Blog

With my web log (blog), I will just log some reactive comments on things going on in the world, mixed with recent things going on in my personal life which may be of interest to friends and associates.

2012 February

It is extremely frustrating how little time I have to spend on my humanistic pursuits -- space settlement and the human extinction issues. Nobody pays me anything for this, and practically no donations come in on my websites. I depend on my private business to support everything, all on my own shoulders.

Unfortunately, my business had a major setback in 2011. I depend mostly on my real estate business, helping expats coming to Bangkok, Thailand to find a home to rent (house, condo, apartment), most of them working expats. Bangkok is at the mouth of a huge river, at nearly sea level, a flat sedimentary flood plane which has been above sea level for only a very few thousands of years.

In late 2011, there was the greatest flood on record since the other great flood in 1942, with massive economic damage. Many entire industrial estates were flooded with massive damages. My neighborhood was flooded for more more than a month, under up to 1 meter of water, and we were one of the later ones hit and not nearly as bad as others.

The international news on this was, of course, sensational, and not in detail.

In any case, we had a dramatic drop-off in arriving customers over a 3 month period, while our office overhead expenses remained the same.

2011 New Year

New Year is always a special time to review events and progress over the past year, the resolutions & goals of the previous New Year, and goals for the next year.

I never go away on holiday for New Year since hotels are largely booked, choices reduced, and good choices more expensive, plus plane fares more expensive, more crowds, and there are drunks out driving the highways. Sometimes I take my break a week or two early since foreigners often wind down for the Christmas - New Year break, but this year it may be a post New Year break.

I enjoyed just relaxing in and around home with my wife. We plan to go to a nature retreat this month, perhaps in the mountains of Chiang Mai, visit some good friends, and I also want to visit a permaculture project there, plus of course write and work on some personal projects. It's good to get away from interruptions and distractions, though it's always a concern to leave our business and customers all in the hands of staff, and we never let go entirely, though my wife is an excellent manager for me.

The last few years with my wife have been the happiest in my life going back quite awhile, and the future looks very interesting.

2011 January 5 - sports, and team / fan loyalty vs. selfish money

Sports ... it gives us another prism to look at human nature. I see it as the tribal warfare instinct in humans. It's insane at times.

My in-the-city weekday apartment has only 3 foreign channels -- CNN, NatGeo, and a sports channel which shows mainly soccer, cricket, rugby, and everything else besides American football -- but surprise, one morning they were playing the game of my alma mater, the #8 Arkansas Razorbacks, playing the #6 Ohio State Buckeyes in a BCS finale. 12 hour time zone difference.

This time, the end of the American college football season, is also the time when many top college football players make a decision on whether to go pro rather than return for their last year on their university team. I find it questionable when a teammate sells out for cash, choosing money over typically about a million loyal home state fans and alumni, and over teammate loyalty, too. Incredible. They're unlikely to have as much playing time or stardom on the field in the pros as they are in college football. It's all about the money.

If there are special circumstances, maybe there could be exceptions, such as if they come from a very poor and needy family and/or intend to donate a huge chunk of their pro salary to youth development in their community, or something like that.

However, most of them appear to do it for one reason: just money for themselves. Never mind anybody else. Good bye loyal home fans and teammates, just let them down and head for another place where they know nobody but there is a stack of cash waiting. Supremely selfish.

The encouraging thing is that most top players stick to their teammates and their loyal fans, rather than go for the money in the pros, including a lot of top student athletes who come from poor families. Those are good role models and leaders. It's good to see them among the next generation.

15 September 2010: Exports Company Started

We have now officially registered a new company to get our exports business going, and to diversify my business.

Feb 24, 2008, Sunday: Aging and Retirement

Visions of old age ... sat near an old lady at Starbucks in Future Park (outer suburban Bangkok) and had a small chat. I like talking with old people, who tend to have wisdom plus they have free time and in retirement tend to not be too preoccupied with business or family or mating. This old lady had very charming English, and spoke to me in old accustomed ways, like a proud daughter of a foregone generation who knew the knowledge of other lands. She was from Calcutta, a lifelong teacher. However...

... periodically this lady kept repeating herself, revealing she's in early Alzheimers with serious memory problems. Scary that someday we could be this way. She told me she was bored with retirement, and I've seen retired people go to pot mentally, but this was different. She "came to Bangkok for a change in scenery", something I can relate to as I find changes in scenery refreshing, which is why I like to travel. She was physically very fit walking but looks very old, balding, prune face, aging spots... Someday, we may all be like that. Don't wait to retire to do your best works in life. And I wonder how much she will remember of this trip, much less be able to share with the world. If you lose your mind, what have you got left in life?

Don't wait until you're old to do your best works in life.

P.S. When she left, she forgot her bags, but her companion soon came back for them. (As usual in suburban Bangkok, nobody else touched them.)

Feb 23 2008, Saturday

Had a private investigation case for a lady in Australia who wondered why her husband went to Bangkok often "for business" -- over the weekend (only Saturday-Sunday) -- and didn't give her his hotel location. She's pregnant so I was dreading the possibility of breaking bad news to her. In these infidelity cases, I feel like I have the job of the military men who go to knock on the door of parents whose son was a casualty in action. Never a casual job despite its repetition.

Agents followed him from the airport (one lady agent this day being too pretty to do surveillance, so I was concerned she'd be noticed and remembered, hence I took her place later), and he went to the top notch Intercontinental Hotel, so I decided to join this one for a change in scenery from home, by sitting in the lobby to watch and do internet and write. So I essentially get paid per hour to sit there and write freely, just glance at passers-by, notify surveillance if he's on his way out, and take any photos if he's with a lady.

Fortunately, to our surprise, it was really just business, as he sat with two colleagues in the lobby near me discussing business, and they went out for a dinner and returned without even entertainment after dinner ("this is Bangkok"), and didn't go out. We left at 2am. What a relief this must be to his wife. (I later found out from her that he was sent with his wife's friend's husband, so this job is not over.)

The cost of these places is astonishing. I would never pay nearly $200 per night for a hotel room. Internet WiFi from the hotel is 428 baht ($13) for the first hour, and about $30 per day from the hotel, and you must go buy an account and log in. However, there's a free WiFi within range. :-) So many cheap hotels give you internet for free. Hotels like this are for the ostentatious and wasteful rich, and it's like they're always trying to find another way to pad your bill.

I could do so much with offshore labor on humanistic causes for that kind of money ...

Finding free time to write is often a challenge, and at times I've wished I was a security guard on the night shift, seeing how those guys have such free time (which they squander watching commercial TV, not the CCTV). I could live cheap and get paid to research and write whatever I wanted. My own P.I. company and surveillance is the next best thing, and it gives me changes in venue, as well as forcing me to see diverse parts of life.

The personal stories I get from customers are like living vicariously, but there is a major counselling part to the job. However, like my psychologist father, I get the same themes and stories over and over ... and wish I could find a good replacement for myself on counselling days like those. Oh, the emotional dramas...

Surveillance and P.I. work is not easy, and customer satisfaction is always a challenge. So much is out of our control.

Feb 22 Friday

Have a P.I. case in Petchabun province that I would really love to help out on because everyone says it's such a beautiful area.

(It's just visiting an address to find out about a Thai wife who has either neglected or broken off communications with her worried British husband, shortly after returning home, and there are children here, too. We can't do the case immediately because of weekend surveillance booking, and normally send two people upcountry for safety reasons, not a Thai lady alone. It has been an exceptionally busy week at P.I., a very unstable business.)

People say that Petchabun city is unique in that it's very green and surrounded by forest. Petchabun province is mountainous and a popular retreat for Thai tourists. There are also a lot of Dvaravati ruins spread around, up to about 1500 years old, but they are in an advanced state of decay here in the tropics. Nonetheless, it's nice to just go visit those places and sit there awhile and meditate.

Unfortunately, I have a major American customer who just arrived here to buy a luxury condominium with a signed contract to complete it by Wednesday, and have inspection and legal matters to handle Friday-Wednesday.

February in general:

After getting back from my vacation up north, I've been catching up on business, and trying to set up standard operating procedures (SOP) for others to take over more of my tasks, yet for our customer services to be reasonably complete and exceptionally high quality. This is a constant challenge of business, and is why mine has grown so slowly. I could do a lot better about training and wish I had someone in my company or a partner good at this.

I feel like screaming HELP !!!!!!!

Trip to Northern Thailand and Myanmar (Burma)

This is covered in my Travel blogs, and my style of travelling

Menu:
Site Map page.

Get to know
Mark Prado
by this personal
biographical website.