retiree

I assume you mean they are broadcasting letterboxed widescreen content within the 4:3 panel ?? AS such you get to see the OAR or closer to it for movies.. Again great news.

You assume wrong. They are not broadcasting the letterbox. Rather, they're broadcasting the full 16x9 picture but squeezing it into 4x3. If you've ever seen a Cinemascope picture without the Cinemascope lens you get the idea: lots of tall, thin folks. Works pretty well for the Botero flicks, but that's about it.

Retiree

Truevisions/UBC incompetence? Don't get me started!

How about the habit of broadcasting (esp. on their movie channel) in 16x9 rather than 4x3 format. No, the adjustment in the settop box does not fix this. And no, it's not the signal they receive (the usual excuse) because they're playing these DVDs themselves (and have frequently shown them in the past in 4x3). My guess is that it looks fine on their widescreen monitors, so they just don't bother thinking about 99% of their subscribers.

And in sports -- esp. American basketball or football -- games will often run long. But even though they know this on the next day rebroadcast (and have to shorten something to fit their time slot), as likely as not they show the full pre-game and halftime shows -- but cut out the third quarter!

Sigh...

Retiree

Greetings. Can I possibly get a recommendation for a (female) gynecologist in Bangkok? My partner (36) is not getting a clear explanation of risk/benefit of treatment options at Phaya Thai II for what appears to be endometriosis (typical interaction: "Why don't you have some children? Or wait a few years and have a hysterectomy? But right now, would you rather have pills or an injection?").

Many thanks in advance for any pointers.

True Series has always had this type of self promoting advertising between one programme finishing and another starting, usually for about 10 to 15 minutes. Could it be that this advertising time is being broken down into smaller segments but at a higher frequency? Not that i'm in favour as it interupts viewing pleasure (if you could call it that!), but from a broadcasting point of view, i guess it would make more sense.

Way back when, programs would run more-or-less back to back. Of course, that requires more shows, so True now uses self-promo ads to avoid 18 minutes of dead air. They are almost certainly starting with program interruptions now to test the waters before trying to sell local adds. Mark my words -- either we try to nip this in the bud, or the local broadcast channels hold the vision of our future ;-)

Retiree

As of last night, True Series has begun to interrupt programming every 8 minutes or so to show advertising. This is not generating revenue -- it's all self-promotion (e.g. for True Series).

Apparently folks are calling in droves to complain. If you'd like to express your opinion, these numbers and e-mail addresses were just provided to me by True (after about an hour on the phone). I'd be interested in knowing corrections or other numbers / e-mail addresses:

Khun Sansuan Saruayjirawat, Deputy Chief Commercial Officer (or something similar)

[email protected]

[email protected]

Khun Wilaiwan, Investor Relations

02 269 2525 / 02 643-8917 (fax 02 699-4321)

[email protected]

Khun Jamorn, Customer Supervisor

[email protected]

Greetings. I have an 800K+ long-term deposit in a local bank. I have already used it to extend (round 5 or so) my retirement visa nearly a year ago. This was before last year's kerfuffle about having to show proof of foreign source for such deposits, so I didn't.

Does anybody know (preferably from personal experience) what Suan Phlu expects now? Do I need to ask my bank to track down old wire-transfer receipts? Or has the kettle cooled down on this particular issue?

Thanks,

Retiree

Sounds like True's transparent proxy is not behaving. ctrl-F5 or shift-reload in Firefox reloads the page from the source, not from your ISP's proxy.

Grrr, do you know what exactly the ctrl-F5 causes to browser to emit? Is there really a magic bullet for getting past proxy servers / caches?

Retiree

Mystery semi-solved (via the missing image-file thread). ctrl-F5 does indeed force a refresh in a way that other approaches (reload, etc) do not.

What's very weird is that it also immediately cleared up other 'stuck' queries (involving different .css files on other international servers) from my other computers, which share the same True ADSL link.

Baffled as to what could possibly cause this. If it happens again I'll trying power-cycling the modem/router.

Retiree

I have a server in the US that suddenly stopped receiving requests from my computer here in Bangkok for at least one .css file. Not only does it fail to load as part of the page it belongs to, but a direct URL to the file (http:// .... .css) returns a blank screen.

Other, nearly identical css files have no problem. I'm using True ADSL.

As far as I can tell, the request is not even leaving Thailand -- it does not show up on my server's access_log and error_log files. I have worked around the problem for the moment by renaming both the .css file, and its associated <link ... reference.

Two questions:

1. Does anybody know who at True can fix this problem?

2. Does anybody have a clue as to how this can even happen?

Thanks,

Retiree

Mystery solved. I spoke to the (German?) chef at their supplier -- apparently he changed the recipe without changing the label: they are now selling frozen RAW sage stuffing! It seems that I was not the only customer who had been taken aback by this, either.

The manager at Foodland was very nice about refunding my money, btw.

Retiree

I'm a long-time fan of the frozen stuffing Foodland sells this time of year. However, this year it has changed from the traditional bread-crumb (kind'a) based recipe to some kind of weird sloshy mess. The batch I bought at the Soi 5 store the other day were all packed 8-12-07.

Now, I have long suspected that Foodland waters some frozen goods before sale (i.e. to increase the weight) -- certainly their salmon drips an incredible amount of water. But before jumping to any conclusions, I'm curious -- does this year's batch match anybody's notion of what stuffing is supposed to be?

Baffled,

Retiree

The blame for greater stringency lies with all the farang who have blatantly taken advantage of less rigorous enforcement of the rules.

[snip]

It's their ball, play by their rules.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm having trouble understanding exactly what "bringing in" money proves:

It's not clear what the transfer limit is (some say 1,000,000 baht; Kasikorn says that they require a "reason," which the branch manager can approve, for transfers over $10,000), but selling baht certainly isn't against the law -- on the contrary, it is actively encouraged these days. And yes, you'll probably lose a few bucks on the conversions, but think of all the merit you'll gain by supporting government policy both coming and going ;-)

Retiree

Well, I finally got through on the phone yesterday. Doesn't seem to have helped ;-)

For the record, the procedure Lomatopo describes gets resolved to

http://www.truevisionstv.com/Schedule/down...ubcschedule.zip

It's the same place as the old URL.

Retiree

Greetings. Does anybody know if there's a new URL for downloading the UBC - TrueVisions schedule? The old address ( http://www.ubctv.com/Schedule/downloadFiles/ubcschedule.zip )

is still providing last month's.

(Yes, I called them, but gave up after 20 minutes on hold ;-( )

Retiree

Basically, it says: If you can retire at age 62, but don't need to take SS early, you should do so anyway.

Uhh.... not exactly. That part of the analysis is based on the assumption that:

" The balance in the retiree’s tax-deferred retirement account at age 62 is $500,000. "

However, even the 'simple analysis,' which doesn't take savings into account, is misleading when it says that:

" ... the retiree in this example who expects to live past 81 years will collect more lifetime Social Security benefits by delaying Social Security collection until 70. "

Lifetime benefits are not the issue for the retiree without substantial savings. Rather, available yearly income is. Delaying SS until 70 provides about 75% more inflation-adjusted income per year, from age 70 on, than early retirement does.

Note that the underlying problem is analogous to the St. Petersburg Paradox

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox ). The paradox arises when a mathematically calculated expected value seems to point to an obvious choice -- but only if one ignores the downside of an outcome that is probabilistically less likely, but could have devastating consequences if it occurs.

In the case of early vs. late SS payments, the marginal utility (i.e. what it means to your lifestyle) of an early payment must be weighed head-to-head against the marginal utility of extra income at an advanced age, even if the odds say that you probably won't live to receive it. Personally, I'm willing to forgo something that has a high expected value but low utility now, in favor of getting high utility -- albeit low expected value -- later on.

Retiree

To get back to the OP's original query, it's important to remember that "life expectancy" means average expectancy.

A widely cited Society of Actuaries 2000 Mortality Table (e.g.

http://www.jhannuities.com/marketing/gener...?ContentId=4219 ) points out that a 65-year-old male in good health has an average --50%-- expectation of living to age 85. He also has a 25% chance of surviving to 92. For a 65-year-old female, the numbers are 88 and 94, respectively. At least one member of a healthy 65-year-old couple has a 72% chance of living to age 85 and a 50% chance of living to age 92.

Under these circumstances, it only makes sense to take Social Security early if you feel you have an adequate safety net -- e.g. substantial existing assets -- because the risk of unexpected longevity only affects how much of your surplus assets will be passed along to your heirs.

On the other hand, if you expect to be largely dependent on SS income, the difference between spending the rest of your life on (and these are typical figures) $US 1K/month (retire at 62), $1.325/mo. (retire at 66), and $1.75/mo. (retire at 70) is substantial, especially as they are inflation adjusted.

Retiree

Here's something that may help your decision process.

The expected lifetime value of your social security is equal, no matter when you start to draw, IF you die more or less when the mortality tables say you should.

However, the facts that a) SS is indexed to US inflation, and that it goes on forever (as far as you're concerned) make it a much safer bet for you to put off filing until 65 or even 70 if you can. It's all about the end game -- delaying now can help insulate you from inflation shocks in your 70's, and make a huge difference in your quality of life when you're in your 80's.

Good luck!

Retiree

The requirement is a bank letter and statement or passport copies. I would ask that they provide the letter the same day - there is no reason they can not do so - ...

Famous last words! They won't provide a letter on the spot because it's a small mall branch. Apparently all letter requests get routed through the main office (which I don't want to traipse to).

Retiree

Sorry to take up bandwidth with such a trivial question, but does anybody know if Suan Phlu will accept a bank statement (signed by a bank officer) re the 800,000 retirement account? Or do they require the traditional letter confirming the current balance? The latter takes two days and two trips; the former I can get on the spot.

Sigh...

Retiree

I bought a 226bw, "c" panel, last month (Bangkok Office Depot, 12,500). I work in two-monitor mode with a Samsung Synmaster 930B (s panel, roughly same height, about 4 inches narrower), bought in the States a couple of years ago.

The main defect rap on the 226bw is backlight bleeding. You can see this if you turn on the blank screensaver -- really bad monitors will get (unevenly) brighter as you go toward the edges. The downside of moderate (and even) backlight bleeding is that blacks won't be as black as they should be.

I was able to test 226bw before purchase in a darkened stock room, and the monitor was fairly even.

At home, I futzed with the calibration until color, brightness, etc. finally approximated my existing 930B. Side-by-side, in a dim room, with black screen-saver, there is clearly more light coming from all across the 226bw screen than from the 930B. And this is with bright 0%, contrast 30% for the 226bw, vs. bright 0%, contrast 15% for the 930B.

Under normal circumstances (e.g. when watching movies, Web browsing, etc.), this is not at all noticeable. However, it is clear to me in my application (reading, using black text on an off-white rgb 250,250,230 background, with WinXP ClearType font smoothing on ) that the 226bw has slightly less contrast than the 930B (even though it's rated 10 times higher).

It is conceivable that there's some bit of adjustment I've missed. And I don't have a 226bw "S" for a two-up comparison.

Bottom line, I'm satisfied with the 226bw, but would be even more so if its contrast ratio matched the 930B.

Retiree

That's kind of how I was seeing it. He wants to know about a Thai receiving the money in their account, yes?

As the OP, yes. But it wasn't a technical query about whether or not Thais owe taxes on work-income from overseas. Rather, it's whether or not poor Khun Lek is likely to get a phone call asking her to explain why the money shouldn't be presumed to be taxable income.

If you are resident in Thailand (stay for 183+ days) and this money was earned in the year you transfer it, then generally speaking, what is bought in is taxable. If however, what you bring in is savings, earned in previous years, then the Revenue Department doesn't care.

Actually, the original question was not about transfers to oneself. It was whether or not Thai nationals had to be concerned about incoming funds being treated as income (or even as a gift, if Thailand has gift taxes).

While another thread has been talking about US authorities looking at outgoing transfers, I'm curious as to whether or not incoming funds -- say, $50,000 over the course of a year or so -- sent into Thailand attract any notice (along the line of "isn't this income that you should be reporting?")? Or is the desire of foreign men to send large amounts of money to Thailand for no reason at all just taken for granted ;-)

Thailands banking system is identical to that in most parts of the developed world. If you can not supply a TAX FILE number they must by law apply with-holding tax.

If you supply a Thai tax ID, is the bank supposed to waive the withholding (on the assumpting that you will be filing a Thai tax return)? Of do they still withhold, but the amount will be refunded if you don't owe Thai tax?

Retiree

I have a very low signal in my hotel. Is there an aerial I can buy to boost it?

I've asked around the computer stores with no luck.

use a USB wireless on a short cable,

get a wok (or wok-shaped strainer),

point wok at signal source,

place wireless device about 3" out from center of work,

fine-tune to taste.

Much more on this at http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

Long term, also consider the Pringles antenna:

http://www.seattlewireless.net/PringlesCantenna