wpcoe

1. 1,000 million is usually referred to as 1 billion.

Hey, you must be a fellow American!

In America one billion = one thousand millions

In the UK one billion = one million millions (= one trillion in USA)

I knocked at my friend's door and his wife answered the door. I said 'Is Jim in?' She didn't reply, just stood there looking at me. So I asked again. Just then a woman appeared at his wife's elbow. 'Sorry luv' she said 'We buried him last Thursday.' 'He didn't say anything about a pot of yellow paint before he went, did he?'

??? Anyone care to explain that one to me?

And, what the heck is a "ten-pence accumulator?"

Heaven help us if everyone starts talking on their mobile.

To say nothing of the ring tones when other people are trying to sleep. :D

Gosh, it will be just like taking an overnight train in Thailand in second class. The only time I was stupid enough to do that, I barely got any sleep: mobile phones going off ALL NIGHT LONG!

Since then my train trips, granted not all that often, are now in a closed first class cabin.

And, did the BCofC write it in orange on grey? It actually hurt my eyes to try to read that!

I agree.

Colour changed

Astral

I am an American, and I got my retirement visa two months ago. The Thai Immigration office asked for a letter from the American Embassy...

They also neglected to ask me for proof that I wasn't a criminal. The only other paper immigration wanted was a medical certificate, which I paid 80 baht for at the first "clinic" sign I saw on Rajaprarop Road. The person at the clinic only asked for my passport, and filled in the paper. No checkup, no questions.

Waitasec. Are you saying that two months ago you went to a Thai Immigrations office in Thailand for a retirement extension and were required to submit a medical certificate?

I thought that the medical certificate was eliminated last October?

I thought that only if you applied for an OA retirement visa at a Thai Embassy in your home country, were the medical certificate and criminal record check still needed?

Where, in Thailand, did you go that required a medical certificate for a retirement extension?

wont a big sausage get a bit whiffy?

substitute it with a baguette......

I dunno, donna. Which is worse: a whiffy sausage or bread crumbs everywhere?

For those of you not up on some of the jargon/lingo, it's called "bug chasing" and "bug giving."

There seem to be plenty of HIV- people (chasers) seeking unprotected sex with HIV+ people (givers). So if you are checking a chat room and see reference to "chasing" and "giving," be VERY aware of what those folks are in to!

I try not to judge the actions of others in voluntary, consensual activities, but I puzzle at the motivation of the chasers? Is it the thrill and danger of the activity?

What I *will* absolutely condemn and criticize are HIV+ who insist on unprotected sex either lying about their status to their partner or not mentioning it. What is mentioned in the OP (injecting HIV-infected blood into drugged victims) goes even beyond that.

I am acquainted with a fellow who is involved with AIDS-related charity work in Pattaya, and he is currently assisting a 17-year old who was infected by an older farang who frequents the Sunee area. Apparently it is known by the bar boys in Sunee that this predator has (presumably knowingly) infected several others with HIV. Currently, the doctor and other people are trying to get this 17-year old fellow to identify the farang to the police and put an end to his literally murderous acts. What are the laws regarding such activity? Can this farang be arrested for exposing his victims to HIV, if it can be shown that he knows he's HIV+? Can Immigrations deport him based on his HIV status?

jd, I can speak Thai flatulently.

Hahahaha! Thanks for the laugh of the day. Does that relate to "talking out of one's ass?"

Sorry, PB, I couldn't resist!

I've been through the process 4 times now -- the initial conversion from a non-b to a non-o visa and then three annual renewals. In all these times, I have presented the letter from the Embassy and have not been asked for any further verification.

lanny, just for clarification is that letter from the U.S. Embassy?

The reason I ask is that the only reports (and have there been any recently?) of people being required to supply supplemental documentation directly to Thai Immigrations were people who were US citizens, since the U.S. Embassy letter is so (too?) easy to obtain.

It seems the U.S. Embassy provides a letter that merely is notarized, meaning the signature is witnessed and verified. Other embassies actually certify the income information, i.e. certify the content not merely the signature on the letter.

Aha. Well that would explain why I was unable to connect to the beta test site to check for an upgrade earlier this afternoon. I was puzzled why I kept getting the "The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests." message. Now I think I know why... There are probably tens of thousands (millions?) of Vista users chomping at the bit to download ZA for Vista.

I'm hoping that the public release version loads faster than the beta version did. I understand that the beta version is setting up all kinds of diagnositcs and log files, but it would add a solid minute to my Vista boot time to load the beta and during that time I was unable to do much of anything with the system (i.e. start other apps.)

Why is Firefox considered to be better than Opera? I've used Opera for years now, so inertia just keeps me upgrading it. Now that I tinker in designing web sites, I've installed Firefox to check for compatibility, and can't see anything that would make me want to switch from Opera.

It's little things in Opera that I like: Being able to quickly hold down <ctrl+shift> and go click-click-click down a list of forum topics and have them all spring open and download in background tabs.

And, when people talk about one browser being fast than another, what do they mean? Faster to start the browser? Faster to load pages? What? I read someplace that Opera years ago claimed to be the fastest browser because it would display table data onscreen before the entire table structure had been downloaded. Is that still the criteria?

One negative about Firefox I noticed when I loaded the lastest version after doing a clean install of Windows Vista (after installing Opera and making it my default browser): without prompting, Firefox installed itself as the default browswer.

So, I'm not overly defensive about Opera, and am bracing myself for a potential assault from Firefox fanatics, but what exactly makes Firefox a better browser?

Is it legal to take photographs in the immigrations area in Thailand?

I know it is verboten in the USA and I recall seeing the old "no camera" (graphic of a camera with a red slashed circle) in other airports' immigrations and customs areas.

Methinks it varies from office to office, and from officer to officer in a given office. (Why should it be different from any other Immigration issue? <g>)

e.g When I applied for my retirement extension in Pattaya, I presented the original of the Embassy letter with two copies. They kept the original. Other folks getting their retirement extension say the officer at Pattaya returned the original to them, telling them to keep it for next year.

Actually, since he's in Pattaya (Jomtien), there is a British Embassy representative here from whom he can get the "embassy letter". Unfortunately, I can't recall the chap's name. But, IIRC, he has an office (or hangs out at?) the building right in front of Pattaya Immigrations. Someone, PLEASE jump in here with solid facts (i.e. the Britsh Embassy rep's name and contact info) for the OP!

edited for clarity

Front page article on the current issue of Pattaya Mail:

Eighth page article in the current issue of Pattaya People:

Crikey. Where is the credibility in a newspaper publishing that??? Is it supposed to be an attempt at humor?

(The NASA Solar Eclipse Page indicates that there are only two solar eclipes in store for planet Earth this year: March 19, 2007 and September 11, 2007.)

I was surprised to see this full-color ad on the front page of today's newspaper. It is a screen shot of the online version of the paper, so is not the greatest quality. Here is the text of the ad:

Stem cell is a primordial cell that has the potential to renew itself and develop into any cell type in the body such as cardiac muscle cell or blood vessel cell.

Stem cell therapy for end-stage, Ischemic heart disease utilizes stem cells isolated from the patient's own blood that are greatly expanded in the laboratory under sterile condition. When re-infused back into the coronary arteries, these cells stimulate the formation of new arteries and capillaries increasing blood supply to the needy region of heart muscles.

24-hour Heart Center of Chaophya Hospital team of decicated cardiologists are ready to provide elective and emergency cardiac care around the clock including stem cell therapy for heart disease.

There is no disclaimer that this is an experimental procedure. Is stem cell science out of the lab and into mainstream medicine in Thailand already?

[edited for typo]

Sum Ting Wong Wi Dis Won? (Chai nis dysxlexia? )

5) Small Horse..............................Tai In Po In

Meh Bi: Tai Ni Po Ni ?

We just got an email from someone in our Belgian office asking us to tell them which countries are in our European Region and which in Asia ;-)

Now this is probably a stretch, but maybe Russia confused her? "Asia? Europe? Asia? Europe?" she pondered.....

And, yes, I'm American. :-)

I have the B1,000/month MaxNET package (1024/512) and can routinely get upper 800k and lower 900kbps transfer rates reported using the ThaiVisa-linked speed test link.

However, MY grouse is that the ThaiVisa forums recently (a week or so now?) have been bloody slow! It often takes several minutes to load a single page. What's up with that?

Also, cannot have multiple pages downloading in background tabs as in the past. Seems the max is one connection at a time, occasionally two. I checked my browser (Opera) settings and in the Windows Registry and all are tweaked to allow multiple connections per server.

Only one scan got attached to the previous message. <sigh....>

Here is the one with the colored boxes:

Yes please scan the stamps and can you let us know the other requirements you provided ? (bank 800k and or income letter from Embassy) Also the fees (2.000 for chnage of visa and 1.900 for etxension ?)

After I scanned, I realized there are an entry or two that I don't understand, so maybe someone can explain?

The red square is my visa-exempt entry stamp dated 03 Sep 2006.

The blue square is my "converted" Non-Immigrant O visa issued at the Jomtien Immigrations office showing "This visa must be utilized on the date of its issuance."

The yellow square I honestly never noticed before. I guess it is simply there to contain the information about a 90-day permit to stay that would be on a "normal" Non-Immigrant O? <shrug>

The green square I have no idea what it says, either.

The second scan is of the stamp permitting me to stay until 02 Sep 2007, one year from my original entry into Thailand on the visa-exempt stamp. (There is a hand written note clarifying the actual date, as the Immigrations Officer had originally stamped the wrong dates.)

I used a combination of (a) pension income verified by the US Embassy in Bangkok, plus ( a verified balance in a Siam Commercial Bank account to meet the B800,000 requirement.

Yes please scan the stamps and can you let us know the other requirements you provided ? (bank 800k and or income letter from Embassy) Also the fees (2.000 for chnage of visa and 1.900 for etxension ?)

Bear with me on the scan, I just realized my scanner is not compatible with Windows Vista, and I'll need to work around that.

But, for the fees and process, you can refer to: http://www.wpcoe.com/visa/ for a summary of what I did.

I'm toying with the idea of subscribing to UBC, which I guess entails putting a satellite dish on top of my condo. I'm sure I've seen a UBC booth somewhere around town, but now that I'm interested, can't remember where.

Does UBC have a sales office in Pattaya? Is there a UBC booth in some shopping mall around town?

I looked around the TrueVisions web site but don't see any phone number or locations for the Pattaya area.

How does it work if I install UBC with satellite dish at my condo and then sell the condo? Can it be transferred to the new owner, or do I need to have everything dis-assembled and returned to UBC, and the new condo owner starts from scratch?

I use TT&T ADSL in Jomtien and it's hit or miss. e.g. In the past week, three non-contiguous days I had access to YouTube.com, the past 24 hours being included. Then for a day or two, it is not accessible.

I've been beaten into submission: I'm grateful for when I can access it.

Excuse me, but who in their right mind would wait to travel to a foreign country to buy an overpriced camera at the main airport?

I hope it's not you.

Take my advice: buy your camera and any accessories AHEAD OF TIME over the internet, and bring it with you.

Prices for cameras, computer equip., electronic gadgets, etc. are ALL at retail prices or HIGHER in Thailand.

Especially at Suwannaboondoggle Airport.

The OP appears to be posting from Pakistan. Perhaps the shopping opportunities are not so good there?