Sydebolle

Surprise surprise? Next please .........

How grateful am I to have finally met the almighty know-it-all. Well, I'm neither your "dude" nor does the landlord have the right to access the premises while rented out - it is called trespassing where I come from. While I own the place I have no right to enter the place without prior approval of the tenant. Exception to this is during the termination period of an existing contract for viewing purposes to potential future tenants. So much to standing corrected as far as "silliness" is concerned but quite obviously you seem to have so much more experience in this business than the law makers and enforcers. Good on you ????

Arguably the naming of the product might be as tasteless as the coffee beans? Yet, in all fairness, nothing better to report on? While the authorities are going over the moon on this issue, they certainly know how to drag feet on issues like a huge svastika on the back of 10-wheelers etc. But then again, how does a local coffee packer dare to soil the immaculate image of the semi-divines .... it refers to the reproductive organ of non-males - to wrap it up politically correct! Just another idiot who started "thinking" I assume ????

The rice-buying-scheme and many other populist farts spring to mind. I - for one - assume though, that the budget, reading +/- 560 billion Thai Baht, will be used up in the end. How much of this enormous amount reaches the anticipated beneficiary in the sticks of Isan, is yet to be seen. But a substantial part of that digital cash will suffer, what is known in electricity, "line loss". What is produced in the power station is one thing; what reaches the end consumer is - for sure - a (minimized) other thing - Nuff said!

You took a Jaeger-leCoultre watch to a watch fixer embedded in HomePro? Good luck with that one considering the prices of this brand. Should you ever have a need for any watch maintenance, do yourself and the watch the favor and see "Time Clinic" which is in Soi Bangkok Bazaar (off Chitlom). Khun Phanom and his team of Swiss trained watchmakers fixed literally all my watch "needs" over the last 40 years; they use original spare parts, automatically replace eventual seals to watertight the watch again and give you a print-out of the waterproof testing as well. It comes at a marginally higher price than all those Tom, Dick and Harrys under the escalators of shopping centres et al. Just in case - it is in the interest of the watch and your investment in an expensive time piece.

Problem is well known. It seems that your clock has a very simple movement so I suggest to take the clock down and clean it with cotton buds which you wet in alcohol to remove residue and dust. Next you take new cotton buds and apply some WD-40 or Sonax to oil the movement. All the while you can turn the clock around once in a while and rotate the clock's hands, then place it back onto its face and carry on the cleaning/oiling. Once the clock is back on the wall you might want to cover the top and side (behind the dial, hence not visible) with medical gauze which you can get in rolls and cut to size. This will keep (most) of the airborne dirt off the movement. I've done this with a 300-years old grandfather clock over the last 40 years and repeat the treatment every 8 - 10 years with success and without damage to clock or movement. Good luck ????

Well, so much to the "quality tourism" front for all to know. While there is more to the story, it is really absolutely irrelevant in the context of "news" - me thinks!

Newsworthy, really?

Has ever anyone queries the immense number and titelling of all those cops? Police Major General xxxx and Police Colonel .... all accelerating hunt downs of God-only-knows-what! My assumption is that Thailand features more Generals, Colonels, Lieutenants and other government employees in its army, police, navy etc. than the next 25 states together? Result is more than sloppy law enforcement, latter though depending on who is involved and the thickness of ....

Forgot the 90 days saga or failed on the TM30 joke?

Well, if you need to go down that avenue, then there is something wrong with you as the landlord. I had no reason to "cheat" on my tenants over the last 30+ years. But you can also turn the table around. Have the locks changed by the tenant (or in the tenant's presence), envelope up one of the three sets of keys and the other two sets remain with the tenant.

Good on you then; I've been working here for four decades ...... enjoy your long stays as a snow bird then as you're apparently not affected or have not realized the reality - yet, that is. Of course the majority of Thais are nice people, greedy all the while but in tourism dungeons they rip you off before you manage to get around the corner. I don't interfere yet sometimes drop a sentence or two in Thai language (I'm fluent in the lingua) just to let them know, that not all of those alien are sheep on the way to the slaughterhouse. Done for my own mental sanity, not expecting any change in behavior by those few crooks!

Minister of the Digital Economy and Society Mr. Prasert Chantararuangthong might be a sharper knife in the Thai government drawer than his predecessor. It is possibly the most ridiculous idea to close down Facebook as Thailand has literally nothing to say in the operation of Facebook. What they can do is to block access to Facebook from a Thai IP server which would create havoc among the millions and millions of Thais who waste their working hours on "friending" and "liking" all that carp which flies around on Facebook these days. While it took 3+ months to formulate a new "government", you can take it to the bank that it will take 24 - 48 hours to unseat the present leadership due to afore-mentioned addiction to all these social media offerings. The problem is not Facebook but the very own (Thai) citizen who cheat on all the others. So get more transparency, educate your citizen before the fall victim. Closing Facebook is dealing with the symptoms but not with the root of the problem which is, once more again, their own loving fellow citizen!

Look at the exit clause of this avalanche of this - most likely masterpiece of Thai-Chinese bureaucratic contract work. Why should you buy substandard fertilizer or surface ships if you have so many other pending issues in your country. You are heading straight into a recession anyhow as tourism is not picking up at the speed the weed-smokers at the Tourism Authority of Thailand would wish to see. Use this HUGE amount of money for putting basic utility structures into Northeastern and Northern provinces (that would secure a LOT of votes next time round) or education (that would secure your pension payments, if in place by then, as the tax payers with a better education get better jobs which means better tax income on the entire tax front).

I just hope Mr Sutin is healthier than he actually looks ........

Maybe she looks up "welding goggles" on Lazada, as re-sparking can go wrong - they said ????

Horticulture - the new word for "sustainable tourism"? Well, as the saying goes "every day is school day". Since the horticulture show is three years ahead, the Udonthanian powers-to-be can calm down; by then this country has seen the departure of the sitting ducks in the government halls and, most likely, the "good old days are back again" - or not. We shall see ????

Thailand's CPI lower than Switzerland - what a joke. The Swiss figure might be right (or not, I don't know) but living here for many years I certainly can attest, that the CPI on a year-on-year basis certainly rose more than just 0.9% ????

What a new shopping experience "rise like Phoenix from the ashes" and get overcharged due to "charcoal and smoldering wood planks". As it was a dead horse to start with ....... good luck!

Despite living here for decades ....... I did not see this coming. I went on betting on 5 December but I am sure that Dr T does not mind, changing his present habitat in five weeks

Stanley Kang, the esteemed FORMER Chairman of the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce in Thailand ........ He's out of the loop, just saying ............

Proof again, that they want the money but not the work involved in getting it. You want tourism money, then you will have to accept, that tourists will come. If there is too little or no tourism (and there is plenty of whining going on all over Thailand) then you complain. Once you get, whatever is left of the previous perfect cake you had, you complain over too many Indians, Russians or Chinese. Well, you messed it up yourself; 35 years ago I remember quality tourism, then you went for quantity tourism and now you have not much else to choose. You should have done it following the Bhutanese example, top quality tourism with top money; albeit Thailand would have had to be a little more "generous" but the tremendous greed all over your country brought you to the tourism abyss you're facing now and in the near future. So, shut up, start working, be polite and friendly and do not treat tourists like sheep on the way to the slaughterhouse - Nuff said!

I have a complete set of keys to my property which is for rent. Upon moving a new tenant in, I put all those keys into an envelope and let the tenant sign on the back. So, if I ever break that envelope, the tenant knows. I had to do this as a tenant once accused everybody of stealing; luckily I could prove being out of town and in the end he admitted having made a mistake. Ever since = envelope time; never ever had an issue again. With electronic access systems (fingerprints, proximity card readers etc.) I would have it changed; the tenant must be informed if the landlord wants access to a rented property after the tenant has rendered the termination of the rental agreement to potential future tenants. Any other access outside this frame would present trespassing.

Seems to become a standard slogan and tag line of each and every government of this country - still going strong after 40 years!

The new boys on the block would earn incredible credit if they would tell the Chinese suppliers to forget the deal as they sold the Thai crooks in the past incomplete equipment. In all fairness, Thailand having subs is the naval joke of the 21st century. Since China cannot fulfill, the contract is broken - wondering how the exit clause reads in that pile of paperwork. Also pretty clear is, that the present German government will have to stand to its position of "human rights", "copyright infringement" and whatever other slogan they use to denunciate China. Germany's foreign minister's visit to China went very "unwell", to say the least, and her absolute ignorance for diplomacy and non-adherence to diplomatic protocol towards her Chinese counterpart resulted in the latter walking off the stage and the Chinese big banana also had no time to receive her - all of a sudden. It is Thailand's chance to get rid of this absolute waste of taxpayers money while putting the shaky club of parliament onto slightly more solid pedestal of honest leadership - provided this is on the cards in the first place ????