CbrLad

Embassy staff come and go but as long as they remain working for Immigration, their email addy stays the same.

If you are now in Australia, you can phone the Immigration office in your capital city and they will tell you where Rob Chambers is now located and provide his email address.

Not quite. When Immigration staff return home they revert to the Immigration network which has addresses, I think that end in @immi.gov.au. They only have DFAT addresses when posted overseas.

It's still a little chilly down here at the moment. It may be better to wait for the warm weather to arrive before you visit Down Under. (for her sake anyway. )

I belive Jetstar don't start going to HKT until around November, so starting to warm up by then.

As for visa issue really cannot see why it would be that great an issue, should I imagine be much easier than for the UK, afterall there is no compelling reason for her to want to stay, unlike say your homeland.

9 current digits... that allows for 999,999,999 phone numbers.

10 times the predicted amount.

It is still an awful lot of numbers, but phone systems are not as easy as saying every number in the range is available. All based on having to give different carriers, regions etc different codes. To have every number in use would require one main central routing database locating EVERY number in the system. It doesn't work. Phone systems need to be quick, so they route on prefixes which is where the wastage of numbers start.

My TGF is considering applying for permanent residency from Malta for the benefit of a Schengen stamp in her passport. Traveling to any EU member state with ease (no additional visa or otherwise) is the main reason why we want to go this route.

Has anyone done this before? There isn't too much (un-biased) information on the web about the pros/cons. Frankly, we don't see any cons so far. I know there must be some cons. (Meeting the requirements isn't an issue, and she feels it's worth the convenience of having a Schengen stamp.)

Unless I am missing something Malta, like the UK is not part of the Schengen visa scheme despite being a member of the EU. I know it was two years since I was there but I travelled from London to Malta and then onto Athens via Rome. Although I am an Aussie and didn't require a visa for any of the countries I did have to go through passport control leaving London, entering and leaving Malta and entering Italy and finally leaveing Greece. My advice would be Malta would be no of no use for what you want to do.

Here is the link to the Schengen visa site

http://www.eurovisa.info/SchengenCountries.htm

I cant even get a straight answer from the OZ immigration (DFAT) about the status, basicly the Permanent resident visa is in an expired passport.

To my way of thinking if you have PR you dont need a passport anymore unless you want to travel.

She will be able to get an Oz one soon.

I am assuming you have contacted the right department but for the record Oz immigration isn't DFAT mate, Immigration is DIMA (Department of Immigration and Multicultural affairs).

DFAT runs the overseas embassies, issues Australian passports (through passport Australia), provides consular assitance to Aussies overseas and provides government policy advice on overseas political and trade issues.

DIMA are the people concerned with Immigration issues and would be the people to talk to about visa's in a forgeign national's passport.

Is this where the station is going to be on the Thonburi side?

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Maestro

That would seem to be roughly the right location, with a second station futher towards the intersection with Taksin Road.

Will be interesting to see what they do to the existing Sapan Taksin station in the long run. It is only designed for a single track. Maybe not so bad with the line running one more stop to the other side of the bridge, but once they start opening up even futher out it will really need to become two platforms, which looks like a complete re-build would be needed.

I was also suprised that the person conducting the interview was thai and not australian

That is very normal, it is the locals who do all the ground work etc and then put forward the case to be approved by the migration officers who are posted Australians. For Aussies to do the interviews and all the reseach etc would take a dozen or so staff, with Thai language skills, and I really don't think the Aussie tax payer would be happy about that when you can employ locals for probably 1/20th the cost of having an Aussie posted to Bangkok.

Hope it all works out for you.

Never seen a handphone like that one, where did ya get it at MBK?

It makes me laugh how we can have so many different words for the same thing. Handphone seems popular in the UK and Asia, cell phone in the US and in Australia we just call it a mobile. Tt took me a while to work out what a HP second was in Jakarta then it dawned on me when I put the grey matter into gear.

Completely f..... up here too. 1-2-call. Will go for beer instead. Cheers!

Good idea

A trick for you guys, no signal doesn't always mean there is no signal. Do a quick check by doing a manual network scan and see what comes up. If your network is there turn the phone off, pull out the battery for a few seconds, put it all back together, turn it on and see if you get an error message.

I was in BKK a few weeks back when my 1-2call service stopped. Firstly for a few hours one afternoon and then for a few days from Sunday 4th thru to Tuesday 6th June. When I did what I suggested above I got a "SIM card registration failed" error, not just a loss of signal. Called AIS and found out it was a problem with the server that handles my phone prefix, 0782xxxx, apparently not an uncomming thing. Hope now Singtel have their hands on AIS they fix it up, pretty sad state of affairs for a company that has such a large market share.