AyG

Surely, the problem isn't with these "teachers" - it's with the schools that employ them, and those schools that don't kick them out when their true nature becomes apparent.

None of the above. At year end complete a tax return. Submit it and wait for the cheque in the post.

Hitting her with a newspaper - or any other punishment - will have no effect unless done when she's actually digging. Even if hit a few seconds after she's stopped she won't associated the punishment with the action. However, far better than hitting her, get a small can, put a few coins in it and close it. Then when you see her digging, rattle the can sharply.

Also, put some of her faeces in the bottom of the hole she digs when you refill it. (And it must be her faeces, not those of another dog.) When she redigs the hole she'll be repulsed and will (eventually, with luck) stop digging.

Ask your wife what brand of Whisky the brothers usually drink - the usual suspects here are (in ascending price), 100 Pipers, Red Label, Black Label, Chivas Regal. Really no point in going overboard, so buy one litre of the next level up from their usual tipple in the USA and put it in your stowed baggage. Don't buy any more drinking alcohol of any sort in duty free. Problem solved.

You don't mention your nationality, but India has recently relaxed the "2 months outside the country" rule for many nationalities. That might make your life a little easier. See, for example http://www.firstpost.com/india/india-relaxes-tourist-visa-norms-544716.html

Clearly, retailers are being pressured someway to fill their fridges with EST.

I wonder whether looking to the owners of Sermsuk casts any light on the situation. Sermsuk is 65% owned by Thai Beverage Logistic. A further 33% is owned by SS NTL - a company widely believed to be closely associated with the Chairman of Thai Beverage.

It's not good for everyone since it can increase the risk of strokes because of the blood thinning effect. It should only be taken on the advice of a qualified medical practitioner.

But to answer your question, the standard dose is 81 mg (which corresponds to one quarter of a USA-standard tablet).

Speaking Vietnamese will give you a head start. In particular, the ability to produce the tones - though the Thai tone system is rather different from (but simper than) the Vietnamese one.

I think you'll find it difficult to get Thai/Vietnamese resources - Thai/English ones are much more common.

As for learning Thai with English versus Vietnamese, most textbooks and courses use one of two systems to represent Thai using Roman letters plus a scattering of IPA characters and tone marks. Both systems are very easy to pick up. There do exist similar systems in other languages such as Japanese. There's probably a similar system using the Vietnamese alphabet (I don't know). However, it wouldn't have any inherent advantage over the Roman alphabet-based one. I have studied Thai with Japanese, Chinese. Korean and Russian students - many of whom spoke little or no English - and none of them had a problem with the Thai language representation.

So, putting aside the system of writing Thai, it really comes down to a matter of lexis: would you find it easier to understand a Thai word from an English explanation or a Vietnamese one?

Given your apparent ability in the English language and the scarcity of Vietnamese-language resources I would think that learning in English would be the better for you.

Good luck with your studies!

Had a similar problem a little while back. It came down to the fact that the proprietary NVIDIA drivers didn't work with the new version of Ubuntu. Only option was to go back to an earlier release of Ubuntu.

Kinokunya in emporium mall has them. Pricey.

Other branches of Kinokuniya have them, too.

I think you'll find it's actually from the Indian Jain religion and the reason it's called Je here is because in Thai they write in เจน์ with the final n silent.

With respect, that's absolute, utter tripe. It's not spelled เจน์ - it's เจ (or, occasionally แจ), and it's from China. See, for example http://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%A8%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%99%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%88

Not sure I'd agree with that as cause and effect, as it demonstrates a possible benefit of having gays in the family a few millenia ago, when we were still hunter-gatherers, but it does nothing to explain why the gay gene continues genetically - if it did, having gays in the family would be so beneficial to those family groups that had them that those groups would dominate and the proportion of gays would have been increasing over time exponentially, which obviously hasn't happened. There are many better and more probable genetic and social options available, such as simple infertility of either male or female, or both.

(1) I believe the same benefits continue, both in terms of supporting family members and in having fewer offspring to compete with the offspring of related "breeders".

(2) A few millennia is but a blink in the eye in terms of genetic timescales - certainly no time for a gene to go from common (10%) to extinction.

(3) I fail to understand the comment about "simple infertility" - how is that a "more probable genetic and social option"? Perhaps you could expand?

(4) I don't think anybody with any scientific background believes in a single "gay gene" - the genetic component is almost certainly polygenetic.

I can't help thinking that this issue is rather back-to-front. The OP is planning on divorcing his wife - a woman, presumably, whose company he can't abide. Why then is he thinking of entering into a long-term business arrangement with her? And is building an apartment block really the best investment available - particularly since such an investment is so illiquid? I can think of plenty more lucrative (and lower risk) financial opportunities.

For that matter, has the OP fully considered the management of the property? Who will be responsible for insuring it? What happens if the insurance lapses and it burns to the ground? What if the wife doesn't want to continue managing the property? (It may well be in her best interests at some time to let the property get rundown and uninhabitable with a view to redeveloping the plot.) And what is the wife decides that the best option for her financially is for her business partner to be six feet under? (After all, she would have the financial motivation.)

I predict this will only end in tears.

Starting from the point stated in the article that "If one of a set of identical twins is gay, there's a 20% probability that the other will be, too", this shows that homosexuality can not be purely genetic in origin. If it were, that probability would be 100%. There clearly must be other - environmental - factors at play.

Positing that those environmental factors are acting in utero really doesn't seem credible. Genetically identical twins come from the same uterus and are exposed to the same levels of hormones, yet there's only a 20% chance that both are gay.

In the vast majority of cases, identical twins are subject to very similar upbringings and (in my opinion) it's much more likely that post-natal environment influences sexual orientation than prenatal.

Incidentally, traditional genetics has no problem whatsoever in explaining the persistence of homosexuality across time. Putting it fairly simply, gay family members increases the chance of children in the family group surviving e.g. through nurturing support, additional food gathering capability, and reduced competition for resources given that the gay members are less likely to produce children. The related children will share many of the gay individuals' genes (including any putative genes associated with homosexuality), and will therefore be more likely to pass them on.

The classic case of genes with deleterious effect persisting is thalassaemia - a blood disorder which until modern times was invariably fatal. It was found that people carrying a single copy of the gene responsible for the disease didn't have symptoms, but also had a level of protection against malaria. (Only people with two copies of the gene were afflicted by the disease.) Thus the carriers of the defective gene were actually more likely to pass the gene on to the next generation than would otherwise be expected.

Might get even better results using fresh ingredients. Dill is widely available in supermarkets, and fresh beetroot is often available at Big C as well as more expensive places such as TOPS, Villa, &c.. Fresh ingredients would also work out cheaper.

Big C also often has lemons (local, I think, not imported) at a very reasonable price.

Thank you for your comments, I`ll admit I was too dam_n quick and opted for the easiest on hand items, I will try fresh but I really want to take this up a notch and try local herbs. My parents are arriving soon and I need to ease them into Thai flavours while they adjust. I thought if I create something better than the norm I`ll be a chef in my Mum`s eyes

I understand.

I've no personal experience of making a Thai-style gravadlax, but if you Google for "Asian style gravlax" or "Asian style gravadlax" you'll find quite a few recipes out there with fresh coriander/kaffir lime leaf/lemongrass/ginger.

Perhaps สิ่งที่เป็นไปไม่ได้ (lit. thing which is impossible).

Might get even better results using fresh ingredients. Dill is widely available in supermarkets, and fresh beetroot is often available at Big C as well as more expensive places such as TOPS, Villa, &c.. Fresh ingredients would also work out cheaper.

Big C also often has lemons (local, I think, not imported) at a very reasonable price.

AyG maybe others ignorance ofmThai food is as bad as your ignorance of the variety of food available on a British Hight St, be careful whom you chastise.

Please enlighten me. The comment was about street food - not food available in other places (I assume shops/pubs/knocking shops) on the High Street.

I think back to walking recently up and down London's Oxford Street - probably the most famous High Street in the UK. The only carts I saw sold stinking burgers and onions - and that was actually on New Oxford Street - and a couple of carts selling popcorn (equally foul-smelling). There are also a few carts around selling candied peanuts and roasted chestnuts, but nothing to write home about.

What is this wonderful panoply of English streetly food delights that is available on the average British High Street? Jellied eels? Maybe "bangers and mash"? Lancashire hotpot? Stargazey pie? Clotted cream teas? Seared black pudding topped with a pan-fried scallop and cauliflower puree?

Please, what am I missing?

I'm more than a little surprised by the ignorance of some of the posters here who seem to have no appreciation whatsoever for the variety and subtlety of Thai cuisine.

I don't think Thais could appreciate the immense variety of Farang food starting from their own cuisine, which lacks variety. Rice or rice noodles with some toppings, and then it's battered to death with chilly.

I rather doubt farang could appreciate the amazing range of Thai dishes if they limit themselves to Thai food which is solely starch with a topping. There's much more to it than that. Just look at the food section of any Thai language bookstore and see how many thousands of dishes there are.

^just look at the "variety" of what sells on the street. It is such a small range, as you mention. I mean the amount of street food dishes around the country is so absurdly low compared to how many stands there are. It is scary really.

Compared with, say the UK, where in the street you can buy burgers with stinky fried onions and the occasional hotdog, I'd say Thailand does pretty well.

Cooking with no regard of what the result looks, smells, and tastes like.

To me this seems like the height of ignorance. Thai people for the most part analyse every dish they eat, commenting on the balance between sweet, sour, spicy and bitter. No vendor could ever make a living if he/she had "no regard for the the result looks, smells and tastes like".

This is how I feel about Thai food. IMO, some dishes are OK, but I have no great love for it. However, some people LOVE the stuff, but I can't figure out why.

It's perfectly OK not to understand the delights of Thai food. I'm not sure, though, that I would personally want to publicise my seemingly total lack of understanding of the cuisine.

I have no problem whatsoever with people living their life in some sort of farang food ghetto in Bangkok, but why on earth do they feel the need to post their narrow-minded, insular, ill-informed, infantile, imbecilic, inane whitterings on a subject about which they are patently totally clueless?

Is the yellow flag used to identify restaurants serving jae food?

Usually the flags only appear during the jae festival - and even then not all restaurants serving jae food will use them. Far better year round to look for the word เจ (jae) outside the restaurant - often written in red on a yellow background.

Jae is not a sect. It's simply a Thai word to describe vegetarian food that is cooked in accordance with certain principles, e.g. the pots and pans must only have ever been used for cooking jae food. It's associated with Chinese Mahayana Buddhist practice.

The food itself tends to be bland and unappetising - unlikely to appeal to most westerners. (Not only are animal products excluded, so are strong smelling/tasting vegetables such as onions and garlic. Also, the food mustn't be overly sweet, sour or spicy. After all, one wouldn't want to stir up sexual desire.)

There's a jae festival once a year during which many Thai people (not just Thai-Chinese) will eat only jae food for a few days. During this time lots of restaurants will add additional jae dishes to their menus.

Oh, and another side effect of the jae festival is that the price of vegetables in the market skyrockets.

I know that i get a hotel room because i read other reviews before i booked saying any stop over of more than 8 hours a room will be provided and you can't access the biz class lounge at least 8 hours before departure.

Actually, you can't use the business class lounge until 10 hours before departure - unless you've already checked in to your allocated hotel room, when they'll let you in for a meal. (Not much use if your hotel is offsite, though.)

Ayutthaya - more than 300 temples to explore - should keep you going for 3-4 days. Also a handful of museums.

Pretty quiet in the evening, but there are plenty of bars on "Soi Farang" (Soi Naresuan 1) and (not touristy) near the Grand Hotel.

In my experience (and I cook for Thai friends quite a lot), and generalising a lot:

(1) Thai people find certain strong tastes difficult: cheese (particularly blue cheese), olives, capers, anchovies.

(2) They dislike very sour food: most pickles (except, curiously, cornichon), anything with a lot of vinegar.

(3) They don't like mushy food: fish pie, faggots.

My list of dishes never-to-be-repeated-for-friends has grown a lot over the years.

Surely you don't need to do anything fancy - just use DOS code page 874 (Thai).