AyG

Most of me mates who eat murdered stuff reckon the sausages are better than those they sacrifice living things for.

There was a documentary on Thai food a couple of years ago after a vegan (jae) food manufacturer was raided and found to be putting real seafood in its mock seafood. It's perfectly plausible to believe that something similar may be happening to make these sausages taste so good

In Thailand, if you want to be sure what you're eating, cook it yourself from scratch - and try not to worry about the insecticides and other toxins. (A report a few weeks ago showed that a significant proportion of food labelled as "organic" in Thailand in fact has high levels of insecticide residue.)

If he/she likens himself/herself to a donkey then [implied] I [informal] may well be a buffalo for having agreed to put up with him/her for such a long time.

Would electrolyte powder from the local pharmacy, mixed with water, be suitable for dogs? i am not a vet nor any kind of physician, so am just posing the question.

i myself was having a tough time today until I remeMbered i had skipped my electrolytes. Corrected that, feeling stonger now.

Dog's don't sweat, so they don't need electrolyte powder (except, possibly when they're vomiting a lot or have sever diarrhea). I doubt it would do any harm, but might place an extra strain on the kidneys of an elderly dog, or one with kidney disease.

Anyone out there know how to help those poor neglectet dogs in my neighborhood?

Would providing correct food and water help?

What does the vet say?

Access to clean water is always a problem for street dogs, so putting out some fresh water every day would be a kindness - particularly in this weather.

Whilst most street dogs do in my experience get fed to a certain extent, the food is usually table scraps with lots of rice. Giving them even a little of a properly-balanced food, or fish/meat scraps would help improve their lot. (That said, many street dogs will be unfamiliar with dry dog food and some may disdain it.)

However, the real problem is disease - ticks, fleas, heartworm, distemper, parvovirus, the lot. Almost inevitably, if a dog isn't taken off the street and given medical care it will die pretty quickly. Food and drink sadly only staves off the inevitable.

Sorry. Mistake.

Not as good with obscure technical topics like this, they're probably working on improving say the medical terminology before they get to "high end hi-fi"

Unlikely. The way Google Translate works is statistical. They compare texts which are available in two different languages and use a matching algorithm to determine which words and phrases correspond to each other. I believe they started their work with European Community documents for this, and subsequently broadened their scope to the web. This is very different from the traditional, rule-based approach for machine translation.

Improvements will come from (i) improvements in the matching algorithm, (ii) a larger corpus of bilingual texts available on the Internet for them to process. I don't believe that any improvements are going to be thematic. The poor results with obscure topics are simply because there aren't enough texts on these topics available on the Internet in both Thai and English to be analysed.

Here's a link to a more indepth analysis of what clues Thais look for to tell letters apart in unusual fonts:

http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf8/cooper1996how.pdf

There's a rather better copy of what is virtually the same document available at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wordingham/thai/tellthai_preface.htm

The book AUA Thai Course Reading (http://www.amazon.com/A-U-A-Language-Center-Thai-Course/dp/0877275114) has an excellent appendix which covers various handwriting styles from khǐan tua bancoŋ through khǐan wàt and variants of each letter.

I have seen it - but it was a few months ago. I'm pretty sure it was in Villa (though it might have been TOPS). Next to the peanut butter, perhaps not unsurprisingly.

Just curious though, is there an inedible almond butter? And if so, what's it used for?

I cant believe the hostility towards this request!

The guy runs a business not a free internet cafe. Post the router details its easiest to block there but remember if they are tech savvy they will get around it with a proxy.....

Then all you need to do is block the proxies too.

That's a lot of CGI proxy's to add!

Which is exactly why I suggested either using a whitelist approach or using OpenDNS, rather than trying a DIY blocking approach; they have the resources to monitor available proxies.

I cant believe the hostility towards this request!

The guy runs a business not a free internet cafe. Post the router details its easiest to block there but remember if they are tech savvy they will get around it with a proxy.....

Then all you need to do is block the proxies too.

Perhaps rather than blacklisting specific websites, it might be more prudent to block all websites, then whitelisting ones relevant to business.

Anyway, do consider a service such as OpenDNS. This allows blacklisting by category, rather than individual website, so is more effective. (It can be bypassed, but then any other solution can be, too. You just have to hope that your staff aren't technically savvy or motivated enough to do so.)

http://www.opendns.com/

Easy. Revoke your US citizenship.

.

I hope you're more intelligent than to suggest something like that, if in fact you're serious.

That idea is simply preposterous and worthless advice.

I'm absolutely serious.

The OP said that he "... would not be returning to the US other than for a short visit."

And lots of people are giving up their US citizenship because of onerous taxation and reporting. See, for example:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/should-you-renounce-your-citizenship-144048875.html

http://rt.com/usa/us-tax-income-pay-244/

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/more_citizens_vote_with_their_feet_CTshpQumBXMZmUXsfw6OTM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/9904314/Americans-renouncing-citizenship-to-become-British-thanks-to-tax-rise.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-01/wealthy-americans-queue-to-give-up-passports-in-swiss-capital.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/16/us-usa-citizen-renounce-idUSBRE83F0UF20120416

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-03/tax-changes-drive-surge-americans-recouncing-citizenship

America is one of the very few countries that taxes its citizens on their worldwide income. It also doesn't provide a decent safety net for its citizens who fall on hard times (unlike "socialist" European countries).

Frankly, I rather struggle to see why any expat not planning on returning to the US would retain their citizenship.

And as for "I have an MBA so once I know Thai there shouldn't be a problem finding a decent job" - dream on!

There are loads of people here with MBAs who read, speak and write Thai fluently. (In fact, it's their native tongue.) Why would an employer employ a foreign MBA with all the extra paperwork and hassle entailed?

Easy. Revoke your US citizenship.

Buy yourself an anteater or two.

That said, a house overrun with anteaters may be worse than one plagued by termites.

A few things missing I think (but I only quickly scanned the document):

ใ and ไ are both usually short vowels, but the tone follow the rules for long vowels.

No reference to leading ห and อ.

No reference to which consonant determines which rule to apply when the word begins with a consonant cluster.

No reference to how with maitaikhu the tone mark can't be shown, so you can't actually determine the tone from the writing.

No reference to how consonants "killed" by karan are ignored in determining whether a syllable is live or dead.

And then there are all the irregularities ...

There was a Mexican food festival here last year - http://www.manager.co.th/Travel/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9530000152057 - but that's not much help.

Haven't heard of anything else, though. Perhaps one of the places along Soi Farang (Naresuan 1) has something?

Chirawat Sitarachiyanon said this first-car tax-rebate scheme did not really address the problem of transportation for people with no cars,

because many people making use of this scheme already owned a car.

If many people using the scheme already have a car, then it cannot be first-car tax-rebate scheme or maybe Chirawat isn't the brightest of light bulbs?

Have a poor relative who hasn't owned a car? Buy a car in their name, but use it yourself.

If you want help, I suggest you post this as text, rather than an image.

In yesterday's budget the Chancellor announced that the IHT-exempt amount that a UK domiciled individual can transfer to a non UK domiciled spouse/civil partner is to rise from £55,000 to £325,000.

Given how difficult it can be to be deemed non-domiciled, this is a positive move and removes one form of government discrimination against those of us who have foreign partners.

Sorry I can't type in Thai, and use but two fingers to type in English, but another common phrase is phii taa bot, the blind spirit, or bogeyman as it is used to scare young children in the same sense that we use the term bogeyman.

Close, but not quite right. The ghost is ผีตาโบ๋ (phii taa boh) - literally the ghost with hollow or sunken eyes. But yes, very much used to scare young children.

กรุณาเก็บรองเท้าเข้าห้องพักด้วยนะครับ

Please keep your shoes in your room.

It must be a popular one, because it is listed on Thai-language.com

It may be popular, but it's not right. ห้องพัก means recreation room/waiting room/lounge - not apartment.

And, generally speaking, people prefer to be ordered around by women, so ค่ะ rather than ครับ.