brian stoner

On 4/9/2021 at 2:57 PM, The Hammer2021 said:

2am is cool..at weekend. As long as it is consistent.

That's where I have to disagree,  if I am allowed.  2am is fine if you're IN THE BAR, because then it is YOUR CHOICE. But if I live 200 yards away, and want to go to bed at an earlier hour.  I don't believe it is "fine" for their music to still be SO LOUD that it penetrates my front windows, across the porch then through the BEDROOM double-paned glass doors and drapes and STILL is loud enough for me to hear the melody and key changes of the bass.  This was going on when my daughter was an infant, and who did NOT want to stay up till 2am, but I guess that is not a concern of anyone who seeks to be perceived as PC above reality.

On 4/18/2021 at 10:21 AM, Farma said:

Lately there's been a lot of covid information being spread over the village loud speakers. 

But how accurate is it? 

My wife mentioned the other day that there was a bunch of info-mercials making the rounds on Thai FB and Line that 'ginseng' can, if not exactly CURE covid, at least provide enough relief to help the body heal itself. Reminds me of when I taught in Korea, one of my students was a pharmacist, one of the first in the country to be certified in both 'modern, Western' medicine and traditional Korean medicine,  which has, (believe it or not) an incredibly rigorous, years-long course of study leading to actual licensure in that field. So if any of us at the school got sick, we'd go see 'April' and she'd dose us with a hot ginseng/tea drink. You felt a flush all over, then went home and crawled into bed, but usually the next day, you actually felt a good bit better!

On 4/6/2021 at 1:52 PM, AlfHuy said:

They tell you/ Please khun farang, make a donation.

You will hear this sound until you pay up.

Similar to a school I was at when I lived in Minburi that had a fundraiser...they played a Justin Bieber song over and over and over and people had to donate money to buy a temporary 'stoppage' of the music...like 100baht got you 5 minutes of silence...then it would start again...  lol

On 2/22/2021 at 10:34 AM, law ling said:

Pro Tip: Always carry some of those sticky traps with you. My best catch was over a hundred (including counting the young ones) in a 24-hour period - from a B1,000/night hotel in Bangkok - name withheld!

I've never seen one of these before. I've seen and used the little plastic tray-type for mice, filled with a gel-type of 'glue' but never one like this. It appears to be made of cardboard, and so it is sold "folded-up"?  Where can these be purchased?

Gee, I guess the NAME OF THE BANK is what threw me. And of course, we ALL know that such posted documents are 100.1% perfectly truthful and fully 'transparent', right? So I thank you for taking the time to show me the error of my ways. In future I will believe ALL such released documents.

I've gone into a local 7-11 masked, and seen clerks in it with no mask. No problem. Next day I go in with no mask and a different clerk shrieks at me for not wearing one.  If anything can cause a problem or spikes it is inconsistency of approach.

I hadn't realized Aung San Suu Kyi was that old. She is truly a martyr and obviously possessed of incredible moral strength.  I feel it to be a shame that Washington no longer has leadership strong enough to face up to the Chinese. She would probably have gotten some help. 

They could have the girls dressed in full HAZ-MAT suits, with head-covering, respirators and gloves, and dancing on the poles.   Oooohhh. sexy!!

THAT would be a new Xtra-experience!!    lol

That half-formed mustache looks pretty familiar...

   Isn't this the guy who ran for some government office years ago, and had, as his advertisements, posters of him riding on a motor-scooter brandishing an axe? Implying he was going to "chop down corruption"?

Well, he had the money to have visited the states, correct? (I believe the initial story said he had visited San Francisco), and was forced to do the quarantine upon his return. So if he had the $ to visit the states, one could think he should have had the money to have picked his own hotel upon his return for his ASQ. I'm SURE he knew there would be a quarantine when he came back, but he tried to cheap it out.

   As to the "propriety" of the military generals owning hotels, remember, this military has its own BANK.

On 2/9/2021 at 3:53 PM, JeffersLos said:

[quote] Resigned not fired, so still gets his pension?   How? Why? [/quote]

Not sure if it is the same with lower-level people such as school directors, but I'm pretty sure the upper govt. dweebs have the law set-up whereby, if they resign (usually upon finding out that they've either been caught or been accused) then they are not liable for whatever transgressions they did while holding their particular post. Seem to remember reading this in the BKK Post years ago after some govt. drone was placed under investigation for embezzling, and so he resigned. Apparently the millions of baht he supposedly "took" before doing so are just written off, and by resigning he becomes immune to prosecution, so it almost seems worth it.  I could be wrong, but that's how it reads in my memory...   ????

Song Kran coming up, waiting to see how it will be this year. We usually leave the city and go out to the wife's family's village for at least one of the days, and the 15th is her birthday as well! (... very auspicious to have been born on Song Kran Day!)  We had a somewhat subdued New Years out there, so Song Kran will probably be similar.  ????????

On 2/9/2021 at 12:27 PM, rumak said:

My god !    They just opened it up !   

 

UPDATE:   Long lines of traffic making there  way down for the R and R  !   Many Thaivisa shirts

spotted amongst the crowd.     

 

LOL!!!   Yep, everybody out to celebrate the "new norm" .....wrap your willy AND wear a mask.  All the girls need to do now is add the white nurse's dress, stockings, cap and shoes and voila!  Sexy nursey, take GOOD care of you!!  ????  

Good kid! Seems like his first thought was to help others rather than worry about himself.

I rarely use an actual 'glass', but I drink probably about 6-8 of the 'smaller' size of bottled water over the course of a day.  I know there are a large number of sizes out there, but these are the 600ml size. We have two bins in the kitchen, one full of 1 liter bottles and one of these .6L, and we refill them from a water-filter mounted on the wall. They're easy to fit in the fridges.

   When I was teaching my kids all knew my water bottles....they were the (strong) plastic bottles that the 'Smile' brand of orange-juice came in, and they had the advantages of being:

A. made of STRONG plastic, unbreakable if dropped  (and WAY quieter than the kids' fancy (expensive) anodized metal 'bottles', which, when dropped, would make a surprise "clank" loud enough to give the class a collective coronary)

B. full 1 liter size,

C. brightly labeled, so hard to overlook,

D. free!  Buy the orange juice (delicious, BTW) and get the bottle.

I hate to throw a good bottle like that away, so I used them as water bottles, kept about a dozen at my apartment.  The lightweight plastic kinds you get in the 7-11s are very thin-walled, and don't last long. Plus, these were 1 full liter, so fewer refills, as between the speaking and the air-con,  I would go through about 4 of those during the working day, plus some more water or beer at night.

On 3/16/2021 at 1:33 PM, THEN said:

...[quote]and even bio degradable balloons can be ordered online from 7seasproshop.

...and this method, strike rate is nearly 100% when the bait gets out 100-150m which is difficult or impossible to achieve with casting. At least with live bait it is. [/quote]

(I edited your quote for shortness, hope you don't mind) 

This is interesting and I've never heard of this. You mentioned wind, and the balloons. So one attaches the bait, and uses a balloon to act as a sort of "sail" and lets the wind push it out from shore?  How deep do you set your bait?

On 3/30/2021 at 2:57 PM, Card said:

You mean the Nancy whose husband was a notorious dope runner for the contras? You mean that Nancy?

  Really?  Can we get some credible sources here? Or are other viewers not allowed to ask for that? (seriously, I'm a newbie, and am just finding out which way the site leans)

Not saying you're wrong, just want to learn more...

       Quick and dirty on how I quit smoking, cold turkey. Back story: I never smoked growing up, in fact I hated it!! Both parents smoked, and I never liked being around it!! Later, I used to play in bar bands, and so was exposed to it a good bit.  When I was in my early thirties, I got involved in an original metal band. The guitarist smoked like a damn locomotive, literally used to light one off the other. After a few weeks of being in our practice room with the top 3 feet of the air in the room filled with smoke, I finally, one night, asked him for a damn cigarette, and found that if I smoked, it was easier somehow to tolerate the smoke in the room. So that's how I started, WAY more than old enough to know better, but.... . At first it was a couple a day but you know how that goes...pretty soon it was a half a pack a day, and it stayed roughly there for years, even after the band broke up a few years later.  That was almost 30 years ago. 

     Fast Forward: 2019, Thailand.   My wife and I had bought a house in Khon Kaen, when I was offered a great position in BKK.  My wife was teaching at my daughter's school here (KK), so they couldn't come with me, so I moved down there and lived alone. Perfect environment for a lonely person to fill the time with cigs, beer and movies.  I know, I know...a LOT of guys, after a dozen years of marriage, would welcome the chance to live like a bachelor in Bangkok, but I was miserable and missed my family (especially my daughter) immensely. So I stayed in my room at night and just watched movies, drank my beer and smoked.  I would fly home to Khon Kaen usually once a month, or drive my truck back if I had a long weekend or semester break etc. 

     So, November 22, 2019, I flew home for the weekend again. Whenever I flew,  I would usually get to Don Meung early, and have a few smokes and beers out in the parking-lot that doubled as an unofficial smoking area. Well, this trip was the same. I had my smokes and beers, and had about half a pack left, and then went in to get ready to board. When I went through the bag-check, and had to empty my pockets,  I guess I put the pack in the bin.  I somehow forgot to retrieve it at the other end, but didn't notice it at the time. 

   So I flew home to Khon Kaen, had a snack with the family then we went to bed. The next day, after my coffee I was thinking about having a smoke, and went to get my pack. I couldn't find it, and then I realized I must have left it in the airport. I had been meaning to quit (again) for a long time, and had tried a time or two, but my job/living situation was giving me a good bit of stress and it was hard to quit solo.  But this time, since I was out of smokes, I figured it was the perfect time to quit. I decided to just say "Screw it! I'm quitting for real!...and I am NOT going to go to the store and buy another pack." So, basically the 23rd of November 2019 was the first day without the cigs.

      It was a little difficult for a few days, just behaviorally, not having that routine of smoking. I felt a little nervous, but it didn't last beyond the first week or so. I tried drinking a glass of water when I felt like a smoke, and that actually seemed to help. I'd also read that bananas seem to help some people (the potassium, maybe?) so I tried to make sure I kept some of those in the house.  The funny part was that I began seeing myself smoking in my dreams. (That ol' subconscious, tryin' to sabotage whatever we do...)  In many dreams, I would find myself in a 7-11, and buying a pack of smokes, or I would be outside and lighting one up. Then, still in the dream, I would feel bad that I'd fallen off the wagon and was smoking again. This seemed to kick my mind into a 'lighter level' of sleep (lucid dreaming) and then I would think, "No...I quit....and this is just a dream. I'm not really smoking!"  I could actually FEEL the rush of relief, even though I was only partially awake. But by then I would drift into consciousness, and replay the dream, just to keep that sense of relief that I had not given in. 

      So it's been since 23 Nov 2019, and I literally haven't touched a cig since. Not.....freaking......once.  I know myself too well, and I know that if I smoked ONE cig, I would find a way to justify to myself smoking more, and I'm not gonna throw away a year and a half of being smoke free.  Now I can go into a store and not even think about buying any. Sometimes I still get the urge, (like when I see someone light one up outside, or even on-screen) but I remember the feeling of having my lungs be full of phlegm, the coughing, etc. and I just use the amount of time I've been smoke-free as a mental-reinforcement and a reassurance to stay the course. My lungs feel better, and I breathe better, but I think I gave myself a mild case of emphysema, as I still sometimes get the slight wheezing/whistling noise in the lungs at night. I'd gotten my stupid ass up to a pack a day near the end, I wasn't exercising, as I was living in a hotel on a side soi off Sukhumvit 50, and it was impossible to get any walking done without breathing air that was damn near as bad as smoking, (not to mention the soi dogs). 

   The funny part was that my wife, several years ago, heard of some (Thai) guy who'd quit cold turkey and died of a heart attack a few days later. We had no idea of other related issues of his, he may have been at death's door anyway. So although she wanted me to quit, she was actually afraid of that happening to me.  But now she's glad I did. I'm hoping to see my daughter graduate HS (at least).

     Just thought I'd share that story, and the fact that if you really want to quit, you CAN!  Hell, if I smoked for 30 years and quit cold, anyone can. Especially with all the help and support (like this site) that is out there now.  Good luck!!

Congrats!!  I'm going to add my own, shorter story of how I quit, but yours caught my eye, and I just wanted to say more power to ya!  It gives me more to shoot for!