jerrymahoney

I don't know about handshake but baby Thais begin to have their hands pressed together by their elders to form a wai starting at about age 2. ... excluding Ronald McDonald.

I go with a slight nod. To me, a wai is something you learned to do when you were 2 years old or don't do it.

I assimilate.

... or just Like pretty girls that don't think.

OK. I lived in the town of Alameda and was on that thing almost every day.

Sure can -- I was on the collapsed Cypress Freeway in the 1989 earthquake TWICE that morning. Loma Prieta earthquake hit about 5 PM. 63 fatalities. Thousands injured.

SD and AZ is not the same a US and Thailand. You can get both worlds sure but I still do not see that one always gets "the best" of both worlds.

One often reads on here the phrase "The best of both worlds". As I see it, one may be living in both worlds but, given all the logistics that entails, I would question whether one actually gets the best of each world. Unless you are like US Senator John McCain in 2008 when asked how many houses did he own and he said that he will have to get back to you on that.

My favorite from The Misfits (1961) Roslyn = Marilyn Monroe: Roslyn : Well, what do you do with yourself? Gay : Just live. Roslyn : How does anyone "just live"? Gay : Well, you start by going to sleep. You get up when you feel like it. You scratch yourself. You fry yourself some eggs. You see what kind of a day it is; throw stones at a can, whistle.

I would have no trouble financially moving back to USA. But what I would be would be a lonely old man.

This is what it looked like before Hurricane Ian

There are reports that recently built structures near the beach fared pretty well at least for some of the 15 million daft Floridians. Me? I have never lived other than about an hour's drive to either coast.

To the above, sure. But this is a bit more dramatic:

And my line while living non-coastal in Florida is that those signs never point TOWARD the ocean or gulf.

Any signs that your house is going to flooded by "rising sea levels"? 55555555555555 No -- just this:

It's simple. How many times on here have you read in reference to Thailand or anywhere else: And I get to live close to the Beach!!!

Of the total population of 19.6 million in Florida, approximately 15 million people live in coastal portions of the state. https://coast.noaa.gov/states/florida.html NB: I always lived either near Orlando or Gainesville, definitely non-coastal.

Yes -- it's a tough one because there is no supplement you can take for that.

To me, the most poignant comment on living in the USA over these last few days: “I come from a generation that has gone through more mass-shooting drills than fire drills,” he said then. “This is something that my generation has had to face head-on: being scared to go to school, being scared to go to church, being scared to be in your community. That gives me a sense of urgency.” 25-Year-Old Florida Democrat Secures Generation Z’s First House Seat https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/us/politics/maxwell-frost-florida-house.html

Funny that you should mention the chaos in Thailand versus the US of A on mid-term election day in US.

From the link in the OP: "For the current first phase, the system will be available only to foreigners who reside or work in Bangkok. 12 conditions for approval include tourism, teaching, studying, state duty, and specialist performance visas." -- and, as with other notices, no mention of retirement.

From the NY Times article as to the hoto above: In places like Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel Island and Pine Island, just west of Fort Myers, an easygoing existence that once revolved around seashell hunts, shrimping, turtle-watching, taking in sunsets over the Gulf, and the ebb and flow of a seasonal tourist economy had been obliterated.

A Thai friend once asked me how he could sell his family's trucking business in Thailand for 5 million US$. I said: Find somebody that thinks it's worth 10 million US$ and that HE is cheating YOU.

And sometimes it isn't.

I have found that the ability to (mostly) not think about anything that I don't want to think about has become a key for me to get along in Thailand in my advanced years