Xangsamhua

Very disappointing performance from the Lions. They'd shown real spirit in the first two games, but never really challenged today.

Maybe the Suns are a really good side this year.

Suns running away with it now. 42 points ahead at three quarter time. The last nine scores (5.4) have come from Suns players.

What character this Hawthorn side has! What a message to send the other teams.

Happy Birthday St Kilda. 141 today. That's 140 wasted years

Funny how we stick with clubs that have little success. I followed Footscray for 32 years until I moved to Brisbane. Then followed the Bears/Lions and went to the games. What a masochist, until the mid to late 90s (but wooden spoon in 98)!! It all came came good in 2001-2004 but has been bleak since then. Still, I was at the "miracle on grass" last year and saw reason for optimism last Sunday, so the fire still burns.

Well done Saints for having made it to 141. A good effort. The oldest professional football club in the world is Notts County (League 1, FA), and they are only 11 years older than St Kilda. (I don't know when the Saints started paying players.)

And kudos to Saints supporters for hanging in there.

Not comfortable with this week's tips. I suspect a crash and burn.

But wouldn't be comfortable tipping the other way either.

Freo

Richmond

Adelaide

Brisbane

WCE

Geelong

GWS

Port

Essendon

Was at the Gabba today. Lions not bad in a 25-point defeat. Plenty of endeavour, but lots of silly mistakes and turnovers. Geelong are just a classier side.

Lions won't play finals in 2014, but if they keep going as they are they'll be nobody's easybeats. Perhaps 10 wins again.

They've got a couple of young stars in Sam Mayes (second year) and James Aish (draftee from Norwood).

Xang's tips for Rd 2:

Tigers

Hawks

Giants

Port

Freo

Swans

Cats

Eagles

North

(I almost typed "South" for Swans. Does anyone else over 60 do that mental flip? Brain associates mental image of red and white with South and the word comes out unbidden? I'll try to purge it. Apologies to Swannies fans.)

I can't find the Fantasy league results for Thailand Mob. Can someone help, please.

I only got 1273.

will be good to see who gets what right for the first round, buggered if I can even remember who I picked let alone who is in my dream team

Go to http://tipping.afl.com.au/home.jsp

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The Thaivisa members' leaderboard will come up.

And you should know because you are leading with 7/9 don't worry I will peg you back next week 6/9

Do I get the meat tray?

will be good to see who gets what right for the first round, buggered if I can even remember who I picked let alone who is in my dream team

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Click on Comps (Thailand Mob)

The Thaivisa members' leaderboard will come up.

The Thai school system needs to copy what the South Korean system is currently doing. They need to focus English at the elementary level. It makes no sense to start learning a new language when the children are in high school. Early intervention leads to success. I'm a special education teacher and when you implement programs at a young age you have a good chance that students will be successful.

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Starting early, if done in sufficient quantity (i.e. several hours a week, not just token "dripfeed", is good for two reasons: (1) It gives kids more time to master the language (and it does take a lot of time), and (2) younger kids master the pronunciation better.

However, older students, e.g. about P6, can pick up the concepts (grammar, pragmatics) quicker and can learn to read and write quickly compared to little kids. Older kids have all the linguistic experience of learning their first language, formally and informally, that can be transferred to the second language.

Older starters are more likely to retain their mother tongue accent (or a stronger one) than younger students, but accent really isn't an issue if it's not hard to understand. After all, French-accented English maybe has higher status than some native regional accents. And it's demonstrable that two non-native speakers of English can understand each other quite clearly where a native speaker may have difficulty. (Why is this? I remember ESL teachers in my hometown jokingly boasting that they can "speak ESL".)

Lions not disgraced at Aurora Stadium.

Only two points in it late in the 3rd quarter, but Hawthorn too much class when they stepped up a level.

Brown got 4.

I'll be at the Gabba next Sunday to see the boys take on Geelong. Was there to see them beat the Cats in freakish fashion last year (from 52 points down late in the 3rd quarter).

Poor old North - eight R1 losses in a row. Where's that Shinboner spirit?

Only one of us tipped Port. Well done Xangsamhua.

Fluke.

The Lions wore them out last week.

GWS for Premiers!!

GWS 99 Swans 67.

Wouldnt be surprised if they shovel bag loads of it here. There's always been suspicion around what goes into the beer in Thailand.

Sometimes the beer i buy is flat when you pull the top.Its very difficult keeping perishables from going off in the tropics.

Singha claim there's no formaldehyde in their beer and never has been. I believe them on the first claim but wonder about the second.

In the 60s and 70s it was rumoured that Singha had formaldehyde in it. In 1973 I took my family from Laos to Pattaya for a five-day holiday and put two small Singhas in the freezer for four days. When I took them out they hadn't frozen at all. I thought that it was because of the formaldehyde, but it may have been something else they put in the beer. (The freezer was working OK with other stuff.)

Xang's Round 1 tips:

Freo

Swans

Suns

Port

Cats

North

Hawks

Saints

WCE

I hated School and learning ''French'' plus i was crap at it, no interest.. Then i moved to ''France'' and within 6-9 months, picked it up easily enough..

And this goes to the heart of the matter.

How many children in Thai schools are really motivated to learn English? How many of them will be required to use it outside the classroom, in the community? Not in ten years' time, but today or tomorrow? Not a great many, I think. And if they have no immediate or near-immediate need to use the language, the motivation to work at it will be low.

A need to use English in real situations, obvious benefits in being able to do so, and the availability of a highly competent teacher/mentor - these are the ingredients for successful language learning. They're not widely available to Thai schoolchildren, or even their teachers. Without them I really question the wisdom of trying to teach English to all Thai kids at school.

May I suggest the following to Minister Chaturon.

1. Abandon the widespread one-period-a-week English offerings.

2. Provide a minimum of five periods per class a week in schools that apply for it and can provide a TESOL-qualified teacher of English for each class.

3. Make English an elective in schools where the enrolment is high enough to enable more than one foreign language to be offered.

4. Make English elective in university courses except for those where English is essential.

5. Use the money made available by withdrawal of funds from ineffective, token English classes to fund (1) bilingual school programs, where subject content and concepts are taught in both English and Thai, (2) high-intensive English programs for teachers who wish to teach English, and (3) high-intensive English for Specific Purposes programs for others (e.g. business people, service sector employees, police and civil servants) who have an immediate or imminent need to use English at a medium or advanced level.

As Robert the Bruce says above, if you really need to learn a language and have the opportunity to learn in a realistic environment (learning by using) you will do so much more efficiently that by sitting reluctantly in a classroom with 40 or 50 other variably reluctant classmates.

It's not rocket science to find ways to change that. Send those who want to become English teachers to an English speaking country, let them attend a university for four years and when they come back, they speak English and don't lose that much face anymore.

Amazing is that this goes on for so many years.-

You're right Sirchai. This is absolutely necessary and has been obvious for years. And if the MoE can't afford to send teachers to somewhere like Australia or New Zealand there are some excellent TESOL programs at RECSAM in Penang and RELC in Singapore that are much cheaper and probably much less confronting to a conscientious but unconfident Thai teacher.

I doubt, though, that many MoE policy makers are really serious about the importance of English. They may think it a good thing, something it would be useful to have, but not important enough to seriously invest in. "Thainess" in all its connotations is far more important to them than international communication.

Wasn't this the same monkey that did not want English to be Thailand's second language because he did not want the world to think that Thailand had been colonized?

No. That was a Democrat Minister.

A police officer in Thailand starts at THB7200 a month, unless it's gone up in the last three years. Not much to live on in Bangkok.

I'm not condoning the bribery system, but if police and other government employees were paid a decent salary then it would be much easier to condemn them.

Also, in my experience of 12 years in the Greater Bangkok area, I think they do a good job at keeping the traffic moving in the peak periods.

^^^ I've been mulling this over myself. Here we have all that middle-class welfare that Mr Hockey is unlikely to touch, seeing as his side of politics brought most of it in. And it will in fact be added to shortly with the ridiculous paid parental leave of up to $75,000 for mothers to take six months off work. Yet they are attacking the OAP and Medicare. Why? They've sniffed the wind and have a good idea what the majority are thinking / feeling is all that I can come up with.

Abbott has a PR issue with Woman.

It was just spin for the then Labor government, but the mud stuck. Tthe Parental Care scheme is portray TA as being 'woman focused' ... again ... spin.

I agreed with Labor's policy and I think that the coalition's one is to generous.

I'm not sure what part of Medicare is being attacked, but I am in favour of a 'co-payment' when you visit the Doctor ... cira $10 ... it places a value on visiting the GP. Ditto Emergency at the Hospital.

What part of the OAP is the Government attacking?

OAP - similar friendly-media softening up underway, talk of raising the eligibility age to 70 and even taking the value of one's home into account in the asset test.

What I've seen in the press is that they're talking about pensioners who live in "expensive" homes. I didn't see any indicator of what was "expensive" though.

Woohoo! I'm in.

Thanks guys.

Maybe the problem was that I was clicking on the little arrow next to "Join this comp".