PeterRS

As a glass 'half full' guy, @vinapu is never sad!

More surprises! 🤣🤣🤣

Should it be slightly less surpising given that this is the first pageant since the death of the founder and the purchase of the Mister International franchise by a Thai company with a Thai President?

This has been the case in Europe for at least a decade and probably a lot more and involves more airines than just BA. I think it also applies in some cases to flights to Asia. Never fly from your usual departure city. Get a cheap flight to some nearby cities (but not all) and start the journey from there. 8 years ago I flew London to Chicago on BA but started in and returned to Berlin. The fare was much cheaper than LHR/ORD/LHR. I have never worked out the rationale for this! I understand all airlines now do this! Decades ago I would purchase round-trip tickets for Japanese clients who wanted to fly TYO/JFK return. A ticket with extra coupons to and from HKG was at least a third cheaper. In those days you could tear up the first and last sector coupons. But when actual tickets disappeared and computers took over everything, miss that first sector and the computer deleted all the remaining sectors. In fact miss any sector without informing the ticketing airline and the rest of your trip disappears. Another dodge in those days was flying BA from Macao before Macao got its own airport. BA had some sort of deal with Portugal whereby return tickets starting and ending with a jetfoil Macao to HKG and then BA from/to HKG to/from Lisbon via LHR had a massive discount. First class return on BA was actually less than business class HKG/LHR/HKG. On the few occasions I used this routing, the jetfoil tickets ended up in the trash!

Never created one. I'm sure it will have a box for 'others'. If there is no way to explain what 'others' stand for, psters can easily respond with a new post in the usual manner.

What happened to all the others? 😵 Or is this just another to add to the harem? 🙏 (couldn't resist!

Many thanks for that post @fedssocr. Sadly airlines based in North and South America seem generally to have much better deals for passengers into Asia than those based in Asia for travel to Europe and the Americas.

Allied to this topic, i find there is almost nothing worse when on a beach holiday than to go to the seating area and find all the loungers either occupied (usually just a few) and the others with unfurled towels, books and other paraphernalia to 'book' them for later use. If at a hotel I cannot count the number of times I have registered complaints and nothing is done. The same happens around swimming pools. Sometimes, the selfish idiots who have 'bagged' these chairs decide not even to use them. They return a few hours later just to retrieve their belongings. If seating/loungers are for use by all guests, personal items placed to 'bag' seats should be removed and placed in a location where they can be later retrieved.

On that we agree!

In that case, lobby your MP to change the national insurance rules. You are obeying them as they exist now. I obeyed them as advised when I started working - and yes, I started in the UK. Had I been informed of a change, I could have elected to cease paying annual national insurance contributions and put the cash into better savings funds instead.

UK pensions are not basically related to the UK economy or an individual's contribution to it through taxes. Pensions are a specific item under the national insurance scheme which has separate contributions unrelated to specific taxes payable by an individual - if any. If they wish to receive a pension, those working abroad must still pay the national insurance contributions annually. After 40 years of contributions, in the UK they qualify for the full basic state pension along with annal increases. Those living abroad, as noted, have the pension frozen. When I moved abroad to work, pensions for those living overseas were not frozen. It was the government of either Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair which applied the freeze. Yet, even as one working overseas and continuing to pay my national insurance contributions, I never received any information from any goverment departmant to tell me that my rights had been taken from me. Since then, I have written to various Secretaries of State with responsibility for pensions. Total waste of time! No lobbby group is going to get this through parliament. One of the above governments also stripped UK expats of the right to vote after being abroad for six years. Therefore there is absolutely zero incentive for any future government to pay any attention to that group's demands as lobby groups have zero effect on voting for or against members of parliament. We are in a government-mandated limbo.

I can understand that the leader of the opposition has to be sitting in parliament. But there are lots of cases around the world where the Chairmen of political parties do not sit as MPs.

The tumblr site seems dead. The other two look very interesting but are in Japanese. I'm hopeless at locating the boxes to change language. Anyone know if there is one on those two sites to switch to English?

No racist remarks here, please LOL 🙏

I can understand the reasoning, but it seems to show a lack of desire on his part to play the key role in the Party that many expected and wanted him to do. In a way it seems a little similar to neither him nor any of his close Party colleagues bothering to check his past history and discover the media company shares. Very sad for what we thought would be a positive move for democracy in this country. Could he not have considered becoming ex-government Chairman of the Party?

Thanks @10tazione. Fascinating interview. Using actors/singers born in other countries is not uncommon in Asia. Several popular Hong Kong and Taiwan singers were brought up and educated overseas. Interestingly, immediately following that interview with the two guys, you can click on one titled Catching Up: Tiger JK when the interviewer is one of the great looking Korean actors Eric Nam who was born to Korean parents and raised in Atlanta in the US. After studies at Boston College, aged 22 he gained some attention in Seoul as a result of youtube videos. He was then invited to visit Seoul to compete in a singing talent competition when he was placed in the top 5. He was then signed by a Korean entertainment company. In 2016 he was named GQ's Korea's Man of the Year. In addition to his fame in South Korea and Asia, he has undertaken three round-the-world tours. And like many Korean actors he's cute!

How can any company, whatever its previous track record, make predictions 20 years ahead? It's all pure fanciful guesswork! In 1983 with Thailand's economy taking off, I guess the country would have been pretty high on a 20 year forecast list. Would Fidelity have factored in the 1997 Asian Economic Recession which left Thailand struggling to rebuild its economy in 2003? Of course not. When Japan was starting its boom years in 1980, would it have predicted the decade of disastrous recession and deflation of the 1990s which left the country in a desperate economic state in 2000? I'll bet not. When the USA was enjoying good years under Reagan in 1988 after 6 years of continuous economic expansion, would it have forecast the 2008 recession which hit the USA very hard? Again, I'll bet not. Savvy investors, of which I am definitely not one, like Warren Buffet certainly look for long-term trends but equally adapt as he feels necessary. Take the Chinese electric car maker BYD. In 2008 Buffet purchased 20% of the company's shares on the Hong Kong stock market for US$235 million and a seat of the Board. He made the investment largely because of the company's battery technology. Had he kept that full stake, it would be worth about US$7 billion today. But because he did not want to compete with Elon Musk, this year he reduced his stake to just under 10%. But his profit is still huge! Just one company, one investor and not 20 years, but getting closer.

On Taylor Swift's Eras tour the Singapore concert is the only one in S. E. Asia. As with all her tours, she will give performances in Japan. But you bring up an interesting point. Singapore and Hong Kong have been locked in a multi-decade battle to be the continent's entertainment centre. 25 years ago Hong Kong adopted the slogan "Events Capital of Asia" and continues to use it everywhere - even on a Cathay Pacific aircraft. In 1999 it beat Singapore to have Celine Dion's single concert outside Japan, but the basic premise is b/s! Tokyo is by far and away the entertainment/events centre of Asia, followed not far behind by Seoul. Singapore is also way ahead of Hong Kong. This is partly because there is a cosy relationship between the public and private sectors. Both governments pump money into events. Singapore's Formula 1 night race brings huge worldwide PR to Singapore but it is now estimated to cost the city state US$150 million annually. Of this, the government puts up 60% with the private sector the remainder. The Hong Kong government is not prepared to cough up funds at anything like this level.

Precisely the point I made.

In the UK, the historical response when looted artefacts were discussed was almost always that they would be better looked after in better surroudings than in their original locations overseas. Most major ones are housed in the British Museum. Over the summer this institution has now had to admit that around 2,000 pieces from its collection have either been stolen or lost! Some have since been found, but no number has been put on them. One of the"lost" items was discovered for sale on eBay for around $51. Its value is estimated at $64,000. Experts call the loss "the worst in modern history."

Kenneth Branagh has something that draws him to Agatha Christie. I only saw Murder on the Orient Express and loathed all the fake cg effects. I deliberately did not see Death on the Nile. Now he is back with another movie "based" on a Christie story titled A Haunting in Venice. From the review in today's Guardian, it sounds pretty awful. "With each new Branagh/Poirot movie I have sat down for some guilty-pleasure fun, and he always brings to the part a basic level of sprightly energy. But each time I have been disappointed by the trudging inertia that sets in – and here by the false-ending, fake-reveal moments which the movie just breezes through, and also by the criminal waste of the supporting cast." https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/sep/10/a-haunting-in-venice-review-branaghs-agatha-christie-whodunnit-given-horror-makeover

The best one is The Beer Bar. It gets more readership than those dealing with escorts further down the topic list. To create a poll, go to The Beer Bar and click on Start New Topic. On the new page you'll see two sub-headings - Content and Poll. Just click on Poll. For Asia/Australia, I suggest you include Bangkok, Pattaya, Tokyo, Bali and Sydney. I love Taipei and there's lots of sex but there are few money boys around. It would be tempting to include Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, but you can't list every city!

Just a suggestion. Would not a poll make this topic more interesting and solicit more discussion, particularly one with many more destinations - say, 25? I've never been to Colombia but have seen photos of many striking guys from there and certainly would like to have an idea which is the more popular city.

I was clearly hard done by. Flew just once on Concorde and was not even offered it. Just a limousine!

Add to the list Denver and Kuala Lumpur!