xbusman

Actually, in that job, the only signatures I ever wanted were on a contract to buy. My boss, the owner and founder of the company, was a complete and utter fawner. Pictures and photos to the point of obsession. It was always uncomfortable and unpleasant for both the customer (celebrity) and me who was focused on getting something accomplished in the extremely tight time frames in their schedule.

I did get one or two, from people I was completely and entirely impressed with.

The first was a fella named Ray Dolby. Dont think off the cuff I have ever met someone I liked more. Ray came to visit and asked incredibly sharp and intelligent questions. Besides being the smartest man I ever met, he had a warm and gentle sense of humor and was a great leader. I, for the life of me, could not figure out who he was or what he did. I asked my careful probing questions because it was always a difficult time in the process. It was that way because one day you would get a call from Rachman Abdul Assiz (fourth? Saudi son in royal family, head of defense) and the next day Johnny Ferraro (producer of American Gladiators) and if you did not recognize them immediately you could offend them off the charts. So you probe gently if you have no idea <deleted> this guy does that he can afford a 1M plus toy. Helps to keep the Amway dream builders at bay. So Ray finally looks at me and says.... DOLBY, I am Ray DOLBY..... From there on, I pestered him with all sorts of questions and forgot busses. What a great and fascinating story, from in my opinion a great and fascinating man.

Another signature collected from his celebrity print is my old buddy John Daly, the golfer. John and I had some fun, I really liked him. From a very rural Arkansas family, he reached some pretty high notes in the golfing world before success and the bottle broke his back. We have lost touch since I have moved to Thailand but he was a good friend and good guy.

Another signature is from Karsten, founder of Ping golf clubs. He was a fun guy who lit up a room when he came in. Looked a bit like Santa Claus.

The last is someone who would never remember me. Mrs Barbara Bush, wife of Bush Senior and mother to our current president. What can you say about a political figure who was assigned the name "mom" by the secret service. She is truly a mother we would all like to have. Compassionate, gentle, kind, and never a bad word about anybody. Dedicated to improving reading and many social objectives, not because they were political capital but because she truly cared.

Oh yeah, one more signature. Forgot, writing helps me remember. Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendys. Really liked him, he was charming and kind. First time I met him he was wearing pastel shorts, some goofy t-shirt and a straw hat I would rather be killed than put on. For him, it worked. My company built a coach for him when he was starting the first Wendys to use in going forth and selling franchises. We were building coaches for a new company called MacDonalds at the time. He sold start up shares to a few of our hourly employees, this would have been before my time, back in the 70s, for the huge sum of $5000 each. I think about four of our workers bought in, all retired extremely wealthy. Got him to sign his book for me.

Not too many signatures. I only wanted two signatures really, one on the contract, the other on a check.

I also want to add "old biker" advice to anyone who drives a motorcycle. As a motorcyclist, even if your hit from behind, its completely and entirely your fault. A biker is completely and totally exposed to moving steel weighing many tons with incredible momentum and energy, if you decide to get out there with them, contact with anything is completely and totally verbotin, everything hurts and the smallest contact can cause great damage.

There is an envelope of life around your bike, anything that enters that envelope at any speed is potentially fatal, from either side, front or rear. Your brakes define the envelope in the front, your mirrors in the rear, and your eyes for the sides. The important point is that when you decide to drive to a motorcycle, you have to come to terms with the fact that you can only lose. Any race, any road rage, any claim to a lane, any right of way, any intersection, you only have the potential to lose, and lose big. Surviving is winning.

This advice comes to you from having buried many friends that had the right of way. Many who never saw it coming. And a few who only could learn the hard way.

Stay safe, stay out of the way, and come back alive.

Nice post from a biker. You have to scrape away a few pounds of flesh and stuff a few bones back into the skin before you really catch on how painful contact of any sort is. Sorta changes things and puts them in perspective. Likewise, I never drive without a DOT certified helmet, gloves, abrasive resistant leggings, proper shoes and gloves. Wish I could wear my Harley jacket in this heat but I have noticed the leather shrunk and its about 6 sizes too small (couldnt be my gut is growing!). I should have some upper body armor, maybe this year.

Having said that, I do drive way too fast through Bangkok. Weaving in and out of traffic like its some sort of video game. Despite complete and total focus on the road ahead and keeping the envelope clear, I have been hit twice from behind at intersections and hit the back of one taxi meter. I think the taxi was messing with me, he ran after the accident which leaves me suspicious. Thats sum total in 50,000km but the level of attention to stay alive here is extremely high. All three accidents happened at walking speed or below but I better slow down before I take out a squid bicycle and end up in ICU.

Sorry, I will do my best to describe the location of Sengphacha. It was within five minutes walk of morning market and ten minutes walk of the bus station. Large central street running perp to the river. I walked toward the river and then turned right about three or four blocks to get to the central fountain.

Very very new. Immaculate and comfortable beds. What a super deal for 600.

Having sold entertainer and executive coaches for twenty years, way too many to list.

However, some really special people that were a joy to get to know:

Ray Charles, just a fine human being.

Ernest Evans (Chubby Checker) only can be described as a "sweet and gentle heart"

Clint Eastwood

Ella Fitzgerald, not only a fine person but gawd amighty what a voice.

In the real people category

Johnny Cash, real people.

Loretta Lynne, real people

Mr Matsushita (founder Panasonic), real people

Bill and Gloria Gaither, just outstanding humans. You might not recognize those names but they are the King and Queen of Gospel music. Bill was a math teacher fifty years ago who wrote poetry. In the summers, he would go to Nashville and try to sell his poems as lyrics. Finally talked an unknown gospel singer to record one called "He Touched Me" and launched the career of Elvis Presley.

Oddly enough, as I look at that list, it seems that I really enjoyed people with a strong gospel background. I will have to contemplate that on a chicken/egg basis. Wonder if their background in gospel made them fine people or because they were good folk they had a tendency to gravitate to gospel.

On a whole, I found newly famous people to be simply intolerable. Old timers like Rose Marie Clooney were charming but "difficult". Politicians were lower than scum with no discernable redeeming qualities (all parties inclusive). Independent businessmen like Gus Spanos, Jack Kemp, H. Ross Perot were very solid, very strong, and brutal (you will find the same bend to Thaksin) but on their good side they were very fun, very generous. Sort of normal times 10. Corporate bureaucrats at the top of ladder were simply insufferable. Lee Iaccoca, Michael Eisner, Jack Welch and like ilk, were simply miserable. The characteristics required to get there did not include anything we would describe as "good". Same in politics actually but politicians still have to present a human face, even if they dont mean it. Corporate CEOs are under no such obligation. An interesting comparison, Sam Walton (founded Walmart) was a superb human being, just a fine compassionate man in all regards. Jack Shewmake (first or second president of Walmart) was a complete and utter beast with no redeeming value. The difference between the founder and the corporate animal. Of course Sam Walton needed a Jack Shewmake to build Walmart into what it is. Even Ray Charles needed a nasty strong arm (Joe Adams) to drive the success.

Fame is not all its cracked up to be. We sold a few coaches to Michael Landon back in the day. He was doing the series "Touched by an Angel" at the time and his TV persona was almost religious. In the real world he was a chain smoking foul mouthed self promoter of the highest grade. Having dinner with him was simply an ordeal. People would crowd over the table and knock glasses over and push and pull, he would smile beatifically and sign whatever they wanted, warm kind words, sincere interest, just a glow of goodness. The second we would get a break it would be F this, F that and two cigarettes lit up. Lucky to get a single bite out of any meal while in public. It sucked.

More fine people, I mean really really fine people. Richard and Linda Petty, Nascar. Milton Friedman, the economist, the ultra nerd you had to love.

I never met Doris Duke but I was very good friends with her personal assistant for over twenty years. Doris was a difficult woman but pretty stout on what was right and wrong. I guess that is easier when you are born with a silver spoon. A lot of the silver spooners were fun but clueless. I dont know that any of them were ever particularly famous.

Obviously I am reminiscing along and losing sight of the topic of this thread. If I remember more good ones I will post them but they were few and far between.

Boy I have thought about that more than once. Have done some preliminary dimensioning working with the Suziki 650 and 800 single cylinder and there just aint much room to work with. I have done swaps before and there is not much that cant be done with a cutting torch and buzz box but all sorts of unexpected messy things happen down the road. Am interested if others have considered the same thing.

Yeah, Lane Xang had a great location and price.

I was just there last weekend and stayed at SengChapha, a brand new hotel. Very very clean, great rooms, comfortable beds, for 600 baht. What a great deal. Ventiene is lovely, great food, and the people are fun to talk with. You will have a great time.

Well here is the problem Yeti.

The Remimbe is rather closely pegged to the dollar and the Chinese are happy to quote about everything in Dollars, even stuff they sell to Japan and Europe. So for the mass of stuff moving out of China, dollars or remimbe it does not matter much. The tiny "mee too" countries being sucked along behind China are also forced to work pretty much in dollars to remain competitive. Also, lots of commodities such as oil are only traded worldwide in dollars.

There is also a pass through effect. If you are a US company building computers in China and need a Seagate hardrive, the chinese order them from Thailand for installing in China. Thats listed as a ASEAN export. So its real hard to follow the supply chain, instead you have to look at the consumption side and thats is about only Euros and Dollars. I dont know the split but its huge. Asia, middle east and africa consume very very little.

So if I were to guess, considering commodities traded in dollars, pass through, and corporate ownership, dollars would be the majority for Thailand exports. Maybe not a lot over Euros but its a number that would be hard to pin down.

Sorry, but incorrect.

RMB grows stronger and stronger versus the downfalling US$, but decreases in value to the Euro.

Since 2007 ALL my imports from China are in Euro

Sorry but incorrect.

The RMB is loosely pegged to the dollar, that has been slowly changing but for all extents its pretty firmly attached. Being that you are in the Netherlands, I would expect much of your quoting to be done in Euros. The Chinese are very very accommodating when it comes to being paid. Its the Euro that is increasing against the RMB and $, and in the end a wonderful thing that. I personally am hoping for $4 per Euro as I have lots of friends at Boeing.

So you can pay the chinese in RMB, Euros, zimbabwe dollars, they dont care as long as the bank will take it. In the end, they have chosen to marry the dollar with all the benefits and problems that causes them.

It hardly matters really. I live in Thailand because it provides the best living cost per dollar of any place I have found. If the dollar continues to slide and inflation continues to roar along in Thailand, it will become cheaper and better to live someplace else, perhaps even the US. Already I find about half of what I purchase to be less expensive in the US. Those things ebb and flow like the tide and it pays to remain flexible enough to ride the waves.

I have always found in my experience it was a lot easier to make decisions (including investments) knowing less than more. The more I know about things the far more concerned I am.

I had a lovely conversation a few years back with the leading corrosion engineering expert in the US. After ten minutes, I can hardly drive over any bridge older than ten years. I thought of him after that recent bridge collapse in the US.

Ignorance is a good foundation for bravery Chownah.

They have been keeping a tight lid on prices across the board for over two years now. I have talked with a couple of major food processors that have dramatically scaled back production and are importing raw materials. Imagine importing food which is also grown in Thailand because its cheaper to ship in than buy locally. They will either distort the pricing structure into severe shortages or release it all at once like a too tightly wound spring. Either plan could present "challenges" but no one has ever successfully forced an economy into prosperity through price controls. This could be interesting in 2008.

Well here is the problem Yeti.

The Remimbe is rather closely pegged to the dollar and the Chinese are happy to quote about everything in Dollars, even stuff they sell to Japan and Europe. So for the mass of stuff moving out of China, dollars or remimbe it does not matter much. The tiny "mee too" countries being sucked along behind China are also forced to work pretty much in dollars to remain competitive. Also, lots of commodities such as oil are only traded worldwide in dollars.

There is also a pass through effect. If you are a US company building computers in China and need a Seagate hardrive, the chinese order them from Thailand for installing in China. Thats listed as a ASEAN export. So its real hard to follow the supply chain, instead you have to look at the consumption side and thats is about only Euros and Dollars. I dont know the split but its huge. Asia, middle east and africa consume very very little.

So if I were to guess, considering commodities traded in dollars, pass through, and corporate ownership, dollars would be the majority for Thailand exports. Maybe not a lot over Euros but its a number that would be hard to pin down.

I have been using macs since 1974. With my programming degree in 1979, eventually I was immersed into the world of the PC for all the wrong reasons. My experience is that whenever a Mac enters a PC environment it becomes the greatly preferred machine by users and hated by IT. I made the unfortunate mistake of introducing a Mac into my company this last year. Now, we spend at least an hour a day fixing the PCs, accessing server files, getting back online, clearing viruses. We have spent a total of about ten minutes working on the mac over the past year. That was to try and integrate a HP printer that is rather messy without a proper driver. Our total time working on the mac is plug it in and turn it on.

Now, as has been my experience since 85, everyone lines up at the mac and sets appointments to do their work.

Here is where macs dont work. When some buffalo thinks that a proprietary program should be written using Windows OS only. These are usually IT geeks who abhor macs. Why? My guess is that if your job is based on the mysterious language of PC which forever need maintenance, it is not a good idea to promote a relatively trouble free product. Kind of like GM building a car that does not ever break down.

Gaming. Games are written for PCs. If you are an avid gamer, the Mac is not for you.

Other than that, it does about everything better than a PC.

Apparently you find the Phantom has enough power to handle realistic driving conditions throughout most of Thailand. How's the vibration on the Phantom at the speeds you normally go?

Vibration is rather bad under 100kph. If you cruise below that, you can feel it in your arms and hands after an hour or so. I have added lead plugs to the end of the bars and installed gel grips. Its no problem now at any speed.

Over the past week I have driven my Honda Phantom from Bangkok to Surin to Ubon Ratchathani to Nong Khai where it sits now getting the oil changed while I relax in Vientiene. What a superb machine, smooth and plenty powerful enough for Issarn roads. I have it pretty well loaded down too. Never a lick of trouble with that darn machine, always starts at just the push of a button. Parts are plentiful, service is quick and inexpensive.

There are a few things you can do to make it cruise better, but stock is fine. The real trick with this bike is that it stops RIGHT NOW because it is so light and has excellent brakes. That has kept me alive more than once with Thai driving. A few times I would have been planted into the side of pickup had I one of the heavy bigger cc machines. For the life of me, and I have owned hundreds of bikes, I dont really see what a bigger heavier bike gets you in Thailand. The roads and traffic are not condusive to sport machines of any caliber.

I will admit, when I drive the Harleys around I get a lot of gawking but that can be a bad thing as well. All in all, I find the Honda Phantom to be an all around perfect bike for Thailand.

Just two cents worth.

SARS could have turned into a massive catastrophe had conditions been slightly different. Read the EU, WHO and CDC analyses of the events. The collective view is that the world had a horseshoe up it's butt.

But it didn't did it. It was contained. I have no faith in the opinion of the WHO. They claimed more people would die from disease after the tsunami and that did a LOT of damage to the tourism industry here. It was totally uncalled for. We took care of our people. The combination of the military, the locals, expats and everyone else made sure that everyone had plenty of food, bottled water and a place to stay. I don't trust WHO.

Solid evidence that it's mutating? Like hello? Viruses mutate 24/7. All living organisms mutate. What happens is that it's a small piece at a time. Just a question of which piece. As for eating chicken, if it's cooked, I doubt that you'll become infected from the virus. Maybe salmonella, but not bird flu

24/7? I doubt that. But even if they do, do they mutate to a form that makes them more dangerous? Maybe they do, but mutating to a form that makes them transferable to humans is another story. Until solid evidence exists that it is possible for this virus to move from birds to humans, I'm not worried. It's not that I trust governments or the "authorities", far from it. But I think that the media tries to make things sound much worse than they actually are. They cry wolf all the time.

Just a couple of notes on your comments above. Viruses are weird things, more like math than living organisms. They want to "sustain" mathmatically, so to be successful they want to infect and transmit. So we can think of them as trying to become "transmissable". Now for the good news, they dont want to be overwhelmly lethal because that interferes with transmission. Viruses have a tendency to reduce lethality in order to transmit. They saw the same thing in H1N1, the Spanish flu and are tracking this trait in H5N1.

As for solid evidence that this can move to human/human form, we can use the jackpot analogy again. The probabilities are finite, not infinite. We dont know what the probabilities are, we only know that the jackpot hit one time. There are those that believe they can identify at least three flu jackpots since the beginning of the second millenium, maybe or maybe not, but we have proof positive the wheels came up once. Every day millions of people pull the handle on our viral slot machine and the wheels spin 24/7. It must be insanely difficult to get the right combination if we have only hit the jackpot once in the last two hundred years, but we have more people pulling and more movement of animals every day. The odds are not decreasing.

The real worry for flu experts is viruses from pigs, maybe appropriately enough, pigs are very close genetically to humans and its a much easier jump. I think the real worry is that h5n1 will find a way into swine somewhere in asia and fly below the radar long enough. Jumping from birds to humans is pretty tough. H5N1 can also jump into cats and dogs, that shows a pretty nasty ability to cross species. So vigilance and work to improve the food chain is about all that can be done. As with most public health issues, people only carry torches up to the castle after villagers are missing. Doctors are lousy communicators as we can all attest to, they make even worse politicians. So when they get worried, pays for us to take note, and the ones who work in virology are terrified of this new monster. It is the worst they have ever seen, beyond their worst nightmare. We need to do everything we can to keep this genie in the bottle.

I heard the same thing from WHO field workers. It has been in the countryside non stop since it was first reported.

There is no one who can say with any certainty that the virus will or will not mutate into a form transmissable human to human. Out of the thousands of viruses out there only a few ever do so. The odds against H5N1 are pretty long but as it continues to spread (and mutate) in close contact with humans, the odds shrink. No one knows the math. Here is the deal though, during mutation if four "Jackpots" come up for this particular stinker the world will forget Islam and the stock market for a very long time.

Our last survivors of the Spanish flu are but shortly gone or they could recount the complete devastation a flu can cause. I know because years ago I did research on WW1 and interviewed about 15 WW1 veterans. Each and every one told me, "the war was bad, but that flu was truly horrible". I, as a mere pup, wondered how a trench war with hand to hand combat coupled with machine guns and tanks in 1916 could compare with a flu causing a few sniffles and temperature. I found out what terrified these men who survived the Argonne, a depression, WW2 and the nuclear age. A flu so deadly that isolation was the only answer. Worse, our medical science today is no more prepared to deal with the flu virus than it was in 1917. Perhaps slightly more, we can identify the killer if it appears and perhaps make a vaccine for .01% of the population in time. But not much more than that. Tell me, do you think you are on the list for that vaccine?

We need to be very aware of Bird Flu and hope that the probabilities are longer than our lifespan.

This is a subject of the utmost seriousness. India is reporting that the virus could well spiral out of control in the next week or two. It never left Indo and has reappeared in Vietnam and Thailand. If I am not mistaken, Europe, England and parts of the middle east are being afflicted as well.

Should this genie get out of the bottle and become truly human to human, we are talking about something that would make nuclear war look like childs play.

Who cares if its making money? Just the folks losing all that cash. Thats the first thing you look at in any investment, and the last thing, and most of the things in betwixt. Definitely an investment you have to look at in the here and now, as are all investments made in Thailand. Things change too completely and rapidly to make any decent mid term, much less long term decisions on resale or amortization of anything.

For those with the spare pocket change, its a handy five year visa without hassle. Just the thing spare change was made for. For those that might miss 1.5M if they forgot it in NEP, they would have to crunch the numbers on the value of a one time five year visa.

In our real estate investments we look for purchases that are 100 times immediate rent. That is the point we will negotiate with the seller. Ideally, (but seldom) we want to have to do nothing to the property for three years. In the end, if we can get a property for 90 times immediate rent, we are doing great. Never over 100 times rent or its just an unacceptable investment as other posters have pointed out regarding guaranteed return monetary investments.

Using the 100 formula, our gross is around 12% before any expenses or costs. I have found nothing even remotely close to that which is a pretty sure indication of a real estate bubble. We were forced out of the LA market almost five years ago and have been selling our residential property ever since, turning that money into commercial property in Las Vegas. As of this year the bubble popped in LA and property prices are plummeting.

100 times rent has worked for us over 50 years, there are lots of exceptions but I am just referring to our rule of thumb to tell you that I have yet to find any property even coming close to realistic returns in Thailand. Thats not even taking into account the illegality and high risk of investing in anything other than a condo under the 49% threshold.

I can relate real life experience to exactly this issue and it has always been of passing interest.

At Greyhound Lines in the US, we used a bus called the MC-9. A veritable work horse, we seldom sold them before 2 or 3 million miles of use and then to a second hand tour operator who continued to flog them almost daily. I have sold twenty year old coaches with over five million miles on the structure to new owners who drove them off the lot and put them into immediate service.

Take the exact same bus though, put a million dollar interior into it and sell it to an owner who pampers it every day and the dam thing breaks down every few hours. Absolutely drive us crazy keeping them on the road for the 800 miles they are driven every year. At Greyhound, we would 700,000 miles on a Detroit Diesel before first rebuild, in a motorhome the exact same engine is shot at about 60,000 miles.

It may not be a rule but it is overwhelmingly true. I am interested in the theory of start up wear but we had the same problem with automatic transmissions. The Allison in Greyhound service had an average life of 1.7 million miles with about 380,000 miles between service. In the same bus used as a motorhome, life span was maybe 400,000 miles with constant service.

Has to be a study on this somewhere, good science to explain the physics, would have loved some sort of report to hand customers when they asked why their million dollar commercial bus was always in the shop.....

I have an extra set of digital read out that are rather new. I prefer the old manual style so if your interested in purchasing PM me.

The problem here is not the devaluation of the dollar, that is mostly irrelevant except to US exporters and expats, but the devaluation of the RMB which is pegged to the dollar.

it's still early. hours to go till i open my second bottle of portwine. my reading glasses are cleaned. but i still can't believe that i am able to read properly.

could the reason really be old age dementia when the old gray cells decay and those left are not correctly aligned anymore?

Well I will admit, the above lines appear obtuse enough to signal onset dementia but the lucidity of your previous posts give you away.

I thank goodness that I dont have to sit in Tarisa's chair every day. The stakes are enormous and the tools are simply pathetic. Its definitely light weight amateurs in the ring with professional heavy weights, coming out alive is a victory.

I like the old system better but then again I am old and curmudgeonly. Bah Humbug.