maipenrai

Very familiar to us colonials too, and Geldof made a whole career out of that one song, it seems...

We also had dire warnings in several online sources of stiff penalties for those caught with "water cannons", yet on the last day I saw a vendor of same walk right by a cop who didn't even look at him - gotta love it.

Maybe they are unnecessary in Australia but they are certainly necessary in my part of the world, unless you want your heavy truck to sit and run at fast idle all night while you are sleeping - this is what they did in my youth, it was common too see up to 15-20 trucks at some stops roaring away by themselves when it got cold because they simply couldn't afford to have them not start in the morning.

I'll do a copy and paste for you: This letter to the editor was printed in the Inverness Oran in Feb 2024. It was written by an owner of a Tesla EV in Nova Scotia and this can be found online. Her view follows: Columns and Letters Letter: First-hand EV owner's experience Last Updated: Tuesday, 27 February 2024 14:53 February 28, 2024 Dear Editor, I am writing in response to a letter in the February 14th publication entitled, “Benefits of Electric Vehicles.” My husband and I drive a 2021 Long Range Tesla Model 3. My hope is to shed some light on what it is like living in Inverness County with an electric vehicle. For a bit of context, I am not your run-of-the-mill naysayer. We’ve been driving an EV for the last three years, we are organic farmers, we lived in a fully off-grid, solar powered home for eight years, and we attended that big Greta Thunberg inspired climate change march in Halifax back in 2019. I feel slightly embarrassed about sharing this so publicly because I truly feel that we got duped by clever and persuasive EV/doomsday marketing. After reading Paul Strome’s letter, featuring all those key marketing points, I felt compelled to write in. Here is our electric car experience: 2021 – Rosy new car: Wow! This is great! – The car was more expensive up front, but it only costs about $14 to “fill the tank” and we can conveniently charge with our Level 2 charger at home whenever we want. That will more than make up for the initial cost over time, considering the price of gas! – No pesky oil changes and Tesla’s titanium shield under the car means no repairs due to rust! Great – more savings! – When going to Halifax, we need to recharge at the Enfield Supercharger. Recharging takes 18 minutes, but no big deal: bathroom break, stretch your legs, get a coffee; just minor adjustments to how we drove with a gas car. Not-so-nice realizations from year one: – The undulating, electric hum while the car charges for seven hours permeates our entire home and yard. Is that healthy? – Needing to exit the vehicle for 20 minutes at the Supercharger because it feels very unhealthy to be in such a high voltage environment while it’s charging. Rain, shine, snow or sleet – Everybody out! – Learning that every time you recharge the battery, the battery life decreases. It actually can damage the battery to charge to 100 per cent and it is advised that you don’t charge more than 80 per cent for day-to-day use. 2022 – One-year-old car: – Can still make it to Sydney and back, but we shouldn’t make many detours if we want to make it home again. Having to stop in Baddeck for two hours to “juice up” just to make the 40-minute journey home doesn’t make much sense... – Can still make it to the Enfield Supercharger when going to Halifax, but no detours. Stick to the highway or else. Christmas 2023 – 2.5-year-old car: Heading to the Valley Christmas Eve (outside temperature is -5oC). – “I don’t think we’re going to make it to the Supercharger...” “What the heck! We’re definitely not going to make it!” The whole family, plus two dogs, wandered around Truro for 1.5 hours, in the cold twilight while charging just enough to make it to the Enfield Supercharger. – With everyone’s spirits low, we wander around the Enfield Big Stop parking lot in the cold while the car charges for 35 minutes. Can’t bring the dogs into Timmy’s and staying in the car while it’s charging feels like every hair on your body is getting charged up too. – Charge up again at the New Minas Supercharger, just in case, because the wall plug at Grandma’s takes days to charge the car and we can’t believe how poorly the car is performing. Coming home after Christmas: – Leave Middleton. Stop at the Supercharger in New Minas for 10 minutes to add some charge. Everyone out into the cold! – Leave New Minas. Stop in Enfield to fully recharge for 35 minutes. Everybody out into the cold: Kids, dogs; everyone. It’s windy and half raining/half snowing. How wonderfully modern and convenient it is to drive an EV! – Make it back home with six per cent. Phew! January 2024 – 2.5-year-old car: – 10oC, but dropping, so range is dropping too. – Husband arrives at Enfield Supercharger. Relief! – Enfield supercharger is down. Neither the car nor Telsa phone app notified him; 9:00 p.m. on a Sunday. No indication of when/if the charger will turn on again. Car is at three per cent. Not enough power to keep the heat on, let alone drive to a motel. Other EV drivers there are all cursing their cars and their decisions... – After an hour of being stranded, the chargers come online again. – 60 minutes to recharge after going so low and it being so cold out. Two hours, stuck at the Enfield Big Stop! February 2024 (last week) – 2.5-year-old car – We are driving home from the airport. I’m driving my 2012 Toyota Matrix (680 km/tank). I have to go pick up the dogs from the boarder, just outside Antigonish. It’s too big of a detour for the “Long Range” Tesla to handle. – Even with that detour, I make it home first. The Tesla took 60 minutes to charge in Enfield. It takes longer to charge a cold battery, but surely they should be home by now... – My husband finally made it home. He crawled home, with the heat turned off, because he was trying to conserve power. Made it home with six per cent. We’ve looked into it: There is nothing wrong with our car. This is just the natural diminishing of an EV battery over time, combined with fairly mild NS winter driving. This is what range anxiety looks like! It is not, as Paul Strome so kindly put it, “for those drivers who have trouble paying attention to their fuel gauge.” Range anxiety means constantly paying attention to your fuel gauge and crossing your fingers and toes, hoping you’re going to make it! It’s leaving home with a “full tank” to go 290 km and worrying about not arriving! The February 14th letter features all of the dealership, government, and activist talking points. None of it is based on the real life experience of a rural EV owner. The “official range” of EVs is not based in reality. Only on the first day out of the factory (if it’s sunny, with no wind, temps between 15-20oC, on a straight stretch road with no hills) would our car ever live up to its range expectations. Speaking as a former climate change activist and current EV driver, I can only see EVs working if you live in a big city and never plan on leaving that big city. The last thing we should be pushing for is to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035 in Canada. Yes, we absolutely have to take better care of our planet, but EVs make zero sense in the real world. Hilary Mueller Mabou

I got my first Thai girl out of Orchard Towers on my way to Australia in 2002, and on the way back from that trip I made a side trip to Thailand and the rest is history....

And many people who have bought them have said they will not repeat the experience - lots of trouble with range, getting charged, abysmal service from the dealers who sold them, etc. - and this is from southern Canada, never mind the north where I live where you'll have over 100 miles between settlements and much colder weather - no EV in my immediate future. https://www.facebook.com/sten.linde.5/posts/pfbid0RYndzLpGKFQW5z8KxW8bLU2HWYrygTQzUva9Xj6CbrZtT9LrSbNHfUVKPfCWEjEtl

I like the song "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" on the "Live at the Filmore" album - it showcases both of the guitarist's styles perfectly; also the shorter instrumental "Hot 'Lanta" on the same album. I think Dickey should be remembered mostly for keeping the band going after Duane's death, tremendous will and tenacity to take on this task after such a devastating loss...

I noticed this too in a couple of bars during my Songkran rounds - yesterday I paid 95b in a 2nd Rd bar for my Heineken and I know it's usually cheaper - the place was packed, too so I'm sure they did well. I started out by Central and walked down Soi 7 from the 2nd Rd end - seemed pretty busy all the way down but not quite as packed as it had been on Monday when I was last there; then I turned on to Beach Rd and walked down to Soi 13 - I didn't find the crowds quite as thick as I thought they'd be but the various music sources were loud enough to be physically nauseating so I went up Soi 13 and hung out on 2nd Rd for a while, blasting full pickups and baht busses - moving targets are always more fun and nobody seemed to mind, most returning fire if they could. I then took a beer break in the Chicken Coop and watched the action around there for a bit, thence to Cherry Bar for a while and eventually up to Soi Buakhow where things get a little foggy...

That's a good video - I'm glad there is a printed story along with it because I thought those bears looked a little different than the ones I have seen at home in Canada. One very lucky dog - I think I've mentioned before somewhere that huskies make great pets but are not known for their intelligence...

This reminds me of my old communications days when we often had to pull cables through underground ducts - we'd get the occasional dead arctic ground squirrel (generally referred to as "gophers") stuck in the ducts and sometimes had to use compressed air to blow the remains out - you'd want to stand well clear of the opening....

Oh, there's still plenty of weirdos around - my favourite, whom I have never had a chance to capture with camera, is the wild-looking character with the ponytail sticking straight out of the back of his otherwise-shaven head who is always charging around on the four-wheeled ATV - apparently he is a disabled German who can't walk, hence the 4-wheeler. And of course there are the tattoo-over doers, the guys who seem to have every inch of their bodies covered with some sort of symbol or other; it's like looking at a page torn from a child's comic book.

The swelling has gone down enough today to reveal that it is indeed four separate bites; they still itch a little but not enough to run to the pharmacy - I suspect ants too as I see them just about everywhere I go and I've had similar bites on several previous occasions.

I don't generally brush up to many plants over here so would tend to discount that theory, especially on the inside of the elbow; and if a centipede were to alight on me somehow I am sure I would know; my own guess would be a small spider or ant of some species - perhaps it landed inside my elbow from somewhere, and then got caught in the elbow as I closed it while drawing back the plunger on the water gun - I wish I had looked at the elbow instead of just casually brushing it with my other hand when I first felt the itch.

Just finished this one the other day and really enjoyed it - took a while as it is a big book, but very well written and filled with many personal accounts of those who experienced the conflict:

So I am out playing Songkran yesterday, just drawing some water from the tub and I feel an itch on my right elbow - I brush it and carry on and a few seconds later I feel another sudden itch with same response and then forget about it. Today I wake up and some creature has left big, itchy welts on the inside of my elbow: This is not the first time I have been attacked in this manner - same thing happened in Jomtien in February and has done so in previous visits, but I'd sure like to know what kind of creature is inflicting it - sure as hell ain't mosquitoes....

How come it's so easy there and yet such a pain here? I guess part of that must be that the busy areas are just so much smaller and easier to police than all of Pattaya - even though I have participated here and will do so again this week, I will be happy when it's all done with.

Yeah, it's an event that really appeals to those that like to bully others, and of course it's easier to be a bully when you are running in a pack. Really, I've noticed over the last couple of days that everything is cool in the daytimes, it's in the evenings when the loutish behaviour starts to show - people get drunker and rowdier and as the preceding video shows, it's not just farangs who indulge in this kind of behaviour! I'm not going to hide away from it, I'll go out and partake in the afternoons for a couple of hours but I am finished when the sun goes down - I won't necessarily go home then but I'll just park myself in safe bars until I decide to do so, and avoid the revellers wherever I can.

Many years ago I toured a corvette that is permanently moored in Halifax harbour, and I can't even imagine crossing a stormy North Atlantic in something as small and basic as this - I think this was one of the older ones that had an open bridge, just to add to the misery - brave men indeed.

I spent a couple of hours playing at the bottom end of Soi 7 yesterday and was surprised to see that the crowd going past appeared to be at least 85% Thai - the last full Songkran I attended in Pattaya was in 2009 and to my recollection there were far more farang out on the regular days - most of the big Thai crowds would wait until the big final days. On another note, I'm heading home with company just after 10:00PM last night and as we walk up the entrance ramp to the building, I get squirted by a group of guys coming down the ramp - I tell them enough is enough, it's after 10:00, shut it down FFS and they look at me like I'm a creature from outer space; in other words, these are not carry-overs from a fun day that don't want to stop, they are purposely heading out at that time to throw water.

I went out today for a few hours, walked over to Soi 7 and bought a PVC gun easily for 300b; from there walked to Soi 6 and hung out for the rest of the afternoon before making my way back down 2nd Rd to New Plaza, then Soi Buakhow to Chayapoon and Soi Lengkee to Soi Diana before getting home @10:15 or so. Everyone having fun and well-behaved during the afternoon, but still too many people throwing water around at 10:00PM and later and they'll probably still be doing it here and there after midnight - they get drunk and just don't want to stop. Traffic was horrendous, walking pace on Beach Rd and not much better on 2nd Rd, and total gridlock by Treetown on Soi Buakhow...

I'm sitting out today but will have a wander around tonight after 8:00PM or so; I think I'll dress up and brave the horrors tomorrow for a while...

It's not the machinery, it is the operator - I had one of those for years and loved it, easy to carry and store and you can soak from afar but I had to toss it when the seals finally gave out; I do agree they end up in the hands of too many dickheads who use them irresponsibly. I remember years ago when the cops were going around confiscating them, and then selling them back to the vendors again, good little racket...

It looks like some bar owners on Soi Honey are going to try that, according to this Facebook post from Ricky of Lips Lounge: I think it's a great idea and hope it catches on...