Robski

Thanks eek, after years of thinking about it I've decided to go for it. I'm a fairly active person and I just find glasses too much of a hinderance.

I've received replies to my enquiries from TRSC and from Bangkok Hospital Medical Centre.

The prices for both are very good, but judging on the information given, the level of care offered and the presentation it would seem that TRSC are the best option.

Here is a brief summary for anyone interested.

Mr.Kumchondej DJ

International Patient Counseling Manager

TRSC International LASIK Center

www.lasikthai.com Tel: 662-733-2020, 66-81-174-1812 ( Cell )

The price of LASIK surgery at TRSC ranges from THB 66,000 to THB 79,500 for both eyes depending on the technology employed. For more details, please see our price list attached.

If you are not a Bangkok resident, we recommend approximately 5-7 days in Bangkok in order to complete the initial eye examination, the LASIK surgery, and both the required 1-day and 1-week follow-up exams. The 1-week follow-up can be from 5-10 days after surgery. The rest of the routine check-ups can be completed with an ophthalmologist in your home country. Patients will be required to pay the fees for any exams performed outside of TRSC.

At TRSC, we have three levels of advanced treatment: (Kindly see the attached file for detailed explanation)

1. Premium LASIK (non-wavefront) – Bausch and Lomb Technolas 217z

2. Optimum LASIK (using optimization) – Carl Zeiss MEL 80

3. Ultimate LASIK (using wavefront + optimization) – Carl Zeiss MEL 80 and 250 Wavefront system

TRSC's Ultimate LASIK is currently the most advanced LASIK treatment available. As each person is unique, there are many factors that must be considered and in some cases Premium or Optimum LASIK can provide the same or even better results. Each person must be considered on an individual basis after all possible measurements have been taken. The LASIK surgery specialist will therefore be the best source to recommend what level of LASIK care is preferred for you, which can be determined after the complete preoperative eye exam.

Premium LASIK 66,000 Optimum LASIK 73,000 Ultimate LASIK 79,500

********************************************************************************

******************************************************

Dr. Nguyen Viet Hung

Medical Correspondence, Physician

Bangkok Referral Center

Tel. 66 2 - 7551362-3

Fax. 66 2 - 7551364

Email: [email protected]

- Custom Vue Lasik-----------70,000 THB/Both eyes

37,000 THB / 1 eye

- Standard Lasik---------------57,000 THB /Both eyes

30,000 THB / 1 eye

These are the operation fee ,medicine during 1 week ,follow up fee 1 time after the operation are included.

**(The Custom Vue Laser is more elaborate than the standard and decrease the side effect of Lasik surgery such as glare,halo .The, Custom Vue Laser is improve the night vision and will correct the cornea smoothly.The side effect of the Lasik surgery such as glare halo just happen with somebody. It is depend on pupil , cornea shape that will be shown in the eye examination )

Now.. what to do when you're holed up in a Bangkok hotel room for 5 days with no booze and no vision..?

I think that could be a new thread.

Try doing the plank 3 times 1 minute everyday.

It looks easy and the the first 1 minute might be but it gets harder and it's a great way to tone up and improve your posture.

I believe that it is time we close the Enron loophole which is allowing rampant speculation on future stocks affecting to a great degree (some analysts say up to 60%) the price of many commodities like oil and rice.

Thankyou.

One of the biggest factors in high oil prices, according to many experts, is that investors, such as hedge funds and investment bankers, can use loopholes in commodities law to manipulate the market and drive crude oil, heating oil, gasoline and diesel fuel prices to new heights.

Congress is aware of the problem and lawmakers recently passed legislation to address the “Enron Loophole,” one of the major loopholes that opens the door to abusive trading practices, but the law didn’t go far enough.

Unfortunately, other loopholes exist that allow energy trading on completely “dark” exchanges. For example, the “Foreign Markets Loophole” allows American energy commodities to be traded overseas – exempt from U.S. oversight.

These so-called “Dark Markets” – commodities markets that are not policed by U.S. authorities provide for an open the door to manipulation, even outright control of the markets.

For example, speculative investors can buy and sell millions of barrels of U.S. destined oil and other energy products every day in the United Kingdom and even in Dubai… but are not made subject to the transparency and accountability laws that govern exchanges here in the United States!

Additionally, through the so-called “swaps loophole,” financial investors can “game the markets” for pure profit by buying up positions in the energy markets, without any limitation on the size of the positions they can take. One recent estimate suggested that they now control one third of the commodities markets, or $150 billion - a 1,000% increase in less than five years!

Some experts believe that as much as 60 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline or heating oil can be attributed to pure speculation and abusive –even manipulative – trading practices, yet most trading is “dark” and federal authorities can neither fully police or see the data in the majority of the trading markets.

The energy trading markets were originally set up to provide energy producers and distributors with an environment to manage risk and produce the best possible price for their customers. But they are clearly no longer the driving force in the market. Profiteering speculators and investment banks care little about establishing a price for energy based on supply and demand fundamentals – they care about turning a PROFIT.

http://www.stopoilspeculators.com/

I'm considering laser eye surgery to correct my vision so I can get rid of my glasses, but the cost in the UK is prohibitive.

The offers look great value on the surface, but as you can see from the extract below there is more to the cost than meets the eye.

I would presume that the cost for similar treatment in Thailand would be lower. Does anyone have any recomendations before I start checking the BKK pages?

Does it work?

Yes, for most people. It can correct short-sight (to -10 dioptres), long-sight (to +6.0 dioptres) and up to four cylinders of astigmatism. A review of 313,154 eyes by the government health watchdog Nice (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) in 2005 concluded that 90% of patients come to within one dioptre of perfect sight. Bad outcomes are unusual.

Somewhat confusingly, there are different types of Lasik. Conventional Lasik uses a very sharp and precise mechanical blade called a keratome to cut the initial flap. IntraLase Lasik uses a laser to make the flap. Lasik with "wavefront" technology uses sophisticated software to map the eye very precisely before surgery.

And the cost?

There are two pricing models on the high street: charging by procedure or by prescription. If you are charged by procedure, you pay a flat rate. For example, Ultralase, one of the biggest clinic chains, charges £995 an eye for basic Lasik, rising to £1,795 an eye for wavefront IntraLase.

Under the prescription model, the worse your eyesight, the more the surgery will cost. For example, while Optical Express's attention-grabbing price of from £395 an eye is attractive, it is not available to those with medium or strong prescriptions.

A survey of 80 of the 95 clinics in Britain in the current issue of Optician magazine says that the average cost of standard Lasik is £925 an eye. Wavefront and IntraLase treatments add another £200-£300 each to the bill.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2006/nov/2...oneysupplement1

reason for edit;

I just read Sheryl's recommenadation for Thai Refractive Surgery Center in another thread on the same theme.

I've checked out their website, but there are no prices, what did you pay?

If anyone else has any experience or recommendations please let me know.

Well put together and a great collection of pictures, did you take them yourself?

I see your time in Bangers wasn't wasted!

Good choice of music (I just noticed the credits at the end)

I would use filehippo for free beta downloads http://www.filehippo.com/

I use the Windows firewall.

I use Kaspersky anti virus which I consider to be the best, but the AVG free edition offered on filehippo works very well.

Use Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy together to get rid of malware and spyware.

Keep it all running sweet and up to speed by using CCleaner to get rid of all unwanted registry reports and temporary files,

don't forget to uncheck the cookies box or write them down or you will lose them.

Another great tool is the registry defrag from Auslogics http://www.download.com/Auslogics-Registry...4-10678033.html

The injured tourist decided not to register the incident at Pattaya Police Station

..but was happy to have his face plastered all over town on PattayaOne News.

To me (refering to the political justification of the source information) is like you are saying you not accepting an arguement because they are a Muslim or Jewish or anything but your own persuasion. It IS uncontructive and irrelevent on this thread.

Blah de blah de blah...

Ok so we've established that you take things on face value, otherwise you've just avoided the point altogether.

It is nothing like saying they are Muslim or Jewish and I think you know that.

A quote from Earnest Bean isn't going to detract form the fact that global warming has become one of the most politicized issues today.

To claim that politics has no bearing and is unconstructive is rather disengenious as you are the one linking articles from politcal publications and purporting them to be fact.

Re: Greenland.

Just wanted to point out that although the source of the name might be disputed, there was a medieval warm period (and after that a little ice age). That is undisputed fact.

Hey Ace, how you doing? Long time no see.

Yes you're absolutely right there was a period of warming and more of the Greenland land mass was able to be inhabitited, but it was only in the very south of the continent and the rest still remained locked in ice.

Anyway that reminds me, we must get together for a few ice cold beers sometime soon.

Right Side News.. Marc Morano.. James Spann the weatherman. Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

Next you'll be telling me Rush Limbaugh told you it's true.

Nope. Can't see that name in this list of signatories.

Once again you have latched on to a single political point that you feel validates your moral high ground. It's very similar to the cries of "Communist" as counter arguements used in the 1970's. I really thought you were beginning to engage

You feel that my critisism is unwarranted and unconstructive, but you have to think outside the box.

Yes I saw the list of signitories, but the arcticle was authored by a well known and unreliable pro industrial ideologue for a Right wing publication, with articles furnished by other proponents and beneficiaries of the industrial political complex. By the time I'd read (most of) the articles and checked their sources my belief in the credibility of the signitories was already waning.

We are intelligent people are we not? If we are, why are you presenting this material, with an obvious bias, as impartial and unequivocal?

I'm not claiming any moral highground, but I will claim the intellectual highground as it is clearly there for the taking.

I think you would take great benefit from broadening your political and educational horizons.

I have no particular political leanings. I just believe that anything presented as the truth should be as impartial and transparent as possible.

Good luck.

Right Side News.. Marc Morano.. James Spann the weatherman. Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

Next you'll be telling me Rush Limbaugh told you it's true.

Before leaving CNS, Morano wrote an article featuring attacks on NASA global warming scientist James E. Hansen by George C. Deutsch, a former NASA press aide accused of censoring Hansen. [3]

Morano was hired in Spring 2006 as the Director of Communications to US Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Senator Inhofe is a member and the former Chair of the Senate Committee for the Environment and Public Works, and has compared Tom Brokaw's climate change documentary to the "Big Lie," a Third Reich propaganda technique. Inhofe also claimed that "if we were to embrace the Kyoto treaty [on climate change], it would shut down agriculture, military and oil production in Oklahoma..." [4]

Many believe that is it Morano who has been behind Inhofe's latest attacks on the science of climate change [5], and this was confirmed by an appearance of Morano at the 2006 Society of Environmental Journalists, where Morano was on a climate change panel with Andrew Revkin (New York Times) and Bill Blakemore (ABC News). [6]

An August 2007 entry by Morano on Inhofe's EPW Committee blog claimed that "proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so, but the Magazine chose instead to focus on how skeptics have reportedly received a paltry $19 MILLION from ExxonMobil over the last two decades."[7] Morano offered no documentation to support the "$50 BILLION" claim, and cited only one figure to support the "$19 MILLION" claim -- a statement that "skeptics have reportedly received a paltry $19 MILLION from ExxonMobil over the last two decades," falsely suggesting that ExxonMobil was the only source of funding for global warming "skeptics."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marc_Morano

I think you're a little confused over timescale and location. Antartica covers the South Pole and Greenland is of course in the Northern Hemisphere.

Although there were parts of southern Greenland that were comparitively mild around 1500 years ago, it was only a small percentage of the total landmass and confined to a few sheltered enclaves. You can find a facinating, if somewhat dry, account of the Viking settlement there and it's subsequent collapse in Jared Diamonds book - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Books. ISBN 1-586-63863-7

It was a combination of cultural and enviromental factors that caused the Viking society there to collapse, but the changing enviroment was key.

I'm sure you can find other sources of information regarding the climate change in Greenland at that time, but I'm sure you will find that it only covered a very small area of Greenlands vast land mass.

Good luck.

They didn't really think that one through did they..

Giant Antarctic ice shelf breaks into the sea.

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Wednesday March 26 2008.

Article and video here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008...oles.antarctica

A vast hunk of floating ice has broken away from the Antarctic peninsula, threatening the collapse of a much larger ice shelf behind it, in a development that has shocked climate scientists.

Satellite images show that about 160 square miles of the Wilkins ice shelf has been lost since the end of February, leaving the ice interior now "hanging by a thread".

The collapsing shelf suggests that climate change could be forcing change much more quickly than scientists had predicted.

"The ice shelf is hanging by a thread," said Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). "We'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."

The Wilkins shelf covers an area of 5,600 square miles (14,500 sq km). It is now protected by just a thin thread of ice between two islands.

Vaughan was a member of the team that predicted in 1993 that global warming could cause the Wilkins shelf to collapse within 30 years.

The shedding of peripheral floating ice shelves has occurred elsewhere on the peninsula, allowing inland ice to move towards the sea and cause rising sea levels.

Some areas of the frozen continent have been cooler in recent years, and have added ice through accumulated snowfall. This year, the thin floating layer of sea ice that forms each austral winter and fades in summer has in fact been larger than usual, in contrast to the Arctic.

But in other parts — such as the West Antarctic ice sheet — ice is being lost to the sea.

The darker area shows the chunk that has broken away. Picture: Nasa Climate scientists around Antarctica were taken by surprise by the new find. "Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula yet to be threatened," Vaughan said.

"I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. We predicted it would happen, but it's happened twice as fast as we predicted."

The retreat of the shelf was first spotted from satellite data by Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado.

He alerted the BAS, which sent an aircraft to assess the extent of the damage.

Jim Elliott, who filmed part of the breakup, said: "It was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble — it's like an explosion."

The Antarctic peninsula, which stretches north from the frozen continent towards South America, has experienced unprecedented warming over the past 50 years.

Six other ice shelves have already been lost entirely — the Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and Jones shelves.

But the Wilkins shelf is farther south than other ice that has retreated, so should be better protected by colder temperatures.

Vaughan said: "It's bigger than any ice shelf we've seen retreating before, and in the long term it could be a taste of other things to come. It is another indication of the impact that climate change is having on the region."

Bring your own life jacket.

Call it what you want, but there's no desperation. Exasperation perhaps.

I'm not trying to take the high road, perhaps trying to elevate the discussion above the very low standard it's at.

If that is the best retort you can muster then I see that I won't be missing much.

Enjoy your 'debate'

A cohesive argument..!?

If there is one thing that plachon has done, it is put forward some unbiased and logical information without dodging the issues or going off topic.

You quote a 130 word paragraph from him that has the basis for an interesting debate and answer it with 9 word hypocritical and contradictory sentence!

Wether I agree with him or not, I respect the fact that he is trying to engage in an intelligent debate.

You repeatedly accuse others of obsfucation, yet when you're demands for clarification are answered you either dodge the issue or resort to childish defamation.

I've seen this pattern before and I know how it ends, those that really are able to engage intelligently get bored with this shallow parody of a debate and move on, leaving people like you to claim victory because everyone else has left.

Who are you? I've seen your profile and from what I can make out you're a nobody.

No friends, no comments and you've never started a topic of your own,

You've really made an impression on people haven't you...

There has been some very interesting and well thought out opinions put forward in this thread, from both sides of the debate, but none of them are yours.

I am able to accept that I could be wrong on any subject and if somebody shows me overwhelming evidence that contradict my own beliefs I am prepared to accept their greater understanding and willing to take on that knowledge. That is how we learn and move forward.

We can agree to disagree, but please don't try and bring this thread down to your level by claiming that you are engaging in a debate to prove your superior intellect on this matter, when clearlty the only one that can see you are not is you.

I'll leave this thread to you to claim your hollow victory, I tried to answer your questions and perhaps point out some flaws in your argument but you have chosen to ignore that.

That's ok I won't lose any sleep over it.

In the UK it's around £1.30 a litre for diesel and rising almost daily.

Great sophistry canucamuk.

It should be about the truth, but unfortunatly the whole issue is more a battle of ideology than a rational debate.

Stephen Armstrong meets paleoclimatologist Jane Francis

Stephen Armstrong The Guardian, Saturday December 31 2005 Article historyThe sun almost always shines on Jane Francis. Even when she potters around her second spiritual home on the Isle of Portland. As a nation of schoolchildren who spent geography field trips there, we know to our cost that the Portland weather is wet, misty and stormy. But when she walks there, she is always in the Jurassic era when it was warm and tropical. When she looks at rocks, she travels back in time.

Francis is a paleoclimatologist, an expert in ancient climates. She deals in storm warnings from millions of years ago. Her particular area of expertise is Antarctica and, for reasons more chilling than its polar wastes, her research over the last 20 years is suddenly terribly important in understanding what is about to happen as the effects of global warming take hold. Scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are trying to predict the effects on the world's climate as we continue to pump carbon into the atmosphere. To be sure they are predicting the future accurately, they ask their supercomputers to describe the past and ask Francis for data to corroborate their findings.

"A few years ago people were saying, 'OK, well, we'll look back a million years or so, something like that, to see the effects of climate change'," she explains. "They thought that we'd still be in the kind of world that we currently know. But now we think that for a vision of what the Earth's going to be like in a couple of hundred years, we may have to go back to a time before the ice, to when it was a greenhouse world. Because if you look at the figures on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it's rising very, very fast. It's beyond the levels of CO2 that we classically know from before the last ice age. If it keeps accelerating at this rate then in a matter of just a couple of hundred years we'll have levels of CO2 that we last saw at the time of the dinosaurs."

Already ice shelves are breaking up; there are plants spreading further south into previously barren areas; and the glaciers are shrinking. She allows herself a wry smile. "That's an awful lot of water about to be let loose once it all melts. So I hope you don't live near the Thames. We're OK in the north. It's a bit more hilly. But I wouldn't want to live in large parts of the south of England."

We have this cheerful meeting as she is preparing to head back to Antarctica as part of a project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the British Antarctic Survey to try to obtain more data on what exactly is going on at the bottom of the world. For years, Antarctica has been the preserve of geologists and explorers. Recently, however, it has become clear that the continent is fundamentally responsible for the way our world is today. It may even have played a part in our route to the top of the ecosystem.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&a...earch&meta=

Are you suggesting that Stephen Armstrong is a expert on climate?

How on earth did you come to that conclusion?

Stephen Armstrong meets paleoclimatologist Jane Francis

I posted the article in response to demands from ThaiAdventure, which have yet to be acknowledged.

I have to say that in the enviromental debate it is easy to find articles that back up ones opinion, but an intelligent person that can put aside preconceptions can find the truth of the matter by looking beyond the type to who has the best credentials and peer recognition and also as to who funds the article and what is the motivation behind it.

There is much at stake in the enviromental campaign and one should not let pride stand in the way of logic.

Yes music without a doubt.

Stephen Armstrong meets paleoclimatologist Jane Francis

Stephen Armstrong The Guardian, Saturday December 31 2005 Article historyThe sun almost always shines on Jane Francis. Even when she potters around her second spiritual home on the Isle of Portland. As a nation of schoolchildren who spent geography field trips there, we know to our cost that the Portland weather is wet, misty and stormy. But when she walks there, she is always in the Jurassic era when it was warm and tropical. When she looks at rocks, she travels back in time.

Francis is a paleoclimatologist, an expert in ancient climates. She deals in storm warnings from millions of years ago. Her particular area of expertise is Antarctica and, for reasons more chilling than its polar wastes, her research over the last 20 years is suddenly terribly important in understanding what is about to happen as the effects of global warming take hold. Scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are trying to predict the effects on the world's climate as we continue to pump carbon into the atmosphere. To be sure they are predicting the future accurately, they ask their supercomputers to describe the past and ask Francis for data to corroborate their findings.

"A few years ago people were saying, 'OK, well, we'll look back a million years or so, something like that, to see the effects of climate change'," she explains. "They thought that we'd still be in the kind of world that we currently know. But now we think that for a vision of what the Earth's going to be like in a couple of hundred years, we may have to go back to a time before the ice, to when it was a greenhouse world. Because if you look at the figures on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it's rising very, very fast. It's beyond the levels of CO2 that we classically know from before the last ice age. If it keeps accelerating at this rate then in a matter of just a couple of hundred years we'll have levels of CO2 that we last saw at the time of the dinosaurs."

Already ice shelves are breaking up; there are plants spreading further south into previously barren areas; and the glaciers are shrinking. She allows herself a wry smile. "That's an awful lot of water about to be let loose once it all melts. So I hope you don't live near the Thames. We're OK in the north. It's a bit more hilly. But I wouldn't want to live in large parts of the south of England."

We have this cheerful meeting as she is preparing to head back to Antarctica as part of a project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the British Antarctic Survey to try to obtain more data on what exactly is going on at the bottom of the world. For years, Antarctica has been the preserve of geologists and explorers. Recently, however, it has become clear that the continent is fundamentally responsible for the way our world is today. It may even have played a part in our route to the top of the ecosystem.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&a...earch&meta=

Right.

so we have assertained you have nothing constructive to add to the discussion. So on with the debate.

Could we be seeing the seeds of doubt about global warming?

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cf...ate=12-May-2008

On with the debate..

Oh is that the royal 'we' by the way?

I think the standard is set by those that govern us. Just as a good role model in a community will shape the morality of that community.

They may blame societies ills those that live on the fringes of society, but are hypocritical in their own affairs.

I think the rules in UK and Thai society, are that honesty is the best policy and dishonesty is the second best policy.