YimSiam

Department stores will be the end of everything, and THEN who will they sell to? Just a big, empty, overheated world of out-of-business Sogos and Emporia. I want to go back to when everything was just little mom-and-pops and rows of smokey little beer bars and freelancer joints. That's what heaven'll be like, when I get there.

Whaddaya mean 'special effects'?! You sayin' it's not real?

I have nothing against the Grace Hotel coffee shop, wretched hive of scum and villainy though it may be - one must be cautious... I love scum and villainy, frankly. I've always considered myself something like Han as I've made my way through the many variations available in Thailand, though in reality I probably appear to an objective outsider a bit more like Luke in the bar. At least I've escaped my C-3PO-like status of the first few visits...

That's odd - in my experience, Bangkok has always seemed like a place somewhere far out away from both earth and the sun, my deep-space off-planet zone of fun and adventure... but yeah, it's hot. So maybe that image is more accurate than my own personal sense of heading away from the solar system I know and love...

For clarification, I don't really work with any USA/UK/AUL native speaker types, just a minority of senior managers come from that background. So everyone is ESL ('ceptin' myself), but when thinking of work in Thailand there's basically the Thais (whose English is good, but overall not as good as the 'internationals' like Arabs, Pakistanis, Burmese - many Assumption) that work alongside the Thais. So the comparisons are different than, say, Chula vs University of Wisconsin, or Wisconsin nurses vs. Filipino nurses. Much of the work is legal and analytical, requires a skeptical and curious approach - this is where I'm afraid Thainess serves least-well. Love working with many Thai colleagues - but this critical thinking and argumentative element is weak, even at the best schools.

Indeed - a tried-and-true technique! Works especially well in Pattaya, but can also be applied in Bangkok. My specialty, the night owl life.

... where "hell" can be replaced by a few choice alternatives, like "Minnesota", "Canada", or "a witch's tit"....

I work in an international field, in English, with a broad array of nationalities - and sometimes wonder just how influential I let that mastery of English be. Everyone can speak reasonably well, but really identifying excellent people I suspect is often colored simply by how well they can communicate and sell themselves in English. Would be interesting to that the national/local staff who they think of as the brightest, most effective workers, and compare it with my own list - do I just appreciate the English speakers, or am I capable of valuing those who may not be as good in English, but have better overall intelligence, skills, commitment, etc? The fact that I appreciate Assumption probably means I'm putting my too much weight on language - but then again, even the fully fluent, internationalized students I've known from Chula-sat or whatever, they have rarely had a very insightful critical perspective, regardless of English - whereas my intl Assumption colleagues certainly have.

Time for a government edict to bring the weather down a bit - or failing that, would it be possible to identify a couple of Burmese guys as responsible for the higher temps? No matter what, it must be clear to quality Chinese tourists that everything is fine - and that if they can't stand the heat or humidity, there are ALWAYS a/c malls to visit. It really is the humidity, isn't it? 33 up to 40 is really not that bad in the dry Middle East, but it just kills you in Asia - at least that's my memory. Embarrassing that I'm still vaguely lost between my native F and the dominant C in the world...

I've worked with or had contact with quite a few Assumption students, and found them at least as effective - sometimes much more so - than students from big Chula/Thammasat. Most were Burmese or Arabs, international students, and some Thais.

Inherent Vice - kind of a Big Lebowski stoner deal movie, but with virtually none of the hooks that similar movies have had. Some fucking hot little Asians in there, though - points for that! And a visit to a whore house that brings to mind favorites ala Lolitas, Star of Light, etc... The general movie-going public would be shocked to think that there is a whore house with $11.95 blowjobs available and a Pussy Eaters Special - some board members will find it perfectly normal... I fell asleep somewhere near the end of this one, just couldn't care about the plot, which I couldn't be bothered to follow - and the Asian hunnies didn't make nearly as frequent appearances as needed to make it worthwhile for those moments alone...

No Escape. Jeez, what a bad movie. Utterly pointless - how, when so many movies have been made on some version of this theme (escape from third world horror a la Killing Fields, Midnight Express, Year of Living Dangerously), do they manage to stumble so badly through this one? No plot, no context, just - oh fuck! run, crazy people want to kill us and speak Thai! Brothel, opium den - still a bit more to go, let''s see what other cliche'd bits are included... Pierce Brosnan is doubtless the highlight - that guy is getting better with age, I think. Or maybe just in comparison to the film, he's looking relatively great.

That's not how you rob a gun store - THIS is how you rob a gun shop, Houston-style: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Massive-Houston-gun-store-robbery-caught-on-6870204.php Apparently some or all now arrested - but they made some good footage!

There's at least one scene that gives you a view of the martian hills - completely criss-crossed and etched by goat-trails - Jordanian goats, I presume. I'm about to move to Jordan, I'm sure at some point I'll get bored enough that I'll actually go visit some kind of tourism set-up "on location where Matt Damon filmed The Martian"... Let's see, what else have I seen? Saw the Wolf of Wall Street again - there's some funny shit in there, great little scenes, but it's drunk on its own excess - hours of yelling and nonsense, and it's hard to give a fuck about the story line.

The Good German. Clooney, that Spiderman kid, Cate Blanchett. They made it black-and-white, but I still couldn't finish it - which is saying something, since I was able to finish the book - I think - though not without some effort. Give me some old-fashioned Raymond Chandler noir anyday. (I'd say "Casablanca is better" but that's pretty much universally true. But Casablanca IS a better watch than this, no matter how many times you've seen it.)

Yeah, the short holiday makers should definitely complain - they probably don't even end up taking the brunt of these events, I'd wager. It's the long-stayers, the afraid-to-complainers who might not want to be looked at too closely, those are the ones I'd think would be ripe for targeting - either get the fines, or better yet, get the off-book cash payments from people who know very well that a little problem can turn into a big one, particularly if you're not driven-snow, Japanese-virgin white and clean - or have longer term plans in the kingdom. I can certainly also say that I have never been treated in a negative way by authorities in Thailand, and if I've ever been treated unfairly, it has meant that my preferential treatment was patently unfair to many others who would doubtless not have been treated as nicely! My interactions with police, immigration - and there have been a few over the years - have been in the end all smiles and mai pen rai and a measure of respect that I hardly deserve...

Andy Hall - is he still in Thailand? He'd better avoid traveling at high speeds, walking down dark alleys, opening his mouth and speaking, and virtually any other activity he might undertake if still there. Accidents do happen. Maybe Andrew Drummond has a spare bedroom and laptop wherever he's living now? Hell, maybe Stickman'll put him up in NZL...

You still wank with shampoo, Panadol? Or even dish-washing detergent? What, are you 12 years old?! Man, there are much better lubricants out there, no need for foaming suds. Just get some baby oil, Johnson's is a gift. The multi-player game is indeed a frequent con - and some of the massive beds they provide in Bkk and Pattaya, they invite you to start to make ultimately ridiculous calculations: 'three verticle, one across, that makes four, can fit easily!' It really is so often a waste of money and a loss of 'arom' to have the whole team back - it's easy to commit to at the bar/gogo/disco/streetcorner, but a bad decision. Stick with one, unless you really know what you're going to get. Or you have set clear objectives, and you are not trying for the porn-style double-team effort. You want to bang three, consecutively? Fine. One by one by one, every thing is okay. But more complex fantasies, each night of the holiday? Not going to work. I had a very good system in place ten years ago in Bkk - had a dominant tom 'friend', tom but pretty with beautiful dark eyes and a bit of a sadistic streak. Would take her, and then go prowl the scene with her, looking for what would almost amount eventually to an unwitting victim (oh, she knew what she was getting involved in, but she didn't really know Sao, did she?) So Sao - the tom - would pick some light-skinned little beauty from a gogo or a latenight display, and off we'd go - and then, with Sao as the ringmaster and me basically as the Dick for Hire, we'd go to work to try to make the girl orgasm. It was fun, it was a genuine interest with Sao to get a hot girl and to make her come (with another woman involved, which added to the challenge and thrill). Best experience of this was on Sao's birthday one year - got the girl to cum, in tears of pleasure and joy - very positive memory I have of that one, it's just so rewarding, nights like that - yet unfortunately so rare...

They appear to be from UAE by way of Goa, from their choice of dress... Now, before it's too late: obtain DNA samples, secure the crime scene, stop beating the suspects, control the flow of unverified information to the press, and - ah what's the point, it all goes pear-shaped eventually, might as well fuck it up from the start.

Of course they're allowed to speak - as Mao proclaimed, let 100 schools of thought contend, let 100 flowers bloom! Anyway who's not happy with the new situation is encouraged to raise their hand and their voice - because there's a bunch of empty places in the next graduating class out at the re-education center...

The flower market? Jesus, talk about sucking the life and culture out of the place. Singapore looks more attractive in comparison every day. I guess the aspect that makes these changes a little less radically bad is that those who have been around long enough know that it just takes a shift in the political/administrative breeze for resilient Thais to be right back out there claiming their sidewalk market space again - but perhaps after a certain point that resilience becomes less likely, and you just end up with a bunch of empty condos and 7-11s and soulless streets. I guess the powers that be have proven that Thailand can survive without tourism, even if it's bare survival for many, and they are committed to ensuring that the situation stays that way.

SImilar in HK: http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2016/02/24/smoking-hot-style-thief-robs-man-his-clothes-apparently-burning-them I suspect in the modern southeast asian world we might calls this Ghost-By-Methamphetamine, more often than not...

Cease fire from today - but blasts at 3, 4 and 11 am - then pretty quiet...

Really, jing jing. But certainly it seems a run of the mill internet lie, too. Burger place is called Upstairs, part of a hi-so shopping arcade attached to the Four Seasons Damascus. Got a sushi joint (run by Filipinos), the burger place, and a bunch of cafes. Sit outside, eat your frozen sushi platter, and listen to the sound of Russian planes and rockets and who knows what else hitting the Jobar and Eastern Ghouta neighborhood... again... can't be much left out there.

Maybe - but I suspect also the gel version is somehow easier to dose properly, not get carried away. And Cialis seems much less of a jumpstart to the heart - but gets the job done. Better - and longer - living through Chemistry...