Comments Posted By Brian
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Yeah, I don’t get the “tossing trash wherever” thing that is going on there.
Have to change the whole culture I guess. But, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step……
(BTW, waitress on the right in your Outback pic is a cutie. At least from that pic)
» Posted By Brian On 25/June/2022 @ 1:13 pm
I assume those canals are pretty pungent?
» Posted By Brian On 23/June/2022 @ 5:39 pm
I agree with Kevin on the calming effects of holy sites. I am not religious at all, but do like to visit various houses of worship – definitely a peaceful feeling when I go off hours.
Completely different topic – are any of the floating restaurants/bars still around?
Lastly – positive thoughts to your fellow expat Mike. I always try and walk against traffic in Bangkok, but all it takes I some idiot going to wrong way or something like that. Definitely have to be a defensive walker.
» Posted By Brian On 23/June/2022 @ 5:35 pm
Beautiful pics. Nice area you are in.
» Posted By Brian On 22/June/2022 @ 1:59 pm
I do agree with you both regarding Facebook. I do have an account, but have not been there in years. But realistically, it is their sandbox. And as such, they make the rules on who gets to play and what they can play with. I don’t think that you guys moderate comments on your respective blogs, but if someone started posted stuff you deemed offensive/inappropriate/etc, you probably would block it or edit.
(Again, I am not in favor of what Facebook does. At this point and considering how big they are, they function almost as a public utility rather than as a private sandbox.). But having moderated a forum for a VERY short time, I know what a pain in the ass it is to be a moderator. Make one person happy, piss off someone else, and vice versa. It is a no-win situation. Of course at this point, Facebook is doing it all be algorithms. Would be interesting “see” the coding behind what caused your post to be banned.
I agree with Kevin. Don’t use it, or if you do, use it as it was originally intended. A way to learn about what is happening in others lives, and sharing what is happening in yours.
» Posted By Brian On 21/June/2022 @ 4:50 pm
Good luck with whatever choice you make with the vaccine. Other than a third arm growing out of my shoulder, I have not had any issues. LOL. (Actually, and I may have mentioned this before, but I have friend whose daughter is a post doc at U of Southern Cal. She has said that one of the common misconceptions is that the vaccine technologies and vaccines themselves were rushed. At least at USC (and probably other universities) they have been researching COVID and researching and testing vaccines for COVID for at least 15 – 20 years.) Anyways, I know passions are high on both sides of this issue so probably not a rabbit hole to go down.
Re: Hashmobile. Yeah, like you guys said, seems like a lot of your group is not rationally thinking. Kind of like someone who buys at $250K motorhome because it will save money on hotel rooms!!!! Ummmm, do the math. How often is the Hashmobile used? Is it used for other purposes? Looking at it from the outside, seems it would just make a lot more sense to hire a jeepney (or other vehicle) when you needed it.
» Posted By Brian On 17/June/2022 @ 11:44 am
I was tired of darts yesterday…
Do you still play CIV? I recently got a discounted CIV VI (I think because they have later versions out there) and just started to play. Wow – a steep learning curve. First time I have played the franchise. Looks like fun, but could be a major time suck to learn the ins and outs of the game.
» Posted By Brian On 12/June/2022 @ 9:12 am
And yes, I noticed after submitting the comment that “your” should be “you’re”, but there is no edit function for us commenters.
» Posted By Brian On 09/June/2022 @ 11:16 am
I enjoy vacation planning – even if all of the trips dont come to fruition.
Assuming your actually thinking of going somewhere, any lists (see what I did there LOL) of places you would like to go?
» Posted By Brian On 09/June/2022 @ 11:15 am
Yeah, suicide sucks. A permanent solution to what is usually a temporary problem. RIP
» Posted By Brian On 23/May/2022 @ 7:07 am
Looks like a very cool hike. As you sometimes do, I was expecting you to link to a song at the end – in this case, the Randy Travis song – Three Wooden Crosses. LOL
» Posted By Brian On 22/May/2022 @ 7:53 am
Agree with Kevin. I am pretty good about exercising regularly, but take breaks when the mind or body says so.
Helps to keeps things fresh such that it remains something that you WANT to do, rather than feeling it is something you HAVE to do.
» Posted By Brian On 16/May/2022 @ 1:09 am
Good post and pretty much captures my thoughts on political discourse on the internet.
The main problem I see with the slicing and dicing of the news on the internet is that eventually you only see what you believe in. With targeted ads and algorithms that update links based on what you have previously looked at, over time a person is sent further and further away from the middle.
And when your (generic your) sources continually feed you information that leans “far” left or “far” right, it makes it harder and harder to understand the other side and have a civil conversation with them.
Oh well, time to go back discussing the benefits of alcohol and size of a woman’s breasts. LOL
» Posted By Brian On 16/May/2022 @ 1:04 am
Agree with Kevin. From your previous interactions, it seems like the logistics of scheduling medical visits is somewhat of a pain, the actual visits are not too bad and quite cheap.
However, you cant put a price on your health, so better to get a checkup sooner rather than later.
» Posted By Brian On 14/May/2022 @ 12:20 am
Maybe you should start buying low sugar “biscuits” to hand out. LOL
Read an interesting article once on how prior to widespread use of refined sugar, tooth decay was not much of a problem. For example, finding the skull of a cave man showed teeth worn down from use, but not much decay. Same with some of the Amazonian tribes that have not had any contact with the “modern”world.
» Posted By Brian On 10/May/2022 @ 12:42 am
Great pics as always John. It does look hot.
Having said that, i am not sure that I would wear a black shirt to go hiking on a day like that. More power to them if it doesn’t bother them. :hot
» Posted By Brian On 07/May/2022 @ 11:51 pm
Yeah, seems like the ability to think in the long term (or even at least the medium term) is sorely lacking in a lot of the girls you meet. Dont know if it is a sign of immaturity, upbringing, culture, or probably a bit of all of the above.
» Posted By Brian On 07/May/2022 @ 1:59 am
My 2 pesos worth of advice is to let Lyn know early on that you are not interested in raising/dealing with a kid. Not fair to her to give her some hope that this relationship may lead somewhere when you know from the beginning it is not going to happen.
» Posted By Brian On 02/May/2022 @ 12:06 am
Tough trail!!! I enjoy hiking a lot, but going through stuff like that is just no fun!!
» Posted By Brian On 01/May/2022 @ 7:44 am
Seems like you are living a 100K/year lifestyle on about half that. Good on ya!
» Posted By Brian On 29/April/2022 @ 1:58 am
You live quite well, and really do not want for anything. Which is a good thing. I get the impression that you do not “budget” per se, but if you feel comfortable sharing, what would you estimate is your average monthly expenses? 5K?
Re: ATM – do they have “check your balance” button on those? That may have given you some idea of if the ATM gods took away your money, or if it was just “ghosts in the machine”.
» Posted By Brian On 27/April/2022 @ 10:57 pm
Is your pension indexed to inflation (or at least the CPI)? I thought that a lot of government pensions were CPI indexed, unlike those few remaining private company pensions?
I am certainly no fan of Biden, but then again, certainly no fan of Trump either. LOL. But, the foundation for inflation was set during the Trump administration. Yes, Biden has not helped matters at all and his administration will take the hit for it, but the train had already left the station by the time he became president.
Look at inflation. There are three major causes (no particular order):
supply and product disruptions from Covid
large fiscal spending, especially ~5Trillion for Covid relief with 5 major bills enacted
Fed printing money like crazy over the years, especially since March of 2020 (something like 80% of all dollars in existence were created since March of 2020
People can assign various weightings to the above categories, or might argue there’s another that should be elevated among these three. Note all three are bigger than just the Biden presidency. Most of #2 was enacted before he was in office, as for number 3, none of the current Board of Governors are Biden appointees, and Covid obviously predates him.
If you want to see a scary chart, look at the link below put out by the St. Louis Fed
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM1NS
Anyway, I am a firm believe that economically, any President gets too much credit when things are going well, and too much blame when things are going poorly. There are so many things globally (and even domestically) that affect the economy and are relatively unmoved by the President.
» Posted By Brian On 21/April/2022 @ 2:09 am
Good job John. A worthy goal to climb Easter mountain every year.
» Posted By Brian On 20/April/2022 @ 9:37 am
Before I read your note, just from the pic, I thought you were having a piece of pie with your roast. So it appears that the texture and taste matched the picture.
Good luck on your climb tomorrow
» Posted By Brian On 17/April/2022 @ 11:56 pm
Grace has a cute face. 🙂
What did Jesus say to his friends on Friday morning?
Lets hang out together later!!
Happy Easter John.
» Posted By Brian On 17/April/2022 @ 5:55 am
You are searching for a unicorn John.
Checklist:
1. Body of a 20 something Playboy model.
2. Cultural outlook of someone who has had significant western exposure
3. Brains of university educated woman
4. Fluent in English
5. someone who has lived long enough to have life experience that you can relate to
6. Less than 30 years oldAnd where are you looking for the girl described above? The shops and bars of Barretto, Philippines!
I do think you alluded to above that you need to decide between finding someone who has traits #1 & #6, OR has traits #2, #3, #4, & #5
Good luck! LOL
(The above is said (partially) tongue in cheek)
» Posted By Brian On 14/April/2022 @ 4:34 am
Not sure if it is your new phone, a filter you are using, or just the particular lighting, but the landscape pictures seem a bit more “vivid”. Not sure that vivid is the word I am looking for, but they seem almost like a painting.
Dont mean that in a bad way – they look great. Just for some reason, they have a different look and vibe to them.
» Posted By Brian On 09/April/2022 @ 11:13 pm
Slow Down by the Beatles. Nuff said
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbsyDHxca7Y
» Posted By Brian On 06/April/2022 @ 11:03 pm
Memory prices (for computer memory LOL) keeps going down. I have an 8 TB hard drive that I use and store all of my stuff on. I back that up to another 8 TB hard drive. I dont have a blog or anything, so dont know if that would work if I did run a blog.
Yeah, I know that if there was a fire, flood, etc. all would be gone, so I guess that is one advantage of keeping things in the “cloud”. However, being somewhat paranoid, I dont think of it as the “cloud”, rather than “storing it on someone else’s hard drive”.
I am thinking of getting a 3rd hard drive, backing up everything periodically (maybe quarterly), and storing off site somewhere (safe deposit box?) to take the natural disaster out of the equation.
John, didn’t you buy your domain name because you didn’t want to worry about your blog actually being “owned” by someone else?
What happens in the PI stays in the PI? LOL
» Posted By Brian On 03/April/2022 @ 5:04 am
«« Back To Stats PageJohn, your drinking is like the saying:
“I dont have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down. No problem”
Hmm, I have eaten in some pretty dicey places, but not sure I agee with Kevin on trying the streetside shawarma. (I am sure that some of the local restaurants are not any more hygienic, but still…..)
» Posted By Brian On 02/April/2022 @ 12:57 am