scorecard

No, taxsin is not winning.

I suggest that the majority are very clear on what taxsin is up to and that he's playing very nasty. He's demonstrating again that he has no ethics and no morals.

He's again using the rural poor as pawns:

- Use the rural poor to foce the current coalition to dissolve parliament.

- Fund massive vote buying again and ensure his leeches and thugs get power.

- His leeches and thieves enact laws to cancel his sentence, stop the other 12 corruption cases, and unfreeze his ill-gotten gains.

- And possibly ultimately his leeches and thugs reinstall him as PM (read dictator out for serious

vengance).

Wow, that really frightens me, another Burma on the horizon.

My friends and I all chipped in once to get a fellow Aussie home.

His ticket had expired, he lost his passport and was facing a 20k overstay fine at the airport

The poor bugger had been in Thailand 3 years and had been robbed blind by a Thai woman and her family.

In 3 years he had lost of given away more than AU$250k. When one of my friends happened opon him he was in a backpacker hotel in KSR.

The Aussie embassy would do NOTHING to help him.

Really sad case. He's back on his feet now in Sydney but all of us never got a cent back from him, I will never help anyone else again

"The Aussie embassy would do NOTHING to help him."

I know from having to help another Australian who went broke (his own doing 100%) that the Australian embassy will contact immediate family in OZ and explain the cirmcumstances and if the family at home deposit funds for an air ticket, then the embassy will ensure the air ticket is purchased. But they will not act simply as a bank.

In the case I'm talking about the guy who went broke was highly educated and had a very substantial income but the girlie bars in Patpong got the better of him, seven nights a week. He became adicted to taking girls every night, became totally broke and an emotional nightmare and destroyed all his farang friendships.

His family did deposit his airfare and he went home. Six months later he was back in Thailand, don't know what happened to him second time around.

Thaksin wants to take back his dirty money and power. That's the real motive to redshirt movement, there’s no 'true democracy' in his mind and those who are supporting him now because they believe in his propaganda of ‘change’ will certainly head for a rude awakening.

I would say before supporting a politician, lets take a look at his records. In 6 years during his premiership, did he care for removing the 'injustice', 'patronage system' or whatever he keeps ranting about? Did he do anything to move the country toward freedom of the press, free and fair election system, truly independent justice system, basic human right, etc? If some redshirts simply love the crook, that's fine to me but please don't tell people that you are supporting 'democracy' because you and I know full well true democracy won't be achieved with Thaksin regime.

If Thaksin is a true patriot, he should respect Thai laws and return to fight his case in court or just serve his jail time. He once compared himself with Nelson Mandela to his audience. Now, I want to laugh. Mandela went to jail! But Thaksin simply believes he’s above all Thai laws unless it benefits him. During his term he’s shown that the laws and the judges can be modified, changed to his own benefit. Is that fair to the people of Thailand? Is that called ‘democracy’ in your view, you redshirt supporters?

The chaos will not end if the redshirts win (well, they will fail). Dream on about ‘change’ in Thailand like those academic leftists love to say. There is also huge faction in Thai society who believe justice needs to be served. That means whoever cheated or betrayed his country for his own gain needs to be punished. As long as Thaksin hasn’t been punished from his corruption and abuse of power charges, there will be no peace in this country.

Excellent post.

The guy is about as dishonest on most levels as anyone I have ever vieweed.

Totally agree, well said.

I will give thaksin one thing, he's a clever strategist and a clever marketer (but also a man with no ethics and no morals, and a blatant liar).

He now uses the red shirts (many of whom are not thinkers) to try to reverse history by claiming he and them are just trying to promote true democracy, and to try to somehow punish the military for conducting a coup which threw him out of office.

Thaksin conveniently forgets that he did a lot of very serious damage to true/pure democracy in Thailand during his reign.

Thaksin also conveniently forgets that the coup in the early 90's was lead by General Sunthorn, who just after the coup granted Thaksin a licence to start up a telecom company. To this day there are open questions of how this happened, especially since there was no announcement that licences were available and no bidding for licences.

Well given that Thailand is still a long way from having a stable democratic system, and 80% of the elected parliament are thieves, perhaps we still need a watchdog. Perhaps that watchdog is the military, but of course we need to hope that the military is the good guys. And right now I see General Anupong as intelligent, ethical and sincere, with the best long-term interests of Thailand at heart.

Ultimately, although it pains me to say this, I'm glad the coup in 2006 happened.

Why, because it frightens me to think where Thailand would be today under Thaksin the dictator. Probably well down the road to being another Burma.

Children and not puppies, they are fragile human beings with hearts and souls, and personally it breaks my heart to see children who are not properly taken care, in terms of both material needs and love and affection.

My hope would be that you seriously consider some long-term planning which provides care, love, stability and a future for the child.

And please don't go down the route of send the baby/child upcountry for the grandparents to take care of. I know this is common in Thailand and there has been a lot of quality research conducted, in Thailand, on this matter. The findings are very negative and indicate, amongst other things, that children brought up in this manner often turn out to be poor parents themselves, mostly because they have not personally experienced the relationships/activities that naturally occur every day between parent and child, therefore when they become parents they don't have a model to work from.

I find your whole attitude to be flippant and immature, hope you grow up soon.

"I dont blame them. they got samak for a cooking show."

What a stupid comment!

- Surely the PM of any country should be spending his/her time focused on discussions / activities about running the country. not spending their time in the preparation of and actual filming of a TV cooking show!

What would happen if the President of the USA, the Chancellor Germany etc., etc., was doing this? The appropriate house of government would have them impeached and removed in 5 minutes, let alone the massive outcry that would come from the electorate.

[if anybody is looking at courses with a 'management' flavor the following sites might be worth exploring:

- PIM .... pimnetwork.org/ .... This is an american accreditation body which accredits universities globally and site contains lists of alliances betwen US Universities and Unis. in other countries, including Thailand.

- EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) A prestigious & highly professional organization which accredits universities. All serious universities, globally, see an EFMD accreditation as the ultimate.

I'm also aware that there are several alliances between Thammasat and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), for both undergraduate and graduate programs. UNSW students can achieve credits at Thammasat.

In fact Thammasat has many offshore students, and their home universities readily accept the credits achieved at Thammasat.

My Thai son (28 years old) doesn't drive (hangover from a bad accident when he was a little boy) often takes his wife and small daughter on trips where the destination is only serviced by buses.

He has another strategy, they start the journey and if my son or his wife feels the driver is dangerous or not paying attention, then they get off at the next stop or politely ask for the bus to stop at the next town, and get off.

He's fortunate of course that he has enough funds to stay the night in a local hotel, pay for some alternate transport etc.

I also agree, Abhisit did OK on hardtalk.

Howecver i'll say again, i have little respect for the show anyway.

And to the poster who suggested that "Abhisit is in the PM seat illegally, and Samak was elected by a majority mandate", my response is:

- Abhisit and his collation have come together and formed a legitimate government through the appropriate Thai laws and electoral processes.

- Samak came to power through massive vote buying, as did Thaksin.

I've lived / worked in Thailand for more than 20 years.

I've established many frienships with Thai men over the years, and it hasn't been difficult to do so.

I regularly get calls from Thai male friends who I haven't seen for several years, often it's a reunion of an old work team etc., they always include me, and we always have a good time.

I have an adopted son (100% Thai ) who brings his university friends home (male & female) and I have very good and open friendships with them, there is no hesitation to talk together, they all feel relaxed to ask me questions, show me something in a book or magazine and ask interesting questions about what they see. We often have a cooking night (i'm lucky enought to have a good size and well equipped kitchen), I 'supervise' them to cook some basic western dishes and they 'supervise' me to cook some very simple Thai dishes.

I'm 64 and starting to slow down.

Have a farang friend whose 74, he's very fit, runs every day, into very healthy eating, takes good care of his appearance, dresses well, etc. He has a long list of lady visitors who call at his home, entertains at least 4 nights a week, or more, and he doesn't use Viagra or similar.

I agree, get some professional diagnosis.

Recently my left foot became very swollen with no apparent cause, and with no pain or discomfort.

My doctor quickly ordered an ultrasound of my whole leg which revealed a blood clot behind my knee.

As most people would be aware blood clots are very serious.

I was admitted to hospital immediately for treatment through intravenous drip to dissolve the clot.

Blood clots can happen to anybody, any age, anytime.

I visited New Park in Taipei several years ago about 10.00pm, it was extremly busy, lots of eye candy, and very friendly.

CCTV CAMERA, ETC:

I instructed my office manager to install CCTV cameras, recording equipment etc., and to use a reputable profesional firm.

Whilst I was away from Thailand for a few days, friend of office manager bought some stuff and installed it. Result:

- CCTV cameras used need electricity, so standard household plastic powerpoints were installed, most of them on top of the fences (never mind about the rain) making it very easy for the kamoy to unplug the electricity to the camera in less than a second, and without being seen on camera.

- All camera images from 20 cameras feed onto one old and very small monitor screen. Image from each camera is about 2.5 cm square. 20 images on one screen at same time, it's just a mess of tiny moving pictures and impossible for anybody to monitor properly.

- Recording equipment cannot be continuous. "when you notice something wrong, then you start the recording function", with total time of 90 seconds.

Of course my office manager thinks she's done something wonderful because she saved a lot of money by going this route rather than using a professional security consultant.

And there have been comments from my engineering staff criticizing the management (me) for the way this has been done, and I don't blame them for being critical. Not a good way to etablish credibility with your workforce.

Lesson: supervise something like this yourself, every step.

d

id you see the last interviews he gave with the BBC and CNN? He came off as a complete fool, a very bad liar, and looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole.

In your eyes perhaps. Not mine. I thought he handled himself pretty well. There was a bit of squirming, but in general he was articulate and reasoned in his answers. If you want to talk about making a complete fool of yourself and blatantly lying, look no further than Samak. His interview on Al Jazeera was a complete embarrassment for all concerned. Did you see it Tony?

I imagine it will be softball questions like "Do you want Thai people to join together?".. "Will there be peace in Thailand?"... "Do you want to improve the standard of living?"

I agree with you that we'll have to wait and see whether Abhisit is brave enough to take the seat, but if he does be in no doubt that Hardtalk will not be asking him softball questions. There's a reason why it was named "Hardtalk" and not "Softtalk" - and that reason is why you'll never see Thaksin or anyone from the red side making an appearance.

I also disagree about PM Abhisit looking bad on the CNN. He did Ok and and I would take issue with the questioning from Dan Rivers who for me scores about 1 out of 10 as a journalist. This is the guy who CNN (which I think is crap) got on camera quickly when the 2006 coup happened and he just mouthed off without facts or relevant information.

To say PM Abhisut was 'a bad liar' is quite unfair and unthuthful.

In regard to 'hardtalk', I have little repect for the show anyway. It relies on sensationalism and often doesn't give the interviewee a fair chance to respond.

"when I read inside this forum I just dont understand why they still live and want to stay in Thailand when it is so bad for someone. I have no problem with the Police and the system Im a guest in this country and I have to behave as a guest, if not I have to go home to my own country. And if I want to find corruption I just can go to europe, america and all of the other countries and find it.

I use to have the same naiveté as demonstrated in your post regarding having to 'find' police corruption in Thailand. That came to an abrupt halt after a Thai man hit my car and followed my Thai wife, child and I until I drove to a place where I knew the people, I had never personally experience police corruption and I certainly was not looking for it. The police who arrived on the scene to 'investigate' agreed that that the fault was with the Thai man who now was insisting that I be put in jail (essentially for being a farang). I felt confident that this would all blow over and that the insurance would pay for the minor damage to both vehicles. At the suggestion of my Thai wife, I offered to pay cash on the spot to just end this. The man refused saying that I belonged in jail. When we reached the police station the senior officer found in favor of the Thai man (following their approximately 1/2 hour private meeting) and if I did not want my car impounded and to potentially see the inside of a Thai jail, I would pay several thousand baht. Of coarse I paid, and queried why am I involved in organizations that promote volunteer work in Thailand? A friend of mine referred to this as "a right of passage." I still am going to live here - I love the culture, and the people, but as for corruption, one does not have to 'find' it. Sometimes it finds you.

I had something perhaps similar 15 years ago. A car came shooting out of a narrow lane and hit me. I got up and went to the window of the car and told the lady driver she should slow down. She asked me to wait, which I did for about 10 minutes when the police arrived, put me in handcuffs and took me to the local police station (in Bkk).

The lady driver also arrived at the police station and told the station chief she would have the police station painted and air-conditioners installed. The station chief then odered that I should donate 10,000Baht to the station welfare fund.

My Thai work colleagues had by this time arrived including a lawyer, who indicated that we should pay up promptly and get out of the station as quickly as possible.

Why? He recognized the woman as a well known rich, powerful, unpleasant Thai hi-society lady, who had been publically jilted a couple of years earlier by her farang husband. And it was well known that she had 'punished' several other farang men for the actions of her ex-husband.

.... "Does anyone recall the reported 400 billion or so baht left in the will of an army general (7 to 10 years ago). His salary was approx. 40k per month - but he was an avid saver."

Yes I do recall this man. General S, he was the leader / co-leader of the coup which ousted PM Chaitchai Choonaven.

More interestingly is that General S is the man who arranged for Mr T. to get a licence to start up and run a telephone monopoly. No bidding for licences was conducted, in fact nobody even knew that such a licence was possible. do I need to say more.

And now our Mr. T wants us to believe he's the champion of the anti-coup movement.

It will depend on the purpose.

For some subjects the notarization must be signed by a translator who is authorized by the Thai Interior Ministry.

I know this one from when I adopted my son. Many of the original documents were in English. The initial translations were stamped at signed at my home embassy.

The first attempt to submit Thai translations failed and we then learned that these documents had to be signed off by a Thai person authorized to do translation by the Thai Interior Ministry.

We were then given a list of such authorized people, only about 10 people on the list.

I would assume that there would be very few Westeners in Thailand with your degree qualification and therefore I would assume that international schools and some of the better bi-lingual schools, perhaps also some universities with English language programs would be interested.

However, I would also suggest that you look for ways to bypass the Thai administrators of these schools, because they are so locked into correct process, rather than look at your application of it's merits. I've had several experiences of job applicants being rejected by my Thai administration manager for silly tiny 'process' factors, and on two occasions I accidentally met the applicants in the lobby of my office and eventualy employed them. Overall, they had a good picture and went on to become good employees. The Administration Manager still, today, can't understand why they were employed 'they didn't perfectly meet the paper warfare criteria'.

If you want to approach a university it might be better to do the spade work to meet another Western teacher and ask him/her to introduce you to the head of faculty, etc. Same comment for international schools, bi-lingual schools etc.

I agree it's to your advantage, in terms of daily existence, to be able to speak some Thai, and maybe you already can. Just one example, the battle of trying to take taxis, with no Thai language ability, several times every day, can be very frustrating, and you don't need this type of extra pressure and stress when your trying to get more important things in place.

Good luck

I need a copy of the above movie, hopefully on DVD.

Can other members please suggest places where I might pick up a copy, in Bangkok.

Thanks.

two comments:

1. Dealing with the local office of a big UK insurer, for condo contents:

Last year one of the condos in my building was burned out, doing serious smoke damage to my condo. To get the insurance company to even talk to me on the phone was like pulling teeth. After numerous calls and some strong insistance for help a third party representative arrived, about 10 days after the event.

His first comment was "It would only take about 4 or 5 days work for two people to clean the furniture, wash the walls and ceiling etc., etc., so why don't you just do it yourself". He was promptly reminded that the reason I have insurance is partly to cover these costs.

We asked about reimbusement for laundering everything in the condo, clothes (three adults and a small child), curtains etc. To this he insisted that we would need to get three quotations and submit them to the insurer and a reply would take about 4 to 6 weeks. Again he was reminded strongly that this was totally impractical, and we wanted some better and immediate help to have clean clothes to go to work etc. In fact everything had already gone to a nearby large scale laundry. My adult son then called the insurer and demanded to speak to someone more senior, and had to get really strong to get any attention. This initially prompted the same remarks about 3 quotations and 4 to 6 weeks for a reply. My son (born in Thailand) lost his cool and got really heavy which resulted in an agreement that we would be reimbursed for the laundry costs for the clothes etc., already at the laundry.

The fire happened early evening, the fire brigade arrived, did a good job, but the Electricity authority insisted that they cut the power to the whole building until they had a chance next day to do a full inspection. By this time it was 10:30pm. I was aware that our policy included up to 10 nights in a hotel immediately after the fire. I therefore moved my family to a nearby quite inexpensive hotel for 4 nights, until the power was reconnected and the fire people said the building was ok to be inhabited. To cut the story short, the insurance company initially insisted they would not pay any of the nights because I didn't contact them in advance. Even refused to pay for the 2nd, third nights etc when I contacted them the morning after the fire.

The third party assessor revisited and then insisted he had to measure and document every article in the entire condo including every plate, spoon, book, etc. He was told to come back the next evening when we would be at home. He couldn't understand why we would not just leave the door unlocked for him to be here, alone, at any time.

After all of the above I eventually contacted the Insurance company HO in UK and insisted they intervene. Eventually they did but only after several more calls to the UK.

2. The effect on personal insurance if you travel to a country which is currently listed as a danger zone. e.g. If the government (Department of Foreign Affairs or similar) issues a travel alert at a certain level (not necessarily all that high), then by law the insurance company can use this as an out to not pay any claim for death or injury. I understand the same laws exist in many countries.

Further, I had this all checked very thoroughly when I was considering working on a project in Pakistan and taking several Singaporean and Thai colleagues with me.

I discovered that all three countries had in fact issued travel alerts, and:

- All personal life / injury / health policies for myself and my colleagues would be invalidated for the period we were actually in Pakistan, there would be zero repatriation assistance, zero local hospitalization coverage and there would be no cover whatever if medical or hospital treatment was needed after arriving home.

- All insurance policies help by the company were affected in exactly the same way as

described above. The only other factor was that the company could pay an astronomically large extra premium (to cover an agreed period of time, about 10 days) which would provide a service to urgently get us physically out of the country by whatever means, if needed. This extra premium did not include any form of health care / hospitalization, anywhere. We didn't go to Pakistan.

Regards

I need to replace two bedroom air-conditioners, both rooms need 9000 BTU models.

I've read many times that the Inverter technology is good and does save a pile in electricity.

But this week I started checking prices and discovered that Inverter is very expensive indeed.

Then I noticed Econo technology, which is much cheaper.

But gotta be honest I can't find any write ups on Econo.

Comments and suggestions very welcome and appreciated.

The Abhisit government is not illegal!

If you wanna discuss illegal governments then lets talk about the two times Taxsin won landslide vistories through massive vote buying. And there's plenty of evidence of this, including numerous comments on this webboard.

The opening comment of this subject says 'embattled' pm. Rubbish, he's not embattled at all, this is not a correct comment.

Will the red shirts win next week and overthrow the government. No chance in hel_l. Do you really think the anti-taxsin masses won't react if the red shirts have many more paid and unaware followers next week? Just wait and see.

And, Taxsin has recently made lots of comments about illegal coups / the military illegally getting involved in politics in 2006, then this week he has tried to instigate a coup to overthrow the Abhisit government. No credibility or constistence in anything this fugitive criminal says.

For several years I travelled regularly to Manila for business, about 5 to 6 visits per year, each visit about 4 days.

During those visits I met many Phillipinos (not gay) who are very friendly kind , always ready to help with anything. I work with one right now in Bangkok.

However after three very negative and frightening encounters with gay guys (one guy I met on-line and two I met at discos (different timings), but didn't take them back to hotel until I had several rendezvous for meals, etc) I decided to never again get into any form of personal one on one encounters.

One of the guys I met at a disco (mentioned above), initially very quiet and seemingly very honest and sincere, turned into a very nasty and clearly experienced money boy with threats of violence, blackmail, I'll call my police friends, etc etc. He had without my knowledge taken my passport, made a photocopy and returned the passport to my bag, which I never leave open to easy access.

Another time I went to a macho dancer bar. I had two drinks but when I asked for the bill it was for about 7 or 8 drinks, and I refused to pay. The manager forceable took my wallet and cleaned out 90% of my cash whilst the staff and the other patrons just watched and laughed.

Another occassion I went to a massage venue, which was also an unpleasant experience, starting with the rude manager, then demands for large amounts of extra money from the massage boy who didn't even try to give me a massage, then threatening remarks from all the staff and massage boys as I left the premises.

Thanks for the very informative reply, much appreciated.

It was posted earlier that the owner was trying to get the place open for Songkran.

Anybody heard any news about the opening date?