jfchandler

Hmmm... interesting placement and choice of tattoos... Can't see them on the TV post photos, but they're very visible on the linked page of 15 photos... Wonder where she's been (and doing what) to acquire those....

A pretty girl, for sure. But a bit skinny and boyish figure. And very light on the top... It may be the style, but it was a bit weird looking at a Thai lady with eyes that are more blue than mine... And I'm an Irish paddy by descent.

To the OP...thanks for the posting. The FHM web site has a range of very nice looking ladies there.

House by the Pond is a nice place, with two types of accommodations: an older more traditional set of apartments, and a newer more modern building nearby. I gave it a good long look when I was apartment shopping.

However, although along Sukhumvit generally, it has the disadvantage of being a fair long way (beyond walking) away from the main road and the Skytrain line that runs along it. Thus, if you needed to make that connection (and didn't have your own car or motorcycle), you'd need to take a motorcycle taxi/bus/taxi every time in and out of your home.

YIKES.... some reallly BAD dental advice offered here... Some people have been drinking too much!!!!

For a small chip. you DON"T need a crown. It can be repaired easily. I broke part of a back tooth lately where I'd had an old large filling, and thought I'd need a crown. But the dentist said NO and did an 'inlay" instead that didn't remove any of the remaining good tooth. And mine was a bigger problem. For yours, they don't even need to do that, just a small thing. They can use porcelain (to match your front teeth color) or other material as you desire.

For falang in BKK, one particular dental place comes very highly recommended for quality. I went there for the first time (for my broken tooth about two weeks ago) and I must say I agree. It was good service, and good quality, though not the cheapest price, but certainly within the market range.

http://www.dentalhospitalbangkok.com/index_eng.htm

They are located on Suk Soi 49, about a 10 minute walk away from the nearest Skytrain station. You can find many good comments about them in other threads on TV.

How about this....

http://bmamasstransit.com/images/stories/T...c/replace62.gif

Always send money from the U.S. to Thailand using U.S. dollars. Never ask the U.S. bank to convert to baht, or you will get killed.

FYI, the going rate for baht in Thailand today is about 31.75... So use that as a yardstick for what to expect. Different banks have different rates and fees. So depending on how much you want to send, you might check or call around a bit.

Best thing, for the future, is get a local Thailand account with Bangkok Bank. They have a foreign office in New York with an ABA number, unlike other Thai banks. So if you or the person you're sending money to have an account here with BKK Bank, you can send to them directly by using ACH transfer to the BKK Bank branch in New York. They then send along to the Thailand BKK Bank branch with little fees and good rates.

Mine auto updated also... Unusual to do like that, normally just prompts if you want to update.

Mine worked fine after the update. Do you have any special proxy or other net settings that might have gotten undone through the update???

Actually, the question posed points to one of the things I LOVE about Thailand, and BKK, in particular.

At my past home in America (Los Angeles), the only thing around my home was other homes, as was typical. So, to go anywhere to get anything from any store, everybody did and does have to drive their cars to do anything.

Here, almost any place in Bangkok, wherever you live, you can find food, drink, 7-11s, etc etc. (all the basic needs of life) pretty much within easy walking distance of your home. Here, I know many people on my soi because I'm always walking to and fro, and stopping to chat or say hello. Back home, it was drive into garage and drive out of garage every day. Lived there for years and barely knew the neighbors.

It's a totally different culture because of that, and frankly, I prefer the style here... Not to mention, NEVER needing to have a car in BKK. So, having 7-11s ever-present is just one nice convenience of life here. I always say, take convenience wherever you can find it.

Plus, I worked my way through college working the graveyard shift at 7-11. So, I've got a soft spot in my heart for the place! Hehehehehehe....

I have friends who work for BTS.. I keep asking...and they keep telling me they haven't been told anything in the way of start dates for either of the SkyTrain extensions... But...if you go out there, you can see they're working on them... both beyond OnNut and across the river...

I've heard it all before... All the smokers and business owners had the same tired old FALSE gripes some years ago when California in the U.S.A adopted the same law.

Now years later, everyone there is calm and fine with it... businesses do just as much business as before...and people who want to smoke take it outside to the patio or other places... And the rest of us non-smokers are not forced to breath other people's smoke. It worked there and it can work in Thailand.

To the poster above who compared the ills of drinking and smoking, get a clue... If someone wants to drink themselves under the table, it may harm them, but it doesn't directly harm everyone around them. But if you're a non-smoker in a crowded, stuffy pub with people all around blowing cigarette smoke, it surely harms you and everyone else breathing in the vicinity.

Based on what happened in Calif., non-smokers make a sacrifice in this too... In the past, I'd always TRY to sit outside at places to avoid being inside where people were smoking. But now with the new laws, it's generally safe for non-smokers to sit inside at places. But as a non-smoker you now take your chances sitting outside on patios and such, because those have become the refuge of smokers...

The bottom line is: Smoking is a nasty habit. If smokers want to slowly kill themselves, that's their choice. But they shouldn't be allowed to take everyone else with them.

The above referenced BKK Bank branch is closer to soi 10 on Sukhumvit Road, between Nana and Asoke BTS.

The staff there is good about opening new accounts, and speak at least rudimentary English.

Don't go to the counter downstairs. Go upstairs to the second floor, that's where to open new accounts.

Bring passport and whatever address documentation you have. Min. account balance is 500 baht I believe and maybe a bit more to open.

As mentioned, Skype does have an SMS feature assuming you've put down the minimum $10 U.S. deposit to activate your Skype "Calling Out" account.

I don't know their exact pricing for SMS, but considering their phone call pricing, it's got to be dirt cheap. It didn't sound like the OP had so many SMS to send that cost should be a big issue.

Another reason to get a Skype Call Out account, if for no other, is they give you unlimited free phone calls to any toll-free numbers in the U.S. Using Skype for those calls alone has saved me a fortune, since almost every bank, retailer, etc etc. has a toll-free number these days.

The prior PC-to-Phone service I was using before for international calls had decent rates, but they charged those same country rates per minute regardless of whether it was a regular or toll-free number. Skype is great in that regard.

About the issue of using Thai characters via Skype SMS, here below is what one Skype web page says. Maybe some bigger geek than me out there can translate what this info means in terms of being able to use Thai characters....

Can I use special characters in my SMS?

The maximum number of characters per SMS message through Skype is 160. However, some characters take up more space than the others.

Why is this?

There are two types of formats for SMS - these are 'GSM character set' and 'Unicode character set'.

You can send 160 characters with GSM character set supported characters. However, if you enter a character that is not not listed, the format of the message will change to Unicode. In this case the number of characters is reduced to 70.

This is not a bug but a feature of SMS and unfortunately cannot be altered.

Tastes in food clearly are subjective. But lest other readers be led astray, I'd respectfully disagree about a couple of restaurant knocks below.

1. Sunrise Tacos on Sukhumvit, and now at Emporium and Siam Paragon, is a great addition and upgrade to what had been pretty weak Mexican food offerings in BKK. Admittedly, they're not perfect, and they've at times struggled with growth and new staff issues leading to problems with their food. But on an average day, their food and selection and prices (all rolled together) make Sunrise a very nice choice for a simple, relatively inexpensive Mexican meal (and 10,000% better than the lousy taco place on Silom near Saladaeng BTS). And if you don't agree with my assessment, you can read a couple of other LONG forum threads where many TV readers have given very good reviews to Sunrise.

2. Likewise, Crepes and Co. on Soi 12 is a wonderful, pleasant restaurant with a wide and diverse menu, fair prices and very good and attentive service. If one doesn't like dinner or desert crepes, then it obviously might not be the place to go. But for a pleasant atmosphere and very well prepared, good quality food in BKK, Crepes and Co. is on the mark, and likewise very well reviewed on TV and elsewhere by many patrons.

3. Lastly, I happened to go to Coyote on Soi Convent for the first time the other day. The interior decor of the restaurant is new and very nicely done. They also have two for one margarita happy hours, and probably the widest selection of different flavor margaritas and tequilas I've yet seen in Thailand. Those attributes at least have to earn them some favor. I'm a big Mexican food fan as a native of So. California, and while I wouldn't say the food I had at Coyote was great, it certainly was passable Mexican food for Bangkok (though I'd still prefer Sunrise Tacos on a good day). But, based on the setting, decor, prices and drink selection alone, I'd argue Coyote doesn't belong on anyone's AVOID list for restaurants. Anyone want a Kiwi margarita???

tried once or twice and never go back:

Livingstone steakhouse suk 33

sunrise taco suk,

subway suk 7/1

greek restaurant Athena

crepes suk 12

chok chai steak house suk 23

Bei Otto (german restaurant) suk 20

pomidoro suk

that new york pizza place on suk soi 4 (forget the name, but like the others places it was recommended here on TV)

Coyote soi convent

La Boulange soi convent

Fuji

Regarding the comment about credit cards for airfare, many still charge foreign currency transaction fees, but some do not. I specifically chose and use a Capital One Platinum Visa card from the U.S. because it has NO foreign currency transaction fees on any purchase anywhere in the world, plus No Hassle Travel Rewards points. That's a big advantage living here because you don't get hit for anywhere between 1 and 3% extra.

Re air travel, I go between here and L.A., and consistently find that EVA's Hot Fares available through their web site are the best deals I can find, usually less than $1000 U.S. now for LA BKK LA travel. Yes, it always seems less expensive to start the ticketed trip in the U.S., as opposed to starting it here. But for me, that means trying to find one-year return tickets, which sometimes can be difficult.

Clearly, the details are going to vary by individual provider.

But, when I shopped a variety of Thai companies last year, most had exclusions for the U.S. (only emergency coverage). And many, but not all, had exclusions for Japan and/or Europe.

I remember some divided their coverage into three categories: full coverage in Thailand, good coverage elsewhere in the world except the USA, and limited coverage in the USA (because of the high costs there).

To others who may not recognize this, two of the most common forms of gluten-free bread are those made from either RICE or POTATO flours. What the OP particularly needs to avoid is WHEAT.

I'd "third" the vote for the BBCO at the Marriott, also for other reasons including

1) the nice variety of choices they always have including sliced meats, veggie options, XXX-salad varieties and other

2) they use a variety of different breads in their sandwiches, all of which are good and fresh

3) they have discounts in the evenings on their sandwich and baked goods items.

But, as far as I can tell, they don't really sell full loafs of bread like what they use for their own sandwiches. And, much of the loaf bread in the local stores is pretty crappy. So when I want to buy good bread for making sandwiches at home, the best option I've found is the half-loafs of wheat bread sold by Au Bon Pain. Toasted or fresh, it's good....

PS... as to the OP's question, macro is the shooting mode on digital cameras for taking images of objects very close up to the lens...as opposed to the more normal X feet away exposures.

There are some pretty good, high-res flatbed scanners on the market (under $200 U.S.) out there that include good quality OCR software.

One advantage to using a scanner is that the scanning and OCR process can be a unified one step automated process, all handled by the scanner software with each two-page scan. It also benefits from you having constant and consistent exposures for your scanned image files, instead of having to struggle with camera distances and lighting variations.

From my years in governmnt, whenever anybody needed to generate digital files of printed material, they always went the scanner route. I can't recall anyone I know ever going the route of using a digital camera to generate OCR output on a large scale document basis.

For the non technical folks out there, including the OP, there's a nice, simple small FREE software package called Belarc (Google "Belarc Advisor") that you download and easily install on your PC... Then, in about 2 mins, the Belarc software will prepare and produce on your screen a complete report on your computer's hardware and software, including such details as how much memory your PC has and in what configuration it's installed.

Then, you can go online to any number of broad retail computer memory providers, enter the make and model of your PC (for non-Thai models), and the sites will tell you how much maximum memory your computer can hold, in what sizes of chips, and how they can be installed. Some sites like that are Kingston, Crucial and Simpletech from the U.S.

As another poster said, memory is cheap these days, and usually pretty easy to install. In general, Windows XP systems want to have at least 512 MB (megabytes) of memory, while Windows Vista is recommended for 1 GB (gigabyte). If your PC less, that could be contributing to the problem.

Another potential cause of the OP's reported problem is a hard disk drive that is either wearing out or filled to capacity or excessively fragmented. You should use the Disk Cleanup (gets rid of accumulated junk files such as from web browsing) and Disk Defragment (compacts file fragments stored on your disk) utilities provided in Windows to help maintain your hard drive and also see if disk problems (instead of memory) might be the source of your problem.

Lastly, if everything else on your computer has stayed the same, and the hard drive whirring problem was not occurring before, another potential cause could be a virus or similar malware infection. Make sure your PC is running a good anti-virus/anti-malware program that's regularly updated with virus definition updates. If you don't have that, there are several that are available for free trial downloads. You can install and then have them run a full scan of your system to check for problems.

Just by way of comparison, you might be interested to know that fair numbers of U.S. universities have been turning over their student and sometimes also administrative/faculty e-mail systems to providers like Google and Hotmail, and those companies have been receptive to setting up locally tailored solutions.

The California State university campus where I formerly worked, 35,000+ students, used to have nothing but grief in trying to main its e-mail system and servers onsite. Something was always going down or wrong, and they were relying on a combination of vendor provided systems and local/university staff support. It always seemed a terrible solution. The vendors didn't really know the campus. And the local IT folks didn't really understand all the nuts and bolts of the vendor provided solutions they were maintaining/overseeing.

My former campus for now has kept its own e-mail systems, but lately changed providers trying to get a better result. But there has been a fair amount of movement in recent years among other big campuses in the U.S. to turn over their systems to the BIG BOYS of e-mail. I think they figured, if Hotmail and Google can support the world, they can probably support a university...

..Not that the same solution makes sense for the Thai government. Just to note, the Thai govt. isn't the only institution that struggles to have a function/operating e-mail system. Though, from what I've heard, theirs certainly is far worse than ours!!!! Hehehehehe....

The Federal is OK, but a bit old and graying around the edges....

There are other, better choices on the same soi, and elsewhere nearby.... unless you just like OLD places!

Gee...the last time was SO successful... Can't imagine they don't want to try again!!!

Seriously..I think history will show it was the right thing to do.. at the outset/under the circumstances... But everything after that... BLAH!!!!!

I live in BKK but don't have a work permit yet, because I'm not yet working...

So, when I went to SCB on Suk Soi 11, they hassled me and insisted I needed a work permit to open a savings account.

Eventually, I ended up calling the SCB call center, where they told me the branch had been wrong and the bank policy permited someone with a business or retirement visa (and a passport) to open an account.

The call center suggested their Siam Paragon or Siam Square branches, both a short walk from the Siam/Central BTS Station. I ended up going to the Siam Square branch where, after initially getting the same wrong answer as Sukhumvit and thus having to talk to an asst. manager and explain my chat with the call center, they finally agreed to open the account and were most helpful after that. It was having the word from the call center about the bank's true policy that turned the deal.

Later, I've dealt with the SCB branch in Nana Plaza, Soi 3 and Suk Road, and the staff there seems really pleasant and helpful. And that branch also stays open on weekends unlike many others. But, I've never tried to open an account there, so I can't say how they'd respond to that. For other business, though, the ladies there have been great.

In general, some of the banks in BKK seem to be harder on this point than branches upcountry. BKK Bank is a breeze with only passport required, and Kasikorn gets many good reports on that issue also. SCB is hit and miss by branch when it comes to opening an account without a work permit. But once you have an account, I find they're really good to deal with and it's the Thai bank account I use the most, including for online banking and bill payments.

I've used both of these successfully... The first one is probably a bit better in functionality.

http://www.acasystems.com/en/screenrecorder/

http://www.download.com/Print-Screen-Delux...4-10474308.html

Thaihome... re BofA, where I also have accounts, be careful to distinguish between two different and separate ways of sending money:

What I was mainly talking about, was sending international wire transfers via BofA or other U.S. banks while residing in Thailand. That's what the OP had asked about. In the case of wire transfers, there is no freezing of accounts issue.

What I think you're talking about, is a separate issue with BofA and some other banks. And that is not international wire transfers, but instead doing online linking of a BofA account to the BKK Bank ABA in New York, and then using an ACH transfer to send money to Thailand. That is not a wire transfer, but rather an ACH transfer.

Indeed, posters have reported problems with the ACH links at BofA and elsewhere at times getting frozen or deleted. It seems to be particularly a problem when someone tries to send more than $5000 via that means. Under that amount seems to go OK, from various reports.

But those issues are separate and distinct from remotely requesting an international wire transfer to Thailand. And, likewise, there's no account freezing issue about doing a domestic wire transfer from a U.S. bank to BKK Bank's New York branch, and then having it credited onward to the sender's BKK Bank account local in Thailand.

Hope that clarifies it a bit. --John.