nisakiman

For me, the main criterion is whether or not it will fit in my pocket, and the majority of smartphones won't. The last one I bought a couple of years ago (which is my current phone) was a Samsung S5 mini dual SIM. It's big enough for most stuff, and it fits in my pocket. I can't see the point of having a 'mobile' phone that you have to carry because you can't fit it about your person. For me, the essence of mobility is something you can drop in your pocket and forget about unless you need to use it.

5 hours ago, InMyShadow said:

A bit off topic but do they not have cops n random stops in France? drinking like a viking i love but the driving not anymore..

That would normally be in the evening, and you'd stagger out of the restaurant to your vehicle (with bed inside) and crash for the night.

3 hours ago, nanglong218 said:

I would like wine to become an everyman drink as it is in Europe. I drove a 40T truck around France and Spain, Swiss and Belgium, and others.    At truckstops and Relais Routiers the food is always excellent, the wine is in litre bottles or on tap. It's Vin de Pays, Vin deTable, sometimes Vin de sprinkle on chips.   You sit at refectory tables with complete strangers and talk to them in school French and mime, it's good fun.  

So while I accept everyone's wisdom on technical points - it is indeed an industry where generations of knowledge have brought it to its present standard  -   I don't want the view that it comes in a stemmed glass, swirled around and sniffed.

OK for some,   no problem,   but if this country is going to tax the hell out of all pleasures I remind myself that I live 100kms from Cambodia.

Ah, that brings back memories. Whenever I was driving in France, I always looked for the roadside restaurants with a two acre car park. There would usually be several semis parked up already. The atmosphere was always great - hugga-mugga with the other customers on the trestle tables; large portions of good food, and an endless supply of wine. It always rather reminded me of those Viking feasts as portrayed in the movies, with everyone sitting at one or two long tables, carousing. Much talk and laughter and a haze of cigarette smoke. It was wonderful!

1 hour ago, smotherb said:

I hear few Thais complaining about wine prices

That's because Thais don't normally drink wine unless they are HiSo, and then the price is pretty much irrelevant. I would guess that the majority of the lower end wine sales are bought by expats, who come from a wine drinking culture. I know that when I'm in Tesco or Big C (both in Bangkok and Ubon), the vast majority people I see browsing the wine racks are farang. The Thai customers tend more towards the spirits racks. That's a generalisation, of course, but wine doesn't figure large in your average Thai household.

On 2/23/2018 at 4:01 AM, Daffy D said:

Hang a heavy curtain or one of those cheap eiderdown duvet bed covers over the door area.

 

 

 

 

Probably the best suggestion here. Just requires putting up a strong rail above the door. The door is probably an MDF (maybe 8mm max) faced hollow construction with that lattice cardboard stuff filling a timber frame, so no soundproofing properties at all. Soundproofing can get very expensive. Back in the eighties I had a business in London that specialised in building and refurbishing recording studios, and a major part of that work was in soundproofing and de-coupling studio and control room. The doors they used for the control room were a four-man lift, had magnetic seals all round, and would come from the manufacturer already hung in a four sided frame. I believe there were a couple of layers of lead in the multi-layered construction. I seem to remember that back then in the mid eighties they cost about £1500 each. Dunno what that would equate to today, but not cheap!

No, as I said, the best suggestion is to hang a padded bed cover over the door. It will be cheap and easy, and provide quite good sound insulation.

On 2/23/2018 at 9:20 AM, Crossy said:

It only fell 8 floors, so one assumes the gravity brake did its job, eventually.

 

Not very reassuring if you're on the 7th floor.

Rather than mindlessly attacking the car with a shovel, she would have been better off just smashing one of the side windows, releasing the handbrake and pushing it out of the way.

20 hours ago, geisha said:

Im spoilt in France with very good  affordable wine. I can’t believe the rubbish they sell here, especially in restaurants.Ive had nice wine in Wine connexion though, and I look forward to some nice wine when in Bangkok.

Likewise here in Greece. My daily table wine is a local (Nemea) Merlot, 12.5% ABV, currently the 2016 vintage, which I buy in a 10 litre box. While not a 'fine wine' by any stretch of the imagination, it is very drinkable, and serves well as a table wine. It's certainly better than all the cheaper(?) end of wines in Thailand. And what do I pay for 10 litres of very nice table wine? The princely sum of 18.70 Euros, about 730 Baht.

The alleged connection between vaping and 'popcorn lung' is non-existent. This is just a click-bait headline generated by the anti-smoking, anti-vaping propaganda machine.

Quote

The most important bit of evidence is that after many millions of person-years of vaping, some unknown but nontrivial portion of which included diacetyl exposure, there has not been a reported case of a vaper getting bronchiolitis obliterans. Those who follow the anti-vaping propaganda will no doubt know that the anti-THR liars have picked up on the consternation as their latest claim — “Vaping causes popcorn lung!!!” Never mind that it hasn’t done so.

https://antithrlies.com/2016/02/04/diacetyl-in-e-cigarettes-what-we-can-really-say-not-much/

I'm sure all their compatriots in the south will be eternally grateful to them when either 1) the lights go out, or 2) their electricity bills double.

Wind and solar are all very well, but if the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine they tend not to produce electricity. Plus both have a big environmental impact, particularly wind, with its requirements for rare earth minerals for the magnets.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/environment/baotou-a-toxic-lake-created-because-of-a-thirst-for-technology/article/430511

But of course, because 97% of rare earths mined come from far away in China, the environmental damage doesn't impact on their lives, so can be safely ignored.

2 hours ago, dddave said:

Years ago, I was in the US Navy, stationed in Morocco, a largely Islamic nation.  It was commonplace for Moroccan men to take another man's hand when walking in public places; nothing sexual about it but it took me a long time to get used to it.

I think it must be normal in most Islamic countries. It certainly was in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan when I was there in the late '60s. And as JT points out, not unusual for Indian men to hold hands either. I must admit that I was slightly taken aback when, on my first visit to Tehran, a local lad I'd got friendly with and who was taking me to a vodka bar took my hand as we were strolling down the street. I didn't quite know what to do! I had to make some rapid cultural adjustments! :)

On 1/26/2018 at 12:23 AM, Happyman58 said:

Truck driving would be one of the worst jobs you can ever think of In fact it would be on my  list of the most hated jobs i never would want to do? My most hated job list is 1/ House Painter No 2 Furniture Removalist  3 Gardener 4 Truck driver   In Australia truck drivers drive for insanely long hours and are very much underpaid. courteously  of greedy multi national  companies like the super market chains eg Woolworths,  Coles who want the cheapest ways of delivery so they can make more money. There has been some horrendous accidents in Australia due to the driver falling asleep because they are driving long hours. Maybe its the same situation here?

I would have thought that with the introduction of tachographs in Australia there would be a lot less driving over-long hours - tachographs are quite difficult to fiddle. I drove semis interstate for several years in Aus back in the 1970s when we just had log books (otherwise known as 'lie books'), mostly doing what was known back then as the 'kamikaze run' between Melbourne and Sydney. Back then, there was just a short stretch of freeway at either end of the route, with the rest of the Hume Highway being narrow and twisty (there was even the old wooden bridge at Gundagai still in operation when I first started that route). We were expected to do the run (about 600 miles - 1000 kilometres) overnight and then spend the following day driving round Sydney unloading and loading for the return trip, which was the following night. About 2 or 3 hours sleep in 24 was the norm - three return trips a week. All the drivers took 'beanies' - ephedrine tablets, to stay awake, but there were a lot of accidents due to drivers falling asleep at the wheel. And those interstate trucks were fast. They had to be to average 50 mph over the trip. One truck I drove, a Kenworth, was capable of a tad over 90 mph on the flat, fully loaded. Have an accident at that sort of speed in a truck, and it's Goodnight Vienna.

That said, I actually loved that job, hard though it was. I was young (mid-twenties) and fit, and enjoyed the challenge. I was one of only a couple of Poms who managed to break into the closed shop of interstate driving back then. Mostly, it was third-generation Aussies, and anyone else wasn't welcome.

3 hours ago, The manic said:

As only 10% of people smoke the myth of pubs closing because of the smoking ban is a sad lie. Yes pubs are closing in the Uk but the ones that survive are helped by the ban on smoking. 

You obviously didn't read the post on the previous page by mrfill

Quote

I do remember very well as I have a company that benefits from pubs closing down and in the last 10 years has done very well indeed. Most of the people leaving, cited the smoking ban as the reason for their business decline, certainly in the 3-4 years after the ban when closures were at their height. The UK lost at least 20% of its pubs .

20 hours ago, flyingdoc said:

Smoking was banned years ago inside restaurants, but look at the result.  Flagrant disregard, and owners too afraid of losing custom, to even consider upholding it !

Now that is indeed a telling comment. "Owners too afraid of losing custom".

And why would they be afraid of losing custom? Reading through this thread, one would be forgiven for thinking that absolutely everyone loves the smoking ban. Could it perhaps be that the majority of people who frequent these establishments don't like smoking bans? And if the majority don't want them, why should the owner be forced to make his best customers unwelcome? That's a terrible business plan to impose on someone against their will, in their own private property, and against their customers' wishes.

12 hours ago, Cranky said:

Can't see why you have to be abusive and name calling after the chap merely stated an accurate opinion.  

 

Anyway, you're either joking (plausible) or you appear to have overlooked the fact that so many UK pubs closed for several reasons other than banning toxic gas that endangers peoples lives. 

 

(a) They were mainly run-down crap businesses managed by idiots living in the stone age serving crap food that deserved to go tits-up. Outsiders definitely not welcome 'You not from round 'ere are ya', followed by a slap commonplace. 

(b) Plod started applying the law that you are actually not allowed to drive home pissed out of your mind, (endangering more lives) and as most decent pubs are out of town it made sense not to go. Seeing as the average Brit would never entertain walking more than about 200 yards to the pub and can't afford a taxi led to....

(c) Supermarkets started selling beer for tuppence a can so it did make sense to stay home and get shitfaced for a fraction of the price, eat in, no need to drive, smoke all you want, bring the neighbours round and take turns annoying each others wives.

(d) Local magistrates closing 'In-town' pubs mainly because they were a place to meet on a Saturday night to get juiced up for the weekly scrap in the vomit-covered market square. Also, a bit off-putting when surrounded by cops in riot-gear and bouncers on the door.  If you didn't get a kicking for not being from 'round 'ere', the bouncers or plod would oblige.

 

Net result, fantastic establishments that serve great food in a smoke-free family-friendly environment without curmudgeons like you.  Pray tell by the way what you mean by 'science and research'?  Assume you disbelieve smoking causes death in various forms?

 

Best regards

Mr Zealot. 

The rate of closures quadrupled almost immediately after the smoking ban was introduced. All those other things you mention didn't start in 2007, so had no bearing on the massively increased rate of closures.

2 hours ago, The manic said:

And the ones that remained open but banned smoking are gaining more customers as the 90% of people who do not smoke  return to pubs, clubs and bars. Staff are more healthy and insurance premiums go down. Bring it on! Dont confuse pubs or beaches with 'baccy Dens' or 'smoking galleries'! Have your fix in your own home away from kids!

Well they've been a hell of a long time returning, and the publicans are still waiting. In fact most pubs aren't even pubs anymore - they had to turn themselves into restaurants with a bar (and snotty, screaming kids running around) to survive, such was the influx of non-smokers that rushed to enjoy the now 'smoke-free' pubs. I guess the sheer numbers of non-smokers rushing to the pubs is why only 17,000 pubs and clubs have closed in the UK since the smoking ban. Yes, that's 17,000. Seventeen thousand.

Sorry, sunshine, but the only reason any pub might be gaining customers is because all the others in the area have been forced into liquidation by the smoking ban. The smoking ban was a disaster for the hospitality industry. Tens of thousands lost their jobs, thousands of good businesses were forced to close, millions of older people had their only social lives taken from them. Why do you think that, for the first time ever, the UK government is creating a 'Minister for Loneliness'? It wouldn't be because nearly all the British Legion clubs and Working Men's clubs and bingo halls were forced to close in the wake of the smoking ban, would it? Those places where the older generation would traditionally meet and socialise? But then, you would never have been to one of those establishments, so you wouldn't know, would you? Nor do you care.

You're just like all the other zealots. Self-centered, intolerant, bigoted and not very clever. You obviously know nothing about the actual science and research, but have memorised all the propaganda soundbites you've read in the 'Daily Mail' or whatever, which you trot out at every opportunity to display your level of indoctrination, your status as one of the 'in crowd', those who are 'acceptable' because they say the 'right' things; tick all the PC boxes.

I usually avoid getting annoyed at other people's lack of understanding, but sometimes the unctuous sanctimony of some people's attitude really does irk me.

You ever heard the biblical quote "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone"?

Think about it.

14 hours ago, toughlove said:

The wheels will off and zippers busted before he gets to the airport.

It's OK if you plan just one or two trips

I have a medium size hard shell suitcase (with clips, not zip) that I bought at MBK about five or six years ago for 1500 Baht, and which has had plenty of rides on the luggage carousel, and doubtless has also been used in that favourite game of baggage handlers "Long Distance Suitcase Hurling".

It's still as good as new. I fully expect it to last another five years.

3 hours ago, Top Chef said:

Many years ago Thailand was home to some of the best weed in the world (Thai-Stick & Buddha Weed ). Now Thailand is relegated, mostly, to some of the crappiest weed on the planet. With little or no benefit for the consumer.

Indeed, I remember it well from when I was in LOS in '71. As I travelled around, I would regularly be invited to share a bong. It was a common and unremarkable social lubricant in Thailand back then - lots of people smoked it, even though it was in fact illegal. And I don't recollect coming across any young people doing Ya Ba or similar back then, either. Why bother, when you have some of the best weed in the world on your doorstep?

4 hours ago, Oxx said:

 

I presume you mean "kretek" which are laced with ground cloves.

 

They are taxed less than regular cigarettes in Indonesia, hence their popularity.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kretek

As I understand it, clove cigarettes have now been banned in EU, on the basis that all the kiddies are falling over each other to buy them. Complete BS, of course. They banned them so as to restrict the choices smokers have. Menthol cigarettes are next...