selling organs: up to them. Not my concern. But too many people in every country, especially religious zealots (meaning anybody who 'believes'), think they know best about how people should manage their lives. They are the most insidious and entrenched threat to freedom. And they are everywhere and always will be. They are the ones to fear and loathe.

Sure. Whatever you say. BTW, I've been an avid smoker and grower for over 50 years; long before it was legal to do in America. But I still cherished the freedoms I had there. A glass half full is better than an empty one.

If you don't feel that you have a stake in a freer and more prosperous society, then you don't. Leave it to others to determine their own destiny.

Not being snarky, but... FYI: The idiom is "off the top of my head". (as with most idioms it doesn't make much sense). But I take your point. We'll see. This may be the most important election in Thai politics for many decades. We expats can't vote but we still have a stake in the Kingdom being more democratic.

Hmmmm. Where have I heard this before? Do all wanna-be dictators read the same operations manual or what? "Government Overthrow for Dummies"?

Perhaps so, but such zombie re-runs are becoming more common it seems regardless of the OP.

Agreed. I have been doing transfer from USA to Los, same account, for about 5 years. No browser changes, large amount, new account, etc that others here have hypothesizied. I have no other ideas why, but I went thru the same drill a few days ago before a transfer. I also had to repeat the picture process several times before it was accepted. I soon got a confirmation email and the transfer was uneventful. The email suggested that I would not have to do it again, at least anytime soon. I sure hope not. I strongly suspect every customer will be completing this process themselves soon. It's a sign of the times. The emergence of the internet in the 1990's promised so many wondrous things, and has in fact delivered many. But as with all things humans do, the bad players soon came in. Social media grew into the cesspool it is today, new jobs emerged for the so called 'influencers' that post garbage to draw more advertising dollars, security has turned so intense that it can bring one to tears, data breaches and identity theft so common, that it is now just a dangerous chore to do much on the internet of any consequence. There is no true security available short of simply unplugging totally. It's a risk to even have a computer connected to the web. The workforce assembled over the last decade to confront the security challenge is now quitting their jobs as too stressful and never-ending. The internet is now nothing but a tool for state actors to peddle harmful influence to their enemy societies and the rest of it nothing but a huge marketing tool that inundates us from every direction with pleas to buy their product. One cannot scroll three inches of text before some advertising pops up. Why is it that everything humans touch ends up as a dumpster fire? Watch the documentary "The Social Dilemma" to understand the self-inflicted threat we all now face. The truism "can't live with it and can't live without it" now has nothing to do with women. We have truly painted ourselves into a corner this time. As with climate change, this cannot end well, even as we renew our pledges daily to ignore it all and bury our heads even deeper in the sand.

After 24 days I'm still waiting for the demise of this topic.

After 20 days this topic is getting pretty stale IMO.