PeterRS

Great Report, thank you!

But not as many! I aso think - personal view - that when you are imitating a living person or someone who is omnipresent on fim you are not creating another persona as most of the other actors listed above, you are merely imitating. Streep was good as Thatcher - but not nearly as good a some of the other characters she has performed over a lifetime in cinema. Not so many Hollywood actors have made it in UK movies as UK actors in Hollywood, even allowing fo the fact that there are far fewer UK movies made now.

Seems you have not opened a business. Sure, if you are happy as you are you can keep it as a one man shop. But you can also develop it through wholly owned shops with your own trained staff or you can franchise it. Either way, you end up with a great deal more profit, provided the end product remains high and price is more competitive than similar shops.

Progressive lenses included in a 9,000 baht bill? This guy should open shops all over Bangkok where I Iast paid around 25,000 for frame and progressive lenses!

Not betraying himself, i think. More he is seriously denying himself the opportunity of getting more parts, no doubt better paying ones. An actor has to be versatile in almost all respects (although not necessarily THAT one!). Think of the British actors who have made it in the US - and not always playing English-accented roles. The late and much lamented Alan Rickman as the German in the first Die Hard Movie. Sir Laurence Olivier as the Nazi dentist in Marathon Man. Albert Finney in Erin Brockovich and the Bourne series. The wonderful Tom Wilkinson, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, Derek Jacobi, Jonathan Price, Anthony Hopkins, Brian Cox, Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes, Daniel Day Lewis, Ewan McGregor, Jeremy Irons and a very long list of more British and Irish actors who have made it in Hollywood movies. This is partly I believe because of their excellent training and then their early careers in weekly rep where they learned that essential versatility. An actor who deliberately decides not to train his voice does not deserve to call himself an actor!

Never touch gin! Vodka puhlease! And I dislike tomatos. I will take an extra dry vodka martini with a lemon twist every time, thank you.

There are many regional variations of the "Chinese one". I have never seen one look as bland as in the second photo in all my 37 years living and working in Hong Kong. Hong Kong restaurants cater to all tastes and varieties and most serve exacty as in the photo above which @mauRICE has labelled "Thai"!. But I note this photo was not taken not from his own experience but from a website with one chef's own particular version of chicken with cashew nuts. It looks fabulous but hardly typical Thai! https://www.eatingthaifood.com/thai-cashew-chicken-recipe/ Nothing wrong with that but it might have been a courtesy to mention it. Naturally we all have different culinary likes and dislikes.

Old 2014 movie that garnered a lot of positive attention when it first came out.

That used to be quite common in Taipei years ago. If you saw a barber's pole outside, you knew sex was avavaible on the pemises

I suspect @vinapu has not been to Hong Kong because there is no question the best chicken with cashew nuts is found there - and in London at some of the non-Chinatown restaurants north and west of Hyde Park. But I bet there are some great similar dishes at other Chinatown restaurants in Sydney and elsewhere around the world.

Sorry but i can not agree. Dancing is dancing. What you describe about a bar counter is more often than not a sort of non-existent soft shoe shuffle - the boys there for punters to see their various assets and not to dance.

There is a degree of something akin to racism in that post. I suggest you talk with @FFbtm1974 and try one for your self and then decide.

Very amusing article in today's Guardian that puts America's performance into some kind of perspective. A lot of griping within the team during the tournament, and then this about the end - In the final, when Harper’s dramatic two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth tied the game at 2-2, his celebration of choice rounding third was a military salute to the Team USA bench and a stare into the television camera, pointing at the American flag shoulder patch on his jersey. Suddenly, it was the 9/11 era all over again. Except that it wasn’t. The gestures were hollow, performative. The Americans peacocked, on guard in a constant state of war. America alone, standing guard when everyone else was having fun. At the WBC, Team USA seemed not part of a baseball celebration but doing their part for a nonexistent war effort. Only the camo was missing. The article with its many truths ends - During a fortnight that beautifully celebrated the national pastime, one memorable image will be of Venezuela in the sunburst of joy. Another will be that of America alone, the hosts masquerading as toy soldiers, at home and painfully out of place. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/mar/18/world-baseball-classic-usa-venezuela-trump-war

Fair point. In framing my post I was thinking of American (and some other countries') adventures that start out linking sport and politics and then suddently the politics part disappears. Is any country more guilty of sportswashing than Saudi Arabia? For many years regarded as some kind of enemy to be kept at arms length, Saudi Arabia is now a leading soccer, snooker, golf (the massive salaries on the LIV tour are entirely funded by the Saudis), F1 racing, boxing and e-sports country among others. Yet how many years have passed since the country was condemned worldwide for the brutal slaying of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a massive number of human rights abuses? Linking sports to human rights frequently has zero effect.

I cringe every time I read about "inflated rates". There is no such thing as an infated rate. The tip you pay is your way of thanking the boy you have just been with. If you are basically in the category of being poor, it will inevitably be on the small side. If you are well off, it ought to be much higher - although there are skinflints everywhere. In my decades of bar hopping in Bangkok, tips were generally on the low side - but that was because there were too many young guys in Thailand in those years for whom the alternative to bar work was working in the paddy fields or in the village shop. Laterly I paid according to the experience I had just enjoyed. We already know from posts on this and another chat Board that there is quite a variance between what posters regard as a minimum tip. But since this keeps coming up on posts, why not pin a small post at the top of the Thailand thread that the "usual' minimum tip for young guys from the apps is X and from the bars is Y - with stress that this is a minimum tip! Now I can see our friends @vinapu, @ChristianPFC and others jumping in to say this is a lousy idea. I look forward to such responses. And I hope those in Bangkok will realise that it is a large spread-out city and accept the point made in an earlier post by @Olddaddy