One of my secretaries once told me long ago that Thais are not known for being good planners but they are fabulous at coping.

That's the quote from the article that best sums up the current situation for me.

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He never says he had more than one at the same time.

He is a lawyer, he obviously has had secretaries. All lawyers do.

Even your average small business has at least 1 secretary.

He also has obviously been here decades, and is second generation at least here

and clearly loves Thailand, or he would have left long ago.

You are attempting to imply something derogatory and failed utterly.

"One of my secretaries once told me long ago that Thais are not known for being good planners but they are fabulous at coping"

Because they all learn it at school to copy instead of creating something alone. Even homework is usually copied at school. Shouldn't it be renamed?

I"ll have to copy the Thesis for my MA now, cheers to all...

Some maybe. My wife, being part of the lesser educated of the Thai system, refused to be limited by that system. There are some that just refuse to be held down. She, for my luck (and hers) is one that refused to be limited by her education.

A few days ago my wife surprised me when she said, "Telak, floods show me you right, I wrong for long time. Buddha no take care. We must do ourselves." Apart from saving for the future which from Day 1 I had insisted upon, she has now started to plan her day - and for the days months and years ahead. To assist I drew up a list of goods and comestibles and set re-order levels for each item. She checks this and draws up a shopping list for when we go to the supermarket. No more trips down the road to the 7/11 to pay over the odds for things.

When the floods subside and we can get up to Lomsak without detours, her daughter is going to be put through a crash course in forward thinking, Thai style. Me? I'll be safe down the pub with the village headman and local cop, well out of harm's way.

There is a marker post outside the National Museum which shows the flood levels for three of the major floods in the past:

What Isn't clear is what the numbers mean, it can't 37.xxx meters, if they are cm or (horror of horrors) inches why would they record to three decimal places? The decimal places might be cm of flood, but what does the 37 mean?

I think they are more likely to be Thai inches (niew) which are slightly smaller than imperial inches. Before introducing the metric system Thailand had 12 niew to the kueb, 2 kueb to the sawk and 4 sawk to the wah which is 2 metres. Strangely only the square wah has survived as an official unit of measure, although the others are still widely used informally - caddies always measure puts in kueb (hand) and sawk (elbow).