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LarryLEB

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    What Books are you Reading ?

    in ASEAN NOW Community Pub

    Posted

    I just finished A Separate Peace by John Knowles and am now about halfway through Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (by Fanny Flagg).  I read 4 or 5 books a month.

     

    Trivia note:  You may remember Fanny Flagg as a frequent guest star on Match Game with Gene Rayburn.

     

    As others have noted, the Kindle is the way to go for readers in Thailand.  Posters here have mentioned some of the advantages of the Kindle, but one advantage hasn't been mentioned...  You can have a sample of the book (often up to the first 10% of the book, not just a random selection) sent to your Kindle.  After reading the sample for free, you can either order the book or delete the sample.

     

    I currently have about 60 book samples lined up on my KIndle.

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    What Can Visa Agent do?

    in Thai Visas, Residency, and Work Permits

    Posted

    I've done all my annual retirement extensions myself:  Jomtien Office, last 10 years.

     

    My annual extension does not require one or two trips to Immigration; it requires THREE:

    • TRIP ONE:  Get queue number; give documents and passport; collect numbered chit for passport pickup next day (I always do trip one at around 3:00 p.m.)
    • TRIP TWO:  Swap numbered chit for passport.  Check passport for correct date of next visa extension.  Given a date-stamped document telling me to appear again in 3 months with proof that I still have at least 800,000 Baht in my account.
    • TRIP THREE:  Bring the date-stamped document and the required documents proving I still have 800,000+ in my account.

    Adding to the above the four 90-day reports, I make 7 trips to the Office each year.  (Yes, I could use the online reporting for those four, but I live only a 15-minute walk from the Office.)

     

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    books written well over 100 years ago

    in ASEAN NOW Community Pub

    Posted · Edited by LarryLEB

    On 5/10/2021 at 10:21 AM, BananaBandit said:

    My best friend is my Kindle.

    I couldn't agree with you more.  I read 4 or 5 books a month on Kindle and they span a huge swath of time regarding when they were written.  About 20% of books I read are in the older (100+years) category.  When the book was written doesn't seem to matter to me as much as the quality of the writing.  That said, however,  the much older books often require a few pages (or more!) to "switch modes" to the style of the times and the style of the author.

     

    Here are some of my favourites that are over 100 years old (in no particular order):

    • Pere Goriot:  Balzac, 1835
    • virtually any of Anton Chekhov's plays, especially Uncle Vanya, 1897,  and The Cherry Orchard, 1903.
    • Bleak House:  Dickens, 1852.  I just read this a few weeks ago!  How it slipped through the cracks, I don't know.  I think it is his BEST work.
    • The Decameron:  Giovanni Boccaccio, 1353 (first complete English version, 1886).  Seven young women and three young men isolate from the Black Death epidemic of 1348 in a villa outside Florence.  Taking turns, 100 tales of love, wit, and life lessons are told by the ten while in their "quarantine."
    • A Doll's House:  Henrik Ibsen, 1879. (and many other Ibsen plays worth reading)
    • Edward the Second and Doctor Faustus:  Christopher Marlowe, 1592.
    • The Government Inspector:  Nikolai Gogol, 1836.
    • War and Peace:  Tolstoy, 1865.
    • Kim:  Kipling, 1901.
    • King Solomon's Mines:  H. Rider Haggard, 1885.  (Allan Quartermain adventure)
    • The Phantom of the Opera:  Gaston Leroux, 1910.
    • Lord Jim:  Joseph Conrad, 1900.
    • The Call of the Wild:  Jack London, 1903.
    • The Mahabarata:  Vyasa, 3rd century BCE - 3rd century CE.  I've read this at least three times.
    • Richard III and Titus Andronicus:  Shakespeare, 1592 and c1594.  These are two of my favourites by this author.  Many of his other plays are also worth reading; some, sadly, are not (such as The Merry Wives of Windsor).  Editions with extensive footnotes really help the enjoyment of the reader.
    • The Wind in the Willows:  Kenneth Grahame, 1908.
    • Pride and Prejudice:  Jane Austen, 1813.
    • The Three Theban Plays:  Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone:  Sophocles, 5th century BCE.

    Occasionally, a book will be just not worth the effort; for example, Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte, 1847).  There, the author attempts to capture the dialect of her characters, making most of the dialog almost unintelligible.  

     

    There are many more favourites that I could add, but I guess I should stop here.  Needless, to say, I LOVE to read!  

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    Changing the filter in an Air Purifier?

    in DIY Forum

    Posted · Edited by LarryLEB

     

    We have 3 Xioami 3H purifiers (all purchased from Lazada).  I rate them 5 stars out of 5.  We have replaced the filters in the units once.  I keep a stock of 3 filters in-house at all times.

     

    Every 2 months or so, I take out the filters to clean them.  I do this, using no water, with a very soft 1.5" paint brush (purchased for cheap at HomePro).  I gently brush the filter surface over the bathroom sink, removing a lot of fine dust. 

     

    (I felt that using a vacuum cleaner might be too hard on the filter surface.)

     

    2 Questions:

    • Do your filters have the RFID label sticker on the bottom?  If they do, then you have genuine Xiaomi filters
    • How many square meters are you using your machine(s) to cover?

    Our 3 machines are placed as follows:

    • Bedroom number one, about 38 square meters
    • Bedroom number two, same size
    • Sitting/Dining/Kitchen (SDK) open area, about 75 square meters.

    We rarely have a problem getting the purifier's LED reading to 001 or 002 in the bedrooms.  If the pollution is near "apocalyptic" on that night, we may have to run 2 purifiers in bedroom (very rare).  (2 purifiers at low speed, that is, because one unit at high speed is too noisy!)

     

    On an "average" day, one purifier handles the SDK area easily (001 reading).  On very high pollution days, we bring one of the bedroom units into the SDK area.  Running 2 units in 75 square meters gets us a reading of 001 to 003 on those days.

     

    Before we bought the purifiers, we suffered from stinging eyes inside our condo.  After buying, no more problems with eyes/throat. 

     

    Hope this helps.  Cheers.

     

     

     

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    Outpatient Insurance Requirement for Retirement Visa.............................

    in Thai Visas, Residency, and Work Permits

    Posted · Edited by LarryLEB

    I have an OA visa.  I have had medical insurance with a company here in Pattaya since age 57.  I'm currently 68.

     

    Until last year, I had only in-patient coverage.  To satisfy the new Immigration requirement last year, it was necessary to add at least 40,000 Baht in outpatient coverage.

     

    My insurance premium without outpatient was about 50,000 Baht for coverage of 5,000,000 Baht per incident (with a deductible of 40,000 Baht).  The insurance company offered me 2 choices by which to meet the 40,000 Baht outpatient requirement:

    1.  A premium of about 70,000 Baht which would provide FULL outpatient coverage.
    2.  A premium of about 60,000 Baht which would provide only 40,000 Baht of outpatient coverage.  (They simply added 10,000 Baht to my existing premium.)  So, the new Immigration requirement cost me 10,000 Baht.  In your case, being quoted 100,000 Baht for out-patient coverage is @#&!. 

    I chose the second option -- 60,000 Baht annual premium.  A few days ago, I renewed for another year at the same cost.

     

     

    Note that I have had no claims against my insurance since 2012, so I get a 20% discount for that (as well as a 25% discount for the deductible; and a 20% discount for not having full outpatient coverage).  In 2012, I had an appendectomy -- 140,000 Baht paid for in full by my policy.

     

    Note also that the discounts are not cumulative--they cannot be added together.  The 3 discounts amount to a real monetary discount of 52% of the initial premium.

     

    My advice would be to add ONLY 40,000 Baht of outpatient (not the more expensive full outpatient coverage) to your policy and to apply a deductible of 40,000 or maybe even 100,000 Baht.

     

    Policy premiums seem to jump every 5 years:  at 60, 65, 70, and so on.  As I age, I plan to reduce my policy in-patient coverage to 3,000,000 from 5,000,000, and even lower, as necessary to keep premiums low.  I will also move from my 40,000 deductible to higher deductibles.

     

    If you would like the name of my insurance company, you may send me a PM (personal message).

     

    Poor air quality in Bangkok and 11 other provinces

    in Thailand News

    Posted · Edited by LarryLEB

    Nothing seems to change in Thailand.

     

    Thirty years ago, while on my then-annual holiday in Bangkok, The Bangkok Post indicated that, for lung heath, living in Bangkok was the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.  The article went on to mention that, at any given time, a third of Bangkok's traffic policemen were on sick leave.

    Okay given for Bt300 foreign tourist entry fee

    in Thailand News

    Posted

    Pre-Covid, the queue lengths at airport Immigration Arrivals desks were a national disgrace.  If the plan is to collect the 300Baht from tourists upon arrival at the airport, this will make the queues even slower to process.  (ASSUMING, of course, that tourist arrivals ever return to anything like they were before.) (and, if they don't, the geniuses in charge will cut staff at these desks!)

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    Thailand faces national lockdown by March if COVID-19 guidelines not followed: CCSA

    in Thailand News

    Posted · Edited by LarryLEB

    4 hours ago, Misterwhisper said:

     

    It's all about priorities whose order you perhaps fail to fathom:

     

    > First we pay our Chinese bosom buddies for those submarines (in the course of which we collect generous "commissions")

    > Then we fly to the moon (for which we collect generous "commissions")

    > And then we vaccinate

    > Then we start building a bullet train line with the help of our Chinese bosom buddies (for which we collect generous "commissions")

    > And then we vaccinate 

     

    Prestige and face always come first, people always last. 

    Totally correct.  Not a lot of "commissions" in a vaccine, sadly; so, dead last as a priority.

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