nokia

I've never had any problem with any of that water - they all taste gross if they are not chilled!

Quite true, most of the water have a strange taste if they are not chilled. Now i'm using the water from 1litre/1baht water dispensing machine, and they do not have a strange taste, whether chilled or not. Any care to comment?

Folks,

How about the common water dispenser machine that sells 1 baht per litre? It uses tap water too.

It seems like LOS is on a nationalistic fervour, targetting the foreigners, thru a forced reduction of foreign ownership of assets/stocks etc & clampdown of visa runs & visas. Any comment, folks?

Folks, is it still possible to get the half priced tickets in the city & where?

Cheers!

Is it running rough? Usually if you let a vehicle sit that long you'll get condensation in the fuel tank and in the oil as well. The rotor and cap generally have corosion too.

What's running "rough"? i think the acceleration(pickup) is about the same, and the fuel consumption too.

p.s. thanks tywais, will find some baking soda.

It probably wont be flat.

Ermmmmm , I told you so...

Cheers

Percy2, thanks, you are right afterall. btw, there's some green corrosion on the battery contacts. Do i clean it or let it be?

Folks, my truck engine purred sweetly yesterday after 5 months, without disconnecting the battery(1 yr old). Thank God!

A few months ago, i paid 2K baht to install three ceiling fans (including drilling, installing new electrical wires & switches). Cost was 500b for each fan plus 300b for materials, 200b for goodwill(done by neighbour's brother). Price quoted by HomePro was 500b per fan without materials. Did i overpay for 6 hours of work, considering min wage is only 200b/day?

Cheers!

That is really sad. I wonder whether the balance of his mind was disturbed. Poor chap

RIP

Perhaps there's more that meets the eye.

Taxi driver who slammed his vehicle into tank found hung

The taxi driver who protested against the coup by slamming his taxi into a tank at the Royal Plaza was found hung late Tuesday night in what appeared to be a suicide, police said.

Pol Col Phaisarn Kojasup, commander of Bang Sue police station, said Nuamthong Praiwal, 60, was found hung from a rail of the pedestrian flyover on Vibhavadi-Rangsit Highway in front of Thai Rath newspaper head office.

A passer-by spotted the body and informed police at 20 minutes past midnight.

A handwritten note was found near the body, saying the death was to protest against a spokesman of the Council for National Security for saying he had no ideology in his earlier protest against the coup.

Phaisarn said the surrounding evidences indicated that the man hang himself.

Nuamthong made headlines on September 30 when he slammed his taxi into a tank at the Royal Plaza at 6 am. He said he wanted to protest against the coup which damaged the country. He suffered broken ribs at that time.

The Nation

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingne...newsid=30017716

Flows push Thai baht to highest vs dlr since Jan'00

Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:05pm ET

SINGAPORE, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Strong foreign investment flows into Thailand drove the baht on Wednesday to its strongest level against the dollar since January 2000.

The baht rose as high as 37.11 per dollar, traders said. It stood at about 37.20 per dollar in late trade on Tuesday and has gained 1.3 percent in two weeks.

"The dollar broke the support at 37.20 on offshore selling, especially from Singapore," a Bangkok-based trader said.

Some dealers had expected the baht to weaken in anticipation of a possible sale by Singapore state firm Temasek Holdings of a stake in Thailand's Shin Corp , which it bought in January from the family of ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thaksin's critics have said the agreement breached foreign ownership laws and the deal is under investigation.

Claudio Piron, a JPMorgan Chase currency strategist, said he was sceptical about market talk that such huge outflows from Thailand were lined up.

Rather, heavy foreign buying of undervalued Thai stocks and the progress on the political front were underpinning the baht, he said.

Thailand's 242-member National Legislative Assembly, handpicked by the leaders of the military coup, met for the first time on Tuesday. The baht has now fully recovered losses made after the Sept. 19 military coup.

http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybri...News&rpc=44

If you keep your car in a garage a trickle charger will keep the battery fresh.

It looks quite interesting. I will normally shut down the entire power supply when i'm away. Maybe there are some folks here who might be interested in the trickle charger?

Any Vigo folks out there manage to disconnect & re-connect their battery successfully after a few months, since most of us work outside LOS?

More than likely your battery WILL be flat, things like the radio and security systems are a small but continual drain. Best to disconnect it, I always do and the worst outcome is that you may have to reprogram the radio.

I initially left it connected and jump started on my return but the battery was nackered after 3 one month discharge cycles and had to be replaced.

Make sure you have the security code for your audio system if you disconnect the battery.

I thought a complete discharge was good for a battery?

Thai car batteries are notoriously prone to very limited lifespan.

I have not sure if i have the security code. Maybe i have to check with the Toyota dealer.

I didnt disconnect the battery because i was afraid of clearing any pre-defined engine memories rather the radio which can be reprogram in a jiffy.

The battery is about 1 yr old and used only every few months.

Thanks percy2 & tywais for the quick responses. I'm thinking of bringing along a dry accumulator & jumper leads, as i dont want to inconvenience my friendly thai neighbours. Well, maybe "grieng jai" once in awhile is ok....

hello folks,

Just a short qn. I left my pickup truck in late June, and will be going back to LOS next month.

As i did not disconnect the battery, what are the chances that it will be flat next month?

If so, do i call the Toyota dealer or any mechanic, and what is the usual charge for battery & transport? Cheers!

DAMAGE CONTROL

S'pore urges talks to save Shin buyout

Worried Temasek ready to pay fine and reduce holding in telecom firm to 49%

A top-level official in Singapore has approached Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont to discuss the controversial Shin Corp deal in the hope of resolving ownership issues in an amicable manner, a government source said yesterday.

Surayud is likely to assign his deputy MR Pridiyathorn Devakula, who is also the finance minister, to look into the matter, the source said.

"One likely recommendation from the Thai government is that Temasek Holdings of Singapore should comply with the Thai foreign ownership law by quickly reducing its stake in Shin Corp, which is estimated at 96 per cent, to below 49 per cent," he said.

Temasek got itself into hot water with its Bt140-billion takeover of Shin Corp, which was owned by the Shinawatra and Damapong families.

The Commerce Ministry's Business Registration Department has found that Temasek relied on nominees to skirt a legal ban on foreign companies owning more than 50 per cent of a telecom business.

A Singapore investment banker said he had overheard that Madame Ho Ching, the CEO of Temasek, had been following political developments in Thailand very closely and had expressed her willingness to seek a compromise.

"Temasek, from what I have heard, is willing to pay a fine or make other concessions in order to end the controversy rather than allow the issue to drag on," he said.

If Temasek reduced its holding in Shin Corp from 96 per cent to 49 per cent by selling some 1.5 billion shares, it would suffer a huge loss. It paid Bt49.25 a share, for a total of Bt140 billion-Bt150 billion, but now Shin Corp is trading on the stock market at Bt28.25 a share.

The Thaksin Shinawatra government and Temasek had been sitting on the nominee investigation, hoping the issue would go away after Thaksin staged a comeback with an election victory. But the September 19 military coup has sent Thaksin into exile in London.

With a fresh government installed, the probe into the Shin-Temasek scandal has taken on a new life.

Besides, Singapore faces public outrage here over its perceived attempt to dominate Thailand's businesses involving national security.

"The Thai government is expected to tell the Singapore government and Temasek that current anti-Singapore sentiment needs to be dealt with quickly," the source said.

"There is a lot at stake for Singapore and Thailand relations, depending on a compromise on the Shin deal."

Of particular concern are Shin Satellite and iTV, both listed subsidiaries of Shin Corp. They are considered politically sensitive state concessions while the cellular service business of Advanced Info Service, Shin Corp's flagship unit, is in a more liberalised industry.

It is widely believed that under close scrutiny many foreign-invested Thai companies would fall afoul of the foreign ownership law, which has been criticised as vague and subject to abuse.

Noted economist Ammar Siamwalla said the Thai government must enforce the rule of law in all the nominee cases by doing away with all the violations.

The government could offer clemency to all foreign companies, giving them three years to cure the ownership or nominee structure to comply with the regulations, he said.

Within 10 years, Thailand should be in a position to enforce the law strictly regarding foreign ownership.

"But we need to state clearly which businesses we would like to protect for national security reasons and which businesses we would like to free up. I don't care if they want to liberalise all businesses. But we have to spell it out and stick to the enforcement," Ammar said.

"The government must uphold the spirit of the law, instead of interpreting it in the srithanonchai [tricky] way," he added.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/10/12...es_30015988.php

Academic sets up anti-coup petition online

BANGKOK: -- A website has been set up to collect signatures demanding that the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM) not arrest or harm protestors who planned to express their disagreement with the coup.

The online petition, www.petitiononline.com/thaicoup/petition.html, was the initiative of Thongchai Winichakul, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and declares that all who have signed regret the September 19 coup and hope that democracy will be restored to Thailand as soon as possible.

Furthermore, it urges the CDRM to respect freedom of expression which is a basic human right by allowing those who disagree with the coup to express their opinions in the media, on web sites, and at public gatherings.

"The right to publicly express opinions belongs to every human being and cannot be suspended or taken away by any authority of any regime," Thongchai said.

So far there are more than 220 people from various countries who have signed the petition; besides Thongchai, they include: Ji Ungphakorn, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University (CU); Kasian Tejapira, a political scientist at Thammasat University; Chalong Soontravanich, a history professor at CU; Viroj Naranong, an economist at the Thailand Development and Research Institute; Duncan McCargo, a professor of Southeast Asian Politics at the University of Leeds; and Michael Connors of La Trobe University, a co-author of The New Global Politics of the Asia Pacific.

The comments posted on the website include, "a coup must be condemned, no matter what it calls itself" and "if the CDRM has a higher morality and ethics than the Thaksin regime, it should not use their power to prohibit the people, particularly the youth, to gather and express their opinions peacefully. The youth do not have a conflict of interest like the People's Alliance for Democracy might have. (At least the Thaksin regime allowed public rallies to take place)."

The online petition was set up after Thongchai learned that a group of young activists who call themselves the "19 September Network against Coup d'Etat" had called on the public to wear black and gather at the Siam Paragon shopping centre this evening to express their disagreement with the coup.

Previously on Thursday, the coup leadership asked the media to change its English name from the Administrative Reform Council, or the Council for Democratic Reform as referred to by many media, to the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy.

-- The Nation 2006-09-22

surely not?

never know, it's not over until it's over. Thaksin is quite resourceful and he got nothing to lose since his family is overseas. It will take a few weeks to see if he's really living in exile in London or whether he has a counter coup backup-plan.

Fewer tanks in Bangkok as Thai army reduces presence

Fewer tanks patrolled the streets of Bangkok Thursday as the Thai army reduced their presence at key government facilities, but troops were not to be completely withdrawn, an army officer said.

Four tanks remained at Government House early Thursday, compared to about 10 the previous day, and there were fewer armed soldiers on guard, a day and a half after the military seized power in a bloodless coup.

"As of now we have only two companies of troops -- some 50 to 60 - deployed at Government House but total withdrawal is up to the army commander because there is not yet complete trust in the situation," Lieutenant Romklao Thuwatham told AFP.

"The army chief is very concerned over security," he said, referring to Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the leader of the coup. "If any small incident occurred, it could lead to violence, but soldiers will try to be relaxed."

Tanks deployed along the main avenue leading to army headquarters and other ministries in central Bangkok were withdrawn late Wednesday, ahead of the first full regular working day since the putsch.

Sources said the Military Council for Political Reform, as the generals are calling themselves, were not fully at ease because some of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's key ministers were gathering at air force bases.

The group included Defense Minister General Thammarak Issarangkura Na Ayutthaya, Air Chief Marshall Kongsak Vantana and Police General Jumpol Manmai, who is the head of the National Intelligence Agency.

Agence France-Presse

The Nation

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingne...newsid=30014240

nokia, your source please? and a link?

From The Nation, are you able to access its website from LOS?

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/09/21...al_30014226.php

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/09/21/national/

Army in show of force in Chiang Mai

Armoured personnel carriers rolled along major roads in Chiang Mai yesterday and were parked outside the houses of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his leading supporters.

Chiang Mai residents saw soldiers, tanks and armoured personnel carriers take to the streets and station themselves at important government offices including Chiang Mai Provincial Hall and the offices of the provincial administrative organisation, as well as on main roads linking districts in the province.

More than 10 heavily armed military officials guarded Thaksin's house at Chiang Mai Green Valley and denied entry to outsiders.

Chiang Mai is Thaksin's political stronghold. A commissioned officer said the city had been under military control since Tuesday night.

Thaksin's leading local supporter, the Mayor of Chiang Mai Municipality, Bunlert Buranupakorn, was asked to stay calm and not to instigate protests against the coup.

Military men also detained Surapol Kiatichaiyakorn, a former Chiang Mai MP, shortly after he arrived at Chiang Mai Airport. Sources believe he was taken to a military area and was asked to remain there and not to instigate protests.

Soldiers also surrounded the house of former Thai Rak Thai MP Pakorn Buranupakorn, in Chiang Mai's San Kamphaeng district, and searched for him.

Pakorn, who was behind the recent destruction of a Democrat Party rally stage at Chiang Mai University, was not at home and was believed to be in Bangkok.

More than 3,000 soldiers have been deployed to check bus and air travellers in Chiang Mai.

Govt heavies flee after many held

Thai Rak Thai executives and close aides of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra have scattered abroad while others still in the country have been taken into custody or have gone into hiding upcountry, sources said yesterday.

Party deputy spokesman Jatuporn Promphan said no executives visited the party's headquarters yesterday because of the new ban on assembling in groups of more than five people.

Meanwhile, Thai Rak Thai Party executive board member Veera Musikapong said he and some party members will seek permission from the Administrative Reform Council (ARC) leader General Sonthi Boonyaratglin to visit former deputy prime minister Chidchai Vanasatidya, who is being detained at the Army Command.

A senior party member said some key members had left on unscheduled trips abroad before the coup. Former agriculture minister Sudarat Keyuraphan has gone to Paris with her family and is still there, while former interior minister Kongsak Wantana was heading for Germany.

A Commerce Ministry source said former deputy prime minister and commerce minister Somkid Jatusripitak had reportedly changed his return from France to Singapore, instead of Bangkok, as first planned.

Former finance minister Thanong Bidaya was attending the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Singapore, which ended yesterday.

Rumours spread about a cabinet in exile forming in Singapore when many ex-ministers were reported to be "regrouping" there.

Pojaman Shinawatra, plus two of her children - Panthongtae and Paethongtarn - escaped to Singapore with ousted PM's Office minister Newin Chidchob, on Tuesday night. However, they have reportedly left the city-state to meet daughter Pinthongta in London, where she is studying and the family owns a mansion - and wait for Thaksin to arrive from Washington.

Former foreign minister Kantathi Supamongkhon decided not to return to Bangkok from France, travelling instead to London, where he has a house. Kantathi was in Paris to attend the Thai-France Cultural Exhibition, that was presided over by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn.

Meanwhile, a source said former deputy prime minister Chidchai Vanasatidya was being held in a safe house by the Administrative Reform Council. Former secretary-general to the prime minister Prommin Lertsuridej and Justice Ministry permanent secretary Somchai Wongsawat, who is Thaksin's brother-in-law, have been placed in separate custody on the second floor of the Army Command building.

The website of firebrand millionaire Ekkayuth Anchanbutr, www.akeyuth.com, reported that Chidchai was arrested at around 9.30pm on Tuesday after he picked up Prommin, who was carrying a black briefcase from Government House. They proceeded to the Army Command, as Chidchai had smelled the coup brewing. They were arrested immediately and detained until 4am yesterday before they were separated in the morning.

Troops went to Chidchai's residence and disarmed the security guards there shortly after he left to see Prommin, the website claimed.

Somsak Thepsuthin, the party's Wang Nam Yom faction leader and ousted labour minister, is in Sukhothai while deposed natural resources and environment minister Yongyuth Tiyapairat reportedly sought refuge at the home of a senior forestry official in a Bangkok suburb before fleeing to abroad.

Senior party members including Chaturon Chaisang, Phumtham Wechayachai and Suranand Vejjajiva are in the country but not detained by the ARC as they are still reachable by phone.

Party deputy and ousted industry minister Suriya Jungrungreangkit, plus former defence minister Thamarak Isarangura and former social development and human security minister Watana Muangsook are reportedly staying in the country at an unidentified location.

The Nation

Thaksin says coup unexpected, says Bangkok paper

Sep 20, 2006

AsiaOne

Ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said he did not expect that he would be ousted by a coup, The Nation has reported.

In his first public remarks since he was ousted in a bloodless coup by military leaders on Tueday night, Mr Thaksin told reporters before leaving New York at 5 am local time for London, he said: "I didn't expect that this will happen. I came here as Prime Minister but left as an unemployed man.

"That's fine as no one gives me the job. I volunteered to work but the military didn't want to give me the job, so it's fine."

Mr Thaksin said that he had been in touch with his family and hinted that he would talk to the Administrative Reform Council, reported The Nation. .

Sep 20, 8:18 AM EDT

Thai king endorses coup leader as head of governing council

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Wednesday endorsed a coup leader to head the new governing council, according to a televised announcement.

"In order to create peace in the country, the king appoints Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin as head of the council of administrative reform," according to the announcement on state-run television.

"All people should remain peaceful and civil servants should listen to order from Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin from now on."

The king's endorsement is widely seen as giving legitimacy to the new Council of Administrative Reform.

Sondhi led a takeover overnight without firing a shot, sending soldiers and tanks to guard major intersections and surround government buildings while the popularly elected Thaksin, accused of corruption and undermining democratic institutions, was abroad.