General Sonthi Booonyaratkalin, the man who overthrew Thailand's billionaire prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra last year on corruption charges, is no pauper himself, a media report said Tuesday. According to the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC) Sonthi, his two wives and underage daughter have a net worth of 95 million baht (2.8 million dollars), the Bangkok Post online news service reported.
Sonthi, Thailand's first Muslim army commander-in-chief, has declared assets worth 38.79 million baht while his first wife Sukalaya has assets of 14.04 million baht, his second wife Piyada has assets of 42.07 million baht and their daughter has 300,000 baht, the NCCC disclosed.
Sonthi was obligated to disclose his family's personal assets to the NCCC upon taking up his current government post as deputy prime minister last month.
Despite their meager salaries, many of Thailand's generals are millionaires, a phenomenon that can sometimes be explained by the top military's propensity to marry into wealth, if they don't stumble into it by other means. [via Earthtimes]
Ed. Even if asset disclosure is not covered by a confidentiality agreement and is meant for public consumption, the timing of the 'leak' is a plus for the PPP. By suggesting the general has 'unusual' wealth sends a message to the electorate that maybe the general has prospered in office, just like his predecessor. In reality, Thaksin's maid probably has more assets than the general but that's not what the electorate will remember on Dec 23.
Sierra Tangos
- The police arrested a Finnish man at a guesthouse in Pattaya Tuesday on suspicion of robbing 1 million euro (Bt49.8 million) from an armoured truck in Finland's Turku city earlier this year. [via The Nation]
- Is Thailand being overlooked - Vietnam has attracted a record $15 billion in foreign direct investment so far this year, up nearly 40 per cent from the same period last year, an official said Tuesday. The amount strengthened booming Vietnam's reputation as the new Asian magnet for investment, thanks to low wages, high literacy and a youthful population. [via Bangkok Post]
- I was drinking in Soi 2, Saturday night, with a few friends visiting from England and as they were coupled up, I took along a rather attractive lady I have been wheeling out a bit of late. We were sitting in a group when this farang came over to chat to my 'lady'. I thought she knew him so made nothing of it. When he wandered off she said she had never seen him before and he had asked her for a date for the following evening. "Cheeky fecker", thinks I. What added insult to injury was he was no Brad Pitt. The two young guys in the group said they would have filled him in if they'd only known. My feeling was let it go, it was Loy Kratong and the ass-hole was going to get filled in eventually if he continued hitting on girls with company.
Eff me if not 30mins later I look up and see the same guy standing just to one side of our table, trying to catch the eye of my lady. Loy Kratongs forgotten, I'm on my feet telling this fecker to do one. Fortunately, he bottled it and exited the bar at some speed. I sit down and one of the young guys says "I'd noticed him and I was just going to sort it". "Oh yeah, really" thinks I.
In all the time I've been visiting Thailand this is the first time I have ever had a guy try to hit on the girl I'm with. It may have happened without me knowing, on the way to toilets or something but never so blatantly. When I think of some of the personalities residing in Pattaya these days, surely this approach is a short cut to the hospital. Is this a new trend or did I just get Jasper Carrots "nutter on the bus'. What do you think?
- Want your wife to learn how to pole dance - check this out
- A major downside with online Office programs (like Google Docs) is that they require an Internet connection – that means if you are on an airplane, a cab or some remote village that has no Internet, you may not be able to create/ edit or print your documents, spreadsheets and presentations that are stored online.
If this “always on” factor forcing you to stay away from any of these online office suites, some good news - the very impressive online word processor in Zoho Office Suite is now available for both online and offline use through Google Gears. The Google Gears browser extension is available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.
To use Zoho Writer in offline mode, just install Google Gears and restart your web browser. Then login to your Zoho account and click the link at the top that says “Go Offline.” This will download all the recent documents from your Zoho online account to the hard drive. Now when you unplug the Internet cable and go offline, you will still be able to edit and save your documents inside the web browser just like you could do in online mode.
And the next time you connect to the Internet, all the changes made to documents locally will automatically be synchronized with the online copy so there are no discrepancies and you always have one version to work with.
The offline mode in Zoho Office will also prove useful in places where Wi-Fi is expensive like in the hotel rooms or the airport lounge – just connect to the Internet, download the documents locally and then go offline to make those last-minute edits. [via Digital Inspiration]
- Best pair of er, err... black stockings you'll see today..........
- You may not be able to download Windows XP Service Pack 3 yet without resorting to risky registry hacks, but software developers at Devil Mountain Software took a beta of the upcoming service pack for a spin, and they like what they saw.
In a nutshell, Devil Mountain reports that they saw a 10 percent performance boost over Windows XP SP2. Microsoft has said SP3's primary purpose is to provide enhanced security and bug fixes. So the speed boost is a bit of an unexpected cherry on top.
Devil Mountain has also been putting Windows Vista SP1 through the paces, and while the software update does improve hardware compatibility and reliability, users running SP1 will not notice any performance boost.
On the bright side, the Vista update doesn't seem to slow Vista down any. But Devil Mountain reports that Vista is about 2 times slower than XP according to the company's benchmarking tests. [via DownLoadSquad]
Ed. I'm going with XP SP3 and not Vista. Windows XP is a mature and stable OS that supports all the applications and hardware I need. I also know where to look under the hood with XP, if anything does go wrong. I can't say the same for Vista.
- A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment. Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper, "Please wake me at 5:00 AM." He left it where he knew she would find it.
The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn't wakened him, when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, "It is 5:00 AM. Wake up." Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests.
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