alextrat1966

24 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Are expensive nice cars a waste of money ???....  Of course they are

It's not really a waste of money if it makes you happy.

To me blowing money on hookers is ridiculous and a waste of money, but apparently many here in LOS think otherwise... Probably most of the ones who claims Mercs/BMW are a waste of money.

1 minute ago, bbko said:

As for when Thais go overseas, when my wife went for her tourist visa interview with the US Embassy in BKK the US workers spoke fluent Thai with her, so there's that.

Yes, in Thailand. But once in the US, forget about it. 

1 hour ago, Lacessit said:

I guess I wanted the experience of owning a Benz. If that's cachet, so be it. I've had the experience, no desire whatsoever to repeat it. I was more interested in it as a performance vehicle. If you want to keep insinuating I'm as shallow as a mud puddle, IMO I'm a bit more complex than that.

You bought a Mercedes (not a Benz) from the Pleistocene, that probably had been crashed and "repaired" a gazillion times and flooded and "repaired" a kazillion others. And in doing so, you probably neglected doing a proper pre-purchase inspection (because had you done it, you wouldn't have bought it).

You don't need to be a magician to predict such story is going to end in a lot of money being put in a car that is not worth it. 

But that doesn't mean other newer better taken care of Mercedes will suffer the same issues.

3 hours ago, bluejets said:

Rubbish !!!! ....what you propose would see the kid loose interest and dump the idea.

simon43 reply would get them going really quickly and retain interest.

Can always go to lower level programming at a later time if they still find they need to go that way.

That depends. If it wasn’t the kids idea to learn programming and he has 0 interest in it, then yes. You are better off letting him do robotics(Arduino) or something like that so that he will have fun and get to play while learning “something”. Whether that something will eventually be of any use, can’t guarantee. 
 

However if the kid himself is into programming and computers, then that’s the perfect plan even for his age. That’s the one I followed and why I’ve done so well ????

28 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

I guess it is more likely that it was one of those guys who learned COBOL in a Thai university not too long ago. He got the degree but ...

it's riddled with user input sanitization related vulnerabilities.... oh boy...

For starters, even when Test & Go was "suspended", you could just edit the (unencrypted) cookie and change the type to Test & Go. Which is how I got mine to return from Europe after 21st Dec ????

20 minutes ago, Kwasaki said:

Dunno where you insure I'm with Roojai and pay 8,500 baht a year by an arranged 10 monthly instalments plan which includes CTPL. 

I volunteer a 10,000 baht excess payment if it's my fault.

My truck is covered for 495,000 baht.

I insure with Dhipaya, but mind you it’s 2+ and not First Class insurance. (because the car is an import from Japan) 

Still, it covers the value of the car, short of a few hundred thousands Baht which I don’t think I’ll ever cause that much damage.

2 minutes ago, Thailand said:

Yep, the British embassy's have dropped responsibility for just about everything, wonder what will be next.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that a lot of people were bringing Photoshopped documents to the British embassy for legalization? Specially those related to income statements, often times photoshopped and provided by visa agents themselves... 

6 minutes ago, Thailand said:

If that is actually the case then we will have a lot of trouble as my HK born wife will have nothing to do with anything associated with the Chinese govt.

Oh boy, you're stubborn... 

Forget about politics here, if you have a HK issued marriage certificate (even if under British law), it's your right to go to the HK embassy to have it legalized there. Obviously there is no HK embassy because the Chinese embassy handles HK's affairs, so you have to go to the Chinese embassy.

If the UK provided legalization services at their embassies, you could also do it there. But it just so happens that the UK DOES NOT at the moment.

The UK will not certify/legalize any marriage certificate in either of their embassies. Only a court in the UK can do so, so if you insist in having it legalized only by the Brits, then you need to board a plane, travel to the UK, and have it legalized by a court there.

The fact that there is a law doesn't mean it's enforced. 

When I travel with my wife in the car, we never wear a mask. When we're in the river by ourselves having fun with a jet ski we never wear a mask. 

When I'm having a walk at 4AM and there's nobody in the street, my mask is on my chin. If I come across somebody I wear it. 

When I'm in public surrounded by a lot of people, I wear my mask the proper way.

Never had a single issue. Is this so difficult to understand? 

11 minutes ago, Kwasaki said:

GS, S1000, CBR1000RR SP. 

Unless your car is new. 

800,000 THB, a bit far ????

14 minutes ago, Thailand said:

To clarify we were married in HK prior to 1997 under British law.

 

I am going to to make a wild guess that nowadays we will have to jump through hoops and pay the British gov in the UK lots of money to resolve this.

Once again, the British embassy will not legalize anything, it's their policy nowadays (in the past they used to do it, but not now). So forget about it. 

But if your marriage certificate is issued by the HK government, then yes, the Chinese embassy will legalize it, and you will save a lot of trouble! (otherwise you will have to travel to the UK to have it legalized there)

1 minute ago, Kwasaki said:

Resell value. 

Even then, I'd highly doubt there's many bikes of that value. 

I find @FriendlyFarang's explanation much more convincing! That does make a lot of sense!

1 minute ago, Kwasaki said:

Maybe because the car is valued less than his bike whatever it is. 

I thought it had a lot to do with the displacement, at least for cars.... 

How can bike insurance be so expensive? 

That's the premium I pay to insure my 6300cc Mercedes-AMG E63.... 12,000-13,000 THB/year

I find it hard to believe the premium for insuring a motorbike could be as much as for a high powered car...

As far as I know BNO passport holders must request this to the HK authorities and not the UK ones. 

You are a BNO passport holder and married in HK (probably after 1997). That's a bit different to being married in the UK.

6 hours ago, fdsa said:

...but does he want to become an expert programmer == nolifer? The happiest programmers out there do not understand how things work but still get their thousands $s coding in Python & friends.

Yes, that’s the way things have worked so far. But nowadays I’m sure even your neighbor’s dog is a freelancer who codes in Python ???????????????? 

With more substandard programmers popping out of everywhere, I’m sure it will be more and more difficult for them to earn their $s. 
 

Competition in freelancer sites is ferocious, they fight over $1, and very few of them know what they’re doing! 
 

I once was lazy and had someone in Freelancer code a very simple backend for me! The piece of <deleted> he coded for me upon overcharging was vulnerable to the simplest form of SQL Injection (and the fella was filled with positive reviews)…. Never again.

5 hours ago, ChaiyaTH said:

You have no idea what you talk about, cheers from a programmer and IT guy who started at 12. 

In reality; the future is program or be programmed. Arduino is a great way to start as mentioned above, and soon after basic PHP and PYTHON too. The sooner he starts the better, I was able to move here since age of 20 thanks to that, after doing a volunteer army period of 2.5 years.

 

Most programmers can't even write HTML5/CSS, that is why they hire front-end coders, yes you read that right, those doing the basics are not considered programmers and programmers do not need to know about this at all. That is only a distraction, better to get good at just one of them (or a few that fall in a certain category).

 

It is much more about which one he likes, some people like doing things that are mainly in the terminal and others love to design things using HTML5, CSS or JavaScript and so on and on.

And if you are the hardware type, you not need to learn any programming perse either. Excel for starters? WTH.

Yes, that’s what’s worked for you in the past. Because when you were 20 not many compared to now knew how to code. 
 

Nowadays you can see in Freelancer sites that everyone seems to know how to code, even if they have no idea what they’re doing (then comes user input related bugs because the programmer had no idea what was going on, and similar things ). 
 

Anyway, unless his only goal in life is making websites as an online freelancer and getting paid peanuts compared to what he could get paid otherwise, then he’d better do it the proper way. 
 

Excel is the gateway to programming, believe it or not. Because while not programming in itself, it readies your mind to understand programming, Specially in a kid. 
 

Teaching a kid to code a Calculator in Python without him understanding what is going on, will never make him a great programmer. Average at best. 

12 minutes ago, simon43 said:

Can you not use an online teacher?  (I teach Arduino, Python, PHP etc coding, but am fully booked up!)

Those you've mentioned can hardly be counted as programming languages! Since they are extremely extremely high level and thought out to let people "code" but barely understanding what is going on. 

IMO, at 12 years old, you need to do it the right way, and not jump straight into coding, but firstly start with how computers work. 

- CPU & Memory (ALUs, registers, addresses, operations). There are ways to make a kid this young understand all these pretty well.

- Teach him and let him do some coding at a very low level (Assembly) - again this doesn't mean making your kid an ASM master, just let him"play" around with it and get a grasp.  

- Now comes programming logic, and the best way to make a kid learn this is believe it or not with Excel spreadsheets. If your kid learns Excel at a good level, programming mindset will come much more easy. Cuz Excel is a simplified way of programming, the logic is the same! 

- Once he has passed all this, you can start with abstractions and high level languages (Arduino, PHP, Python,...). 

IMO if you start teaching him from the ground up, it will make his life easier, and he will be a better programmer once he reaches the commonly used high level coding languages, than if you start straight from high level programming languages.

13 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

Something else may astonish you..... Car’s do not need to be hand-cranked to start....

 

All a bit ridiculous ????

 

 

 

 

Don’t worry, you (and your wallet) will learn the lesson sooner or later ????

A scored cylinder or a worn piston ring could develop pretty much overnight. Both of which could cause the engine to burn through liters of oil in days. If you never check, how would you know? 
 

Don’t forget that by the time you get a warning it probably is too late, as going uphill the pump may suck in air instead of oil when the level is low enough to trigger an oil warning.

4 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

the Bangkok bank app has now updated itself again

An app can’t update itself, Met. 
 

Somebody must have updated it ????

13 minutes ago, FridgeMagnet1 said:

Really, how? 

You don't need to. 

After the divorce instead of getting yearly extensions of stay to your Non-O VISA for being the spouse of a Thai, you would get them for being the father of a Thai. 

In the end it's the same, you would just have to provide different documentation.

1 hour ago, rowley said:

Do you all think the pendulum will ever swing back the other direction and there will be a return to free living, democracy, laissez faire and a vibrant economy or do you just see the situation inevitably sinking further and further into a cambodian existence?

That is purely a matter that the Thais must deal with it. If you don't like the way Thailand is now, stay home. 

7 minutes ago, GrandPapillon said:

it's not because you didn't see them that they don't exist, I have seen them and they work, even in the long run, some over 20 years. The good strategies are kept and reserved for the "elite" and UNW Individuals, not for the average investor.

That would make for a nice barstool story in Pattaya, Mr.Elite ????

You guys are nuts. 

Pay the guy making noise to stop making noise? I'd rather pay the police 100K to fix the issue, than pay the guy 1K to stop making noise.