Last week I advertised 350 DVD's on Cragslist.

I got a reply yesterday that was - to me - very obviously a scam.

I am interested to buy your item also Willing to make the purchase today for my pastor that is doing his 50 years aniversary in AFRICA. Is it still available for purchase.

Dr,Jacob.adebiyi

I'm always amused at how scammers operate and have asked a few people if they can identify the 8 red flags that this email contains?

 Answers below …

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Why do Thai builders fail to understand that apartments cannot work with just one plug socket in each room?

This week we added at least 10 additional sockets to our new place and I've realized now that Thais and farangs don't see eye to eye when it comes to living efficiently.  

Every Thai person I've spoken to claims that appliances should be unplugged unless they're in use.  Two plug sockets therefore in the kitchen is perfectly sufficient in their opinion .. one for the fridge, one for the one appliance that's going to be used.  

My philoposhy, which I believe's shared with the rest of the western world is; the more sockets the better.  There should never be a time where a person must unplug one appliance in order to use another, nor should there be any time where a person shouls have to pass a wire around a room because there's simply no socket nearby.  

We've had nearly all the maintenance work completed on the apartment now so I'll upload some photos of it shortly. 

I really enjoyed this book as it was very different to what I expected from Archer.  I'd always assumed he wrote exclusively murder-mystery but this novel, set in England in the early 20th century was a refreshing change.

It follows the life of a young barrow boy caled Charlie Trumper who builds up his grocery cart business into a large super-store.  The excitement builds around rivalry with a rich family who seek to cause Charlie problem, and whilst parts of the story seemed a little silly I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  It's quite easy to predict that harlie will battle his obstacle so I enjoyed reading a book where I wasn't made to feel anxious and ould just relax knowing that the good guys would overcome the odds.

 My Rating 7/10

Another disappointing read really so it's another book I'm glad I've finished.  The story itself was ok, it followed a group of imprisoned judges who operated a blackmail scam from prison that targeted closet homosexual professionals and also upon a man who the CIA had decided to pupeteer to become the next president - who, unsuprisingly really was also a closet homosexual.

What annoyed me about this was that the plot never really developed.  It was as if Grisham was so proud of his storyline that he just gave up on closing it with any suspense or interest.  The CIA director explained what he planned to do to resolve the problem of their candidate being blackmailed and then followed this plan without anything else happening.  As their resolve was detailed 50 pages from the ending my only suprise from that point onward was that there was no suprises.

My rating: 4/10 

The past 7 days have perhaps been the most productive I've experienced in Thailand.

I've always claimed that it is impossible to do more than two things in one day over here.  Any task seems to take half a day of ones time or half a day of ones energy but, despite spending our evenings exhausted, Tik and I are delighted that we've worked productively through our to-do lists.

It's been 5 months since Tik and I decided to purchase our own apartment.  We've had frustrations and delays with every bank we approached but we were determined to have moved in before November 1st.  

Last Monday we at last got something in writing from the bank and now wer've cleared out bottleneck we've really gained some momentum.  Here's how our last week panned out …

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It's rare that I give up on a book completely but my pleasure rfom this rubbish came from the exhileration I felt closing it for good, about 1/3 of the way through.

The book I guess tries to be a psychological thriller about a madman who mubled crypic details about current murders whilst he's locked up in an asylum but after a few hundred pages I found myself skipping sentences at a time when Kellerman just over did his descriptions of every mundane object, person or emotion.  A little later I found myself skipping entire paragraphs until it dawned on me that I really wasn't enjoying the book at all.  

My Rating:  2/10 

I'm currently reading "As The Crow Flies" by Jeffrey Archer and am really enjoying it.  When I finish I'll review it here.

Despite the best of plan and precautions we found ourselves at the mercy of UOB bank today after deciding to work with them for our mortgage.

Their credit scoring is based on income minus expenses each month and we were told that to get a 4 million baht mortgage we would need to pay 330,000 baht (appox $9600) to pay off Tik's loan for her car.

I was a little skeptical that things would go smoothly so I suggested to Tik that we visit the bank and pay off the car loan there and then so that we could leave that day with a written mortgage agreement.  I imagined how, after emptying our accounts to pay off the car, we may hear of a complication that would delay or prevent us getting the mortgage in time.

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One of my biggest grievances online is with people who confuse the words 'lose' and 'loose'.

This week I was planning to buy myself a domain name to teach people how not to look so damn illiterate and I noticed many of the domains I wanted were taken.

I decided to check them out and found this site which seems to have beaten me to it.

Check out LoseLoose.com Here 

Please forward this site to your friends as it deserves some publicity. 

I tend to treat comparisons with "The Da Vinci Code" as a red flag when reading book reviews but I'm trying to clear out all the books people have left me.

The reviews on the back come from such credible sources as the "Sunday Express" and the book has a "Richard and Judy Recommends" sticker on the front.  Regrettably I decided to give the book a chance nonetheless.

The plot starts off ok, it's pretty simplistic, no big words, no clever analogies and it's a pleasant and relaxing read.  It follows a journalist who investigates a few murders, has his wife kidnapped and then enters the world of Hassidic Jews in New York in an attempt at rescuing her.  All the crime is related to a reasoning within the bible that becomes apparent towards the end.

The riddles are a little dull and, unlike the Da Vinci Code, I didn't feel obligated to give them any more than a fleeting read.

The secret hidden within the bible was a huge letdown.  It turned the book into a farce and once this wonderful secret was revealed, the book just plummeted.

To me a good book is one where I feel disappointed when I finish it.  With The Righteous Men though it came as a relief.

My rating 3/10 

It's been a long journey securing a mortgage in Thailand but we've had 2 offers now and all being well we'll get a good offer from another bank this week.  Our mistake was putting all our faith in just one bank and letting them dictate their terms to us. 

The Thai credit system is probably no more screwy than any other country but as I've got no experience to compare it with it's been a frustrating few months.

-  We got rejected for a mortgage from one bank because Tik's credit card spending exceeded her quoted income.  It was irrelevant that often she put her business expenses on the card and was reimbursed in cash, nor that she paid off my card and hers in full every month.

-  We were made an offer by one bank of 1/2 the mortgage value, on the concession that if we paid of Tik's car loan (300,000 baht) we'd be offered a further 2,000,000 baht mortgage.

-  My income wasn't of interest to one bank, the others merely verified it with a short email to my business partners in America.

That said, it looks like things are now moving.  We had a busy few days applying to every other bank and now we've been made some offers we are now in the nice position of being able to play one lender off against the other. 

We were expecting to move in September 1st however it'll probably be mid-November for us to have the letters signed, the money paid and the refurbishments made. 

We're both quite excited about having a place of our own and Tik's awake until late mentally rearranging the layout.