The site’s now quite as pretty as I’d like but it’s not a big priority now.  I do plan to add some more updates over the next few weeks though.

After destroying our old camera when we capsized our kayak in Koh Mak we splashed out (pun intended) on a waterproof version. This was the first shot I took. It wasn’t taken intentionally (I was trying to photograph Tik’s face but i didn’t have my goggles on). It reflects the hours of fun I’m going to have with this new toy though.

We spent the weekend on Koh Samet with Nick and Ying.  Great weather, clean water, a nice and cheap bungalow and great friends.  It’s times like this I remember why I’m living here instead of in the UK.

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 …

1. I am interested to buy your item
   I'm selling 350 items.  This person's been deliberately vague as h's likely to be pasting exactly the same text into hundreds of emails.

2. Willing to make the purchaser today
   A bit too enthusiastic seing that he's not really acknowledged an understanding of whats for sale or the price.
3. … for my pastor …
   Completely unnecessary information and the pastor has been added to boost the credibility of the purchaser.  It's a shame he didn't know I'm an atheist.
4. AFRICA
   I've got no idea why the person put his in capitals.  It'll be used to explain why the purchaser purports to be living in a different country to where he'll ultimately want me to send the DVDs though.  Africa is notorious place for fraud too.
5. Provide your Full Name\Home Address/invoice
   I really don't understand the benefits the scammer would get from this but I think it's used a diversion to make the burder of trust rest on the seller.  None of the information requested is necessary fr this type of transaction though.

6. … payment through your money order or payal account
   Both of these payments are easy to commit fraud with.  Money orders are easily faked and Paypal acounts are either stolen from legitimate users, transactions are falsified or the person will ultimately reqeuest a chargeback, claiming the items were never received.  
7. I gonna take care of extra cost for the shipment in addition of $120USD
   Very nice but quite unnecessary.  This guy's offering to pay me extra money, without requesting a discount or confirming the total price.

8. Dr,Jacob.adebiyi
   Another way of trying to sound credible.  Notice all the Nigerian scams also seem to come from doctors too.

I toyed with the sender for a few emails.  He provided me with a UK cellphone number which, although I didn't call it, seems to be a common contact method for scammers.

I think this is a pretty crude scam but can see how somebody might fall for this.  With fake money orders a seller can have money added to their bank accouunt, only to discover a month later that the bank has canceled it.  

If you get similar messages from potential buyers, please stay aware of how these scams work. 

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 

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 …

Monday:

• Collected Barry from the airport at 7am and brought him home to his place.
• Met with Bangkok Bank at their head office to complete the paperwork for our mortgage
• Drove to Rockworth in Ekkamai to make payment for my office desk and chairs
• Drove to Index in Bang Na to pay for cupboards and our breakfast bar
• Drove to TOT Chit-Lom to order telephone and internet service

Tuesday:

• Went to bank to withdraw cashiers check
• Tik and I stayed up late to clear our backlog of work.

Wednesday:

• Arrived at 12:00 at a government registrars building to met with representatives from Bangkok Bank, Belle Park and their lawyer friends.  This was when we transferred the condominium to our name.
• Tik then flew to Singapore 

 Thursday:

• A relatively relaxed day for me, just trying to get on top of my work and organizing through books, DVD's and clothes.
• Met a friend for lunch and bought myself a "Teach Yourself HTML' book

 Friday:

• Full day (6am - 7pm) in Cambodia to do a visa run.  I was working late Thursday and did not go to bed that night on the premise that I'd be able to sleep on the bus.  My bus was overbooked though, and despite making a reservation was made to wait 90 minutes in Tesco Car park until a friend of the travel agent came to pick up up in his car.  I didn't get a chance to sleep that day so came home exhausted.
• Tik returned from Singapore about 9pm

Saturday:

• Wake up about 6am and go out for breakfast.
• Home-moving company arrived 7:30 am.  They sent 6 people to help us which was an unexpected bonus.  Everything got boxed, packed and moved to our new place within about 3 hours.  ONly one casualty was a glass water-jug which we'd planned to replace anyway.
• Rockworth arrive to install my office table
• Shout a lot at TOT because internet is not working
• We have a LOT of unpacking and tidying to do
• Visit Powerbuy you inspect washing machines

Sunday:

• Drive to Barry's to deliver our TV set and DVD player to him
• Meet friend for lunch, collect his washing machine
• Visit to Index to order bedroom cupboards & purchase 2 stools
• Return home to organize office

Monday: 

• Rise early to begin sorting daily emails
• Index arrive to install cupboards and breakfast bar
• Rearrange office & kitchen

Still to go …

• The fridge will arrive tomorrow (hopefully)
• Next Monday our bedroom cupboards arrive
• We could do with selling / donating some furniture that we don't want.
• The office, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom needs some rewiring and general handyman work 
• Tik and I are really looking forward to going to JJ market to get some nice paintings.  We'll do that next weekend.

We're now at the stage where we can see nearly all the floor as we've moved all our rubbish into the large spare bedroom.  My office is working perfectly although I've got large clumps of wires which will be tidied once we get some more power sockets installed.

I think our honeymoon period will last some time.  Tonight we are Mexican food on our balcony.  We are on the 16th floor overlooking a HUGE swimming pool and the weather here is very comfortable in the evenings.  Our lounge area is very comfortable and I enjoyed sitting with my books before.  The pool always has a few people in but it's far too big to get busy.  

We're still finding our feet this week but in a fe days 'll write down a comparison of Bangkok Gardens with where we are now.   In short though, despite losing the 'gardens' of our previous home, we are going to have a much better life here. 

Tik's got a very busy week in the office and I'm overwhelmed with my new PlugandSave site which launched 2 weeks ago, I begin a 1-month internet marketing course tomorrow, am teaching myself HTML programming and need to teach myself accounting before December 1st. 

At least now though we've gotten most of the hard work over with, we enjoy rearranging the place and despite the hard work we've put in, we're going to be very happy here.

Tags: bangkok bank, naratiwat, bangkok garden, home moving, belle park, siam movers, condominium

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.

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.

For a few reasons we were not able to pay the loan off from that bank and Tik was pushed for time.  Before heading to a differnt bank to make the payments we checked with UOB bank that there would be no problem at all processing the mortgage as soon as we faxed confirmation that our loan was paid off.  

Tik made the payment yesterday, called UOB bank today and was told that, despite their promises, they wont get their paperwork sorted for another week.  We dont plan to give them our business now.

We are now working with LH bank who actually phoned Tik about 2 hours after she paid off the car loan to offer us a mortgage for a few hundred thousand baht less that UOB but with no need to pay off the car.  They missed the Friday deadline we set them but luckily we have now selected them instead of UOB Bank.  LH have already got the paperwork ready and we can collect it as soon as we want.

Thankfully things will work out for the best.  Whilst our bank accounts will be nearly empty by this time next week, we've paid off Tik's car (freeing up 12,000 baht a month from her income) and our mortage will be 100,000 baht less than with UOB Bank.

I predict a hairy few months ahead to recoup the extra payments we made, but, as with everything I do, jumping in at the deep end at least keeps me focused.

We now need to arrange a convenient date for the bank, Belle Park and us to visit the government registrars and complete the deal.  We'll then return to Belle Park and collect our keys :) 

Tags: UOB Bank