radiochaser

After going to Thailand several times and going out to eat etc, I grew tired of not being included in the conversations, because of my limited Thai language skills. I know enough to live here, but not enough to have an adult conversation. I finally told my wife I was not going out with her and her friends because of this. After she understood, I was left behind to fend for myself. Makes my time in Thailand a lot more enjoyable.

That happened to me. I was in a cellular phone service store waiting to be called to the English speaking desk. I asked the lady a question and she started speaking Thai and looking to the side of me. I looked and there was a woman on my left. I asked the lady why she was speaking to the woman and she told me something like, it is easier to explain in Thai to your wife. I told her my wife is in America. I don't think she can hear you! She said, no your wife right there. I told her to ask if she is my wife, the lady behind me said she wasn't my wife, seemed to be embarrassed, and walked out of the store!

Oh... I forgot about that part! True that.

There is a science to hanging to assure that the neck breaks correctly. Years ago I read about it. You need at least a 12 foot drop before the rope stops the person from falling and the person must weigh over 150 pounds. If the person weighs less than 150 pounds or you cannot facilitate a 12 foot drop, then add weight to bags tied to the feet of the hangee! I think there is a formula to determine how much weight to add.

Someone determined to die could do it. Years ago, while taking a medical course, the class was taken to a room where a mad (I meant man not mad, but you could say he was a mad man i.e. crazy) lie dead of self inflicted knife wounds to his chest. He stabbed himself several time until he was able to stab himself in the heart! If a person could stab themselves in the chest multiple times, then someone could cut their own throat. Before you believe the guy did not stab himself ... he did it in a bus station in front of more than 50 people waiting for their bus and several police. It happened very quickly, before the police could stop him.

Make jokes if you will. I did a search and found that the Thai immigration website was hacked for gambling as well as Thai police websites. Someone else could, if not already done, hack that website and steal information of people entering or leaving Thailand. From looking all the other Thai government websites, pulled up with an internet search engine that have been hacked, it seems that it is only a matter of time that someone hacks the Thai government websites for identity theft reasons, again, if not already done. I have already had identity theft done to me. From a government website, one that I would not have expected to be compromised. The U.S. of A. government website Office of Personnel Management, that held personal information of people to run background investigations for those that needed security clearances. Information that for me was literally from birth to then current, plus background information on parents. If I recall correctly I was informed that data on 3 million security clearances was stolen. The Federal Government paid for two, different, credit watch companies to watch for illegal applications for credit in my name. Three weeks after I left Thailand after that, both my credit cards had been canceled. When I contacted my credit card company I was told that someone claiming to be me, claimed to be traveling in Europe through 4 or 5 different countries and was going to use the credit cards. They knew all personal data about me! I don't know if that was related, but I believe it was.

Off topic a bit, but my experience leads me to think the dog, if it survives, will move the next time a car drives near it. Where I was living one time, people moved into a rental about 3 houses down. They had a dog that bit at people walking by, nipped me on the back of the leg, chased bicycles etc. The dog didn't bark, just attacked people. I was on my bike one day and didn't see it coming, it grabbed my pant leg and I nearly crashed to the ground. The kids, when they were outside on the steps would just watch it chase and try to bite people walking by. The mother watched it chase people sometimes when she was out on the steps. I talked to the mother and kids one day, asking why they let their dog attack people. Everyone of them claimed the dog would not do what they watched it doing!! I got fed up with the dog doing what it did when it bit an old man who could barely walk with a cane. The dog moved away from him when he tried to hit it with his cane. The kids just watched it happen. Old man managed to walk home and the kids went inside the house. I got my bike, my slingshot, and a rock about 3/4 inch, rode down the street then back to my place on the sidewalk. Dog ran for me and as it got close I shot with the slingshot. Dog yelped and ran back to the house. Next day as I walked home to my place, the kids asked me if I had hurt their dog. No. I didn't! Dog still tried to bite people walking by, but every time a bicycle went by, it ran back to the steps.

I have retired, have several sources of legal income, with more than the B40,000 requirement. My income, I believe, is eligible to be received in Thailand tax free. Married to a Thai woman here in the U.S. I don't think I can get a work permit though, being over 70. I have medical insurance that covers me in Thailand. Guess I am out of luck. LOL

When you say nice, I assume you mean they taste good. Had to look it up. Is this the wood pigeon in the U.K.? That is one big pigeon! Also looked for a recipe. Found one on a page called Great British Chefs web page. I wonder how that recipe would work with chicken. I don't know if there are any place to buy pigeon breasts where I live. I tried pasting the recipe here, but it didn't look right.

I think you spend way too much time on these forums. Makes me think that are like two people I met in Thailand after conversing with them on a yahoo forum about Thailand. Those two also had thousands of posts in a short period of time. Come to find that they were both living in Thailand on social security payments. One was very old and too ill to go out much, the other was physically disabled and unable to go out much, having a difficult time walking. I met them both in Thailand and offered to run errands for them when I could when I was in Thailand. Their SSI was ok for both in the beginning when they moved to Thailand, but then inflation caught up with them and most of their money went to rent and medical bills. They didn't have much else they could do, so spent a lot of time on the yahoo forum. Not much else they could do. I would visit them, find out what they needed and then go buy it. Sometimes they could not afford to pay me back. Not too much of a problem for me. It wasn't a lot of money. If you are like that, unable to go out. Perhaps I could go get some things for you when I am in Thailand next time. That would be the end of June.

You mean, you only need an income of 40,000 baht, each month? That's it? That small amount???? Does it matter where that income is from, if legal??

Have you tried pasting the link into a google chrome browser page? It will translate for you.

I have wondered about that. A place I used to work at in 1978 had pigeons in the building over the steam boiler. The plant supervisors son would shoot them with a pellet gun. I asked what he did with the dead pigeons. Eat them he said. I didn't ask how he prepared them but I have always thought it would be a similar procedure like a chicken. I also wonder if the smaller bones and chicken parts makes it more difficult to eat them.

What is that thing dropped over my house? ????

Oh, by the way, even though I held a GS-13 pay grade, I only had a high school education. So I must have done something right! Regardless of what this link implies! https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2021/GS-13#:~:text=The GS-13 pay grade,are known as Career Competitive.

I think you take this stuff much too seriously. It isn't that important in the general scheme of life. (wow, this turned out to be more of an essay than a comment response) I participate in some of these threads for the mental stimulation, for the fun of it, and the occasional education aspects that the debates provide. If there are errors, mistakes, etc, they do no harm to life! If these debates were vastly important in my life, then there would be a very great number more posts from me. If you look at my profile you will see that I have been a member since November of 2009, 13 years. Divide the number of posts I have, 1041 by those years and you can see that my yearly average number of posts are, 80. You however have only been a member for about 2 years. You have an average post count of 140, per week. That is why I think that you take this much too serious. You seem to devote much too much time to posting comments. I wonder if you have anything else in your life that you can do, besides these ASEAN NOW forums. To give you some perspective of me and what my life has been, that influences how I react to some of these threads. I went to Vietnam in late 1970 and was involved in the Vietnam war for about 27 months. I was in the Army Security Agency, had a TOP SECRET Clearance equivalent to todays TOP SECRET Clearance with SCI access (TS-SCI). I had access to classified material from Confidential up to Top Secret. This was required so that I could perform in the MOS that I was trained in. That training started in October 1969 and ended August of 1970. This was 8 hour a day, 5 days a week, with some of it requiring studying classified class notes only in a secured facility (breaks for some holidays). The study of classified class notes had to be done on free time, meaning after class, not during class time! There were times when my MOS affected life, either harming the life of people or killing them, but not directly. People were injured and killed and there were a lot of them. Those were not injury or death reports submitted by U.S. Military personnel, those were from reports of field troops back to Hanoi via radio communications. I once made a mistake and that lead to the death of Allied personnel, namely Army of the Republic of Vietnam. That was a little over 50 years ago, about 50 ARVN died and I still have guilt about it today. Years after Vietnam, I was hired by the U.S. Government. Some of the work was very similar to what I was trained to do in the Army Security Agency. I had to undergo 1 year of training for that job consisting of 10 months of 8 hour a day of OJT with 2 months of classroom training. I also had to have a SECRET level clearance, with access to cryptologic materials. That clearance took 18 months to complete (before 9/11/01 occurred) and as I did for the TOP SECRET Clearance, I had to provide information going back to when and where I was born! At the end of the 1 year training with the U.S. Government, I was considered qualified to to function on my own, unsupervised, as a Federal Agent. I also had a break in that service which lead to my clearance being revoked, as I no longer needed it, not being in the Enforcement Bureau of the agency I worked for. Then later, I was reassigned back to the Enforcement Bureau, in December 2001. The subsequent security clearance was much more demanding. Partly because because of 9/11 and by then, I had married a Thai national who later became a U.S. citizen. I was given the same clearance, SECRET level, with access to cryptologic materials. That part of having access to cryptologic materials is important. It requires additional back ground investigation. Fail that part and there is no clearance given! The second back ground investigation for my third clearance lasted 2 years and 9 months! I investigated issues involving violations of Federal laws, Regulations, and Rules. The punitive results of my investigations of individual people and businesses violations ranged from, please don't do that again, to I am issuing you this written violation, to you are being fined, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, or being imprisoned in a Federal Penitentiary. The shortest sentence in a penitentiary was 1 year, the longest was 7 years. When I did investigations, I was the principle person that had to do the work. I neither depended on anyone else to do the research, nor could I make demands of anyone to do the research. It was almost entirely on me. There were times I could ask someone else, hey, if you have the time, can you look this up for me? But otherwise, I did the investigations. Apparently I was good at it. I solved several cases that had already been under investigation for more than a year, to one that was over 2 years old. That latter case was solved in 2 or 3 months after I was transferred back to the Enforcement Bureau, which was also being investigated by multiple law enforcement agencies in New Jersey and by the U.S. Coast Guard. So, I ask that you excuse me if I seem to be reticent in responding to demands that prove what I say is true/real/accurate/etc, when it can be found by just a little bit of internet research, such as one I did today, which actually took me less than 1 minute to complete. If I question what someone else writes, then I do the internet search myself. I have years of experience having to do that and ended up being a senior agent at a pay grade of GS-13, Step 6! Really, it isn't that hard to do. Aaaaaannnddd a link providing some information about TS-SCI! https://thesubtimes.com/2022/08/21/so-what-does-sci-really-mean/

The most active European nation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade was Portugal, which used the forced labor of Africans in their Latin American colonies in present-day Brazil. Almost 3.9 million enslaved Africans were forced to embark on Portuguese ships. Present-day Brazil received around 3.2 of them, making it the country in the Americas where most enslaved people arrived during the period. British ships also carried upwards of 3 million Africans forcefully removed from the continent, mostly to the Caribbean, the United States and the Guyanas. French ships carried 1.3 million enslaved Africans. https://www.statista.com/chart/22057/countries-most-active-trans-atlantic-slave-trade/

What did I claim was a fact. I don't remember writing anywhere that, "this is a fact"! Please be more specific than to make a general statement. If there was no instance of my claiming something I wrote was a fact, I will throw back to you, "at least have the decency" to not make a statement that is not true!

This isn't a thread about news. From reading this thread, it appears to be mostly about personal opinions! "In factual areas such as news forums and current affairs topics member content that is claimed or portrayed as a fact should be supported by a link to a relevant reputable source."

The answer is just too easy to find. I do my own searches on the internet, daily, as a result of someone writing something or other. Why is that difficult for you to do? I think it was only about 1 minute to find this article. It is taking me longer to post a response than it did to find it! Top 10 Countries with the Highest Prevalence of Modern Slavery (by total number of slaves) - Global Slavery Index 2018: Top 10 Countries with the Highest Prevalence of Modern Slavery (by slaves per 1000 residents) - Global Slavery Index 2018: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-still-have-slavery

You must not have seen the link. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-slavery-and-this-fact-there-are-more-slaves-today-than-were-seized-from-africa-in-four-centuries/

You are projecting your thoughts and emotions onto me. None of your claims are valid in this case. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-slavery-and-this-fact-there-are-more-slaves-today-than-were-seized-from-africa-in-four-centuries/

Slaves in the modern era? Not today, unless you believe that that muslims who own slaves are white/caucasians! I don't believe that all muslims are white/caucasian, they can be any ethnic race, and not all own slaves today! I would think that you mean during the years of southern slavery and I would agree with you. There is no "look over there" aspect of my post. It is what you want to call a, fact base, post, according to the history of what happened. One issue that seems to be evident is that too many people believe that America had the most slaves through out the world, or, as is in some cases, the only country that had slaves during that era. Did America have black slaves, yes, did America own the most slaves or was it the only slave owning country? No.

Yes I can. If you cannot I don't know why. I thought it might be due to you being in Thailand (I don't know where you are) and your IP address was blocked. I changed my VPN to Singapore and the link opened. As to paywalls... I run into that on occasion. What I find works more than 90% (a guess on my part) of the time is, using a search engine (not google, at least not currently) I look for the same story, quote, etc, and keep opening up links until I find one that works. Something I learned to do when I was working as a Federal Agent and was involved in investigations, beginning back in the the year 2002. Here is a brave search of the title: https://search.brave.com/search?q="The+Big+Lie%3A+Democrats+and+Republicans+Switched+Sides+on+Race"&source=web

I would like to believe, that I, when I called the talk line of the ray taliaferro's talk show out of San Francisco, one early morning after midnight, and invented the idea that Bush Sr. flew to Europe in the back seat of an SR71, and negotiated the hostage release from the Iranians, before Reagon was elected! ray taliaferro had never heard that claim before, but he immediately and completely accepted and believed it. I made that claim, hung up the phone, and continued to listen to other caller after another also accept the claim. There were some callers wanting to know what the SR71 was. I don't recall if ray taliaferro knew what it was or if I had to explain what that aircraft was. I had known about the SR71 was since 1972-1973. I could look at pictures taken on it's flight over Vietnam and China that were posted on a bulletin board in the OPs building at the 7th RRFS, outside of Udon Thani. If I recall correctly, the SR71 would fly at an altitude of 80,000 feet, up the east coast of Vietnam, make a U-turn over China, and fly back down the west boarder of Vietnam, all in about an hour or so, all the while with cameras taking pictures continuously during the north and south flight. Amazing black and white pictures, taken from an aircraft flying approximately 3000 miles an hour, at 80,000 feet. I think I was told that the negatives were 24 inches square! I remember pictures of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun crew, where you could tell they had either sandals or boots on, you could see canteens on their belts, whether they carried an AK47 or an SKS rifle. Not just something that looked like it might have been those things, but you could see the detail of the objects. I sometimes wonder if I had heard this theory, that Bush sr. was flown in the SR71 and that memory was relegated to some deep dark place in my subconscious memory, and then I dug it up on that time. I don't know at this time so many years after the fact. Now there is a claim by a pilot that he flew Bush to Europe in the SR71. But there are also claims that a single pilot could not as he needed a navigator. I don't know which is true, I only know that people I have met, who worked with the SR71 program supports the claim that the SR71 could not have been flown with Bush Sr. in the back seat, because he was not a qualified navigator, and the pilot in the front seat, alone, could not navigate, and fly the SR71 by himself.