connda

Bye bye ????

I'd rather sail the world while working on a container ship. Ex-navy. I really enjoy being out at sea for extended periods of time. If I had this life to do over again, I would have entered a maritime academy with the end goal of captaining a commercial ship. Not a cruise liner.

The Red Bull heir is young and will simply wait out the statutes of limitation and walk back into Thailand a free man - and laughing and laughing and laughing at how he beat the system without seeing a day in the general prison population - just like Tony will be laughing and laughing and laughing at how he beat the system without seeing a day in the general prison population by playing the elderly, frail, Thai who is on death's doorstep and just wants to breath Thai air once more. ???? <wipes away crocodile tears> It will play out like a Lakhon soap opera. One system for the commoners; another for the connected wealthy and rich.

Like other convicts, further clemency for Thaksin possible on important occasions Wake up. Any one with a functioning brain can see exactly where this is heading as the public is being primed for Thaksin's early release. You're average 'other convicts' will be rotting in jail long after Thaksin is a free man. Average commoners don't get clemency. Rich, connected, sick, ohhhh so sick and frail somebodies get clemency. Tony ain't seeing much more time under arrest in a hospital, no less seeing the inside of a prison cell.

71. I personally don't worry about it as long as I'm in reasonably good health. From the epidemiological data I've read, the people who have the worse time are those who are 75 and older, not in good health, and who have health issues such as diabetes, coronary problems, immune issues, and obesity. So in the meanwhile, exercise and eat right. After 75? Something will eventually kill you. That's just the way of it. If you get Sars-Cov-2 while battling some other disease, well, that may usher your passage off this moral world. Until then? As long as I have a healthy immune system, I'm personally not worried. Especially after contracting Covid as now I have Sars-Cov-2 antibodies and B and T cells immunological memory. If my immune system encounters a form of Sars-Cov-2 again, even a mutate form, it's primed to go into action. Honestly, that's the purpose of getting vaccinations. Then Virology 101: as the viruses mutate (and they all mutate) they become more infectious but less virulent, in other words you're more likely to catch it, but also your immune system is more likely to beat it down just like most healthy people will beat influenza. But? You gotta do whatever you feel makes you safe.

Yep - had Covid (according to an rapid antigen test) at the beginning of last month. Two and a half days with a manageable fever. Splitting headache for the first 12 hours. Body aches with the fever for the next two days. After the fever broke, I felt "off" for another couple of days. And that was it. I stayed at home. It was never bad enough to consider seeing a doctor. Connda's Covid Adventure. Essentially it was 4 days with flu symptoms. I've had worse cases of influenza in the past. Rapid antigen test was back to normal on day 15. My immune system will take care of any future brushes with Sars-Cov-2 seeing that I've got antibodies. Once the antibodies decrease, then immunological memory will take care of any other SARS-based infections. (Immunological memory refers to the ability of B and T cells to produce long-lived memory cells that defend against pathogens1) I'm no more worried about future Covid than I am future influenza (which I haven't had for a couple of decades). And I don't take shots other than Rabies shots, but that's a different story. But! I highly recommend you get the Covid boosters if it makes you feel safer. Try private hospitals as they have a profit motive to keep mRNA Covid vaccines in stock as opposed to public hospitals. Source: Immunological memory 1. https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Anatomy_and_Physiology_(Boundless)/20%3A_Immune_System/20.6%3A_Humoral_Immune_Response/20.6D%3A_Immunological_Memory

Check your blood pressure. Low BP can cause dizziness.

I doubt I'll be growing opium poppies any time soon. Well, unless Anutin makes it a "cash crop."

Nativity tends to be the bastion of Western expats who strap the anchor of their government's own pro-colonialist propaganda around their waists, and then fail to take off the rose-tinted glasses to see the realities around them when they leave their own borders and reside elsewhere in the world. China does not have 800 military bases world-wide in order to enforce Power Projection at the end of a gun for the enrichment of US-backed corporate and "stakeholder" interests. The United States (and it's allies) on the contrary - Do. ???? Take the time to read books by Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski or at least read policy papers from the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) (their magazine, Foreign Affairs, is less than $40/year) as US and Western foreign policy objectives are spelled out quite clearly for those who can read at a high school level. But most expats I know get their Geo-political viewpoints from 2 minute sound-bites on CNN or MSNBC or other MSM outlets, or short MSM filtered sound-bites from White House and State Department "Pressers", or from completely unbiased digital tomes like <laughs> Wikipedia. Filter a CFR policy paper through CNN, it gets edited to a few sound bites as the average MSM-consumer has the attention-span of a gnat, and what you get is quite simple: "China Bad; US Good" - if anyone says different? They are a <add pejorative here>, e.g., 'a propagandist.'

Connda Rockefeller. Now you know!

Agreed. I can't reach a couple of sites in the US that I use for music practice.

Well that was fun. Coffee time!

Try it now. Everything just went live again.

Same here. Kudos for 3BB system administrators. <cheers>

Whoo Hoo. I can reach https://tm47.immigration.go.th/tm47/#/login so it seems some servers within Thailand are accessible. Servers outside of Thailand? No joy. Interesting.

I can ping www.aseannow.com and get returns, although sometimes there is a delay. However, I can't ping outside of Thailand, like Google's DNS server ping 8.8.8.8. So it looks like the primary problem is talking with the rest of the world. Maybe the government has turned on the Great Thai Firewall? Anyway, it seems 3BB routing is f***ed to the outside world.

Off and on in Lamphun even though the router is showing "Internet."

Nothing like a topic on normal, run-of-the-mill diplomatic meetings between the new leader of Thailand and the leader of China to bring out the "Expats Who Abhor All Things China Committee" to throw copious amounts of shade at both Srettha and Xi. Like it or not, BRI and the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area agreements foster bilateral economic cooperation between neighboring countries in Asia, for the benefit of all countries involved.

Red Bull boy is young enough that he will wait out the statutes of limitations and reenter Thailand a completely free man (while thumbing his nose at the family of the police officer he killed and Thai 'commoners' in general). "We submitted a Interpol Red Notice." Bunk. Interpol Red Notices are searchable and the last time I checked he name wasn't on the list. And why not? He's a billionaires heir. Untouchable. Kon Peeset. A special person, sorta like Tony.

Thaksin arrives in Thailand August 22nd to serve 8 years in jail. A week later that 8 year sentence is 1 year. My guess is that he'll be under house arrest for "health reasons" and "humanitarian considerations" before the end of the month. "Ordinary prisoner?" Oh, Please, don't make me (and 70 million Thais) laugh.

Buffalo Paddies. ????

I think most Thai students, especially those given high grades based on participation vs merit, and rote learning vs analysis - will be in for a shock once they enter the Korean school system. However, if they can manage passing the Level 2 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK), they may be light-years ahead of their Thai peers. By the way - importing Thai students isn't going to do diddly-squat for the Korea population. Westernized ASEAN kids aren't reproducing either. So Thailand may be sending their 'best and brightest' away to the detriment of Thai society as a whole. But in the meanwhile, migrant labor from Myanmar are landing in Thailand to do, "the jobs Thais refuse to do (supposedly)" and unlike Thai kids, these younger folk from Myanmar reproduce and find it advantageous to do so in Thailand as a Myanmar child born in Thailand is very much an "anchor baby." That doesn't work for farang, but cheap labor from other less developed ASEAN nations are a different story. Speaking from discussions about Myanmar migrants that my wife initiates with me. How ironic, that after hundreds of years of attempting to conquer Thailand, Myanmar finally succeeds as Burmese migrants become a larger and larger subset of the Thai population.

????

Yep

That is a routine. Very simple, but a routine none the less.