meadish_sweetball

With the SUV type prams so popular in the West at the moment, I would agree it is a bad idea to try to take one down an escalator, but the small ones are very easy to maneuver with some practice. For two adults, I honestly don't see what could go wrong, unless one is severely coordinationally challenged.

Now that you mention it, I do have EDGE Internet access on my mobile phone, I just need to dig out the codes DTAC gave me to turn it on and off... Thanks for the reminder. Any other tips still welcome.

Important to separate 'já' / 'jaa' (which are Standard Thai 'sweet particles' that can be used by men in the way Peppy explains) and 'jao' which is the Northern Thai dialect female polite particle. 'Jao' should not be used by men in a Northern Thai context (except by transgender people or men who like men). To make it a bit more complicated though, based on my limited experience of the Lao language, 'jao' does seem to be acceptable usage for men when speaking Lao.

To be more precise, Firefox (and IE) get stuck when trying to access du104w.dub104.mail.live.com

Turn off the torrent client completely. Reboot the computer, and don't open the torrent client. Does this fix the problem or not?

If yes:

In your torrent client, reduce the number of torrents open simultaneously.

Go to the Preferences or Settings in your Torrent client and reduce the number of allowed open connections per torrent. It could be they are choking your router.

I have a guest from overseas who needs to access Hotmail to check her email. It has been impossible to complete the login procedure for 2 days now. I am on CAT. Getting to the login page is quick and painless, it is the following process that does not work.

Other websites have been a bit glitchy, such as Facebook, but they have mostly worked during the same time period.

I've run a tracert to the login server and it does get through in 23 hops, but there is major lag. Is there a setting in Firefox that can be fiddled with to increase the time-out period?

Any other ideas? (short of going to an Internet cafe, changing ISPs and changing email providers).

<br />

Hi,<br /><br />A ***** send this picture to my gf on hi5 website. Is anyone could say me what's mean ?<br />(attachment)<br /><br />Thank you very much !

<br /><br />I believe it says, "I'm sending you a message on a day when my heart is full with missing you."<br />

Agree with the translation. The word 'mén(t)' is short for 'comment' as in the "Comment" function in blogs and social networking sites such as hi5, Facebook, MySpace etc.

If you are of average intelligence and coordination with just a week or so (yes, really) driving experience it is nearly impossible to fail.<br /><br />General tests: They test your ability to see colours, judge distance etc. When I did it, nobody failed, not even a woman who clearly was unable to judge distance properly. She got it wrong 10 times or so, until she got it right by accident, then they passed her as well.<br /><br />Theory: No preparatory course. You are instructed to watch a 1 hour instruction video on Thai traffic regulations in English, and you are given a sheet of road signs to study. When you have finished watching the video, you are placed at a terminal and given a multiple choice test. You need to get a certain percentage right, can't remember exactly but if I recall correctly, perhaps 85%. Not difficult. If you have any questions, you can ask the test staff. When I took the test last year, two questions had been paired with an unrelated set of answers, which meant that none of the answers fitted the question.<br /><br />Practice: There is a small, closed driving circuit around the back of the test centre. You need to bring your own vehicle to drive. You sit alone in the car and there will be other cars in front of you as well as behind you, you wait for the car in front of you to finish and then it is your turn. <br /><br />You will be told to drive along the circuit, make a turn or two and then you will end up in front of a small quite steep artificial hill. When the car in front of you has finished, you drive up onto the ascension to the hill, make a full stop and then you are supposed to start the car without the engine stopping or sliding back past a line drawn on the road. If you fail you will get the chance to do it again. You will be told to use the pedal brake, but since you are alone in the car nobody will know or care if you use the handbrake instead.<br /><br />After this, you will be told to drive straight through a row of stakes on each side, and then reverse back the same way without hitting the stakes. <br /><br />The final test is driving up next to a curb/footpath so that the car is straight and close enough to the curb not to exceed a line drawn on the side. <br /><br />Both of these tests, you will also get the chance to do more than once if you should fail. <br /><br />I am not a particularly good precision driver but had no problems passing the test. No bribes expected or needed.<br /><br />There is a subforum on Thaivisa specifically for driving where you can find information about car ownership etc.

Your first license is valid for one year. If you extend it the following year, the next one is valid for 5 years. Thai citizens with Thai driving licenses connverted into international (which is only a monetary transaction, no additional testing needed) can drive for 6 months in Sweden. I don't know if this would work for a non-Thai resident Swedish citizen with a Thai license though.

1. So what is the cause of the loneliness, then? 2. Love that is different.

It's quite ambiguous.

The only reason it has not happened is because nobody has thought to put them there yet. Speaking for myself, I rarely participate here these days, and I was not even aware that there is an obituary section.   What you are saying about the old schism is true, but there is no conspiracy or bad blood as a result.   I'll take a look and see what format to use, etc.

You could have just asked, you know?

It's a misspelling of a word meaning 'to fantasize'/'to imagine'/'to visualize'. จินตนาการ jintanaakaan.

The sentence as a whole is a bit incoherent.  "Funny, an occurrence at work that was not quite like average person made (me) fantasize exactly like movie I have seen"  

My interpretation:  This funny thing happened at work that [you wouldn't normally expect]/[wouldn't happen to most people]... it made me fantasize... it was just like movies/[a movie] I've seen.

I keep looking up all the guesses in the E/T dictionary but no luck, I am new to this sort of talk, ธรรม I translate as goodness but there must be more comfortable words.

In this context I think perhaps it could be left out, to leave something like 'practice of observing my mind, perceptions and feelings' for the phrase, making it more transparent for a reader who is not familiar with Buddhist concepts.

The meanings of the word ธรรม in a Buddhist context:

Dhamma (Pāli: धम्म) or Dharma (Sanskrit: धर्म) in Buddhism has two primary meanings:

• the teachings of the Buddha which lead to enlightenment (The Universal law of nature)
• the constituent factors of the experienced world (The characteristic of elements)

ปฏิบัติธรรมสังเกตจิต หรือ เวทนา

...my/the (dharma/[dharmic??]) practice of observing my mind or perceptions and feelings.

To the OP: Is there any chance you could post the answer too? I suspect that it might help in understanding everything in the question.

An electronic translator is not going to help that much in teaching you the language. A traditional language course is probably better value for your money.

What an electronic translator can do is help you get your point across on the spot in case of a communication breakdown.

The dictionaries do Standard Thai which is not quite the same thing as Bangkok Thai. Standard Thai is the formal language taught in schools and used by newsreaders and in other formal functions. While it is based on the Central Plains dialect, it is much more carefully pronounced than what most people in Bangkok use in a non formal setting.

I doubt any commercial outfit will have bothered to develop text to speech synthesis for Northern Thai. The usefulness of Northern Thai is quite limited. Unless you plan to retire to a remote village in the North, Standard Thai will be much more useful. You can learn Northern Thai through interaction with Northerners after you have learned Standard Thai to a reasonable level.

Shot on Nimman, in Mae Jo and on Nawarat Bridge?

You can check it out any time you like, but you can never leave...

Poetry is the most difficult form of text to translate. A poem where both rhyme, rhythm and meter are strictly observed would be a serious challenge to translate, but that does not mean it is impossible. I have seen some amazing translations of poetry.   I am still not attuned enough to Thai to be able to tell a decent attempt apart from a brilliant one. What I do know is that regardless of language, the task requires somebody who is skilled at poetry as it is an art onto itself; your average educated bilingual person who would otherwise be able to translate a piece of regular prose will not do.

<br />What is "fine" food and what is not is very debatable. If it tastes good and someone wants it and enjoys it, it is fine food to them. <img src='http://static.thaivisa.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /><br />

No it isn't.

Thais can spell foreign names anyway they like

The thing is though, that Thais actually have established ways of spelling names that are common in the English-language world. If you search Thai text corpora of edited texts (i.e. not Google as that will turn up much more variation due to typos and misspellings, deliberate or not, as with any language) you'll see there is relative uniformity.

You can choose to deviate from this, but should be aware that Thais are likely to see your differing spelling as 'off' or perhaps even 'incorrect' because it differs from what they are used to.

Mixed Thai-Western children are from all types of socio-economic backgrounds, and that means that as adults, they will also be distributed like that, across the board. Some of them learn two languages, others learn just one. Some of them get to travel from an early age and get used to the rest of the world, some stay in Thailand or in their Farangland and consequently become more like the majority there. Some of them will grow up with just one parent, some of them will grow up with their grandparents, some will be abducted, some will live in fairy-tale land.

So they'll become business owners, librarians, beach bums, bakers, shakers, quakers, nuclear physicists, gender shifters, authors, actors, killers, gardeners, ice skaters, golf players, hotel receptionists, embassy staff, soldiers, porn stars, housewives, househusbands, feminists, racists, catalysts, rapists, pacifists, insurgents, cartoonists, conservatives, pianists, anarchists, florists, liberals, talk-show hosts, motorcyclists, nationalists, lawyers, communists and libertarians.

My advice:

Khao San Road

Phra Athit Road

Avoid the others.

I'm writing a small article on a few neighborhoods in Bangkok and want to get the transliteration just right. I'm going with "Khao San Road" for the first but would like to know why some people are writing it as "Kaoh Sarn Road" and if it makes a huge difference?

It does not make a huge difference, but in my view it is best that you use the same romanization that is seen on the road signs, because this is the only thing approaching a standard that is available. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Thai_General_System_of_Transcription )

Some would write 'sarn' to indicate a long vowel. This works reasonably well for people from Southern England (except the South-West), Australia, South Africa and New Zealand (except those from around Invercargill). It does not work well for anyone else, as they will want to pronounce the 'r' which creates a sound that does not exist in Thai.

Another option would be to write it 'sahn' or 'saan' to indicate the long vowel, but since the pronunciation will not be perfect anyway, just use RTGS.

Pra Athit vs. Phra Athit

The second one is more consistent and follows RTGS. The function of the 'h' after a consonant is to show the consonant sound is aspirated. So if you for some reason want to use the first spelling, 'pra' then it follows that the second word should be spelt 'atit', too, as the 'h' in that word is there for the same reason.

'Arthit' - here we see an attempt by a Southern Englishman, Australian, New Zealander (but likely not Invercargillian) or South African to show that the first vowel sound in the word should be long. Don't use it, is my advice.

Anyone who wishes to make a donation to the Harris family but is unable to make it to the funeral to hand it over in person, feel free to PM me for bank account details. Also, if you plan to attend the cremation on Thursday or any of the preceding days, please PM the Snark as soon as you can, since they need to plan how much food and drink to get for each day.

Loi Krapong can be a wonderful occasion.

RID 'dresses it up' but does use พูดจา for พูด, my RID says that จา is the North Eastern dialect for พูด, กล่าว so is that saying something about the form of speech?

No, พูดจา is just a so called 'elaborate expression' and a more elegant way of saying the same thing as พูด.