Why Me

18 minutes ago, Swimfan said:

As you can see now it is false economy to skip the root canal therapy prior to placing a crown.

Interesting you say that because the original treatment plan had 45 and 46 slated for root canal but then when he took a closer look the prosthodontist decided against it.

So when they ended up taking off the 46 crown and doing an RCT anyway I asked the endodontist wouldn't it have been better to have done it first like the original plan. She said an aggressive treatment like RCT is advised only when it is absolutely necessary. It would be "immoral" (her words) to do it otherwise. She said sometimes can happen that it's needed later and we have to deal with it.

Got a bunch of crowns inserted as part of a full mouth rehab. Soon after started a constant pain lower right at the end (region of tooths 45-48). My prosthodontist has tried a bunch of things to fix the problem: Extracted 48, wisdom tooth, as it was the first suspect. Then removed the crown on 46, did some gum work there followed by an RCT. Now he has prescribed muscle relaxant tablets in case it's a ligament issue.

I don't see any improvement. Still have to control the pain with a lot of Tylenol. Anyone had a similar issue? Obviously the problem is a  consequence of the crown insertion procedure. The prep work he did prior was long and at times painful so my guess is that something or other got impacted/traumatized. Hopefully, not a serious thing, just need a correct diagnosis. So a reco for an experienced prosthodontist in Bkk would be appreciated too.

12 minutes ago, CharlieH said:

You just happened to be stood behind her and felt it was directed at you, a harmless act totally misread by you in my opinion.

Exactly right. She was probably so wrapped in prepping herself for a meet with Somchai on the 9th who kind of looks like Jungkook that she'd blocked out everyone else.

21 hours ago, CLW said:

Also Lazada customer service refused to return the article or refund the money.

Even within the return window? What did they say? Curious because I've generally had no problem returning even when the seller was resistant.

9 hours ago, wordchild said:

There should be no fundamental reason why a well constructed and well maintained condo should lose value over time eg look at the many beautiful Manhattan co-ops which still look great 80 years after they were built.

Absolutely! Owned a 1-bed 1-bath condo in a 1920s building in the US. Beautiful hardwood floors, high ceilings, thick walls, old style heating that would rumble occasionally. Loved it. Only problem was it was ground level so of course I got burgled.

And I rent here in a well-maintained highrise built early 90s. Have had guests sneer at its age but, jeez, I wouldn't move if you paid me to newer buildings I saw when I was thinking to buy. Shoe box sized, cheap fittings, including one with a bathroom with a plastic bathtub that was asking millions.

12 hours ago, Yellowtail said:

I would be suspicious of anyone offering a "free" one hour consultation.

The first hour. Pretty much the norm in the business for this to be offered at a no cost basis for both parties to see if they are a fit.

I believe the blue book with the WP stamps is the employer's property. Might be wrong. But in my case when I quit I got an email from my org asking for it back which I then mailed to them.  I guess they must have canceled it after. I never got it back and didn't see a reason to want it. I assumed that if I worked again, which I didn't, my new employers would issue another blue book.

Mine took more than 6 weeks to get the papers back after mail in to CW. Others say about the same. So stay put till week 7 at least.

After that if you have to go in person there will be no fine as long as you have some kind of receipt that you mailed in in time.

1178 is the Imm hotline number to call if you have to. They are pretty prompt in picking up and English is fine.

24 minutes ago, Poet said:

1 hour ago, Why Me said:

And the VN youth, the few I interacted with at least, all seemed particularly enamored of Singapore, more so than the US where I am from

Perhaps there might be some sort of historical reason for that odd lack of enthusiasm.

Not sure what you mean. Enamored means enthusiastic. The young VNers love Singapore. Epitome of Asia to their mind. Can't blame them that they don't care as much for the US.

30 minutes ago, Poet said:

Thailand's figures are nonsense.

Thailand counts everyone who lands, even those in transit, as visitors. As the region's main air hub, this rather stacks the figures in their favor.

For example, someone flying from Frankfurt to HCMC via BKK counts as a visitor to Thailand, both on the way to Thailand and on the way back to Germany. That return leg makes them "a repeat tourist", even if they never got further into Thailand than the transit area.

Calm down. These are international hospitality org stats. Thailand is by far the bigger tourist draw.

33 minutes ago, Poet said:

The bars are hip, the restaurants - both cheap and expensive - are as good as their equivalents in Thailand.

No serious person puts either HCMC or Hanoi in the same league as Bkk or HK or Singpore. Like comparing Naperville and Chicago. But I take your point that equivalent service costs less in VN. Definitely if I were on a shoestring in Asia I would prefer VN/Cambodia/Laos to Bkk, Singapore.

41 minutes ago, Poet said:

Like Thailand, they fail to understand that, in our less hierarchical Western societies, the various groups are not so easily separable.

The "rich" Westerner will happily sit at a bar, shooting the <deleted> with a random selection of "poor" <snip>

Your western entitlement is showing:-) They give a rat's what we want from them. As should be. It's their country. It's what they want from us that matters. Which is long-stayers who bring wealth and business (and wealthy tourists of course). Not old men chasing cheap flesh.

And, no, we westerners don't shoot the breeze with all and sundry either. We're pretty tribal too. A young American with an international outfit drawing 300k/month expat package in Bkk won't be seen dead in the Beer Garden Soi 5. He'll be in a Thong Lor nightclub with a dropdead babe on his arm. And a 60 year old farang with a Soi 4 hooker does not get into that club. The two worlds are separate. But good thing is Thailand caters to both. VN wants just the one and not the other. Fine, their country their rules.

53 minutes ago, Poet said:

A smart policy would be to let anyone come in and stay for as long as they want, as long as they are self-funded. That is how you lay the foundation for the higher spenders to come too.

That would be dumb. The place would be flooded with losers scraping by. Class attracts class. Money money.

I am just grateful Thailand has (till now) a relaxed retirement immigration policy. Still might happen any day I get a tap on my shoulder that Chinese millionaires have filled the quota and I need to pack my bags. Which is when I'll make a call to a friend in Da Nang:-)

VN is a poor man's Thailand. Food and accommodation is cheaper but edges harder and people more aggressive. Made a few week-long business trips a year to HCM and Hanoi (from Bkk) for several years till 2016. Bkk is a lot safer, especially at night, and classier and more diverse in terms of places to go out to, clubs, restaurants bars, shops, entertainment venues et al.

But I did like that the few expats I met in VN were mostly young go-getter types trying to set up shop in an up and coming country. Very different vibe from the farang oldie crowd ubiquitous here.

And the VN youth, the few I interacted with at least, all seemed particularly enamored of Singapore, more so than the US where I am from, which kind of told me where their head space was.

VN sees a future for itself as a Singapore-style Asian business/enterprise hub rather than a Thai-style tourist mecca. In fact, their repeat tourism numbers - percentage of tourists coming back - were dismal compared to Thailand when I last checked so hospitality/service clearly is not their forte, no matter scenic attractions.

But they know what their strength is which probably explains visa-issuing preferences. They want neither rickety retirees nor indigent backpackers. Investors and entrepreneurs are who they are after.

The Netflix series Surviving Death relates documented paranormal phenomena.

13 hours ago, seancbk said:

 

 

Also they want to ensure that vast numbers of people are employed, even in that employment is doing unnecessary tasks.

 

Exactly, it's a jobs program. Not just in the Govt. but most everywhere. At my local Boots there's an assistant pretty much every aisle. 

Not just Thailand though. Most developing countries I've been to are the same. Heck, here's a hilarious video from Spain

(mods, it's subtitled in English):

6 hours ago, asiam110 said:

Certainly is, one should also be careful of internet forums promoting unregulated unverified high yield investment services ????

Dang, you can't be meaning TV here can you? I borrowed from my ma and granma and put everything into Dogecoin. You're not saying people on TV would be making stuff up?

6 hours ago, Sunderland said:

I would have hated my parents if they had jetted me off to another country to be stuck away in a boarding school.

I would too. Boarding schools are a British thing. Those in India and Pakistan started in colonial times and apparently the leading ones are highly prestigious.

I know Thais who send their kids to boarding school in India. Top-tier English-medium there would be a fraction of the cost here. Of course, not an option at the moment because of the virus.

3 minutes ago, sharksy said:

I remember years ago, the telecoms giant, Vodafone.  Stupidly high share price, yet every year is was losing BILLIONS.
Why would anyone want to pay big money for something that was in debt?

 

Potential....

Yep. I remember MCI too. Used to be a subscriber. The 'orrible customer service and billing malpractices should have warned people off. Instead investors lost their shirt when it went belly up and CEO Ebbers went to prison.

4 minutes ago, Susco said:

Bitcoin I can't even touch, so even as a weight belt to drown myself because I lost everything, it would be no use

555. You, sir, are a comedian.

15 minutes ago, Logosone said:

You never know until the story ends. Maybe Steve will have an accident in his Porsche Taycan and you'll be laughing.

Jeez, no. I love him. Nicest guy on the planet. Smokers then both of us and countless hours spent sharing cigs and shooting the breeze. He deserves all the luck that's come his way.

Me? I haven't done too shabbily either. After getting bitten in a couple of investments (like Redhat) I learned my lesson and settled down to staid steady non-flash investing and am worth plenty now. So, I give a rat's about coins and stuff. My problem isn't making money. It's spending all this sh*t sitting in my Fidelity acs. And which is why I tell anyone who cares to listen that slow and steady pays in the long run and never ever sell in a recession.

5 minutes ago, Logosone said:

I tell you one thing, I had a lot of money two years ago. I seriously wish I had put it all in bitcoin. In the space of a year I could have made a million Euro.

I had to laugh at this. Seriously:-) Let me tell you a story. When I was a grad student in the US early 90s I had a friend named Steve. Steve failed his quals, I scraped through by the skin of my nails. So he went back home to Toledo to work for a local software company called Foxbase. Which was soon bought by a piddling upstart called Microsoft and Steve had to move to Seattle a rainy town he hated.

Then I graduated and got a faculty position. We compared salaries. I made more as a prof than him. He got paid in company stock because revenues were yet to pick up,  which <deleted> him off because he had little cash in hand and a family to raise. He jokingly asked if I wanted to take Microsoft shares off him. We both laughed:-)

Well, you can guess the ending. 20 years on Steve own homes on both coasts, a getaway near Milan, retired early and travels the world. Do I wish I had invested in Microsoft in 1991? Well, hindsight in 20/20.

To balance this story I'll admit to buying Redhat shares worth $20k late 90s and selling them for $3k a few months later. Helped as a tax write-off though.

In any case, good luck with coins. Just be careful.

Again. to both gentlemen above, would you today park your savings for retirement in 20 years in bit coin? You might say yes but most would say no because basically it's worthless and it's not clear if any coin will acquire the cachet of gold or art.

Right now it's a gold rush. But most miners will end up being picked apart by buzzards:

1 minute ago, ozimoron said:

What is the intrinsic value of gold? or the Mona Lisa? How are they different from an NFT or bitcoin?

Good question. Intrinsically worthless all of them. But there is a difference. Gold and fine art have had demand, therefore value, for centuries so one can reasonably say that their value will remain in the foreseeable future. Can one say this about crypto?

Here's a simple test. Would you put your savings for retirement in 20 years in (a) gold (b) fine art (c) S&P 500 index (d) bit coins? If enough people answer (d) then crypto has arrived. Right now there's no sign of this. It's purely speculative short-term play. Buy and hope you can sell Friday for a profit.

39 minutes ago, gearbox said:

 

 

I don't think there would be a lot of "dead" investors. I suspect hardly anyone of the crypto fans in this thread has put a 7 digit value or more in crypto.

It is the same as the lottery. Technically at each lottery draw most of the participants lose 100% of their investments, and a few get returns of digits with many zeroes.

So say you set up a new crypto with a friend, then you convince 1 million suckers to put $100,  that's 100 millions for you and your friend, the suckers will lose $100 each, not a big deal. They won't pursue class action for losing $100.

 

That's a good strategy to invest in crypto. As if buying a lottery ticket. If you get lucky you get rich. If not who gives a rat's.

Deleted.

1 hour ago, Logosone said:

A lot of financial instruments are "intrinsically worthless" in the sense of not being backed directly by real assets, that doesn't just apply to crypto. That applies to pretty much all of Forex trading, if you look at any pair even EUR/USD, that pair in and of itself has no "intrinsic worth"

Almost all instruments traded on reputable exchanges have intrinsic worth. E.g., if I own Apple or Netflix or Tesla I own a tangible product or service provider.  As for USD, it is backed by the Federal Reserve's commitment to maintain a stable reasonable value for the currency. And the Feds are backed by the full faith and credit of the US Govt. for what that's worth.

Crypto is none of this. This is why it is intrinsically worthless. Like the broken chair in my bedroom I pile clothes on. But if you come along and want it for $1000 I'll sell it to you. Nothing illegal in that transaction. And then if you turn around and sell it to someone else for $2000 more power to you. You are a smart man who turned a profit on a worthless item.

1 hour ago, Logosone said:

Even corporates, I mean Lehman Brothers was a corporate entity backed by 600 million worth of assets. Yet it still blew up.

Lehman brothers blew up in the subprime meltdown because because mortgage-backed securities were priced and bought for by many for much more than they were intrinsically worth. And when the market went, wait a minute this is what they are really worth so why should we pay more,  Lehman (and others) were left with hundreds of billions in liability.

But those securities did have an intrinsic worth. Just that those who overestimated this and overpaid were screwed. Crypto has intrinsic worth zero which is why cautions is advised in putting anything in.

Still I wouldn't call crypto a Ponzi scheme like Krugman. Ponzi schemes are illegal. But it's not illegal to sell even a broken chair for millions if there is a buyer. And there are people getting rich off crypto because they are smart enough always to unload the chair in a timely manner.

But go in with your eyes open. It is an asset whose value derives solely from the Greater Fool Theory.