Toy Boy

I fancied a decent Rioja, so went to V2V on Thepprasit and was surprised by the selection there. Around 10 different bottles on display, but not cheap, the most expensive one would set you back around 3,500 Baht. I was tempted by the Marques de Caceres, it was one of the reds that I cut my oenophile teeth on around 45 years ago when I was living in Assen and just starting out on my lifelong journey into the world of wine. The Aussie guy who runs the place said that you were paying for the name, and there was better value to be had. He pointed me to a Muriel 2014 Gran Reserva which, at around 1,200 Baht, was cheaper than the Caceres Reserva and looked like it would do the job. It's got good reviews and, as is often the case with the premium quality wines, it was only a few hundred Baht more expensive that it would have been if I'd bought it in the UK (£21, apparently). That's resting in my wine fridge now, I'll uncork it one of these days but, at the moment, I've got a bottle of George Wyndham Australian Shiraz in the fridge waiting to be finished.

None of the translation software is very good at converting Thai into English. The language has very little grammar or tenses, no plurals, no definite or indefinite articles, it's deliberately made to be vague, probably to minimise the risk of offending someone else, they're such a sensitive bunch. English is the opposite, a highly precise language that leaves no room for ambiguity when it's used correctly. Add to that the fact that the Thais seem to have a lot of strange ways of saying things that have no equivalent in English (e.g. saying 'it's as hot as broken liver' on a very warm day) and the normal translation algorithms don't work well. Maybe we'll get an AI translator that can do a better job, though it would need to be trained on millions of words that have been correctly translated as well as detailed explanations of all the idioms, and where will you find them?

Yeah, I agree, the amount of time and frustration the online 90-day reports have saved me over the years is huge, and the new system is easy and reliable. I got a new passport when I was in the UK last September, got it registered in the Immigration system and the visa stamps transferred as soon as I got back (free service in Jomtien), then did my annual retirement extension in December with no issues. The first online 90-day with the new passport was due in early January. I entered the new passport number and pressed the widget to get it to fill in everything for you, but it all stayed blank. So I entered everything manually, submitted it, and the next day it was approved. I'm pretty confident come April and the next 90-day that the auto-fill widget will work now.

It simply didn't work that way back in those days, at least not in the poorer parts of the country like industrial South Wales. If the police and local education authority weren't interested, then you'd be opening yourself up to a whole world of pain by trying to make an issue of matters.

The senior French teacher in the grammar school I went to (preceded by my older brother and father, so there was no moaning allowed about what a dreadful place it was) was an ex-commando, Dewi Davies. He'd been captured by the Nazis, interrogated, tortured and then stuck in a concentration camp for the duration. This probably damaged him mentally as he was unbelievably violent with the kids he didn't like. I once saw him beat up two of my friends who'd whispered his nickname, Snitch (due to his Hitleresque moustache), as he passed by. They ended up two piles of blood and bruises on the floor. Another time, in his class, a boy was talking so he lifted him up by his hair and smashed his head down on the desk top so hard that it actually split the wood. Lots more blood. And in spite of parents' complaints to the LEA, nothing was done about him, though it was clear he should never have been allowed anywhere near a bunch of teenage kids. I got the impression that a few of the teachers were very uneasy about him, but were too afraid to say or do anything. The headmaster and school admin evidently didn't give a monkeys.

Boeing unveils its new, improved passenger seating for the 737 Max aircraft...

Another one from Siamburi's...

After being a bit disappointed in the Nonthaburi Brewery's Helles, I gave its Weizen a go. The same price, a painful 150 Baht for a locally-brewed beer, and a waste of money. While it's better than the chemical crap produced by the large brewers (e.g. the truly awful Snowy Weizen from Boon Rawd), that's not really saying much. It has nothing worth talking about; no character, no interesting flavours (Weissbiers are famous for their fruity, citrus tones, or even banana), its sole distinguishing features are the banality and the outlandish price. Why would you drink this stuff when, for 95 Baht in 7-eleven, you can buy a half-litre can of Hoegaarden brewed under licence in Vietnam? Remember that they've been brewing Hoegaarden for some 700 years, so they've had plenty time to figure out how to make it interesting and enjoyable. Maybe in the year 2725 (cue music by Zager and Evans, lol) the Nonthaburi crowd will finally produce an interesting beer? (If man is still alive.)

I think @Jambo used to live there when he worked at Secrets, though I may be wrong.

Yeah, I know what you mean, I do as little on my phone as possible, much preferring to use the PC, but some things you just can't avoid. And the phone seems to be the way of the future, the GF hardly even bothers with the TV any more, preferring to watch stuff on her Apple iPhone.

My phone (Oppo Reno 8 T 5G) has a side app panel that you can pull out and one of the apps does a screen translation. If your phone doesn't have something like that, try taking a screenshot of the message and then get Google Translate to translate the photo for you using the Camera option to find the screenshot you just took (odd-looking widget just to the left of the shutter release button on my phone). Bolt's app automatically translates text messages, I'd hope other companies will follow suit in time.

That's useful, thanks. I'll try that the next time I send some money, I'm sure the GF will be demanding more soon enough, lol.

To be fair, it's not just the Thais. I have an O2 sim for when I'm back in the UK, and need it working here to receive OTP texts to access certain sites. Two years ago, the sim was disconnected, so I had to find a phone number where I could speak to an actual human being at the O2 end, and that was no easy thing as I recall. When I eventually found the number and, after the usual nonsense, spoke to a person, he said it was because my credit had run out, even though I still had over a fiver left in my account. I didn't really understand what the reason was, but said OK, I'll just top up with £15, but first I'll need to get the sim reactivated. No problem, he replied, all I need is the ID number that's inscribed on your O2 sim. WTF??? I use a dual sim phone, and one of them is, of course the O2 sim, so opening it up to find out the ID would disconnect the call from the other sim. I explained this to him, but he said it's their protocols, he has to have the ID. I said that even if I was a fraud, what possible harm could it do for me to top up the sim account with £15 of my own money? Nope, it's them damn protocols again. So I had to shut down the call, extract the micro sim (no easy feat with my sausage fingers), photograph the ID, put it back together again (also no easy feat), then go through the whole process of contacting a human operator once more. I was not amused, I can tell you.

Does anybody else use the SCB app on their phone? I much prefer doing stuff on my PC, with a proper screen and keyboard, but that's no longer an option with SCB. Anyway, with the old and now-defunct website, it automatically kept a drop-down list of people you've transferred money to in the past. This made it easy (too easy, lol!) to send the GF money, as well as paying annual bills like the village maintenance fee and car insurance and so on. The phone app, though, seems to insist on me filling in the bank account number every single time, unless I'm missing something. So that's my question: does the SCB app store the names and account numbers of people you've paid in the past, and if so where, or do you really have to type it in every single damn time?

I watched this one last night, The Holdovers with Paul Giamatti. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14849194/ There's nothing really to dislike about the film, as long as you don't expect plenty of action and violence. It's gentle, mildly funny, character- and dialogue-driven, and well produced. By getting to know the characters well, with their personal hopes, fears and weaknesses being revealed gradually as the movie progresses, you build a genuine empathy with them. Personalities that seemed quite obnoxious to start with become warm human beings when you learn what made them the way they are. The ending is quite satisfying, too.

There's been a lot of fuss lately about Thai craft beer, and the possibility that the law may be changed to allow the small but successful brewers to expand. I'm not sure where that idea ended up, but anything that improves the quality of the mass-produced dishwater sold as beer here would be welcome. Boon Rawd and Thai Bev are both guilty of having produced a lot of what they no doubt consider to be craft beers in recent years, but these are all chemically-inspired crap IMHO, with the possible exception of Tapper. Then there's the Red Bull craft beers, or at least that's what some people call them, but I haven't seen them in the shops here yet, or maybe I just haven't noticed them. Anyway, I was in Villa and noticed that they had large cans of Brauhaus beers from Nonthaburi Brewery, supposedly one of the leading Thai craft brewers, so I thought I'd give it a go, even though they're ridiculously expensive for a locally-brewed beer at around 150 Baht a can. My first drink was their Helles Lager, and it was OK but nothing special, the Kuchlbauer Helles that Siamburi's used to stock was much better. If the NB Helles was a sensible price, say 70 or 80 Baht a can, I'd say it's decent value, but at 150 Baht? Honestly, at that price I expect something much better than this, the price is the same as you pay in Friendship for a half-litre bottle of Weihenstephaner dunkelweissbier, widely regarded as one of the best beers anywhere. If this is what Thai craft beer looks like, then the future is overpriced and not especially bright.

Early days in the invention of the remote control...

Sad to hear that. RIP

Christmas dinner at Chez Toy Boy. It was only me and the GF and the dog this year, the young neighbours were going to come but they decided they had a better offer elsewhere. A shame as it was very good and there was far more than we could eat. This is the Butterball turkey crown I bought in Friendship after it had been warmed up in the oven for 90 minutes. Hassle-free and excellent, perfectly cooked. My dinner, I think the Yorkshires were trying to sail away on teh sea of gravy, lol. The GF enjoying herself, she loves a cooked dinner, I've been making them for her for years. That's my glass of Breton Fils she's holding, she was on the Baileys. And, at the end, the pooch was out of luck, no leftovers. Though there was still about 70% of the breast left in the kitchen so I cut some up for her and she wolfed that down. Afterwards we took a Bolt cab down to the bars at Rompho in Jomtien and had a few drinks down there, so all in all a very pleasant Christmas Day indeed. It will be Boxing Day dinner this evening, the same thing but just warming up the meat and veggies and gravy from yesterday, I always do lots of extra to make an easy second dinner. I'll have to cook some more peas as they all went, and make the Yorkshires fresh too, but that's about all the work involved.

Merry Christmas!

Don't show this one to a Thai whatever you do, lol...