GinBoy2

There are a ton of them. But I used Americas Mailbox for years. I got scans of the mail and could decide what got shredded and was was forwarded to me. https://americasmailbox.com/

Curiously in the US we do it slightly differently. We don't have benefit the culture you have in the UK, so young men and women find the idea of enlisting in the military rather appealing, not bad income, good benefits and free housing. Beats living in some dead beat job flipping burgers. I'm a bleeding heart liberal, but from what I read about welfare in in the UK it's insane. "My mental health is so fragile I can't work, I need a handout". Give me a break, guys came back from WW2 after experiencing total horrors and went back to work

Curiously it's actually cheaper than you think, or I thought. I always thought it would be ridiculous. Now I can't can't comment on an international repatriation, never done one But last year I accepted an HR (Human Remains in airline jargon) being sent domestically, to Atlanta I think I recall, but the air freight charge was $450!. No idea how much the casket and undertaker costs, but definitely cheaper than I thought. Maybe the airlines take pity on the dead

Tourist visa's for Thai females are a total crap shoot. My then girlfriend, hi tech job, US college graduate, we owned a home I was working in Taiwan at the time but commuting back. And, we're not talking some young gal. my now wife is, and was at the time, a middle aged women Just wanted to go visit my daughter who had just had a baby. Of course it was denied. Several years later nothing materially changed, except we had actually got legally married for the green card, and it sailed though Looking back on it, I think since my wife had grown up as a teenager with her Uncle in Chicago after her parents died she was more likely to disappear, which of course was nonsense, but I get the CO's paranoia

The sad part of this, no 18 yo female is sexually 'interested' in a 40+ yo male, thats just not how nature works. She see's him as an ATM and he is getting his ego stroked

Working in the airline industry we go through a bunch of training, and dealing with transporting corpses is one of them. They can only be loaded in the aft cargo bin, and cargo straps criss crossed to keep the box in place. Due to the stress on takeoff is why we load them head up to stop the embalming fluid pooling in their head

The family do. It's because at takeoff if the head is facing back the embalming fluid flows into the head which disfigures the corpse

I always roll my eyes when it comes to repatriating corpses. I work for United Airlines/Delta Airlines in Rapid City. During and after the Sturgis motorcycle rally we'll ship out 10 to 15 during the two weeks of the rally. We call it the 'Rally Tally' I've always wondered why folks don't fly here get their loved ones cremated and fly home with an urn And btw they are a pain in the ass to process and load onto aircraft. For anyone contemplating this, we load them head forward, to stop embalming fluid concentrating in their head!

I'm going with cats too. They will love you, on their terms, but low maintenance unlike dogs

So this is getting off topic, but here goes. I grew up as a kid of farm workers in the CA Central Valley. Drive down I-5 and you'll see a ton of uber right wing stuff about immigration. The irony is that the same folks paying for all that stuff are the ones employing illegal immigrants to works in their fields. My parents were legal but I'd say half of the other people they worked with were illegal, all paid by I'm sure fully paid up GOP members!

Yeah that's tough When we moved to the US it twice poverty or $30K in savings Thankfully we passed the theshold

TG business class 747 had that weird configuration of the galley parallel to the right window. I never booked any seat on the right side

Some of this agree with. The gift thing, totally on board with, but it's little different in the West when you go visit you take a bottle of wine or the like. I've never liked holding hand and certainly not kissing in public, so that for me is a given I supported my parents in their old age, but maybe an Hispanic thing not totally Asian. Food ditto Gik thing. Well pretty sure my wife would chop off my balls in my sleep if I even thought about it!

Sometimes I wonder about the reading and comprehension skills of posters on here. Read and you will see it's an Airbus. So that rules out Boeing and Airbus, best you be checking out flights on a Chinese COMAC aircraft. Good Luck with that

Thats exactly what it looks like. In the real world we'd be covering it with kitty litter, then shoveling it up and disposed as toxic waste, but TiT, go figure! Enjoy the water you drink, and the sea you swim in....

I love use of the word 'apron' it's a blast from the past Today we use the word 'ramp' pretty universally across the world, but apron still sounds good.

Now I work for an airline, and I've seen my fair share of hydraulic leaks, but they tend to be 'drips', that is a total failure, never seen that much fluid on the ramp ever. Since this was an Airbus, given the currents sanctions, good luck in getting the AOG parts to fix it! That birdie might be spending a few years in Phuket. Turn it into a themed restaurant maybe?

Apart from the stupid picture of the wrong aircraft, I love the fact that they stored them in Suvarnabhumi. Retired aircraft still have value, and there is a reason airlines pay to store them in the dry deserts of California, Spain and Australia. Corrosion, one of the reasons the A340-500's stored at Don Mueang were totally worthless was they were corroded to cr**p in a hot humid environment. That might not be fair since the A340-500's were never going to parted out since the planes themselves were worthless, but you get the gist

Most of us come from an age where it was taboo. I'm Hispanic where it was double taboo! About 10 years ago I got a phone call from a shocked female childhood friend, that our mutual childhood friend had finally come out at 50! My reaction was, I always knew he was gay from when we were teenagers in HS, but back then it was always safer just to hide it away, and I'm sure thats a hard thing to shake, even as attitudes changed in society. Try to remember what being Gay was like in the 70's. Not pretty, a lot of violence and hateful speech. He always seemed to have 'roommates' AKA boyfriends as I understood it, but he could never get his head around those teenage fears and didn't even tell his parents. I was his best friend in HS, of course I knew but we would never have talked about it back then. When he finally did come out in middle age and we talked, my reaction was "About Time" We both laughed and life went on

I kinda get this. I love my wife, she loves me but to be around each other 7x24 one of us would be dead. Thankfully we both work, so kiss goodbye in the morning and come home at dinner time to recount our boring day at work. Isn't that how life works?

I rather like Harry and Megan. Harry has for British tabloid reasons been vilified, but he's a decent guy in my view I'm an American, so I have no skin in the game, but he does good things, the Invictus Games alone gives him a free pass. His pursuit of the appalling tabloid press harassment of his mother should be appaulded

I'm a native Central Valley guy. Lived most of my adult life either in the Bay Area or San Diego and I still love San Diego county, my youngest daughter and my Grandson still live there. But OMG I just couldn't live with the traffic and all the people anymore. Daughter is contemplating a move to North Carolina, which I'm not thrilled about, but I get it

I vividly remember being in the lunch room at work as we watched the verdict One guy said "Lets all go and loot Best Buy"

Well, the truth for anyone speaking a second language is you lose some of the nuances, but if you speak nothing you lose it all. I have a friend who has joined Mrs G and me in Mexico. Now I'm Hispanic so Spanish is a native language, he speaks pretty good Spanish, but even then when we are with my family he loses some of the essence, especially the humor of conversation. My wife just looks bemused she speaks not a lick of Spanish past Ola! In Thailand I do OK, I'm pretty fluent in Thai and Lao, but they are my 4th and 5th languages, I wouldn't even try to say I understand all of the nuances when I talk to folks So I'd say unless you live in the expat enclaves, not speaking any Thai is very detrimental. Apart from anything else, for a lot of folks it means you are very dependent on your partner for almost any transaction you do, from the bank, market or immigration

Back to the OP Everywhere can run it's course, you just kinda tire of a place. Over my life I've tired of California, China, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Not to say I hated any of them, but I was just done with them. Maybe some of us just aren't built to stay in one place for too long. Now I think I'm done with my world travels, and as boring as it sounds, I hate spending a night away of home. I've spent more than my fair share of nights in hotel beds Now just leave me at home with the missus and the cats, I'm a happy boy