Gary

That was a tongue in cheek post. I just wonder what is going to happen with all the new construction projects.

Great expectations for Pattaya. There is evidence that the city will come roaring back. The question is when? With the number of new hotels and condos being built, the city will either recover or there will be some bankrupt developers. I would hope that the developers have deep pockets to hold on until this virus disaster passes. I think it will take years for the new construction projects to make any money if ever. I remember the last crash when huge projects were nearly finished and then abandoned.

When I first retired, my friends told me that I would be bored to death with noting to do. They were totally wrong. Maybe living in an apartment or condo full time would be boring. Living upcountry out in the boonies with my wife having several farms, I have plenty to do, IF I feel like doing anything. I have made being lazy an art and simply can't imagine having to do any regular sort of work. It took me several years t get over the habit of getting out of bed at 6:00 AM. Sometimes I still have to force myself to stay in bed until 8:00 AM. I do wish this virus disaster would go away. I do get cabin fever and that is boring. Even at that, I would never consider trying to find any sort of job or activity that would require me to have any sort of must do schedule. Why do something today if I can put it off until tomorrow? I am thankful that I have very good fiber Internet.

Many of us have seen guys retire with a pocket full of money that seemed like a lot of money at the time. Unfortunately that money has a way of evaporating. What you really need to do is to use that big money one way or another, to set up a guaranteed lifetime income. We have no idea of how long we are going to live. Being old and poor here in Thailand is not the way to enjoy your later years. That said, you don't need to be wealthy but having a reasonable monthly income plus a decent nest egg will allow you to sleep well.

This thread reminds me of years ago while working in Australia. I did drink quite a bit of wine back then. A box of wine was about as cheap as beer and I thought it was pretty good. My Aussie neighbor lady asked me how I could drink that crap. On a special occasion, I was invited to the bosses home for dinner. After the meal, he said we were going to have a very special treat. He got a bottle of port out of his wine cabinet. Everyone was saying how great it was. I didn't say anything because I thought it was terrible. As I have said, different strokes for different folks.

Years ago I had a live in girlfriend who loved wine. Coming back from a trip to the US, I bought a high priced bottle of red wine from the duty free shop as a gift to her. She hated it and went right back to the cheap Italian wine. I couldn't say much because I don't know the difference between so called high quality wine and the cheap stuff. I'm also not much of a liquor drinker. When I do drink liquor, I prefer Canadian whisky or Jameson. I definitely don't like the burnt smoky whisky called Scotch. I do like the liquorice flavored stuff or schnapps over ice. Different strokes for different folks.

I call the tomatoes from the local market, rubber ball tomatoes, no flavor or juice. You could bounce them off the wall. I had a Florida friend bring me seeds that were supposedly developed for a hot weather climate. Most came up and looked great. They fruited and then withered up and died. I planted them in full sun, partial sun and shade. Same results. I used clay soil, sandy soil and sterilized soil from the nursery. I gave up. The cherry tomatoes from the market taste great.

I may try that in the future. It just irritated me that they wouldn't accept my credit card.

I made up an order for Shopee and had to cancel it because they would not accept my Bank of America credit card.

It was sad and interesting that a couple years after I was common law married, which I certainly never agreed to, Ohio no longer recognized common law marriage. It was too late for me.

One reason I chose Thailand was because I totally lost faith in the US justice system. To make a long story short, I accumulated a lot of real estate over the years. I moved in with a VERY wealthy woman. I refused to marry her because we didn't get along that well. When I left her, she told me that she would take everything I had. Ohio recognized common law marriage and she got us married in the eyes of the law. All her money and property was in trust so no way was that part of our assets. We got divorced and she signed a power of attorney allowing me to sell the properties and divide the money equally. I moved from Ohio to Florida. Her crooked lawyers managed to void the power of attorney in the local equally crooked court. She then sued me for fraudulently attempting to convert her assets for my own use. That court approved a huge fine. Keep in mind that ALL the assets were mine because her assets were in trust funds. I refused to pay the judgement so the court gave her the other half of my property. They even went a step further. My properties had a blanket mortgage on them. My banker asked me what I wanted to do. I told my banker that I no longer owned any of the properties and to foreclose on them which they tried. Her crooked lawyers then sued the bank for five million dollars because the mortgage was in my name and not her name. It took six years and it eventually went to the Ohio supreme court. Of course the bank won because that judge immediately threw the case out. My banker was a friend of mine and called me to tell me that we won the case because the judge saw through their scheme. Of course over that six years, the lawyers were collecting all the rents. The crooked lawyers knew their scheme would eventually fail. There was absolutely no way that power of attorney could be voided. The woman told the crooked lawyers that she wanted nothing and just make sure that I got nothing. Of course after six years there was nothing left. Of course the bank finally got their money. The other lawyers in the crooked county refused to represent me so everything was left to the court. All through that nightmare, I kept telling myself that no way was this entire obviously crooked scheme possible. I was wrong, there was no justice. Anyways I had nothing left in the US and that made it much easier to leave. I was fortunate to have a very good profession and always had good paying jobs. That's how I ended up here in Thailand, a very good job offer. During my time working here in Thailand, it got in my blood and I knew that I would eventually retire here and that's how it has turned out. I'm certainly no longer wealthy but I am comfortable enough with the financial means to comfortably live out the rest of my life. I am sure that my standard of living in the US would not be near my standard of living here in Thailand. I still hate lawyers, even lawyers here in Thailand. If anyone thinks this travesty of justice is not true and could not happen, I have a copy of the supreme court hearing and the reversal of the crooked county courts decision. It is a lot of legal mumble jumble but proves that the lawyers and the county court are/were indeed crooked. The only loser in the entire scam was me. It cost me everything that I had worked for. Fortunately I landed on my feet and life is good for me here in Thailand. All I can hope for is that the crooked lawyers and judges rot in hell. ADDED - Maybe there is such a thing as karma. The main crooked lawyer who started the scam had a heart attack and required open heart surgery. He was then disbarred. He did move out of the county that he had controlled. He had plenty of money so I'm sure being disbarred didn't bother him much. Maybe the best part was that the rich bitch, (my exwife who I never married), walked out of a bar and got hit by a car. She did like her booze, she got busted up big time but fortunately she lived. I didn't want her to die, I wanted her to suffer a lot which she apparently did. She was hit by a drunk driver who had no car insurance so she was responsible for her own hospital bills.

I'm not sure about that. The old meters would run backwards if you had extra power from a grid tie inverter. As soon as they saw my solar panels, they changed my meter to the so called smart meter that cannot run backwards. The other three meters on the pole were not changed, only mine. A techie electrician friend of mine installed a fairly large solar array behind his house. He had applied for the government program but when they finally answered, they disapproved it because the panels were ground mounted and not on his roof. The government program was called Rooftop Solar. Not only that but they went back to before he installed the solar and averaged out his past bills. not only did they get his electric feed for free, he had to pay the old average bills. He ended up buying battery banks and new inverters for off grid use. His large expensive government approved grid tied inverter was then useless. Maybe the worst part was that his components had to be government approved and they were. Not surprising that they were about three times more expensive. I was never interested in grid tied inverters because they have what is called island protection. When the grid goes down those inverters go down also and you still have no electricity.

Today it is completely overcast, no sun. I'm happy to say that my double sized capacity solar panels are putting out less than 50 percent and still charging the batteries quite well as well as running everything. So called experts have told me that my systems are not efficient, BUT, they serve me well. Yes, I am wasting electricity but what is wasted cost nothing. I am able to use the extra power from full sun but I have to plug in an outlet and throw a double pole double throw switch to change from the grid to the battery bank. I'm not techie enough to make it automatic. That runs the refrigerator, some lights and a freezer. If I forget to change it back, my batteries would not last through the night. It's not worth the effort. I run eight surveillance cameras plus the router and WiFi from the battery bank 24/7. If using the grid, the power goes off (often) so do the cameras and recorders.

I have three solar systems that I have built. First, don't believe the wattage figures advertised. You will be fortunate to get about half of the wattage advertised for maybe 5 hours a day. Your installation will not even be close to their laboratory testing. Cloudy overcast and rainy days drastically cut production. For instance, my largest system has double the number of panels recommended. There are 4 250 watt panels The panels have a very long life and are now cheap enough to double up. Those 4 panels feed a 40 amp MPPT charge controller. Cheaper charge charge controllers are not very efficient. MPPT controllers convert the extra voltage into usable amps. It feeds 4 6 volt 225 ah golf cart batteries. They are connected to give 12 volts so the total amp hours is 450. They cost approximately 5,000 baht each. The batteries feed a 1,500 watt pure sine wave inverter. Decent quality components cost more and my inverter is also oversized. Running an inverter at near the capacity causes it to get fairly hot. My oversized inverter stays barely warm to the touch. With wiring and decent quality components you can add about another 10,000 baht to the cost. I should add that I didn't build my systems to save money. The electric grid here sucks. I wanted stable voltage and 24/7 electricity. I have no idea if I will ever get a payback but really don't care. I have a backup inverter and charge controller but the systems have been VERY reliable and they have not been needed over all these years. It is very important to never run the batteries below 12.1 volts. (fifty percent discharge). They need to be fully charged every day. I have seen guys fry an expensive battery bank by running the deep cycle batteries down too low. They may call them deep cycle batteries but that doesn't mean that you can abuse them or run the acid level below the plates. I like the idea of lithium batteries but the components are special and the batteries are sill priced too high. Keeping the deep cycle lead acid batteries serviced is a pain but they will last many years if taken care of.

The larger system will but not for long enough. It's simply too small to be effective. ADDED - for no more than I run the aircon, it wouldn't be worth it to expand the system. I smoke and my wife hates the smell. If I do run the aircon, I have to close six windows or try to cool the outside. I'm too lazy to close all the windows so use the aircon even less.

Today is Thursday, the 3rd. The electric grid went down about 8:00 AM and it is still off. This is why I love my solar systems. I am able to run a large refrigerator and freezer off my battery bank but only during the day when the sun is shining. The battery bank is not big enough to run them continuously. One hint for anyone interested in building a system is to remember that the sun doesn't shine every day. I have double the recommended panels. They fully charge my battery banks even during cloudy and rainy weather. I built both systems myself. You will likely be disappointed with installers because they will never install enough panels to cover rainy days. Experts have told me that I am wasting power. I have no problem with that because solar panels are much cheaper today and they will last far longer than the rest of the components. Too many is far better than not enough. Today is a little overcast and my battery banks are nearly fully charged at 9:00 AM. My goal was not to save money but to have a reliable electricity supply. My Chinese components have been surprisingly trouble free. The systems and batteries are nearly ten years old. I might add that the high tech expensive AGM sealed batteries only lasted about five years before I replaced them. I did fry one inverter by experimenting. It was entirely my fault and a replacement inverter cost less than $100. I do have spares for every component but have not needed them. During the past year, I built a very small system for my outside game room. (Formerly my garage) One solar panel and one sealed battery for my surveillance cameras. It also has one 10 watt LED light for when the power is off. I bought a sealed deep cycle battery because I didn't want to have to maintain it and add water to the battery. It was install and forget. It just keeps working. All the rest of the batteries are lead acid deep cycle and I do have to add water to them.

A bit off topic. The electric grid up here in the boonies absolutely sucks. It is down now and has been for a couple hours. I bought a small generator and that didn't work out very well. By the time I got it connected and running the power would come back on. Just too much hassle. I then tried the UPS units. They would only keep things going for a hour or so. Big ones are simply too expensive. That's when I got interested in solar power. I started out with one solar panel and one battery to run my computer. That proved to be just too small. I finally went for two panels and four AGM batteries. The system was very dependable and trouble free. I then built another bigger system, four panels and four golf cart batteries. My computer room is totally off grid as well as my router, printer, fans, lights and surveillance cameras. I have no idea whether the systems will ever pay for themselves but when the neighborhood is dark, I still have electricity 24/7. No worry about power surges or lightning strikes. This is something to consider if you have your own home and are bit handy.

I think the service life of the 747's has been extended because of cheap oil. If the oil price goes up a lot, you will see that model slowly die. For an airline to be profitable, they have to fill seats. The Air Bus A380 was a massive gamble that appears to have failed especially now. Smaller more efficient planes are the flavor of the day and maybe also for the future. If a small plane is full, it is fairly simple to add another small plane. Huge planes do not have that versatility and they cannot afford to fly with half the seats empty.

China has destroyed Sihanoukville and right now thousands of them are bailing out and heading back to China. Cambodian property owners who built apartment complexes are in trouble, they have lost their Chinese renters and are going bust.

Many small businesses, especially bars were in financial trouble before this virus thing took hold. This is just the last nail in the coffin. I would hope that some of the greedy landlords will go belly up. I think only the Thai owned and operated businesses will weather this storm. Remove the astronomical rent from the overhead and they will be able see it through.

I agree, the experts know as little as we know.

I predict that this thing is going to get worse before it gets better. People are wondering which will kill them first, cabin fever or the virus. If it lasts much longer people are going back to their normal lives, virus or not.

https://thepattayanews.com

Am I paranoid? I didn't turn loose of the money until the land office had the chanote in my name. Trust is nice but be very careful where it involves money, especially a large amount of money.

A Som Property rip off. That is just another reason to be very careful. Pattaya area residents and foreigners lose 45 million baht from real estate scammer in Pattaya