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8 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

Fully expect some dirt to appear out of nowhere on this guy banning him from politics before the end of the week

This has already happened. Given his impressive results in the last election, Mr. P and his cronies dug up the dirt. They found that he was at one time part owner of a small magazine owned by his mom. A ridiculous little travel magazine stuffed into the back pockets of seats in domestic airlines. Nonetheless, this violated the rules saying that no politicians can also be in media, and so he was pushed out. There's also a rule saying convicted felons can't be in politics either, like that guy who served drug trafficking time in Australia, with fake college degrees from a run down storefront in California, yet there he still is.

But awhile he can't actively run for political office anymore, Thanathorn still acts as the face of his party. Some have said that ban has actually played out quite well for him, as it sent the msg loud and clear, "Mr. P's afraid of him. He must be good.", thus bolstering his party. Yet unfortunately, given the more popularity he's picking up, as you say, more measures might be taken to ban his presence completely. Say perhaps, an "unfortunate accident", like that famous, crazy, Thai-Indian guy tried to do a few months ago, jumping on Mr. T with a fake bomb scare at a convention. Oh Thailand. Can't make this stuff up.

4 hours ago, robblok said:

What you describe as a conversation is the most basic and normal form. But if you have GF that has real limited English a conversation like that will be dead in the water too. But the topics you mentioned are of course the majority of conversation. 

Ah hah. You've touched upon an important point here.

Given her vocabulary, I've at times been amazed with what my wife's been able to put together. I can tell she's got a lot more in there upstairs than she lets on, and only her limited grasp of the language is getting in the way. I think the same goes for most Thais.

I can tell she's especially passionate about her country's adversities, that she'd just love to get out with a high level, academic speech in English about it, but can't. The inequality, the corruption, the lack of opportunity, the education system. She makes do with what she has, quite the Thai way, resulting in a lot of "they no have, no good jobs, don't want to learn, too much cheating, govt not work good", you get the idea. Would you really want to hear, "Indeed, the systemic failings in the Thai political system indicate…" on a daily basis, even from your countrymen? Hah!

I'm taking her back to the US, and at 45 I doubt she'll be going to university to ever get out that high level speech. But I don't think it's necessary. I know what she means, and that time would be better spent going to work and sending some money back home to the fam, during which she'll most likely pick up some better English anyway.

Something they often told us in my ESL program was not to judge a book by its cover regarding "broken English". While it certainly indicates a limitation in language, it tells nothing about limitations in intelligence. You really don't know what's in there as they can't yet get it out, and they'll need your help in doing so. That ought to be the takeaway from this thread. While you wouldn't want every convo to be deep and intellectual, with a little digging, patience, and hand holding, it could get a bit closer to that, on those occasions one tires of hearing about somtam.

13 minutes ago, save the frogs said:

That's not what a relationship partner is necessarily for. 

In fact, if you talk about too many complex topics, you might end up arguing a lot. 

Agreed. Not every convo has to be "deep" or "intellectual". In fact they rarely are, with anybody, men or women, your own countrymen or other cultures. I don't know where people are getting the idea they have to be. Maybe those long monologues characters do with each other in movies, about saving the world or whatever. Or maybe listening to too many podcasts. But they're not real life, which is more likely going to be what somebody did today, what so and so said, something they saw on TV, something stupid or funny that happened.

Nearly 10 years in the LOS, 5 years with my Thai wife, happy to say it's gone 90% well. I just turned in my resignation at my school. Next step is teaching back in the US, and bringing her back home to mom. I think it's gonna work out.

I know exactly how they come up with these lame excuses, one after another. They learn it in school.

Whenever there's incident, a fight, a theft, serious misbehavior, the group is called into the office to sit on the floor around a teacher's desk. Then they are grilled. The teacher tries to get them to admit fault, and they quickly learn how to dodge and deflect. This goes on for 5-10 mins and the students are let go. There are almost never any consequences. The lesson they then learn is, not to fix the problem, not to change behavior, but to just keep throwing out excuses to eventually get it over with, and move on.

22 hours ago, itsari said:

More spending by people with less creates more wealth . That is the  reason why the US became the largest consumer in the world 

Totally agree, yet the US has been shooting itself in the foot lately by saying they want more consumers, then turning around and outsourcing, laying off, and more recently, turning to automation.

20 years ago, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina said something like "There's no job that Americans have a right to anymore", in defense of her outsourcing. Well gee, fine. Looks like you've got fewer people left to buy your computers. Similarly, now it looks like ChatGPT is after all the customer service, research, copywriting, and journalism jobs. Such companies are salivating at the thought of "Wow, we can increase our profits by getting all these guys off our payroll, and replacing them with AI". Uhh, no, your profits will be zero once you've left everyone with no jobs, and no money to buy your products. Maybe the AI bots will be their new customer base.

It's gonna turn around tho. Already retailers are rethinking all the self-checkout machines, and going back to humans, as rampant theft with customers tricking the machines is negating any cost savings, heh.

Sorry if that was a bit off topic. Bringing it back, be it a company or a country, the strategy should be making the product more accessible to all to increase revenue, rather than hoping to squeeze more revenue out of a few. Anything that makes the product less accessible is the road to ruin. 

18 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

Does not matter how intelligent the teachers are if the children are never in school

They've been wanting me to make full lesson plans. As you probably heard, stacks of documents are very impressive, whether or not they really mean anything. At first I was doing two weeks of plans, but then they wanted the topic changed every week, as doing the same thing too many times "makes them bored". The reality is more like they want a bigger stack of paper. I said we can't just move onto another topic if they haven't got the first one, as most of the class isn't listening, are missing due to activities or cutting class, or we've got yet another holiday.

Add to that the fact most of the teachers aren't even teaching. Many times you'll walk by a room and see the kids in there just running amok. Their teachers are usually in a "meeting", or have simply dropped off a worksheet, or wrote an assignment on the board so they can go back to the office and get back on Facebook. This explains much of why the students are so disengaged when they finally get a "real" class with one of the foreigner teachers, and why most foreigner teachers eventually quit really teaching also, as no one else is either.

2 hours ago, BritTim said:

would have been better to use a friendly land crossing instead

Go to Pakse, Laos, stay at the lovely Pakse Hotel. Dine at the rooftop restaurant. Have a big steak and 2-3 big Beerlaos. Then take the bus to cross at Chong Mek, then go to Ubon. Smooth sailing.

One of our dogs once jumped out of the saleng (motorbike sidecar), then bit and killed a chicken, one of the many that roam the sois.

Everyone knows a whole gai ban (country style, freshly prepared chicken) can be had in the market for about 200 baht. But to compensate the dead chicken at the hands of the wife's dog, married to the farang, that the whole tambol (subdistrict) knows, 1000 baht. 

You can argue about it all you want. But if you want to keep the peace, just pay the compensation, and be more careful next time.

On 2/23/2023 at 8:25 PM, BangkokReady said:

It's much more likely to be related to something like social media or smartphone addiction.

This right there. I'm a high school teacher. They just can't put the things down.

1. They get used to constant stimulation, a bombardment of flashing movement and colors. They then can't focus on lessons in class, and grades fail.

2. The above, but also in regards to the rest of real life, which then pales in comparison. No drive to go out, see friends, do things, when there's effortless stimulation to be had on the phone. Sometimes when I enter a classroom before school starts, there's kids laying on the floor with their phones, instead of playing and talking outside. This number has been increasing.

3. Social media. A constant need to check up who's saying what, the latest gossip, the competition, so and so's saying this or that about them, then they gotta measure up. Creates anxiety.

4. And finally, the advertising, on which all the Internet runs. In order to get all of its material for free, the companies must constantly throw out ads in the hopes of someone buying something. Cosmetics, fashion, cars, phones, travel. But just who is buying? Certainly not the kids of poor Issan farmers laying about in the village, or in back of the BKK sois while dad's hustling for Grab, and mom's wiping down the street food cart. The message then becomes subconsciously ingrained from an early age: these are the things you want and should have, but you cannot.