connda

Shhhhhh. You'll be called a "mask-denier.' It doesn't matter that they don't work. It only matters that you do as you are told and conform. Now with that said, I have a snug fitting 3M P-100 that is capable of filtering water-bound virus globules like the people in the hospital are hacking, coughing, and sneezing. I wore it in 2020-2021 while at the local hospital where 100 people are jammed into a relatively small space. However, those cloth masks? They are "feel good" devices. Most have significant gaps. Unless you believe that mask create the conditions that defy physics so that viruses and water droplets can't get past the gaps between your face and the mask where large quantities of air are sucked in as it is the path of least resistance? At best it's a feel-good device. I don't wear the P-100 any more. Had Covid. It was three days of feeling flu-like and generally like cr*p - and done. Much ado about nothing. All this public fear and loathing over a flu-bug. Haven't had the flu for 20 years. If I get it, like Covid? I'll deal with it and get on with my life. "It might kill you!!!" Ever time I get in my car and drive on these road I have a much higher chance of dying than of dying of any kind of flu including Covid. So "no," I don't mask, and "no" I can't understand the level of paranoia that drives people to willingly don a mask and re-breath their CO2 all day. And "no" I don't take the shots. "You're an anti-vaxxer!!!" Nope. I get rabies shots as I work with animals and don't particularly want to come down with a virus - that will kill you. Oh, and then those putting on masks to filter out diesel fumes and other noxious airborne chemicals. At a minimum they need a 3M 6000 series mask fitted with 6001, 501, or 5N11 filters. But - I guess those flimsy paper and cloth masks are good for a placebo effect. 🙄

Thai do it become it is a sign of social conformity. And Thais are raised from birth to conform to Thai society as well as to those who have positions of power within Thai society.

Go to any corporate run retailer and see how many employees are masked. 7/11 for instance - all employees in every store I've been to up here in Northern Thailand are masked and probably will be for God only know how long. Why is corporate policy created to "mask" the employees? The same reason that in some places women are forced to cover their faces. Ultimately it's about power and the projection of power over those whom you believe you control.

By the way - I agree.

For some reason most of the "I hate the Chinese" crowd fail to observe that the US via the IMF have doing the same for decades. However, unlike China, the US/IMF tag-team tends to leave the target country with rich leaders who are beholding to US foreign policy and the hell with the country's citizens who are on the hook for the IMF loan. China at least leaves valuable infrastructure that stimulates economic trade. 😠 "China is evil. US/IMF debt is 'good debt' and Chinese debt is 'bad debt.'" Whatever..............

Lets see. Ok, Israeli reservists, about 300k won't be coming to Thailand unless they are fleeing the reactivation notice. Palestinians in Gaza won't be coming as most of them would never be coming anyway as most are locked behind the Israeli-built border wall that creates the conditions of the world's largest open-air prison. Who does that leave? No many. So, the new Israel-Palestinian War will probably have about zero impact on tourism, well, unless the global fear-mongering agencies crank the "terrorists are gonna get you if you travel" rhetoric. Which of course, they are.

I'm really curious as why she was not approved as females married to Thai men do not have a financial requirement to meet. The Thai husband does, but if I remember right, foreign females and Thai husbands can pool their funds to meet the requirement (and that bar is very low). Other than that, I pretty much thought that foreign gals married to a Thai guy simply needed to prove they are actually married and breathing. It's a realllllll low bar and it provides a path to citizenship.

Dr. Yong back to spread fear-porn.

Actually it will be an Ethnic Tax. Non-Thais get taxed based on ethnicity. It will be a tax on any non-Thai. No country in the West would get away with that. There would be a public and government uproar heard around the world.

Huh? 😕

I can just imagine the push for EV 18 wheelers that will be use to haul cargo over the green silk road. The only problem being is that the BRI silk road traverses some of the roughest, inhospitable land in the central Asia where there won't be any solar panels and wind turbine in the middle of the Gobi Desert to power the 18 wheelers which will need a day to charge so they can roll another 100 or 200 km. Slow. Costly. Impractical. And based on a bravo-sierra climate change trope which is a globalist's wet-dream. Well, this establishes one thing - Srettha is a globalist. Hence the push for 'green' and CBDCs.

Yep - United Kingdom, which includes the Isle of Man.

Yeah - address your letter, go to the Thai Post Office, and once at the window say, "I'd like to send this letter to the Isle Of Man by registered mail." Easy-breezy!

Personally? I could care. I'm not easily offended. Just saying........A swastika in the middle of a Star of David? Don't do that in Germany. It's prison time for sure.

Travels with Charley - John Steinbeck

He ate, pooped, peed, had sex, had better luck than the average plod in his business dealings, and then died at a relatively early age. I'm not a fanboy of the CEO-types that others place on pedestals and worship. There is plenty of wisdom to go around from the most normal, common, average people that you'll ever have a chance to meet. Some of the brightest, smartest, and most insightful people I've met are literally nobodies. Collectively, they too change the world, generally for the better.

Most Westerners are in denial. It's much more accepted in Eastern countries where death is not made into a morbid affair to be feared at all costs as it is in the West. When you live in a Thai village like I do where 10+ people die each year, and the 'funeral' is a village affair that goes on for three days, and ends with a procession of villagers holding a robe and pulling the deceased's coffin past your home to the crematorium (and I've pulled those robes myself) - death is close up and personal. You can't ignore it like most Westerns do. So - you come to terms with it. It is the way of it. Death is as much a part of living as life itself. It doesn't take a billionaire on the edge of death to come up with that obvious fact of life.

Goes to show that being a billionaire doesn't keep Death at bay. Then when that becomes obvious, suddenly you make the "Greatest Speech Ever." As any practicing Buddhist already knows, understands, and accepts the indeterminate nature of a human life-span. I've told people pretty much what Job's stated. I receive no accolades or praise. And why should I? This is the nature of life and death. You don't have to be staring at your own mortality, as Job's was, to come to grips with mortality. You simply need to open your eyes and stop just a moment from being consumed in self. It's not a revelation - death is sitting next to you right now. Take the time to say hello now and then. Then when he comes for you, it will be like going home with your old friend.

You didn't eat enough shooms. 😉

The rich all get breaks that the average commoner will never get. It's a two-tiered system but that said, it tends to be global in nature.

If Krungthai Bank is a public company on the SET - buy stock and go long. The government is going to make this scheme into winners and losers. Winners are those, like Krungthai who will be declared an "essential business" and a player in the scheme. Losers will ultimately be everyone else, "non-essential businesses" and those deemed non-players. And then after the government dumps about 600 billion THB into the Thai economy all at once, inflation is going to skyrocket. For their "free" 10,000 THB the average Thai will lose multiples of that amount over the long term as inflation decimated the average citizens.

Have a checklist. Keep multiple copies of reusable items (for example, hand-drawn map, your wife's house-book and id, your passport). That leaves you with annual pictures. If you want to get sneaky about it, take multiple pictures wearing different clothes. Our office wants two pictures (copies of the same picture) at the front gate with address, two pictures in living room and two picture sitting on the bed. While your at it, make multiple copies of a 4x6 photo of yourself. You could spend one afternoon/evening at put together application packets for the next three or four years. That leaves you only with going to the bank to get a bank letter (you have to do this for retirement too) and on the way stop by the Amphur office and pick up a copy of your Kor 2 (20 or 30 THB). Op, you're making a mountain out of a mole-hole. You're railing at the system probably because it is unfair as compared with the immigration policies of our own country's where foreign wives are pretty much a shoe-in for a visa, a green-card (work permit), permanent residency, and a path to citizenship. I get it! I've been there. I've done that. I do understand. But now pushing 16 years of marriage and 17 years living here? You adapt. Or you don't and you leave. The process is an afternoon of prep work (or like I said, make packages for the next three years) and a day at immigration that could be as little as an hour to as much as all day depending where you Immigration office is. Put it in perspective - It's Once A Year. Really - it's not that big of a deal. I've attached Ubonjoe's (may he rest in peace) Marriage Extension Checklist. Marriage Extension Requirements - Ubonjoe.pdf

🤵‍♂️ "Here's a million THB." 👮‍♂️ "Yep. He really is sick!" 🙄 TIT Baby!

"Legal" vote buying. Call it what it is. Illegal: Hand a voter 500 THB before they go to the poll. Legal: Promise to give a voter 10,000 THB using government funds if you vote them into office. What concerns me is the moral relativity. Btw, the 10,000 THB scheme grift initiative is going to give birth to a whole new generation of nouveau riche billionaires as they refine the digital shell game and give special retailer status to connected "essential businesses." Watch.

Between Feb and May (even until June some years) this is your friend and buddy.