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Acharn

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Everything posted by Acharn

  1. I never met Trink, and I suspect his best work was for the Bangkok World, which was out of business before I retired from the Army. I enjoyed reading his column in the Bangkok Post, but it didn't give me any information. Alas, Silom became sleazy and they raised the price of beer at Nana Plaza. I spent most of my time at the Thermae or the Beer Garden on Soi 7, which had great pork chops. In his later years he had quite a bad reputation as a grifter and freeloader.
  2. Yeah, that's actually pretty likely. I tend to be a cheapskate. About 47 years ago I quit drinking alcohol (I am self-diagnosed as an alcoholic). I started eating a healthier diet (I was in the Army at the time, so I ate what was served in the mess hall) and exercising regularly. After a year, I was in great shape, without any vitamins or supplements. I also started following a couple of Usenet newsgroups devoted to health and body-building. Most of the people there (mostly power lifters, rather than body builders) were skeptical of vitamins and supplements; they were very concerned to avoid steroids. Alas, with the growth of the commercial world wide web Usenet is practically extinct and I haven't had the comfort of those newsgroups since the late '90s. By the way, I think the body builders had a somewhat different attitude toward vitamins and supplements (and steroids), but I never got into that side of it. I'm 86 now, and think my good health comes from that period of several years of physical fitness.
  3. I'm pretty sure one third of what they're taking is worthless, one third you or I would need a prescription for, and the rest are illegal. I dunno. I confess I take vitamins and/or supplements from time to time, but usually they don't make any difference in how I feel. I'm sorry I posted on the topic.
  4. The internet tells me the preferred method is liquid nitrogen, which is quite a lot colder than dry ice. I'm currently trying salicylic acid. I may try superglue, since this doesn't seem to be doing anything.
  5. Vitamin and mineral supplements are mostly scams. It probably won't hurt you to eat them, but you usually don't need any, either. I'm currently taking B12 and zinc citrate, but expect to stop when I've finished these bottles. I admit I'm not consistent.
  6. When I served in the Air Force, from 1955-1958, I didn't need glasses. When I joined the Army in 1965, I needed glasses. When my wife took me to an ophthalmologist in 2008, she diagnosed cataracts. When I went to another ophthalmologist in 2021, I had astigmatism, along with nearsightedness. I wish I could afford lasik, but the prices I've been quoted are ฿80-100,000, which is far beyond my financial ability. I gather lasik only corrects astigmatism temporarily anyway.
  7. If the Thai physically attacks you, you can defend yourself. If he just annoys or upsets you, and if you hit him/her, you should be deported. Some people get very upset when Thais refer to them (when talking to other Thais) as "farang." I've never understood why.
  8. Well, we had QE for twelve, fifteen years, and until two years ago the CPI inflation rate stayed at 2% or less. It was great for the stock market, though. I haven't read the link you enclose, but the headline seems to agree with me. Sometimes people luck out and inflation follows their prediction; sometimes they don't and it doesn't. Nobody knows what causes it. I used to really like Milton Freidman's theory, inflation is a purely monetary effect, but that didn't pan out.
  9. Alas, nobody has figured out yet what causes inflation, much less hyperinflation. Pundits in the USA have been predicting catastrophe from our budget deficits since 1789, and yet we persist. In fact, the five times we have seriously lowered the public debt have produced recessions/depressions. Japan's public debt is well over 200% of GDP, yet they persist. The big problem is the debt denominated in USD.
  10. I renew my visa in Nakhorn Sawan using the income method. The local Immigration Office wants a twelve-month statement. I use Bangkok Bank, and they give me a printout of ALL my transactions for twelve months for ฿200. They also demand copies of my bank book for the twelve months. Seems like overkill, to me. Oh, and don't forget to make copies of the tabien baan and the owner's ID card.
  11. Errr... the age thing wasn't illegal until December, 1996. I remember the before times very well. Used to be a lot of 16 and 17 year olds in the Thermae. Even the occasional 14 year old. I'm not so sure about removing a minor from her guardians, but I imagine they're very well-to-do. I don't expect we'll ever hear the facts of the case, nor its outcome in the courts, nor the reason they decided to prosecute now.
  12. We pay our electric bill at an office each month, so I don't know the correct URL for PEA, but any official Thai government site is going to end in "...go.th." This is obviously a scam.
  13. I've gotten all my mail here in Thailand for over forty years. It takes longer since 9/11, but usually gets here within two or three weeks. I just got my U.S. social security tax form today, faster than the last several years. Bank of America sends my credit cards to me. So does my credit union.
  14. I've done my own extensions since 1982. At the time I didn't know there were agents. In fact, since Prem was Prime Minister at the time and he was death on corruption, I doubt there were. Anyway, since then it's always just been so easy to do myself I never thought of using (paying) an agent. When my first wife died in 1995, the Immigration Office was very helpful. At the time, I was a year too young to qualify for a retirement visa (income problem). They advised me to do border runs for a year and then get a non-O visa and extend under the retirement provision. Now that I live in Nakhon Sawan the IOs are just as helpful.
  15. I've never been there, but I'd recommend Surin. When I used to hang out at the Thermae, the best looking girls always seemed to be Khmer ethnic from there. Buriram was well represented, too.
  16. I'm so old I remember the winter of 1993, which was the Year of No Winter. It not only got as hot during the day as during the rainy season, it did not cool off at night. On the other hand I also remember the winter of 1982, when I was living up on the Korat Plateau. On New Year's Eve it got down to 4° Celsius and I was glad I had my Army cold weather gear (I had just retired that year). It doesn't look like this winter is going to be particularly cold, but I've learned I have no weather sense in Thailand.
  17. My wife had a six week stay in a government hospital in Nakhon Sawan. Among other things, she had an endoscopy performed, during the third week. Total cost would have been ฿30 (for the whole six weeks), but in the fourth week a private room became available for ฿100 a day. You can beat the price if you're a Thai.
  18. When my first wife passed away in 1995, I was allowed to remain in the country until the end of my current extension. There was a dual income requirement, then, and my income wouldn't qualify for a retirement extension for another year, so my immigration officer recommended I do border runs until I turned 60. In those days you couldn't change your visa type inside the Kingdom.
  19. The Poh Teck Tung Foundation is a private foundation, not the police. Maybe "the conditions" at the dock made it impossible.
  20. Well, I found that, during periods of celibacy, I had to masturbate every day. Since that practice is frowned upon, I wondered if all those other guys staying celibate do the same thing.
  21. You may not have known them, but there have to be lots of customers to support so many prostitutes in American towns and cities. I've long wondered how so many men could stay celibate so long -- maybe I was wrong.
  22. Well, no, there's no rush, but putting your family into bankruptcy for an extra couple of weeks in the ICU seems unacceptable to me. Maybe I'll feel differently when I'm faced with it, but I'm 85 now and I've been living since I was 19 with the knowledge that I might die tomorrow. I'm an alcoholic and stopped drinking alcohol when I was 40, but didn't stop smoking until I was 75. Since I'm in reasonably good health, I believe I'll tell my niece and her husband not to give me extreme care, although I don't really know if I'll still feel that way when I'm in the ICU. I don't take care of my health and I don't have a social network, so I really shouldn't be living now. My family was not long-lived, except for my maternal great-grandfather, who served in the American Civil War and lived to 105. I really don't know why most people are so frightened of death. We all die someday.
  23. We were playing that the loser paid for the game, IIRC ฿20. We were having fun, so amicability was possible. Actually, now that I think about it, I only remember one or two incidents where things got serious. May have been the bars I hung out in.
  24. I've really never understood this attitude. I think a large majority of us either pay for it or use our hand. I'm socially inept, myself, plus I have inhibitions that make me unable to speak about sex with women. I never learned how to tell a "normal" woman that I wanted to take her to bed, and I lived for many years content with masturbating. Then I lived in Bangkok and spent a lot of money on it. Certainly many women (not only in Thailand) are able to make a living because so many men are like me.
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