OxfordWill

There is nothing particular about Thai script which causes the Thai native reader to read more slowly than the English native reader.

Part of life in Bangkok.. itll happen to you again and again.

I reckon Im the only person in Bangkok who tries to cure insomnia by reading threads like this.

There has long been a theory supported by multiple research that women value the "stamp of approval" from another woman and therefore find men "approved" by a fellow woman to be more attractive.

When I went on Monday it was a nightmare immediately after lunch. The Q was long enough to reach back to outisde the building and it took several hours of waiting before I was done. Once the door opened nobody obeyed the Q (not that I was surprised, this is Thailand) and a stampede on the tiny entrance happened.

Also on the way out the taxi / security guards at the nearest exit were not allowing indians blacks or anyone not Thai or white to wait for a taxi - they had to walk to the road.

The thai workers who were leaving work took preference, I eventually paid a tip to get a motorcycle to the main road, where I crossed the foot bridge and got a taxi from the other wise. The traffic was horrible there and back. Possibly a monday thing.

The building was nice but walking through in shorts and a t shirt I did feel very out of place and like many Thais there probably didnt appreciate that their nice, formal office government type building was being invaded by so many foreigners. Working for the government is not a good paying job but the pride that goes with it tends to be attractive so making an effort to respect the buildings and turn up looking a little smarter than usual might be appreciated by the locals working there, if one cares.

Overall for location, speed, surroundings, I much preferred the old one.

They care about one thing only with regards giving her the visa or not: Will she come back to Thailand when the visa expires, or will she try and illegally stay in the UK.

You know your girlfriend, and you know she isnt like that and will have good intentions.

The embassy does NOT know this. They need PROOF. In their eyes, this is "considerable" holdings of land, business, children, job.. something which would be enough of an argument to counter the embassies belief that life in England is so much better than in Thailand. Behind the scenes they will also want to "know" her intentions are good and you are not being hoodwinked, and 6 months living together is very unlikely to satisfy this.

Please also note guarantee letters from family etc are not worth anything to them.

Please prepare for the worst and fully expect, and tell your gf to expect, it will not work. It is likely you will be interviewed separately, even for a visit visa. They will focus on her interview and not yours.

The only cases which are like yours (short time known, no money or assets and not based on education in england) I have come across where this situation has been happy and successful is where the Thai girl is connected to someone important and a letter can be provided by a Thai person to the embassy. While an English staff will be the signatory on your rejection it is not to be ignored that Thai workers do most of the "filtering" of suitable applicants.

Post number 6 answers your question but Id like to add that the british reparations for Thailand declaring war on us was 3 million tonnes of rice (or something like that). Shame they didnt ask for unlimited visa privileges for british citizens.

It would behoov Thaivisa.com to have a more easily located privacy policy/tos. (friendly hint to george)

Thank you all. 6 hour round trip for my visa extention today, completed successfully.

Thanks.. where is that list of holidays website? Appreciate it

Is the new immigration office on chaeng wattana open today? I cant seem to find the holiday dates list.. and its term break now.. not sure if relevant.

Thanks!

edit: sorry, the title might be misleading to some people.. should be a question mark in there.

I think Chutai is being unnecessarily polite toward N!

"very odd kind of music" Fantastic.

Yea you made the only point worth making in your OP, and that is that most users dont know how to use, maintain or fix their computers. Possibly, the only discussion relevant to your OP worth having beyond this is what OS can be better tuned to provide a safer experience for such users, so as they are less likely to do much damage or less likely to need to know about maintenance or fixing. As you say, running not as admin is a big and important step. But even so, the weaknesses in windows even for a non admin user are easy to see by allowing a normal user to browse the net or read his email. As soon as a user is allowed to open attachments or click on links in the wilderness, windows is alot more vulnerable, and the reasons why arent relevant. I can sit the same user down at a windows pc, and then at a linux pc, and let him browser the net in the same browser anonymously for a day. I could even make both interfaces look identical- a windows theme for linux or a linux theme for windows. Which system will be more likely to have a problem, security thread, etc after the 24 hours of anonymouse surfing? And thats even if we beefed up both systems to our top security standards. If we got a brand new PC running windows and brand new pc running linux, both "out of the box" working and connecting to the net, the difference in vulnerability would be even bigger.

Oxford Will. I'll get back to you on the other questions/comments raised in your Post #34

Yes please

N is no fun at all since he doesn't write clearly and even less is he understood when in translation but the general consensus nowadays is that the problem he had was one of ontology- i.e. the matter at the heart of the conflict is whether or not there is a third thing between or other to "existing" and "not existing".

Buddhists say: Yes.

N says: No.

N says: Enlightenment means you (your will) don't exist, ergo nihilism

Buddhists say: N doesnt understand us or enlightenment

Oxfordwill adds: how can enlightenment be better understood?

Buddhists say: by what is absent (negation)

OW says: and you wonder why nihlism is a charge?

Buddhists say: you dont understand us or enlightenment.

Its tough, but I think I hate N alot more than the people who have tried to explain enlightenment to me.

The solution is to simply make more money... it's not that hard to do either. Especially for those of you who apparantly already have some.

The "Run" prompt in Windows may not be as wonderful as its Linux counterpart, but it I've found it pretty practical for my requirements.

Its too easy to go on and on and its not really sensible to compare windows with linux anyway.

Yea, he's just so wrong its painful, but someone had to point it out or someone might think he had a point.

Hey I clocked up over 500 days on my last mmorpg. Not wow thankfully, I saw that for the life fail it was and got out before it got me..

But now im seriously getting into eve online.. we are but weak humans.

I have a theory that these games save us money though, I mean I can go out 5 nights a week and waste any savings I have on beer and thai *cough* ladies *cough*. Ive been playing eve for a few days and gone out once...saved a good chunk already, the only cost being my GF doesnt understand why I am not coming to bed until the wee hours.. and she hears explosions and me swearing at the pc all night.

Ill do it around 25th of this month. I would be very surprised if there was even a raised eyebrow, there certainly wasnt when I got the original without a theory or practical test and on a tourist visa to begin with. The only question asked was did I also want the license for all types of motorbike and I said sure, why not!

shriah - Gnome Do looks interesting. Downside is it's something that needs to be installed separately which therefore brings its own limitations.

This is fundamental misunderstanding of how linux distros work. Everything "needs to be installed separately". The distro (flavour) you choose depends on your needs so many of them install with Gnome out of the box.

Dontdisturb - Yeah, ALT+F2. Now here's the thing - the Windows "Run" prompt is very basic, but is surprisingly useful when you know a few commands. ALT+F2 in Ubuntu, on the other hand, is rubbish compared, even with its "autocomplete" function. When I checked how to launch calculator, it was something like "gnome-calculator" - hardly brief. Other commands are equally long (and many begin with "gnome-" ruining the auto complete function for the first 6 characters). Not really thought through that well.

A simple text file in your home directory can make gnome-calculator respond to "calc" or "lazy" or "extra fries please" or whatever you like. Why dont they just make it calc? Well, because there are so many choices of free calculator software available to linux users that you need a unique name to differentiate them. It takes two seconds once in your life to decide you want to always use gnome-calculator and change the alias "calc" to replace it.

Another use of Win+R - if I want to quickly launch the page I'm currently viewing in a different browser to my current - copy the URL (ALT+D, CTRL+C), launch Run (WIN+R), then iexplore/chrome/firefox then CTRL+V. Can I do the same with ALT+F2? No chance.

You can do it much quicker- copy url, then type "browsername (pasted url)" Windows: minimum 12 keys, linux: minimum 4. If you do this alot and wrote a simple bash script you could even make it happen with the press of one single key. If your staff did this alot for work purposes you could enable such a feature on all workstations and save time and money.

Another use of the Run box is launching a file with a specified application. Win+R then start typing out the path (it's own Autocomplete kicks in to help you browse as you're typing). Once you've got the file you want to open in the box, it home to bring the cursor back to the start, type out the app name (such as notepad/paint/browser name etc), then hit enter.

And in linux one does exactly the same thing, except quicker- you type the app name followed by the file and no need for clicking anything at all.

This might sound like a pedantic rant, but the "Run" box gets used so often by me when launching applications. Navigating through the the Start menu/Windows Explorer is a secondary chore. Figuring it all out again in Ubuntu is a real pain, especially considering this is an OS that prides itself on the flexibility of the command line.

Honestly I think youve just found out how to use the run box and you think its magic, which is great, but whereas in windows it is a godsend and finally you can shortcut regular tasks, in linux it is a fundamental and you begin your learning experience using it (linux), not finish your learning experience using it (windows).

"Which brings me on to the last point - launch a command prompt/shell. Win+R, "cmd" then enter in Windows (6 keys). ALT+F2 then what in Ubuntu?"

You just click the terminal icon on your taskbar, or if you havent bothered to set one, you can type "terminal" or "xterm" or whatever you have as your terminal choice, depending on your distro and setup.

There are some good arguments for windows over linux but trying to argue that the command prompt/run prompt is one will quickly show most of windows' flaws and make linux look very good. very quickly.

looks like ill have to go back to nong khai to renew then!

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Urgent-Warni...rs-t306377.html

case in point.

What's really happened in that thread? A few possibilities, none of them make microsoft look good.

so? The complaints often come from support persons who deal with people who dont know how to "fix maintain or use" their computers and this is why they dont like windows. It's not idiot proof. People refuse to learn how to use their pcs. People refuse even to read "IMPORTANT: READ THIS FIRST" instructions. People say things like this:

"Hi I cant fit the cable into my computer"

Tech: "What shape is the end of the cable please?"

"Purple."

etc.

The system which can be made the most idiot proof is the best for mass consumption. Windows is definitely not this.

Secondly, power users. Users who need to get shit done and quickly. Unix systems. Windows can't really compete! Also bear in mind power users need to get shit done quickly on other peoples computers too. So if an inexperienced windows user has messed up his PC looking at trojan porn sites or just deleted a bunch of .dll files because he thought it would fix something, an admin is faced with considerable time wasting tasks before he can even begin to fix the actual problem he has turned up to fix.