StoneSoup

A soluition, desperately searching for a suitable problem.

Following my instructions will result in you passing by many "dens of iniquity" along the way. After the sun goes down, the Smoking Pug itself has nothing open in close proximity on its side of the street - which makes the bluish-white neon sign stand out quite clearly from a distance - althogh it is flat against the wall, so you can't read what it says until you are pretty much in front of it

 

Cheers!

SS

All you do is type "Maps" into Google search. Then select Google Maps (the first search result). Then enter 13.729263, 100.529240 into the search window, and click on the magnifying glass search icon.

 

After a few seconds, it gives you a map with the location plotted.

 

Instructions: From Saladaeng BTS Station, walk down Silom to Patpong Soi 1 (THE original Soi Patpong). Turn right onto Soi Patpong, and walk all the way to Surawong Road. Turn left on Surawong, and walk about 250-300 meters - and you will be able to see a white neon sign on opposite side of street that says "Smoking Pug". There is a zebra street crossing site about 50 meters from the restaurant - in the direction toward Patpong.

 

Cheers!

SS

Yep - that's the place - recreated/trasnplanted from Chengdu, China.

 

SS

Greetings, Gents -

 

I'm putting in a plug here for a newly-opened restaurant run by a couple of friends of mine - an American married couple.

 

The place is called Tthe Smoking Pug - it serves (very excellent) American-style smokehouse barbecue - and I talked them into putting some craft beers onto the menu as well.

 

Location is Surawong Road - at 13.729263, 100.529240.

 

I'll be there on Saturday night, the 28th of February, from about 7:00 pm until maybe 10:00 pm.

 

They are still in "soft open" mode, to let their Thai staff get their sea legs, and gel together as a team. But - they need some (hungry) warm bodies in seats to make it work.

 

I'll hope to see a couple of you there.

 

Cheers,

SS

"Eppur si muove" you pathetic Muslim savage. Our own worst religious morons duplicated your blind ignorance 500-years ago - but we got over it

 

From: http://www.ejectejec...ves/000035.html :

 

"Next time you look at the moon, challenge yourself to think of something: there are footprints up there. Footprints, and tire tracks. Also three used cars, and one golf ball.

 

Why are they there? Because we decided to go to the moon, that's why. What a typically arrogant, unilateral, American conceit! But you know what?

 

That footprint ' you know the picture ' will still be there, unchanged, a million years from now. In ten million years, it might begin to soften a little around the edges. But in a billion years ' a thousand million summers from this one ' it will still be there, next to glistening pyramids of gold and aluminum junk decaying under the steady cosmic drizzle of micrometeorite hits.

 

Eventually, in about five billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen and start burning helium. When it does, it will begin to swell, consuming Mercury, then Venus as it enters its Red Giant phase. The forests will burn to ash, the oceans boil into steam and then be blown into deep space along with the rest of the atmosphere. Life will have been long gone.

 

But on the moon, there will remain six scraps of colored cloth. Red and white stripes peeking out from the dull grey lunar soil; perhaps a star or two on a faded blue field as the sun reaches out to reclaim her children. Very likely they will be the last, best preserved monuments to our presence as a species on the face of the third planet now burning to a cinder below.

 

But eventually, they will burn too. The sun will contract to a white dwarf, the inner solar system nothing but black cinders, the outer planets shrunken and frozen corpses. Perhaps fifteen billion years from now, a time as far in the future as time goes into the past, there will be nothing here except a burnt-out and cold white dwarf.

 

But somewhere out there, somewhere, there will be four battered, unrecognizable hunks of aluminum and titanium and gold, spinning through deep space, their names recalling the spirit in which they were hurled into the abyss: Pioneer, and Voyager. And the day before the Universe dies, you'll still be able to dimly make out the stripes and star-spangled square, and read the words in the ancient language, from a dead race in the far distant past, when the stars were young and alive: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

 

There are at least five nations on the earth that had the technical skill, not to mention the money, to do something as grand and noble ' as immortal -- as this. Yet only one has done so. Why us? Why not them?

 

Confidence. That's why."

 

 

That is one of the best pieces of writing that i have ever read. To priove the quality of the author's writing, go the link that I referenced above, and read the humorous anecdote that precedes the above section. It creates a great, down-to-earth context for the sentiment that I quoted above.

 

And then, to cement your respect for Bill Whittle, and to stiffen your disdain for the Muslim shitstain in the video clip, go read http://www.ejectejec...ves/000033.html part of which I will quote here:

 

"But the crew of Columbia had a much larger helping of joy ' sixteen days in orbit, almost a hundred sunrises and sunsets, playing weightless choo-choo trains through narrow tunnels and tweaking gravity's tail good and long and hard ' and the Columbia Seven would be destined to pay for that by several minutes of knowing that they were about to die.

 

As they strapped themselves in for the long, quiet ride home, they had the satisfaction of a job so well done that NASA was calling it the textbook mission.

 

Rick Husband took his six crewmembers rock climbing during their years of training. He wanted to bond them into more than a crew. He did: he made them into a family. There's a picture of them in shorts and sunglasses, atop that mountain, admiring the view. They look like they'd known each other since grade school.

 

I'll bet they talked about that day as they pulled down their visors, and Willie McCool pitched the Orbiter on its back for the de-orbit burn. They talked about who was waiting for them, where they would go, what they would have for dinner.

 

As Columbia began to press against the first thin wisps of air, a little hint of gravity, a little push at the small of their backs must have felt strange after sixteen days of weightlessness. But it was time to go home. And like all coworkers facing the end of a close assignment and weeks and months of hard work together, I know they planned to get together over the years. I know Laurel and Mike were talking about their families, Dave and Kalpana already grinning about being the old salts next time and how much they would miss this team, this family, in all of their future rides on the bullet. Ilan Ramon must have invited them all to his house in Israel, perhaps a few years from now when things had settled down a little. It's beautiful there. I know that they meant it too, that these were not idle platitudes but real offers from people who knew they would be friends for the rest of their lives.

 

And so they were.

 

Perhaps ten minutes before eight am on Saturday morning, Rick Husband and Willie McCool started to pay attention to the data coming from the left wing sensors. It was 30 degrees warmer than normal in the left wheel well. Not much, considering the 2-3000 degrees on the leading edge of their wings and nose, but something to pay attention to. Anomalies are never good. There are no pleasant surprises in the flying business.

By 7:55 things were looking worse ' a lot worse. Unbenownst to the crew, telemetry beamed to the ground showed that readings from the heat sensors in the left wing started to rise, and then dropped to zero. They were failing, in a pattern expanding away from the left wheel well. Tire pressures were way high on the left side, and then those sensors failed too.

 

Sensors fail all the time. But this was different. This was a pattern, and it was spreading. And something was starting to pull the ship to the left.

I don't know the words he used, but I can hear the tone perfectly in my head, because it's exactly the same tone I've heard dozens of times on cockpit voice recorders. It's concern. Alarm, even. But it's cool. Disciplined.

 

All right, we've got a problem here...

 

The Pilot and Mission Commander probably never exchanged the knowing look that we'd see in the movie. They were too busy working the problem. But in the two seats behind them, and the three below, those five brave passengers looked at each other and now the smiles and the grins were gone.

Something was wrong with Columbia's left wing. The air that should be slipping over and under her like water off the back of a duck had found something to hold on to: almost certainly some missing tiles knocked loose by insulating foam coming off the External Tank. But 3000 degree ionized air was pushing into that wing, and heat sensors were winking out one by one because they were being burned through by gas far hotter and sharper than that at the end of a blowtorch.

 

Guys, we're in real trouble here.

 

The Commander would have told them. I have no doubt of this at all. You love and respect those people, people who have shown courage the likes of which we will never know. These are not babies, not shrieking, hysterical, self-centered celebrities either. These are astronauts. They deserve to know.

 

The air pushing backward and into that left wing continued to yaw the nose of the orbiter to the left. This cannot be allowed to happen ' the ship will disintegrate if she doesn't come in at exactly the right angle. So the computers flying Columbia commanded the aircraft to roll right, to bring that left wing forward using the rudder and elevons, the controls on the wing and tail that made Columbia an airplane and not merely a space capsule.

 

It wasn't working.

 

Columbia still pulled hard to the left, so hard that the computers fired the attitude control rockets on the nose to try and force it back into the relative wind. When that happened, when they heard the roar of those rockets firing in a last desperate effort to keep that ship intact, and when the rockets fired again, and kept firing, Rick Husband and Willie McCool must have known that they were not going home that day.

 

Guys, it's Rick. I don't think we're gonna make it.

 

And I know what courage did for these people. I know they looked at each other and nodded, and whether they actually said goodbye I know it was in their eyes. We know it. We know. We saw it on the deck of the Titanic, in the aisles on United Flight 93. On some level, they had all said goodbye to their families and their lives before they walked through that circular hatch, right below the word COLUMBIA.

 

When PSA Flight 182 collided with a small plane over San Diego in 1978, and dove straight into the ground trailing fire from the wing, the last words on the Cockpit Voice Recorder was a calm, level, 'Ma, I love you.'

 

And in that last second, there may just have been enough time, as that bulkhead wall opened into golden and purple light, to smile and think, It was worth it. It was a great ride."

 

SS

Bust - 'Very cool website! Thanks.

I remember in Ranger School, the immediate action drill for a "near ambush" is to attack (charge) into the direction of fire - which seems EXTREMELY counter-intuitive.

 

But - in reality - if you walk into a well-planned ambush, you have little hope of escaping anyway, and the ONLY hope you really have is to attack into (and past) the guns.

 

The deer just proved the point.

Well, it was three years ago today that Karma scored its geatest victory in my recent memory - on Soi Pridi Binomyong (Soi Prakhanong), when an Iranian ass-hat bomber blew his own legs off.

 

Here he is - Saeid Moradi - in all his glory:

 

http://youtu.be/tx5FZL4dCdE

 

I hope he's enjoying his life sentence in prison.

 

SS

An Aussie friend of mine who runs a business in China told me that China is forecasting that it (alone) will soon be sending 25 miilion tourists per year to Thailand - aided by Thailand's new "no visa required" rule for Chinese visitors. That is basically 2% of the Chinse population.

 

He also describes Chinese as "locusts" who destroy everything they touch, once they are present in large numbers.

 

If 25 million Chinese per year visit Thailand for a week each, that requires 480,000 beds PER NIGHT. Even if you put five people in each room, that amounts to 480 hotels - each with 200 rooms. Crazy numbers.

 

I suspect that Thailand will soon be revisiting their "no visas required" rules, after a "locust plague" decimates a few more tourist areas.

 

Cheers!

SS

OK - last Thursday, I had my first opportunity in a long time to dine at the El Gaucho steakhouse on Sukhumvit Soi 19, which was panned pretty badly by Jitagawn in his OP.

 

I was part of a party of five (3 Americans, and a married Thai couple). Based on an earlier arrangement, I paid for all the alcohol, and someone else paid for all the food. In no particular order, here are my comments:

 

1. The place was PACKED on a random Thursday evening. The primary host called to make reservations around 2:00 pm - the earliest seating he could get was 8:45 pm. Our group showed up at 7:30 to have drinks out front - they managed to get us in early at 7:45 pm, by pulling a few tables together.

 

2. Our total bill came to about 21,400 baht. 18,300 baht, plus 10% SC, plus 7% VAT.

 

3. There wasn't a single Thai server in the place. The floor captain in our area was from Croatia, and all the waitresses we spoke with were Filipinas. Service was EXCELLENT.

 

4. You can see the menu at http://elgaucho.asia...nd_30092014.pdf

 

5. I had Item 31 off the menu - Filet Steak, 350 gram, USDA Prime - 2,590 baht. Cooked medium. The five best steaks I've ever eaten are pretty much indistinguishable in my memory (at age 58) - but this was definately one of them. I've never had better. It was huge - you get your money's worth.

 

6. We ordered various accompanying dishes - all were acceptable, none were extraordinary. All side dishes were HEAVY on garlic - which I do not particularly care for.

 

7. We all left happy.

 

I feel bad for Jitagawn - he had a bad experience - but I had a great experience. I will say this: It is a pricey place. You can't go in there planning to spend less than about 3,000 baht a head, and still have a great meal. I'd suggest budgeting at least 4,000 baht.

 

Cheers!

SS.

For some reason, I'm thinking of a small toad, eyeing a big toad, and hoping that the big toad isn't hungry.

 

But - that's just me.

 

Cheers!

SS

Very clever comment by a Nigerian:

 

Jordan to execute suicide bomber in retaliation after Islamic State burn alive hostage

 

 

http://www.express.c...ned-alive-video

 

 

Just one? FFS he's a suicide bomber and wanted to die.

 

Uh - it's a "she" - but - still a terrorist puke.

If a venue owner pay wthe BiB enough, I'm sure that they can conveniently "suspend the passage of time" in a given location, for an appropriate length of time.

In the various Lord of the Rings films, Peter Jackson and company tried to create the most evil, vicious, terrifying "bad guys" that they could imagine - the Orcs. Second place to the "Ring-Wraiths" (Nazgûl).

 

Well, no fanciful evil beings can even come close to the wanton depravity that is continually being exhibited by Muslim fanatics. The Nazis were civilized gentry in comparison. The Mongols and the Vikings - at their worst - were pikers in comparison.

 

I am utterly astounded at the attitudes of Western leaders around the globe, tut-tutting about the "extremist fringe" of Islam, and bemoaning "Islamophobia" - and making light of the astonishing record of Islamic outrages:

 

From: http://www.thegatewa...administration/

 

Think About It

 

The Shoe Bomber was a Muslim

The Beltway Snipers were Muslims

The Fort Hood Shooter was a Muslim

The Charlie Hebdo killers were Muslim

The Underwear Bomber was a Muslim

The U-S.S. Cole Bombers were Muslims

The Madrid Train Bombers were Muslims

The Bali Nightclub Bombers were Muslims

The London Subway Bombers were Muslims

The Moscow Theatre Attackers were Muslims

The Boston Marathon Bombers were Muslims

The Pan-Am flight #93 Bombers were Muslims

The Air France Entebbe Hijackers were Muslims

The Iranian Embassy Takeover, was by Muslims

The Beirut U.S. Embassy Bombers were Muslims

The Libyan U.S. Embassy Attack was by Musiims

The Buenos Aires Suicide Bombers were Muslims

The Israeli Olympic Team Attackers were Muslims

The Kenyan U.S, Embassy Bombers were Muslims

The Saudi, Khobar Towers Bombers were Muslims

The Beirut Marine Barracks Bombers were Muslims

The Besian Russian School Attackers were Muslims

The First World Trade Center Bombers were Muslims

The Bombay, Mumbai, India Attackers were Muslims

The Achille Lauro Cruise Ship Hijackers were Muslims

The Nairobi, Kenya Shopping Mall Killers were Muslims

The September 11th 2001 Airline Hijackers were Muslims

The Sydney, Australia Lindt Cafe Kidnapper was a Muslim

The Peshawar, Pakistani School Children Killers were Muslims

 

Think of it:

 

Hindus living with Jews = No Problem

Baha’is living with Jews = No Problem

Jews living with Atheists = No Problem

Sikhs living with Hindus = No Problem

Hindus living with Baha’is = No Problem

Christians living with Jews = No Problem

Jews living with Buddhists = No Problem

Shintos living with Atheists = No Problem

Buddhists living with Sikhs = No Problem

Baha’is living with Christians = No Problem

Buddhists living with Shintos = No Problem

Buddhists living with Hindus = No Problem

Hindus living with Christians = No Problem

Atheists living with Buddhists = No Problem

Confusians living with Hindus = No Problem

Atheists living with Confucians = No Problem

 

Muslims living with Jews = Problem

Muslims living with Sikhs = Problem

Muslims living with Hindus = Problem

Muslims living with Baha’is = Problem

Muslims living with Shintos = Problem

Muslims living with Atheists = Problem

Muslims living with Buddhists = Problem

Muslims living with Christians = Problem

MUSLIMS LIVING WITH MUSLIMS = BIG PROBLEM

 

**********SO THIS LEADS TO *****************

 

They’re not happy in Gaza

They’re not happy in Egypt

They’re not happy in Libya

They’re not happy in Iran

They’re not happy in Iraq

They’re not happy in Yemen

They’re not happy in Pakistan

They’re not happy in Syria

They’re not happy in Lebanon

They’re not happy in Nigeria

They’re not happy in Kenya

They’re not happy in Sudan

They’re not happy in Morocco

They’re not happy in Afghanistan

 

******** So, where are they happy? **********

 

Islamic Jihad: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

ISIS: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Al-Qaeda: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Taliban: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Hamas: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Hezbollah: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Boko Haram: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Al-Nusra: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Abu Sayyaf: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Al-Badr: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Muslim Brotherhood: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Lashkar-e-Taiba: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Palestine Liberation Front: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Ansaru: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Jemaah Islamiyah: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Abdullah Azzam Brigades: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION

Al-Shabbab Somalia: AN ISLAMIC TERROR ORGANIZATION AND A LOT MORE!!!!!!!

 

Islam - ALL OF IT - is the problem. We erradicated Smallpox - no small feat. We need to start eliminating Islam - that incluides all 1.6 billion of its adherants. If any TV members are Muslims - you need to find another belief system, and distance yourself from the malignancy that is Islam.

 

I shudder to think of the year 2100, with remote pockets of civilzed people surrounded by a global Caliphate trumpeting the joys and benefits of living a Seventh Century lifestyle - with no muusic, no alcohol - I guess no bathing and no education from the look of many of them. Huddled around their pitiful campfires, those few western survivors will be muttering into their porridge "Back, 100 years ago, what were our leaders THINKING when they allowed the pestilence of Islam to colonize their lands, instead of wiping the Islamic plague off the map.....?".

 

Once again, Winston Churhill had it exactly right:

 

"...if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."

 

End of Rant.

SS

From the film, it looks like the bombers were pretty good about just targeting the river bridges and approaches - they look like railway bridges to me - but maybe roadway bridges also. But - all the strikes look like they were consistently 50 to 100 meters too far to the left.

Hey Jack -

 

You must have overlooked this one:

 

LvCornwallis wrote:

 

“Redlight Hotelâ€

Reviewed July 12, 2014

 

 

First of all, every square inch of this hotel is most likely covered in sperm dating back to the 1970's. The hotel is filthy, but I guess it does not matter because I was up to filthy activities anyway. Great location for picking up third world hookers, I even saw a ladyboy knife fight in front of the hotel.

From my days as a jumpmaster - the ultimate hazard was if some new guy about five or six jumpers back managed to somehow deploy his reserve inside the plane, as you approached the drop zone.. There is a sort of "spring" in the reserve chute housing, which forcefully ejects the silk forward and away from you. There is also a sort of suction effect (venturi effect) near an open door. Combined, there is a tendency for a deployed reseve chute to make its way to the open door - and out. If that happens, everyone between the guy whose chute deployed and the open door is in a WORLD of hurt - as the unfortunate chute owner is dragged out the door at about 250 km/hr (or whatever the aircraft cruisng speed is at that point) - literally sheering the legs off everone along the way.

 

I never saw such a terrible event, but I did see a couple reserve chutes deploy inside the plane after "hooking up" - and I was amazed to see how fast a couple of NCO's could react to throw themseives on top of the chute on the floor, pinning it to the floor. Then, within 75 seconds or so, they had the jumper unhooked, him and his billowing chute dragged to the front of the plane, and the NCO's then back in the stick, hooked up again, ready to jump.

Welcome to China, where we set very low standards, and we then consistently fail to meet even those standards.

Karma at work????

Here is an interesting side story: http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/paris-market-hero#.jkernk5Pwy

 

Bathily, a 24-year-old Muslim from Mali, was working in the store in the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood when the Islamist gunman burst in. (SS question: What was Muslim doing working in a Kosher deli?????)

 

As panic ensued, up to 15 customers in the store hurried down to the store basement, when Bathily had an idea. “When they ran down, I opened the door [to the freezer],†he told France’s BFMTV.

 

He quickly shut off the freezer and switched off its light. As he closed the door to shelter the customers inside, he told them, “Stay calm here. I’m going out.â€

 

Eventually police raided the market, killing Coulibaly. As the hostages were freed from the freezer, they had a few words of thanks for Bathily. “They congratulated me,†he told BFMTV.

 

SS Note: In another article about this situation, Bathily wa decsribed as "a Muslim African-American" - but - who knows?

 

Cheers!

SS

Well, it appears that El Gaucho in Bangkok does not even serve any Argentinian beef: http://elgaucho.asia/thailand/wp-content/uploads/Food_Menu_Thailand_30092014.pdf

 

So - BB evidently had bad US beef. I will see about paying a revisit to the place sometime soon.

Also - BB - your problem may have been in selecting Argentinian beef. I chose the USA Prime beef - and it was great.

The mushroom cultivator confirmed that none of them spoke any Thai Khun Flashermac , not that it worried me .

 

Mr Stonesoup , we had beef from Argentina over Christmas here in Jeormany . The El gaucho material in comparison has been an insult looking at the pricing . What they supplied as vegetabled made me dream of the street food vendor rear end of Patpong 2, another of my daytime hotspots . Not that I fancy Patpong , just for the record . Only because we had received drinks already I did not escape from the El Gaucho premises , I am still angry when I think of it . Madame did even agree on a reasonable discount when checkbin time for services, assorted came next morning because she felt guilty . Hardcore freelancer by the way but good heart . No prompremm .

 

Hello BB -

 

I first visited in September 2012 - here was my write-up: http://t2.thai360.com/index.php?/topic/58540-restaurant-review-el-gaucho/ , and I last visited in maybe June or July 2013 - so things may have gone down hill over the past 18 months. But - I stand by my original observations - as of the date they were written.

 

Cheers!

SS