nglodnig

When we were young, we had only a few years of life experience to judge with our time perception. So days seemed like weeks, months like years. etc. When you were seven years old you only had a few scant years of memories so being told "we'll do it next year" seemed literally like a lifetime. You had only been self-aware for a short time (a few years) so that was like 25% or more of your whole life. We got older - we got more memories that ARE our time perception. The more things that happen to you, the longer your life memories seem to be. Then you entered your (later) adult life and maybe got stuck in a rut - every day the same. Days seemed to drag out endlessly but as there were no stimuli you could record in your memory - so looking back over the year, it went "whoosh" - nothing memorable there. The years rushed by quickly. THEN you started to do interesting things, change your life - and suddenly days were short and the years are chock-a-block with memories! Life is long again.... Discuss.

Me too! When I was unemployed in Switzerland I asked to be retrained as a TEFL but the anal admins here told me "we are not allowed to change your profession". BUT the salary is more like $60k a year which is just about livable in Switzerland.

Yes it's Capital One mastrcard. Apparently because I have had my card so long my account is of the"old" type - it can't be changed to paperless. Seems like major rocket science to them (I first asked for it four years ago) or most probably they can't be bothered, it;s not a priority. The responses I get from "secure messaging" seem to have been answered (mostly) by a bot.

Nope - never happened - to me at least. I have frequently flown on one-way tickets, or with onward or return flight with another airline - or sometimes purchased the return or onward leg in Thailand. My wife checked in with her British passport once (no visa) with a return of several months away - they looked at her place of birth and was asked "you've got a Thai passport as well I presume?" (she did) and she got on no problem.

Update - after sending them so-called "secure messages" which are scanned by a bot and a bland answer posted back - phoned their number, ask the "off-shore" rep who just googles what you say and reads back the answer to "escalate" - talked to someone in the UK. I explained what I did and asked for a confirming email. Technically it's against the terms and conditions but I have been asking this for FOUR YEARS now and was a right pain when my address was in Thailand, useless statements arrived by registered post. Sure, they could cancel my card but as I owe them (quite a lot) of money from balance transfers at a lower interest rate (which is ALL I use the card for) - what are they going to do? Send the baliffs round to their head office?

Yeah Boris has already charged a few party kegs but I got that blocked. ????

This "must show return/onward ticket at immigration to get tourist visa exempt" MYTH never seems to die. It's probably on some Thai embassy website covered in cobwebs, along with the "must have 20,000 baht cash". When was the last time anyone got a printed ticket (as opposed to a print of the PDF the airline sends)? And who carries that much cash normally anyway - plastic rules! Has ANYONE ever been asked to show a return ticket? Or is it just me with my air of honesty and respectability that wows the IOs? I have been coming to Thailand for more than forty years, always on the VOA thing, never asked to show a ticket (or money) - for the first few years I was travelling on Airline Staff "subject to load" tickets which are basically toilet paper if the flight is full (unless you're sleeping with the Station Manager, he was quite a hunk I remember but not my type ha ha ha ???? ) (Actually for Gulf Air he was a she and a very nice, helpful and friendly lady but we never got that close ???? ) Nowdays I DO have a return ticket, but it's a PDF in an email that I could have easily edited myself. Like I said I have NEVER had to show it.

Why can't I edit? This is getting annoying. The airline obviously could be over-charging of course.

There two possible explanations a) the booking.com website is a charity and trying to make travel easier for us all b) you get what you pay for. For example, most airlines will allow you change the dates on your ticket (sometimes for a fee) but booking agencies - rarely so. My daughter booked a flight with one of thses sites and then realiszed she had put the wrong date down. Calling their customer "service" the smarmy operator said it was a condition pointed out in the booking - no date changes allowed. She had been forced to pay for "insurance" which would refund her fare for a cancellation for say medical reasons - but not wrong date. Worthless. When you book through the airline website your contract is with them. Going through an external agency means you have no relationship with the airline. Of course if there are no problems you are still sat on the same seat going to the same destination whether it is agency or airline. Fingers crossed.

Minor point, but I have no way of stopping these statements being posted to me (with the credit card number printed in FULL so I have to shred them) despite repeated requests going back years. So, I rang their telephone banking service and got my postal address changed - to their head office in Nottingham. Of course their (off-shore) operator had no idea - I even asked him if I could put 10 Downing Street down as my address and he said "sure, why not?" ????

And of course, as we have seen with the "Thailand Pass" applications, we have no fear of our data passing into the wrong hands

Swiss francs

Exccept we weren't working with Euros - the echange rate I mentioned was actually for another European currency. Maybe my post was misleading. But it halved.

About twenty or so years ago when we sold up - just before the Great Crash I think it was 2004? The house we bought was valued at approx 400k pounds - now more than 800k. No brainer. If we had held on to the house in the UK it would be worth half what it is now. In real (i.e. not sterling) money.

The Pound is now 1.20 to the Euro . When was it that the Pound was 2.40 to the euro ? About twenty or so years ago when we sold up - just before the Great Crash I think it was 2004?

Reneted our house out in the UK (West London) and the rent just covered the mortgage and agency fees. A couple of problem tenants but otherwise painless. Sold up when we wanted to buy a house here in mainland Europe where we living so needed the equity for the (stringent) deposit requirements. Luckily we did before the pound crashed (now half its value from when we sold). Friends back in the UK say "Oh you should have held on to it, look at how much houses are worth now!" - yeah, now divide by two to get the REAL value. Best decision I (we) ever made.

Sounds like my kinda gal! ????

Last time I checked there were stacks of blank cards in departure. And I'm sure no one ever looks at them. I lost mine once, just fell out - even checked into hotels without it - when I left either the check-in staff or the passport-checking IO (can't remember which) just inserted a blank card with flight details. This advice seems WAY over the top to put it mildly

Ridiculous. I was using a video link with a bank in Singapore once and the girl at the other end was wearing a mask - I asked her why? and requested she took it off. I do tend to lip-read subsconciously so the mask hinders communication - also she was quite pretty ????

Tried that for a while, one problem is the time difference with say Euope or the US - unless you want to start work at 4pm (well maybe you do) you will find yourself out of step with your colleagues back in the office - it's OK if you are doing development work needing no interaction but if you do meetings (Skype / Zoom) you could be working late into the night. Again, that might appeal to some people..... we have a lot of off-shore staff and many of them end up doing shift-work in Asia to match up with our office hours.

I just got this too - yes it is almost 100% certain it's a fake. It appeared in my Gmail spam folder. It's sending address is definitely dogy: Thailand Pass [email protected] via sendgrid.net. Looks like someone hacked the Thailand Pass mailing list - who'd have thought THAT was possible? ????

They're in Hang Dong! I've got some old pairs I'll pop in and drop them off. 262/1 Moo 5, Ban Huathung Nong Kwai, Hang Dong District, Chiang Mai 50230, Thailand

Duh - who says I STAY in this country?