Jump to content

Ragnarok

Member
  • Posts

    67
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Ragnarok

  1. Here are three companies that accept up to 99 years old:

    Chubb 26,500 baht for 1 year 
     
    Luma Thailand Pass, by Tune Protect Thailand, a subsidiary of AirAsia, 31,500 baht for 1 year https://w3.tuneprotect.co.th/WebPortal/Pages/TAOnline01.aspx?Keys=BQSRGVKQQUKQAVY5P8KLG2KZ94ML26U3BJUXXGSF28UZG4RRX4JLAGFRW2 
     
    Thai General Insurance Association (mentioned already) 43,200 baht for 1 year 
     
  2. “Pool tile has been been specially manufactured to stand up to sunlight, changing temperatures, an aquatic environment, and constant contact with the chemicals in swimming pool water. Regular household tile such as bathroom and kitchen tile isn't designed for outdoor use and may not offer the same durability.” 
    We got stone tiles for our pool from https://www.hinsaengnakorn.co.th

    • Like 2
  3. I will be happy to get Astra Zeneca. Pfizer won the brand war, and everyone thinks it's the best, but that doesn't mean it is. My mother, age 90, got Pfizer in the US. She got an itchy rash all over her back. Pfizer doesn't seem good for the Indian variant either. Renowned infectious disease expert Dr Rajendra Kapila, 81, died of Covid-19 after having two doses of Pfizer. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/renowned-infectious-diseases-expert-dr-rajendra-kapila-81-dies-of-covid19-101620168008338.html

  4. It’s called a reverse mortgage, and it’s a great way to make money. I know Thai people who do it. If you’re not paid back, the borrower finds another guy to cough up the amount in hopes of getting the land, so although you thought you’d get land if they couldn’t re-pay, you get your money back, plus you’ve gotten all the monthly interest, and another guy assumes the reverse mortgage. You would only get the land if they can’t find anyone else to invest in the reverse mortgage after you. Any Thai person who transfers land, has to have their foreign spouse go to the land office and sign something to say the foreign spouse does not lay claim to the land. So maybe that doesn’t work for a reverse mortgage. Too bad.

    • Thanks 1
  5. 22 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

    You put your mask where exactly? 

     

    Inside faced up or down? 

    I put my mask on the table, outside touching the table. Mine is the kind I could fold in half so the inside didn’t show. However I suggest you put it out of sight if possible as it’s kind of gross. Just figure masks are like handkerchiefs stuck to everyone’s face. To me, they don’t require all this protocol. Just stick the thing on your face and go.

    • Like 1
  6. 5 hours ago, BritManToo said:

    Must be nice being rich.

    Who actually earned the money? You or hubby?

    Just wondering as I'm rarely that generous with money I had to earn.

    Hubby’s mom earned the money. Nicest mother-in-law ever!

  7. I’ll tell you what I do. I give a 20 baht tip to deliverymen and gas station attendants. My husband and I pay a good wage to our part time maid. We give a gardener 300 baht for 3 hours of work whenever he can spare the time since he also has a full time job. When my kids were little I would buy snacks for the whole gang and take them to movies and concerts. We had a hard working maid at our old house in Nonthaburi. She worked for the neighbors too and I noticed she never took a vacation even at Songkran. After 20 years of this dedication, I thought this is a person we can help. Especially after her husband left her. We moved to Bangkok and it was too far for her to work for us any more, so my husband and I put her daughter through college (she graduated) and we are now paying for her son’s education. Also I sponsor a cat at Soi Dog Foundation. I wouldn’t pay for strangers at a store. You don’t know whether they even need it. 

  8. We got our shots in June 2019 here in Thailand. I think a new flu vaccine will be available in May 2020. Thailand's flu season usually coincides with its wet season, around June to October each year. Here is some info I found. My conclusion is either get it here, or get it there as soon as possible when you arrive. Either way should be fine. Some years I have gotten it in the U.S. That was before I knew there were two vaccines for the two different hemispheres. From this information it seems that the two vaccines overlap and will offer protection in either hemisphere.

     

    https://www.who.int/ith/vaccines/si_iAh1n1/en/ "The composition of vaccines is adjusted for the hemisphere in which the vaccine will be used. Thus, a vaccine obtainable in one hemisphere may offer only partial protection against influenza infection in the other hemisphere, although in some years the viruses in the northern and southern vaccines may be identical. In years in which the northern and southern hemisphere influenza vaccine strains differ, high-risk individuals travelling from one hemisphere to the other shortly before or during the other hemisphere’s influenza season should obtain vaccination for the opposite hemisphere two weeks before travel. Where this is not possible, the traveller should arrange vaccination as soon as possible after arriving at the travel destination."

    The flu shot we got in 2019 in Thailand includes:

    If you get the 4 strain shot:
    -an A/Michigan/45/2015 (H1N1)pdm09-like virus;
    -an A/Switzerland/8060/2017 (H3N2)-like virus;
    -a B/Colorado/06/2017-like virus (B/Victoria/2/87 lineage); and
    -a B/Phuket/3073/2013-like virus (B/Yamagata/16/88 lineage).

    If you get the 3 strain shot it leaves out the last one.

    https://www.who.int/influenza/vaccines/virus/recommendations/2019_south/en/

    The northern hemisphere flu shot contains:
    -an A/Brisbane/02/2018 (H1N1)pdm09-like virus;
    -an A/Kansas/14/2017 (H3N2)-like virus; *
    -a B/Colorado/06/2017-like virus (B/Victoria/2/87 lineage); and
    -a B/Phuket/3073/2013-like virus (B/Yamagata/16/88 lineage).

    So you see the last two strains are the same for the northern and southern hemisphere. And even if the strains aren't exactly the same in the vaccine vs in real life, if they are similar it provides some protection.

     

    https://flunewseurope.org/
    Week 06/2020 (3–9 February 2020): Widespread influenza activity was reported in Europe. Both influenza virus types A and B were co-circulating. Of the type A detections, A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses were detected more often (57%) and of the influenza B viruses, the vast majority were B/Victoria lineage.
    2019/20 season overview: Both influenza A virus subtypes, A(H1N1)pdm09 and A(H3N2), are co-circulating, 60% and 40% respectively. Of the influenza B viruses, the vast majority (99%) has been B/Victoria lineage. 
     

    And lastly, in the northern hemisphere "The 2019-2020 flu season has been particularly unusual. Influenza B, the viral strain that usually circulates toward the end of flu season, instead emerged first this year. The 2019-2020 flu shot was formulated to protect against strains of both influenza A and B. It’s too soon to say exactly how effective the flu vaccine will be this year, Brammer says. Early indications suggest the vaccine is quite well-matched to circulating H1N1 and B Yamagata viruses— but much less so against the widespread influenza B Victoria viruses. That, too, may help explain the early-season diagnoses." Jan 16, 2020 https://time.com/5765486/flu-season-2020/

     

    They are saying the B Victoria in the vaccine doesn't match the B Victoria in the environment. Good luck! And have a nice trip.

  9. "The volcano had been showing signs of unrest for several weeks before the eruption. In October, volcanic tremors and sulphur dioxide gas were at their highest levels since 2016, indicating that an eruption was more likely to occur, and on 18 November, the volcano was rated at Volcanic Alert Level 2, indicating moderate to heightened volcanic unrest, due to increased activity. GeoNet, which tracks New Zealand's seismic and volcanic activity, raised its alert level on the island in November after increasing sulfur dioxide gas." 

     

    I also read somewhere that a ranger saw a puff of smoke come out from the crater the week before. In a report from 2012, "White Island and Taranaki are highlighted as needing greater instrumentation." Such a tragedy! Our family toured Pompei in Italy, even though they told us it could erupt at any time, and was even due for an eruption. But tourists drove up there anyway. It's a drive up a mountainside (which is the volcano) to the city of Pompei. Maybe the tourists on White Island thought the same way. Six years ago I went with my husband on a business trip to Hawaii. We stayed on the island that has the Kilauea volcano. "This active volcano has been continuously erupting since 1983 & sees over 2 million yearly visitors." Our hotel was on the other side of the island, and they said we could drive to see the active volcano but we opted not to.

  10. Some adventurous friends of ours who are in their 70’s stayed at The Deck by Arun Residence and loved it. They said the room was amazing. It’s near the grand palace but doesn’t have the facilities like a big lobby and pool. So I would go for a hotel on the river like Royal Orchid Sheraton and book them on the club floor. People love it! Any hotel on the river is good for first timers. They’ll love the buffet breakfasts and great facilities. Or, some friends of ours like the Pullman G, 188 Silom Road. You can just walk to restaurants and shopping.

    • Thanks 1
  11. 16 minutes ago, sunnyboy2018 said:

    What if your deceased mother or father was an adopted orphan? Would the test stop at that generation?

    DNA shows biological relatives, from a pool of people who also recently tested their DNA. So there's no DNA match for further back than my parents because no one's alive to send in their DNA (or they live in Thailand haha). I have a match to my mother. So I know I'm actually her daughter. The test doesn't "stop at that generation" there's no such thing as "stopping". Believe me Ancestry is a learning curve. At first it's confusing, I spent hours on the site learning it. Ancestry says "AncestryDNA matches are calculated based on your DNA and do not take into account any data from your family trees." That's because family trees are like flowcharts built by us, the members on Ancestry, so there can be human error in tracing your family tree with data from birth certificates and what info you know about your family. Basically the DNA is scientific, and the family tree might have an error because I created it myself. The DNA results and the family tree are two separate sections on the Ancestry site. In your example if my mother or father was adopted, I would get no matches to descendants of my grandparents (my mother's adopted parents) but I would get matches to descendants of my mother's biological parents (here I would find cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents I never knew I had). Then I could update my family tree to reflect this new information.

  12. School officials can be wrong, they are not infallible. This is a terrible situation at the time, but you'll get through it. I'm sure it's very upsetting. Here is an example of a school official in the wrong. At one of the best international schools, one of the other mom's told me what happened to her son. He was on a school trip and another student stored some beer in her son's hotel fridge. Her son was caught with it, and the punishment was that he couldn't go on the next school trip, which was the big overseas sports trip that was really important. So this mom decided to go talk to the head of the school. When she got there, the secretary told her the head of the school would not talk to her. She was very upset, and the son did not go on the big overseas trip. Weeks later, the head of the school apologized to her, and said he shouldn't have done that. He admitted that he was wrong to refuse to talk to her. All you can do, is do the best you can for your son.

  13. On 11/18/2019 at 6:53 AM, Xaos said:

    23andme is 99$ sale now Do they ship to TH. 

     

    What about AncestryDNA https://www.ancestry.com/dna/ 59$

    Ancestry and 23andme do not ship to Thailand. 

    On another note, ethnicity changes as they get a larger database. All they are doing is comparing your DNA to everyone else who submitted a sample, so of course if the database changes, your ethnicity will change. Ancestry says "We recently added more ethnicity populations and communities. Based on this update, you might see changes to your results." So now I'm 100% Eastern Europe & Russia. My Thai husband is 45% Vietnam, 42% China, 8% Dai (they show it on a map as Burma, Laos and Thailand), and 5% Southeast Asia. My husband's mother had Chinese ancestry, while my husband's father came from Southern Thailand. Anyway, the interesting thing about DNA is not really the ethnicity, it's that it matches you with relatives. So many relatives! You wouldn't believe it. Thousands, for both me and my husband. We get a list of their names and sometimes their pictures and where they live, and we can message. And the list keeps growing as more people get DNA tests. To make it worthwhile you have to build your family tree and then you can see where you're related to all these distant relatives. The ethnicity part might not be reliable, but the relatives matching is. In the case of relatives, "DNA doesn't lie." People are finding out lots of things about their families that they never knew.

     

  14. My husband and I did the DNA tests from Ancestry. We were in the US and received it by mail there and sent it in. Turns out he is

    57% China

    36% Vietnam

    7% Thai

    He got a list of 4th cousins (2 names) and distant cousins (about 200 names). In addition to that, I’m creating our family tree on Ancestry. I’m finding a lot of historical records on my US relatives but nothing on his Thai relatives. I’m entering names, dates and pictures of relatives on Ancestry in the hopes our descendants will have the info available there in the future. Mainly because we have a grandson. I want him to know about our family. Doing the family tree and DNA is fun!

    • Like 1
  15. I thought it was an excellent article. I would like to try a few of the restaurants, namely Barcelona Gaudi on Sukhumvit Soi 23. I looked up the author Jinda Wedel, since I recognized the name. Her dad Paul Wedel was a reporter for UPI. So thanks, this was very interesting! As to your question if I like the tips in the article, yes I do. 

    • Like 1
×
×
  • Create New...