Gaybutton

I never thought about that. I always thought it was wage plus commission. I didn't realize that it's commission only. In some of the bars there are boys that show up to freelance dance whenever they wish (or do the "one-knee shuffle"). They are not paid. They're hoping to be taken off and get whatever they can get from the farang. The bar still charges an off fee for them, though. I think they also get their commission if a farang buys a drink for them.

Wednesday, December 10: Today is a public holiday. Exchange rates are not published today.

Poor service is definitely not exclusive to Thailand. In the USA, nearly every time I was in a grocery store trying to find something, if I asked an employee something like, "Where is the tartar sauce?", the answer would almost invariably be, "Aisle 6." On the rare occasions when the employee would actually take a moment to personally show me to the item, I would make sure to commend him to the store manager. Sometimes the service is much better here in Thailand. In places such as grocery stores, hardware stores, etc, whenever I ask an employee where an item is, he will almost invariably take me to it. My peeve is more with certain policies at some of the local stores. For example, when I first moved to Thailand, my boyfriend wanted a beanbag chair. We went to a local hardware store where they were advertising a promotion for them at 1400 baht. He picked out the chair he liked and we went to the cash register. A tag that said 1400 baht was attached to the chair. The cashier rang up the sale at 2000 baht. I called him on it. He said, "Promotion finish yesterday." I showed him the price tag and pointed out that the bean bag chairs on display had a big sign in front of them that also said 1400 baht. He wouldn't budge. I asked to see the manager. A girl came over, who was no more the store manager than I was. I pointed out all of this to her too. She also wouldn't budge. She said the reason the prices were still in place was because they didn't have time yet to re-do the price tags. I mentioned the fact that it is 3:30pm and the store has been open since 10:00am. She still wouldn't budge. I asked her if the store intends to honor the price shown on the item or not. The answer was no. A farang standing behind me and listening told me that he had recently spent a lot of money in the same store on floor tiles. He told me that a few boxes of them contained broken tiles. He returned those boxes to the store only a few hours after having bought and opened them, but the store refused to refund his money or even exchange the broken tiles. Needless to say, that's one store where I no longer shop. But not all stores cheat customers in that manner. One store that I do like is Big-C. Whenever I buy some sort of appliance or electronic device there, they always open the box and make sure the unit is working before I purchase it. Then they carefully re-pack the box. I bought a washing machine at Big-C. It came with a 1-year warranty. About two months later it broke down. I went back to Big-C with the warranty paperwork. They told me it's too late to replace the machine, but they told me where I could go locally to have the machine repaired under the warranty. There was no problem at all and my machine was promptly repaired with no charge to me. Several months ago I bought a DVD player at Carrefour. In the store a check was done and it worked just fine. Of course, as soon as I got it home it wouldn't work. I took it back to Carrefour. They tested the unit and they also couldn't get it to work. They told me it must be a defective unit and they immediately replaced it with another one. They checked that one too and it was working. When I got it home it was working and that's the unit I've been using ever since. Those are the kinds of stores where I prefer to shop. They do stand behind what they sell and they live up to their promises if anything goes wrong.

The following appears in the Bangkok Post: _____ Tourism Losses Could Hit 130-bln Baht The tourism industry may lose up to 130 billion baht of revenues because of the closure of Suvarnabhumi airport, Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) deputy governor for international marketing Santichai Euachongprasit said on Tuesday. According to the initial assessment, the number of foreign tourists between December 2008 and April 2009 could drop by 2.3 million and the loss of revenues should be around 86 billion to 130 billion baht. The decrease would be about 40 to 50 per cent when compared to the same period of the previous year. Mr Santichai said the TAT initially aimed to welcome 16 million tourists, but the number could be slashed to 14 million due to the political and economic crises. The TAT will fine-tune its marketing plan by emphasising on restoring tourist confidence. Previously, the authority proposed the "Seven Wonders" campaign to promote important tourist destinations in the country next year, but it will also try to restore the national image by apologising to tourists who were affected by the seizure of airports by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and beefing up security measures. The TAT in cooperation with the private sector will come up with different tourism campaigns and promotions to draw in more tourists as well.

It isn't just Thailand, folks. Welcome to corruption, American style: _____ Illinois Governor Arrested in Obama Successor Probe AP - CHICAGO – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested today on charges that accuse him of trying to benefit from his ability to appoint President-elect Barack Obama's replacement in the U.S. Senate. The U.S. Attorney in Chicago says federal investigators bugged Blagojevich's campaign offices and placed a tap on his home phone. At a news conference on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the corruption charges represent "a truly new low." An FBI affidavit says the 51-year-old Democrat was intercepted on wiretaps conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife. FBI chief Robert Grant says even seasoned investigators were stunned by what they heard on those tapes. Fitzgerald described the situation by saying: "We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it." The governor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

In the film, when the attorney first starts talking to von Bulow, he says, "You have one thing in your favor. Everybody hates you." von Bulow responds with, "Well . . . . . that's a start."

It depends on the bank. They all have their own system. Many now have an OPT, which stands for One Time Password. When you make the transfer, they send you an OTP. You have to enter the OTP to complete the transfer. Some banks don't use OPTs. The ones that do usually give you a choice of receiving the OTP either by mobile phone text message or by Email. Siam Commercial, for whatever reason, has suspended the Email OTP and will only send by text message, which doesn't do much good if you are making the transfer from somewhere outside of Thailand. I think the easiest bank to work with for online transfers is Bank of Ayudhya. TMB is easy too. Bangkok Bank is fairly simple. With all three banks you can set up the transfers online. No paperwork is involved. You can do the same with Siam Commercial, but it's a problem if you need to do the OTP by mobile phone. I don't have an account with Kasikorn, so I don't know what's involved with their system. Based on what Billyhouston said, it sounds like you'll have to make a trip to your bank branch office to set it up. But try online anyway. Billyhouston didn't say how long ago he set things up with his account. Until recently, several banks required paperwork to set it up, but only recently have changed their system so that the whole thing can easily be done online. You might as well try setting it up online first. If you can't, that's when to go to your branch office. If you do have to go to your branch office, try to go to the same branch where you first opened your account. Some banks won't do that sort of thing unless you are in your primary branch office.

Are you talking about transferring money from one Thai bank account to another Thai bank account or are you talking about an international transfer? If it's an international transfer I don't know of any way to avoid fees. If you are transferring from one account to another account with a Thai bank, depending on the bank there are either no fees at all or a fee of about 20 baht or so, depending on the bank. That applies if it's the same bank. In other words from one Bank of Ayudhya account to another Bank of Ayudhya account. If you wish to find a bank that does this kind of transfer with no fees at all, then don't walk into a bank to ask. They really wouldn't know. What you want to do is call their service number and talk to an online banking agent. That's where you'll get a reliable answer. I could be wrong, but I think you can do this kind of transfer with no fee with both Bank of Ayudhya and Siam Commercial. I'm not certain. There may be other banks that will do intra-bank transfers without charging any fees, but you'll need to call their service numbers to find out. If you are transferring from one Thai bank account to an account at a different Thai bank, you can do that online too with most banks, but depending on the amount of the transfer, most banks charge a fee of 25 to 35 baht. In other words, from a Bank of Ayudhya account to a Kasikorn bank account. One possible solution, if you're talking about international transfers, can work if you have your own Thai bank account. International transfers usually cost a set fee, and the fee is the same per transfer, regardless of whether you are transferring a small amount or a large amount of money. What you could do would be to transfer as much money as you can to your own Thai bank account and pay the fee. After the money is in your account, you can then transfer smaller amounts to your friend's account online without additional international fees until the funds in your own account are depleted. You won't avoid fees that way, but you can at least save a lot of money because you will be reducing the number of times you have to pay the international fees. It's been a long time, but before Thai banks offered online banking I used to wire funds to a Thai bank account from the USA. At the time, the fee was $40 per transaction, regardless of the amount of money I was sending.

The following appears in THE NATION: _____ Prasong Tells Foreign Ministry to Revoke Thaksin's Passport Former foreign minister Prasong Soonsiri Tuesday demanded the Foreign Ministry permanent secretary to revoke all types of passports of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Prasong submitted the written demand to the permanent secretary and threatened to file nonfeasance charges against him if he refused to revoke Thaksin's diplomatic and ordinary passports. He reasoned that the Foreign Ministry's directives prohibited issuance passports to anyone who face criminal charges and Thaksin has already been sentenced to two-year imprisonment.

It seems strange to me too. Most of the time, when a public holiday is declared, the banks and government offices close. I didn't see anything about that, one way or the other, in the article, so that remains to be seen. Just how that is supposed to boost tourism, other than perhaps for Thais themselves who are on a holiday within the country, goes beyond me.

The following appears in the PATTAYA DAILY NEWS: _____ GOVERNMENT PREDICTS GLOOMY ECONOMIC OUTLOOK FOR THAILAND IN 2009 Acting Finance Minister, Suchart Thada-Thamrongvech, on December 8, admitted to being seriously concerned that the country‘s economic problems will intensify in Q1,2009. "The economy has begun to signal its worsening because policies drawn up to address the problem cannot function properly and state agencies need to wait for a new policy from the next government," Mr. Suchart is reported to have said. The fact that the mid-year budget of Bt100 billion must be suspended pending consideration and approval by the next government, hardly helps matters. However, Mr. Suchart did express satisfaction over the Bank of Thailand (BoT) Monetary Policy Committee's decision to reduce the policy interest rate sharply because it would encourage financial institutions to reallocate their assets in more promising avenues of investment; however, he said that a further cut in interest rate would be encouraging. Further predictions · The economy is likely to weaken more in 2009, in line with a further slowdown in the global economy, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth forecast to fall to 3.9%. "We have to revise the growth projection down because the global economic slowdown is affecting our economy," said the National Economic and Social Development Board's Secretary General, Ampon Kittiampol. · "Net exports are falling and local political turmoil is seriously deterring investment and tourism," Ampon Kittiampo said. · The pace of export revenue growth will slow in 2008-09, while import demand is likely to improve. Exports suffered during the recent PAD blockade of Suvarnabhumi Airport, which was a huge blow to Thailand's tourist industry that brings in the equivalent of about 7 % of GDP. Losses were estimated to cost 1 billion baht ($28m) a day to the tourist industry. · "The world economic recession will have a strong effect on the Thai export sector in first half of the next year and private investment will continue to slow down," Ampon predicted. · Despite the best efforts of the central bank, Thailand will almost certainly fall into recession in 2009 and although the Bank of Thailand recently cut its policy rate cut to 2.75%, this is deemed by most economic pundits as insufficient to prevent the economy weakening further · Thai industry expanded at 6.1 percent, down from 7.7 percent in the second quarter and 9.5 percent in the first quarter, and Ampon warned that the global financial crisis would continue taking its toll in Thailand. · The National Economic and Social Development Board projected that the Thai economy would grow at 3-4% in 2009, while inflation is expected to drop to between 2.5 and 3.5 percent. · Thailand's unemployment rate is expected to rise to at least 2.0-2.5% in 2009, up from the 1.5-2.5% projected in November and the 1.4% estimated for 2008, the state planning agency said on December 8. · Unemployed Thais would average 900,000 in 2009 out of a national labour force of 37.6 million, up from 530,000 in the first nine months of 2008, an official at the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) recently stated. 'This is the impact of the growing global economic and financial crisis that affects Thailand,' according to NESDB Deputy Secretary General Suwanee Kamman. She continued by saying that the unemployment rate next year could be even higher than her new forecast as it did not take into account the effect on the tourist industry of the week-long blockade of Bangkok's airports by PAD protesters.

Maybe not dedication. It's more like I'm simply not tired yet, so I get the daily count out of the way. I appreciate what you said. We've had our little tiffs. I don't hold any of it against you. I'm glad you don't hold any of it against me. In any case, I'm flattered that you think I deserve an award. If people are benefiting from this message board and the work I put into it, that's award enough for me.

I wouldn't complain about it . . . Most likely it has to do with the time of day when you withdraw money. I post the opening rates, which usually appear about 8:00am, and the closing rates, which usually appear around 5:00pm. During the day the rates constantly fluctuate. Also, since you're withdrawing from a foreign bank, maybe you're getting an offshore rate. I have no idea why or how it works, but offshore rates seem to be better than the rates within Thailand.

Tuesday, December 9 OPENING RATES: US Dollar: 35.15 Euro: 45.30 British Pound: 52.205 Australian Dollar: 23.11 Canadian Dollar: 27.95 _____ CLOSING RATES: US Dollar: 35.21 Euro: 45.26 British Pound: 51.99 Australian Dollar: 22.885 Canadian Dollar: 27.9325

Apparently, those jockeying for political power are not interested in becoming, or continuing to be, puppets for Thaksin. The following appears in the BANGKOK POST: _____ Thaksin Told It's All Over AEKARACH SATTABURUTH After his ex-wife Khunying Potjaman Damapong failed to get Newin Chidchob on the phone, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra had to make the call himself. A source at the Puea Thai party said Thaksin decided to call Mr Newin after his once close aide refused to take calls from his wife and other key party members. But Thaksin did not get the reply he was hoping for. Mr Newin made it clear he would not let his faction join Puea Thai and help form a new government. According to faction member Supachai Phosu, a Nakhon Phanom MP, Mr Newin told his former boss: "Sir, everything is over." After not answering Khunying Potjaman's calls on Saturday, Mr Newin had told some members of his faction "it's too late", Mr Supachai said. His faction leader was now very selective about taking calls from members of the Puea Thai party, he added.

Ok, my next question is how many megapixels is a good number for point-and-shoot?

Huh? What?

Even though total numbers of posts have nothing to do with winning this contest, I thought some of you might be interested in some of the numbers. So far, 28 posters have their names in the hat at least once. Some, a great many times more than once. The posters who have exceeded 100 posts since the contest began are, as of December 8: MonkeySee: 301 posts Laurence: 124 posts Lvdkeyes: 124 posts Pattayamale: 101 posts There were some posts that were deleted for various reasons, but those posts were still counted toward the daily minimum of 3 in order to get your name in the hat that day.

That's one of the reasons why I dislike modern so-called music. I can't understand the words. It seems almost as if the more a singer slurs the words to the point of incomprehensibility, the more of a "superstar" they become. Sometimes it's difficult to explain to a Thai boy, when he asks what the words are, that I don't have any idea. Sorry, but if I have to struggle to make out the words, and still can't make them out, that's music I'm not interested in listening to. The great Elvis Presley? Not interested. You know what he sounds like to me? "You ain nuthin buh a han dog, crockin alla time." Then, "ain wenna wenna ain no frenna mine." Wonderful! An Elvis impersonator? Yeah? Impersonate this! Somehow I really don't want to have to have a translator sitting next to me just to listen to music. I think the last time I understood all the words in a song was when Cole Porter songs were still at the top of the charts. My favorite singer was always Ethel Merman. No matter what she sung, I was always able to understand every single word.

Probably both.

I thought you were doing this with a motorcycle. I didn't realize until now that you're going to do this on a bicycle. You know what I say? Go for it! It could turn out to be a big mistake, but it could also turn out to be the greatest adventure of your life. If you back out of it now, without at least trying for a few days, then for the rest of your life you'll have to wonder if you should have done it. I've done my share of crazy things in my life. There have been times when I was right in the middle of whatever it was and wondered what the hell I was doing. But I did them. I'm happy I did. I wouldn't do some of them again, but I'll always be glad I did.

I don't know why, but with me usually it's exactly the opposite. The instant I walk in to a mom-and-pop store or the instant I express interest in a relatively expensive item in a large store, a staff member is hovering over me constantly, to the point that it can become very annoying. Maybe there's no happy medium. You're either totally ignored or a staff member practically glues himself to you while you're trying to shop. I don't find too many Goldilocks clerks where everything is just right.

Even if that happens, I doubt much would end up settled. There always seems to be another corrupt politician who manages to get himself into office.

If you ever get a chance to see the film, "Reversal of Fortune," you'll know the story. I think it's an excellent film and they leave it up to you as to whether Claus von Bulow was actually guilty or not. Maybe you can rent it. I think it's worth seeing.

Monday, December 8 OPENING RATES: US Dollar: 35.38 Euro: 45.095 British Pound: 52.02 Australian Dollar: 22.875 Canadian Dollar: 28.7735 _____ CLOSING RATES: US Dollar: 35.31 Euro: 45.445 British Pound: 52.90 Australian Dollar: 23.4125 Canadian Dollar: 28.04