Beer Chang

Top 10 Ways You Can Tell If A CBS Employee Had Sex With Dave.

10)

in the USA, after California, Missouri is at most risk for a quake.

Lately I have been flying either China Airlines or Eva. Maybe I should investigate a credit card that is linked to those frequent flyer programs.

For along time I was very close to a free flight with China Air and looking for a credit card offer but none was available. SoI paid for one more flight so that I'd be able to get a free flight.

Shortly thereafter I got a credit card offer in the mail that would have put me over the top for a free flight.

As far as seafood restaurants go, I think they are over priced on Walking Street.

Absolutely.

With one exception, the Pattaya Beer Garden which is out on the pier right before the entrance to Walking Street. You have the exact same view as the Lobster Pot but the prices are quite reasonable. Not a seafood restaurant.

Hey, are fake boobs as prevalent among Thai women as they are among American women?

Bolt ons are popular with the ladyboys.

Think America has lost it's competitve advantage in many industries.

Globalization will rebalance the wealth of the planet.

Though Saturn has a cult like following it never made money. Hasta la vista baby!

OH yes, the dear sweet kindly nuns! I had the shit kicked out of me by them more times than I can count.

They'd grab kids by the hair and smash their head against the blackboard. Chalk it up to sexual frustration.

That kitchen table scene was steamy!

Being retired and living outside the USA, as an American citizen I am still expected to pay IRS income tax. If I am still paying taxes even under retirement, then I feel I have a right to the same benefits every retiree living within the USA gets.

Sort of like taxation without representation since none of the Congressional clowns care about us.

It can't be due to an inability to coordinate medical treatment and payment between the US and foreign countries. There are a whole slew of US insurance companies that will provide coverage for Americans living abroad, including one of the best, Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

Not all Blue plans will cover those living abroad.

And some won't reimburse at the same percentage they would back home.

If someone looks too young they probably are no matter what their ID says.

Better safe than sorry.

Last June I think it was there was a mini-tornado that knocked down the fence surounding Tony's tennis court. I'm nearby and knocked some shingles off me roof too.

If anyone (think you have to be American) wants the 30K you could help me out by giving them my United Mileage Plus number and I get a bonus too.

Refer your friends and earn up to 30,000 bonus miles

Dates: Ongoing

Offer: Earn 15,000 bonus miles when your newly referred friend makes an eligible purchase with their new Mileage Plus Visa card1. You can earn a total of 30,000 bonus miles for referring up to two friends2 - enough for a roundtrip Saver Award within the continental U.S. The friend whom you referred will earn 30,000 bonus miles after the first eligible purchase and 1 mile per eligible $1 spent, along with all the other benefits of carrying a Mileage Plus Visa.

Get started now: Simply have your friends call 1-877-858-5188 (offer code C7G4) to apply, and be sure they provide the operator with your Mileage Plus number.

PM me if interested and we can also work on other ways to get a free trip to Asia without ever flying a mile. I know cause I did it and a buddy flew his family to Hawaii.

That's just not right bro.

I don't buy DVDs since they're not worth 100 baht to me with all the free content on TV.

If there's a movie I really want to see I'll have a old fashioned date with my teerak and even splurge on popcorn.

It makes sleeping very pleasant with the balcony doors open.

I love the sound of the rain and the feel of the wind too!

I really worry that Pattaya is becoming a more dangerous place than Bangkok!!

I don't think either place is particularly dangerous.

And I don't thinking walking many streets of Manhattan at 4AM is dangerous either.

I used to prefer the Bangkok Post, but The Nation is delivered to my apartment lobby and they seem to have good business coverage while Bangkok Post may be better for Sports and Entertainment.

In most countries public nudity is frowned upon.

However, in most big cities, if you look hard enough for something you can probably find it.

I abhor all jewelry.

In 2009, wrist watches are now simply jewelry since most people carry a mobile phone with the time.

From the Op Ed page of today's The Nation one of Bangkok's two English language daily papers.

TELL IT AS IT IS

The Roman Polanski story that isn't just about Roman Polanski

By Pornpimol Kanchanalak

Published on October 1, 2009

"EVERYONE'S a bottomless pit of something," said a cartoon caption in the New Yorker this past June. The Roman Polanski story illustrates this aphorism perhaps more than most.

There is no mystery about what actually happened, what Polanski did on the night of March 10, 1977 at the home of his friend, actor Jack Nicholson. That is the only thing everybody agrees upon, and it is a well-documented public record. However, opinion on this emotionally charged case often goes to the extreme.

The girl at the centre of the case, Samantha Gailey (now Geimer), was at the time, a 13-year-old beauty aspiring to be an actress/model in Hollywood, where there are no boundaries to decadent self-indulgence. The night she was raped was the second night of a "photo-shoot" arranged and agreed upon by her mother. According to her court testimony, Polanski made a move on her on the first night, when she said no to his indiscretion. But she went back to the second session and was left alone with him. One would wonder what kind of a parent would allow that to happen. But fame and the lure of money can often be blinding.

Polanski never disputed the six criminal charges, all but one of which (statutory rape of a minor, which was the less serious crime than the rest) were dropped in exchange for his plea bargain. The presiding elderly judge - a media savvy and attention-craving man - then changed his mind and reneged on the bargain. There was then a lingering question about the prosecutor "coaching" the trial judge to return an imprisonment and deportation conviction instead of probation, upon which all parties had agreed earlier. Under such a threat, Polanski fled the United States, which at that time he considered his home, to France, and never returned.

After more than 30 years as a fugitive, Polanski, now 76, was arrested in Zurich. His arrest has brought reaction, both positive and negative, from the world over. The Swiss are divided over the issue, and the French next door are royally irked. To his supporters, his artistic talents and contributions outweigh the crime he committed.

Meanwhile, Samantha Geimer, who is now 45 and married with three children, says she has forgiven Polanski and wants him to be forgiven by others. She said what he did to her was wrong, and she believed he realised it was wrong. She asked to meet him again and he agreed. They met in Paris near his home two years ago. To Samantha, the meeting was a catharsis, and more importantly a closure. She had said many times that the media and the unending attention to her and her case had made her life hell. She said she had made peace with Polanski, with herself, and wanted everybody to leave her alone for the sake of her family.

The tortured life of Polanski was used by some to explain his predicament and his action. Some entertain the hope that if people knew more abut the man and what he went through in his life, they could understand and forgive him, and the law would absolve him.

Born in France to an agnostic Jewish father and Russian emigre Catholic mother, Polanski moved with his parents to Poland when World War II broke out. His father was imprisoned in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, his mother in Auschwitz. His father survived, but his mother died. Polanski's childhood ordeal during his parents' incarceration was one of abject poverty and acute fear of deportation. He lived the life of a vagabond in the Krakow ghetto before being helped by Polish Catholic families to escape expatriation.

The gruesome murder in 1977 of his American wife - actress Sharon Tate, eight months pregnant with Polanski's first child- by members of Charles Manson cult. After the murder, Polanski was described by his close friends as a shattered man. He said his time with Tate was the happiest of his life. She gave him the security he never had. He said everybody knew how beautiful Sharon was, but they did not know how good she was. At a time when he was living a life of hopes and dreams, with boundless optimism and opportunity, it was pulled from under him in an act of vicious and senseless butchery. Everything good, gone too soon.

Polanski's movies - "Chinatown", "Rosemary's Baby", "The Pianist" to name a few - have one common characteristic: they are hard to watch. They are disturbing, and tend to focus on the darker themes of alienation and evil. The extreme violence experienced by Polanski throughout his life is reflected in his films - but he has nonetheless won accolades around the world. Critics call him one of the greatest directors of film noir.

It has been said that artists dwell in a different moral universe than the rest of us. The misogyny, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual predilection, recklessness, and deviancy are part of the mythology, and often considered a qualifying factor. But do they constitute a legal and even moral defence? The media circus, the bad judge, the zealous and unscrupulous prosecutor, and even Polanski's own phobia about being in captivity … can they be used as justification for his jumping bail and fleeing? Does talent and accomplishment exonerate wrongdoing? Is he a special case to whom most ground rules do not apply?

Look beyond the Polanski case, and we see many similar ones closer to home. We have a fugitive former prime minister who is a supposed champion of the poor and downtrodden, who has done good things for the country, as well as - according to many - not-so-good things. We have individuals who make horrible noises about defamation and injustice and inequality, who, caught up in the "hero racket", have also fled the country. Many of these individuals - who are long on rhetoric and short on real contributions to society - never stop fuelling the fires back home, aiming to rip society into pieces to make it pay the price for crimes it did not commit, usually against them. Theirs cannot be a life of peace.

For Polanski and all of us, there will be a time to face the music, a time for closure. It is necessary for life to move on. To make do and mend seems to be the only manageable dictum of our time. As Polanski's case has demonstrated, one can run, and even hide, but not forever.

REMEMBER TO SMILE

This really works. I have a farang buddy who naturally smiles all the time, a friendly bloke. When we're walking he'll invariably get into a random conversation with a Thai he never met before.

Some cultures are the opposite. In New York, it's borderline rude to smile at a starnger on the street.

I am here in Thailand on a Retirement Visa but I have been offered a job.

That's a concern of mine too.

All I know is you can't have both at the same time, getting one will invalidate the other.

Congrats on your new job!

ya, expiring miles is a bad feature of ff programs for those that don't fly too much.

By they way if you fly on other Star Alliance carriers you can put your miles into United Mileage Plus and reedem them on yet another Satr carrier.

For example, you can fly Thai Airways, before flying specify u want the miles to be put in your United account and redeem them with Sing.