The deal on Uber's exit from SE Asia is in the mainstream news today:

Uber sells South East Asia operations to rival Grab

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43536322

Uber, losing $1 billion a quarter, sells its southeast Asian business

The deal could help Uber slow 2017's $1 billion-per-quarter burn rate.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/uber-sells-southeast-asian-business-to-regional-rival-grab/

Quote

Uber is pulling out of Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Cambodia. According to Bloomberg, this represents a region of 620 million people. The deal includes the operation of UberEats.

Uber Pulls Out of Southeast Asia, Selling Operation to Rival Grab

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber-cedes-southeast-asia-to-chief-rival-grab-in-latest-pullout

Quote

 

The cease-fire marks a victory for Grab as well as SoftBank Group Corp., the biggest shareholder in both companies. Masayoshi Son’s firm is pushing to reduce competition in a Southeast Asian ride-hailing market forecast to reach $20.1 billion by 2025. Uber and Grab, together with two other SoftBank-backed ride-hailing firms -- India’s Ola and China’s Didi Chuxing -- provide about 45 million rides a day, according to SoftBank presentation material in February.

 

Frankly, I've always seen Grab as simply a techie front end for the usual colored taxi types, who never had smartphone booking on their own before.

Whereas with Uber, it was an entirely different thing, and one that the Thai government has long maintained was illegal and supposedly was trying to do away with.

So the announcement of Uber's sale to Grab, either in Thailand or Thailand and all of SE Asia (the announcement isn't quite clear about that) makes me wonder the reason for the sale -- Uber's own internal corporate problems, or pressure by the Thai government and others to eliminate a competitor to the usual taxi m....s....

12 minutes ago, HidyHo said:

What I was told by Uber driver is that the final destination is not known until they pick up the fare; whereas, in Grab, they know where you want to go beforehand.  So I guess they want a longer destination for larger fare.

 

I also like and use Uber more than Grab so will be sadden by this upcoming change.  It's always better to have choice and competition.  I hope a new challenger will come to the market soon.

 

 

I may be wrong about this, and if so, someone please correct me...

But my impression has been, generally, Uber drivers are private citizens working as freelancers on their own, driving regular cars.

Whereas Grab drivers seem to be regular taxi drivers driving the usual colored taxis, who may have affiliated themselves with Grab.

Frankly, I've had better experiences with the ordinary freelancer citizen drivers under Uber than I've had with the regular traditional taxi drivers, whether aligned with Grab or not.

PS - Every time I've ever booked an Uber taxi trip, in order to do the booking in their smartphone app, AFAIK, you have to designate what your starting and ending destinations will be. Lately, though, I think they also added the ability to have multi-stop trips.

Tonight, got an email from Uber saying that they're "combining" their Thailand operations with Grab as of April 8, and everything will run thru the Grab platform after that.

In a separate link on the Uber website, the headline refers to "Information about Uber's Sale to Grab"!!!

Email headline 7:33 pm tonight:

Important announcement: Uber combining operations with Grab in Thailand

https://help.uber.com/h/1e6cfc45-10da-416c-a7a3-d13f75505c34

All I know is, any time I've ever tried to use the Grab service from my home in central BKK, their app shows a dozen or so Grab taxis in my immediate neighborhood, and not a single one of them ever wants to take any of the trips I'm trying to book, usually 5+ km or so.  On the other hand, never had any problem booking a taxi trip with Uber...

2 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

My coverage with them is 20 million baht lifetime, and the policy pretty much covers 100% of normal, customary charges for both OPD and IPD with a daily hospital room rate capped at $8K per night. The coverage obviously excludes any pre-existing conditions noted on the policy at the time it was first issued.

 

Sorry, that should have read, maximum 8,000 baht per night hospital room charge -- not $8K.

BTW, I also have the impression, though can't confirm it, that they have a somewhat better rate structure for customers who kept their policies from the original LMG company vs. customers who have taken out newer policies under Pacific Cross.

I've had Pacific Cross, and their predecessor LMG, for quite a few years. Fortunately, never had any big claim with them.

In the earlier years under LMG, I had a lot of small outpatient claims that were almost always covered without any problem. In those situations, the LMG insurance was honored by the hospitals for most or all of the payment, and I either paid nothing or a very small portion extra.

I've discussed the claims "penalty" notion with my broker, and gotten feedback on that directly from Pacific Cross in the past. Without digging into my files to find my notes on that, my memory says the question of whether they'd raise your premium at the next renewal time, in the event of a large claim, has to do with the amount of the claim vs. your total paid premiums during the life of your coverage. In other words, what the insurance industry would call your loss ratio. And if they did decide to raise your premium, I believe there's some percentage limit on that, like 25% or so...again, doing this from memory.

My coverage with them is 20 million baht lifetime, and the policy pretty much covers 100% of normal, customary charges for both OPD and IPD with a daily hospital room rate capped at $8K per night. The coverage obviously excludes any pre-existing conditions noted on the policy at the time it was first issued.

They used to have a 5 million baht per incident limit, but I believe they did away with that in the past year or two. And I pay less than $1400 U.S. per year for my coverage, which includes a no recent claims discount and an additional 20 or 25% premium discount for accepting a 40,000 baht annual deductible on my policy.

Obviously, if I had insurance claim on the policy, I'd lose the smaller (10%?) no claims discount for that year. But I'd still be entitled to the deductible-based 25% discount, regardless of having a claim/claims and even if I were to end up with a premium increase. Then the deductible discount would simply be taken off the new higher premium.

1 hour ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

Funny you should mention that... Just got back home now after being gone and outside some hours. Turned on the bedroom AC with Filtrete sheets installed. No purifier. Will re-check the bedroom PM2.5 level in one hour.

Well, this is interesting, and deserving of another round of testing. But here's what I found.

I started with a nothing going on bedroom at 5:30 pm and got a 31 mcg reading for PM2.5 after coming home and just checking in the bedroom.

At that point, turned on the Mitsu wall air con on medium fan with relatively new (about one week since installed) Filtrete sheets covering all (100%) of its two regular plastic screen filters. Windows closed. One door to bedroom kept closed except for my brief entry twice to check the PM2.5 sensor.

Checked back 30 minutes later at 6 pm, and got a 14 mcg reading. Checked back another 30 minutes later (1 hour since starting) and got a 7 mcg reading.

Now, if I was running the air purifier in addition to the air con with Filtrete sheets, that would usually bring the PM2.5 levels from 30+ to 5 or less mcg in less than a half hour in the bedroom. So, the decline in PM2.5 was slower than with the purifier, and didn't take the levels down as low as the purifier would, at least at the one hour point. (Normally when I'm in the bedroom, I'm running both the air con there and now lately the purifier as well).

The one caveat I can think of is, while I was testing this in the bedroom, I had the air con and my other air purifier running in the adjoining living room, separated by a closed door. In my past experience, I don't get a lot of air movement between the living room and bedroom with the door kept closed.

But it's certainly possible / likely there's some leakage from room to room, although not enough to produce the kind of PM2.5 reductions I saw in the bedroom at 30 and 60 minutes with just the bedroom air con running with two Filtrete sheets on its filters.

So, I think, it's worth trying again in a situation where:

--I'm running the bedroom AC with Filtete sheets, but NOT running the air purifier in the adjoining living room.

--and probably, another round where I'm just running the bedroom aircon and its normal filters without any Filtrete sheets. 

As I mentioned before, what I read previously about the Filtrete sheets suggested they had some ability to capture small particles down to or close to the PM2.5 size. But it also suggested that the sheets had a pretty limited lifespan for accomplishing that, and would get saturated and less effective pretty quickly. But those notions were just from some quick reading. I didn't find a lot of reporting info directly on the point you've raised.

On 3/20/2018 at 3:01 PM, webfact said:

People in these groups should wear an N95 face mask and stay indoors when air quality is poor, he said.

I'm thinking of all my time in Thailand, and trying to recall how many times I ever saw ANY Thai person wearing an N95 type mask outside of a work situation, and I probably can count those on one hand.

The cheap typical hospital/drugstore paper kind, sure, all the time. But an actual respirator mask, here, almost never.

Really???

I was waiting to watch the 60 Minutes piece until tonight when I could relax and enjoy it...

But now you've ruined the suspense!!!

Chaing Mai City News has linked to an interesting PDF document report by Greenpeace that tracks the PM2.5 pollution levels in different Thai cities, including several locations in BKK, during 2014, 2015 and the first six months of 2016. Well worth reading...

http://www.chiangmaicitylife.com/news/greenpeace-publishes-city-rankings-pm2-5-thailand-first-time/

greenpeace.or.th/s/right-to-clean-air/PM2.5CityRankingsREV.pdf

8 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Did you have a chance to do the aircon only test in your bedroom?

Funny you should mention that... Just got back home now after being gone and outside some hours. Turned on the bedroom AC with Filtrete sheets installed. No purifier. Will re-check the bedroom PM2.5 level in one hour.

1 hour ago, Lupatria said:

I wonder how "Big Joke" can afford to employ a huge PR team to operate in his favor on his salary.  

He must be bucking for the big national police chief job, in which case, all the "dark skinned" people had better watch out!!!

1 hour ago, jenny2017 said:

Please don't be so hard on him.....

 

Quote

Crime buster Surachet Hakpal was the main man as a 56 year old Thai called Sanguan "Daeng" Netsao was arrested by his tourist police bureau comrades on Saturday.

Let's just say, the sentence wasn't organized especially well in grammatical terms.

The "his" is normally going to refer back to the closest prior "him", which in this sentence is Daeng the alleged scammer, not Hakpal. Hence the inference that the scammer is a policeman who was arrested by his police comrades, which apparently is NOT the case, notwithstanding quoted sentence.

8 hours ago, webfact said:

He added that the military could not be separated from the NCPO, because the two bodies were indivisible. The military and the people were “also one”, he added.

The first sentence I believe to be correct...

The second sentence, not sure about that...

3 hours ago, Bill97 said:

It is not about what you sleep on but rather who you sleep with
 

I've tried sleeping on my wife, but it isn't exactly comfortable. Because she's a bit lumpy in all the right places....

If the OP is having repeated performance problems with his existing router, another thing to try is to contact 3BB support, explain the problem and ask for their techs to bring out a new/different router to test in your house, and see if that makes any difference/improvement.

I've done that in the past quite a few times with True, but fortunately, haven't yet had to tackle that kind of issue with my 3BB fiber.

I've never had any problems with my Huawei 3BB fiber router, but I've had recurring problems with 3BB fiber lines where some problem occurs outside up the line somewhere, and their techs don't do a proper job of making the fix/reconnections, and then have to keep calling them out until they finally get things restored back to normal.

If the OP is having WIFI problems but NOT Lan speed problems, then there also are a variety of settings in the existing router than can be looked at/changed, such as what wifi channel the router is broadcasting on, etc etc., what wifi protocols it's set for, B/G/N, etc.

Part of the challenge on these kinds of things is correctly narrowing down to just where the problem is occurring. Could be hardware issue in the router, could be router settings, could be interference from other wifi around you, could be the receiving devices you're connecting to, etc etc.  The fact your LAN speeds aren't a problem is a good sign.

Better day today. With luck, might stay in the yellow and out of the orange:

1 hour ago, ChidlomDweller said:

My Blueair manual recommends changing the HEPA filter every 6 months, AND i assume that's based on Swedish air (where the company is based).  The Smartair website has some nice data on the declining effectiveness of filters over time, but even better is probably if you have your own particle meter so you can tell when it's time.

Like this one, sitting in my bedroom right now, about 6 feet away from my Sharp HEPA purifier...

To be fair, the meter in my bedroom has been bouncing between 0 and 1 and 2 micrograms during the past hour.  It helps that the air outside tonight is a bit better than it's been...roughly 28 micrograms outside.

54 minutes ago, edwardandtubs said:

Also, not all HEPA filters are equal. The Smart Air ones are as good as they come whereas your Sharp appears to be in the E10 class which provides only 85% efficiency. See the specifications section of the Wikipedia article:

 

I saw a reference to E10 in part of Sharp's information, but I'm not sure what to make of it. Given, that the manual for my Sharp unit specifically says HEPA filter efficiency of 99.97% down to 0.3 microns, which is True HEPA.

From the manual for my Sharp unit:

And on the Sharp website for the unit, it has these two pertinent entries:

http://www.sharp.co.th/product_detail.aspx?l=en&p=383&c=2&sc=6

5 minutes ago, edwardandtubs said:

 

The cost is cheaper than any other option that uses a true HEPA filter. 

 

Not sure about that. My Sharp unit cost 3200b total, and I have no reason to expect that its original True HEPA filter won't last the estimated two years, especially because I AM using a carbon prefilter with it. It really does make a huge difference in preserving and extending the life of one's HEPA filters.

But even if I have to replace it somewhat sooner than 2 years, the replacements run 950 baht. And I'll guarantee you my HEPA filter in the Sharp absolutely will last longer than a year at worst. So I'm certainly not going to be spending 2000+ baht per year on replacement filters, any way you cut it.