manchega

so glad I switched to us $ but even that is a concern

On 6/19/2019 at 3:01 PM, happy chappie said:

It only looks fast because of the traffic is at a standstill.he didn't even break the glass in the door or fly through the air.you can be doing 10kph but when someone decides to take you out with the car door trap you've not got a chance in hell.filtering through traffic on either side is legal in Thailand.im still waiting to hear what was the reason for the pick up to open its door in the middle of the multi lane road because that was the most stupid thing you could do.also if the pick up was in the right why did he run away.this should tell you about the pick up drivers attitude to other motorists.

I explained above, Thai people like to swarm, they see a scuffle and join in on the side of karma, or depending on if they have penis of 2 cm or 4cm, sometimes motorbike vs driver, sometimes they all attack a female for being from Laos, or non Thai,  look online

this is Thai mentality, if you find yourself in an accident the best thing you can do is elave quickly, then tell police later you were afraid for your own safety

In all honesty in the rest of the world university education is not all that, it is a business and what is lectured about is mainly non useful to students in their careers - from an engineering perspective - less than 15%

agree I would advise against Thai uni for job prospects but in terms of content it is the same standard as anywhere else in the world

look at free online courses such as MIT online, its all there for anyone to see /use/ take exams

wrt university I think you would find them accomodating on their international programs provided in English Chula, one of the KMUT 's there are many of them

don't think they would enforce the outfit, these are just businesses like any other and would take your money the same as any other

On 6/18/2019 at 11:00 AM, happy chappie said:

So how would you turn right of in a 3 lane carriageway.

in the video you can see many scooter pass by the car then the occupant decides to open the door without looking and why would you open a door while sat in the middle lane.

are you not the least suspicious that the pick up fled the scene due to the fact he was in the wrong.anyway we are missing the point....how do you turn right if you are only allowed to drive in the left lane???????

I notice the blind spot in your view though,  you can see many scooter pass by? I think not, you can see many scooters speeding through that gap, only buddha and blind luck knows how they travel so many km without getting injured but the probabilities are played out eventually 

that gap through which scooters speed on every street throughout BKK, Pattaya and everywhere else in Thailand, were I on a bike of any sort it would be with caution I would squeeze through such a gap between traffic

scale this up to those trucks with truck trailer and watch cars squeeze through the gap between wall and truck or truck and truck, it is the same mentality

the probability of surviving encounter is slightly higher when you have a cage or chassis around you but do it often enough you will get an accident of some sort

I get it you fall into the trap of believing its fine and safe because the locals do it but it does not mean it is a safe method, were you turning right you would be moving at a speed appropriate to turning right while squeezing through gaps in the traffic particularly because of all the other motorbikes speeding through the gaps

obviously ready to lead the next coup

that bayer stuff above but also get the termite system set up in your house, the termite system will kill all ants, cockroach and termites.

oh dear how will this one be spun ? I know taxi driver returns a billion baht left by chinese customer in taxi?

or thai locals help out chinese tourist in walking street altercation instead of helping to kick head in in a swarm like fashion

or even thai immigration staff fix crappy service by getting 1000 chinese through customs in less than 3 hours.

its a shame the villages don't also fall under this, it means the stupidity will continue in multiple city housing investments.

what is needed is proper standards and a means to prevent corruption

surely it is only corruption that enables multiple wires to be hung and rehung

the economics cannot justify such an action

2 hours ago, Justgrazing said:

This should be No1 priority for the P M now without exception .. Casualty rates like that are not out of place in a warzone so rather than pfaffing around with stuff minions could do he could direct his efforts into trying to reduce such a catastrophic toll for the good of all .. 

it is the political nature of it that means it will not be fixed especially by current PM, whoever pushes for proper driving enforced by financial penalties will not survive an election

I did this one year, the next year I had to make multiple payments for tax and asked to send duplicate info to tax office by visit , despite having handed it all in the first time

I am not sure if it is worth it as it feels like tax office now know you

my suspicion is that as a tax payer you are quite unique as an individual, just try not to attract anymore attention

is this the counter story to taxi driver returns random nationality tourist small fortune to tourist without stealing a baht of it?

16 hours ago, thequietman said:

You are way off in your estimates. Thai government Uni's don't pay even close to that. International uni's might go to 70k at a push, but local in town ones - forget about it!

 

For 70k, i would put up with their crap.

perhaps, none the less 40k+? for doing a fraction of the work and pointless time wasting admin have to do in order to keep their jobs with no career progression

I realise this is not a response to you but to Connda

the admin really do earn next to nothing for a lot of work

when I was last doing uni I really did feel for these people and the horrible circumstances they find themselves in waiting for the head dragon of admin to die to move up a step or around

even normal Thai (non alien) lecturers don't earn that much in some unis- 10 years ago I think 15k basic at kaset before top ups etc.  however talented and inspired you were as a 20 something researcher 5 years of that would start to drain you

after 10 yrs of glorified teaching in a profession where everyday the lack of any difference being made to anything would take the umf out of whatever inspired you in the first place

4 hours ago, AhFarangJa said:

Many posts are saying it was the driver of the car who opened the door. Drivers sit on the right, the left door opened. The passenger was more likely to be the culprit. That of course does not exonerate the driver for leaving the scene. I also think the motorcyclist was partly to blame for going in between vehicles at a higher than safe speed, but then again, don't they all do it.

 

and now you have become a native

because they all do it

they all ignore common sense and drive like headless <deleted>

it makes no sense to drive between vehicles at speed, cautiously maybe ? 

if you drive into a door being opened and you break multiple bones in your body perhaps spine crippling yourself do your really feel the driver is at fault?

I suspect the truth hits one about then, were my actions responsible for this state of affairs?

mayhaps twas the shrine I passed but did not fully bow and send a prayer up to buddha for proper recycling?

The only sensible way forward is to teach safe driving and only allow license to those that pass a real test to drive in a way that does not frustrate others

once this is done then roads can be improved

I am reminded of the paragraph in freakonomics or one of his books roughly remembered as-

if I am stuck in traffic I want everyone to die, I know statistically that for every road user taken off the road statistically I can get to where I am going quicker

-

agree 100% 

2 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

The Sultan is a man of such brutish ignorance, such a flaming fool, such an immoral, fake puritan. He has led a life of debauchery, and now he imposes these ridiculously harsh penalties on his people. Dumb and dumber. Fake puritanism. Usually, those that are the most extreme in these acts of ignorance, are the ones who are the most guilty. That certainly applies with this charlatan.

 

So, why now? “Who knows?” says Reza Aslan, religious scholar and author of “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.” “This is obviously not coming from a place of religious devotion, since the Sultan himself is in violation of every single rule of Sharia law you could possibly imagine.”Enlarge ImageIndeed, the Sultan and his equally decadent brother, Prince Jefri, were dubbed “constant companions in hedonism” in 2011 by Vanity Fair. He lives in a palace with 1,788 rooms, 257 bathrooms, five swimming pools, a mosque, a banquet hall that holds 5,000 people and a 110-car garage. When he turned 50, the Sultan built a stadium, invited Michael Jackson to perform in it and paid him $17 million for three concerts.

 

Jefri, 59, maintains a separate pleasure palace and once owned a 152-foot yacht called Tits; he named its tenders Nipple 1 and Nipple 2, and could never understand why others often found that juvenile and crass. Here and abroad, the brothers are infamous for their sex parties and their harems composed mainly of underage girls.

 

https://nypost.com/2014/05/10/inside-the-wacky-sex-obsessed-world-of-brunei/

 

“It’s a radical double standard,” says Jillian Lauren, who wrote about her life as a member of Jefri’s harem in her memoir, “Some Girls.” “They have more money than anyone else. I know that they both have been married and divorced multiple times. It’s really hypocritical.”

 

It wasn’t until 2001, when Jefri was forced to auction off personal possessions after using the country as a piggy bank — spending an average of $747,000 a day for 10 years, on top of $17 billion in gifts to friends and family — that the sultanate’s true vulgarity was exposed. (His brother also treats the country as an ATM, and it remains a crime in Brunei for anyone to ever discuss how the leaders spend their money.)

 

Among this heinous families many possessions:

 

 

• The Dorchester Hotel luxury chain
• More than 17 airplanes, including a private, customized Boeing 747 and an Airbus 340-200 — often used to transport their harems and the South American professional polo players they rent for sport
• 9,000 cars, including two custom-made Mercedes-Benz firetrucks
• 150 homes in 12 countries
• A private zoo
• One 12-foot-tall rocking horse
• Four life-size statues depicting Jefri having sex with a fiancee ($800,000)
• A global network of employees to procure women
• Asprey, jeweler to the Queen of England
• 10 luxury watches, at a cost of $8 million, that showed a couple having sex every time the hour struck
• Hundreds of thousands of suits by Versace and Armani
• A golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus
• Gold-plated toilet bowl brushes
• A sofa shaped like a Cadillac
• Dozens of bowling alley machines, pool tables, pizza ovens and grand pianos
• A professional lab to develop film
• 16,000 tons of marble, stacked in warehouses

 

I think you will find the truth is as with all these tools they are a means to power have enough zealots beleiving your god is the only true one cos the profit was <deleted> kids while they have to repress more and more

of course you 've got power

Happy to say the younger gen are more savvy than us - anyone else felt like their early life was a verse from crash test dummies?

there really is the worlds knowledge in the pocket of almost everyone, kids really can and do question stuff that certainly my social peers were'nt ( admittedly we spent a lot of time faced and wishing we had been teens/young adults in 60/70's) 

There is hope and with a little luck an increasingly less powerful general will be overthrown, 

No homeopathy is not a cure

however, shrines and talisman/amulets are

I have amulet dengue fever protection +5 if any one is interested

and I have 6 pointed shrines with comedy animal figures for extra karma sutra points

any takers?

compared to UK - I get it you are aussie but - much cheaper living here, less tax, less housing costs, less living costs, better living standard than UK and damn site warmer

despite GBP weakening, though 

weakening GBP is a real pain and saving less and less per month

indeed Naam, I find shouting crap while smiling when being heckled in a tourist area always helps me too.

Admittedly I have a decade or two of youth on my side but my high level Thai extends to all sorts of sophisticated ways of demonstrating I don't understand and what I do understand I am not all that sure the question asked was correct

On 6/16/2019 at 11:23 AM, connda said:

Puchaiyank addresses the status issue here too, which is very real.  
Administrators poop flowers and fart perfume in their own minds.
I worked for a private company but did gigs teaching Thai teachers at their own schools.  At the end of course we had a pizza party.  The class and myself all sat around at a table and had a jolly good time while the school's director sat at her own private table on the other side of the room.  She would have looked better with a dunce-cap on imho, but she was showing her status to the plebs. 
That is exactly what you are dealing with.  That mentality.  And most Thais want to be in the director's seat - high and mighty!  
So, a couple of lessons here.  I personally only work for private companies.  I never dealt with the buffalo paddies you folks in public institutions deal with. 
Second, if I did it all over again, I'd have worked in countries where the pay was good and where the administrations had a least a modicum of respect for their staff.  Thailand ain't it and never will be.  If you like Thailand, then dandy.  Work elsewhere, make some decent 'jack', and on your vacations or between gigs, come to Thailand as a tourist.  That's a better plan in imho.

On the contrary connda, Thai admin are in position with no future, particularly in universities, there is no bonus, there is no reward for doing the extra work other than keeping your job,

once you understand this, every interaction is easy,  there is no advantage in it for them to make things difficult or easy for you, piss them off and they will attempt to manipulate you for the rest of your relationship with them

admin know they have no status and they know exactly how much you earn

so when you are earning 100 k for you couple of lectures a week, and get your housing paid ( altered for what ever uni you are at) for while doing a fraction of their working hours 

if you put yourself in their shoes it is you who is the prima donna earning 10 x + their salary for a fraction of the time they put in, and you expect them to help wipe your arse

the op just needs to train them, if they are unable to give notice it is there problem not yours

On 6/11/2019 at 12:15 PM, richard_smith237 said:

You'll have to make a point...  

 

I wrote 'Mileage varies'...  this is what I see my fellow Westerners spend - many of my fellow Thai's too (who may also save when owning their own house or living in extended family houses).

 

I think you may have looked too hard in an attempt to take offense... also note that a CRV is not a luxury car, neither are houses which can be rented for 40,000 baht gigantic or luxurious, at the higher end of the scale yes, hence the provision of the range, which I guess you also took offence at in searching for bias. 

 

If you live on a much more frugal budget, good for you... why not list your spends and provide insight for the Op instead of displaying jealousy or what ever it was that seems to have rubbed you up the wrong way?

you edited your post after I had commented

On 6/11/2019 at 5:28 PM, BritManToo said:

My family and I are living on 40K.

me (foreigner), and Thais gf, daughter at university, son at junior school, former MiL.

We're living in a fairly new 3 bed house with mortgage repayments.

3 bed detached or town house? is this in BKK?

that would cover mortgage for 1 house and possibly utilities for us

its that whole reality thing that strikes me about that statement, suspect its a lie or that academic is not really a Thai person

reality is more shrine more talisman , more face, more bribery

reality ? 

you might need a real democracy 

unfortunate optimism of the trump being around in 3 years time, was hoping the old <deleted> would have a heart attack soon.

but long term trend dollar appreciates