Last of the purchases?

Yeah I think I am getting a little too shopee happy. Its a great service and no doubt that things are quite a bit cheaper here than in NL but I need to start cutting back. A few hundred/thousand saved is still a few hundred spent.

But I am feeling good about my last, and not very expensive purchase, a new split slanted keyboard.. It does feel a lot less sensitive and less prone to random accidental key prsses than the other I had.  

Theres something reassuring about a full size keyboard where you can press one button to print screen/calculator and scroll lock... much nicer, it doesn't have the reassuring click but it works nice.

Also my 2nd last purchase was a stream dock to help control some of my video recording and editing, I bought the really nice Elgato prompter from Amazon last week and it arrived a few days ago, awesome ... But the dock lets me contol the OBS display with 1 button presses instead of lots of clicking and ticking.

But that needs to be it... enough spending on things I don't need now, all the main things I use for coding/recording and music making are now replaced and in some cases enhanced. Time to take care of the pennies.

Ahthankyew

Funds transferred and more purchases

And with my nice new bank account in place, I managed to transfer funds from euros to baht so the required 400K baht visa funds are now in place 

Still only one account though and not an interest bearing account as far as I can tell but for now that's ok.
Get the visa extension and we can then go to the bank and ask for something we can lock those funds into rather than have them in a general non interest account. Since we basically have to keep 400K baht in that account at all times to allow us to continue to extend the visa each year, it's better to lock it away in a long term savings account and have it make a bit of money. 

Though interest rates here are very low....and... worryingly as far as I can tell, savings with interest are only available to Thais, at least with the options I've been presented.. But we'll see. 

Having that account and card and ability to use my phone to pay is a big factor for buying things here. We do still have a couple of large purchase we want to make. Some household things, and a Scooter to get around when the car is in use, for example. 

But even every day things like Grab need that thai based money. The Revolut card is awesome for paying for things, but it's not accepted everywhere.. and of course there's costs when you turn euros into baht even on their internal accounts. 

The sooner overall we have most of our money transferred the better, but right now we are making some sweet interest in the EU which is offsetting some of those transfer costs, so we'll delay the transfer of the house purchase money as long as we can. 

The Chippy, I reported on in October has moved premises and I thought I would give it another go... and...well... same problem, amazing chips, disappointing tasteless fish, couldn't even tell if it was Haddock or Cod. I guess it's just what it is, there's no North Atlantic fish markets here to hand so the fish they have is clearly frozen stock and it just loses a lot of its flavour over the shipping time. 

Pies are probably a better bet. I can't see me staying away but I can't see me being a weekly regular either. 

I'm in the process of ordering a stockpile of some superb Thai farmed beef though from an Aussie farmer in another Thai state who breeds Wagyu cattle, so getting me a load of steaks, stewing steak and mince to load up the freezer for nice meals. This will be pricey but...once a week, western cooking à la Brian will be on the menu at chez Beuken. I can restock every 3-4 months. 

And meet Sky, my one big pressie to myself... No its not GAS, I am not going on a spending spree of guitars, sadly my main guitars are stuck in Netherlands still, Our container assigned before Christmas was cancelled. So our goods are currently awaiting allocation to another container...Can't say I'm happy about this but  apparently it is not uncommon. So my guitars are in that shipment and may be a few more months away. So I needed to get a guitar to play.. Can't not have a guitar... I do have a fairly shitty ovation copy acoustic, but need an electric.. and here she is, a nice G&L Tribute, mid price strat copy, and I have to say I like this a lot. At least until Margarent and Goldie get here.

Now that I have a decent guitar to play I can put my gear back together, finally doing something with my Voicelive3ex I meant to do for years (why the fuck didn't you then...dozy) Put it all on 1 pedal board with a single plug. A cheap power brick under the board powers the VL3 and the HB wireless and it fits in 1 bag to transport.

I'm hoping to locate some musical peeps in the area, even though we can't perform in public here, try to get back into some kind of rehearsals....though not in a massive rush.  

My fingers are still a little painful after my December shower mishap, but slowly getting more flexible, playing guitar is helping. I have a black nail coming through on my middle finger which shows some internal bleeding took place, hmmm guess I was luckier than I thought.

Ahthankyew

Big Boy stuff

Feeling pretty happy with myself today, after a disaster on Wed, not making it to immigration on time, and a total waste of time at a couple of our local bank branches trying to open accounts, I was not a happy bunny at being unable to open an account.

Part of that was the fact that the tellers never talked to me, they spoke directly to Jirawan and I was totally out of the loop, which made it super hard for me to explain exactly what I wanted or to understand exactly why they were unable to do it. Some bizzare excuses were mentioned. I mean totally irrelevent documents including some which were pure fiction (Certificate of residence from the dutch embassy in bangkok????)

Anyway, the banks opened up today in the main shopping malls at least, and I went to town armed with my paperwork to try on my own.... then promptly forgot my paperwork which I left in the car as Jirawan drove off.... doh

Fortunately I just needed to get my online lease printed out which I did at the mall, they had a small print shop I just needed to send them the document and they printed...

And then I went to the bank.  I was told, with no real way to be sure it was true, that SCB was the easiest to work with but the queues were mad, so I went to KasikornThai which I was told with the same lack of certainty, had the best online app.. in English.. There was a big queue there too but I took a ticket and was about to sit down when my number was called...wow...There was a specific teller who's job was to open accounts and she was just finished. 
Sit down, explain I need an account for visa extension and heres my passport and TM.30 which were in my very manly shoulder baggagggge and I had my printed lease... she did a bit of reading, a bit of typing and, then proceeded to go through the process of opening my account, installing my app and setting up everything I needed.

In 15 mins or so, I had an account and app and a debit card... no stress.. 

Now... the fun part is getting money from NL to Thailand.... I can make international transfers, done it many times, but this time it decided right at the death to use an old card slot e-reader to verify the transfer.. Something I have never been asked to do before...and of course... I do have a card based e-reader.... but probably in a box sitting in a warehouse at Rotterdam harbor awaiting shipping.

Buggeration.

I was able however, with a bit of faffing to increase my card limit to send money to my Revolut card, then transfer that to Thai Baht in the cards dual currency account,  at a decent enough rate, then, send it to my account...which then flagged it as suss and asked me to verify...but thats fine, a wise precaution; I verified and a few mins later my funds are on the way. What a faff...

Now thats done, those funds need to stay in the account for 60 days, to allow me to qualify for the marriage visa which needs to have 400K baht in an account for said 60 days... basically they will have to stay there until Im 67 and claiming pension to prove I have enough money to bury me if I pop off or something.

So I've completed an important step to long term living here, getting the account and the money in (should be there by the 6th) in time for the 90 day cut off point to apply for the extension is done... just the paperwork for the visa to do now and I've hired an agent to do 95% of that for us.. 

One more tick on the todo list.

 

Ahthankyew

Home....office

Aside from a little cable tidying, my new office is up and running, yes I am missing a 4 port KVM and a 16 port network switch and a white board, but overall those are not bad issues, I no longer need 10 machines running at once, 2 maybe 3 is just fine. I have to not regret the things I left behind or threw away, everything is replacable if needed... just not sure its needed.

I bought most of the gear from Shopee or Temu so it was dirt cheap (the 2nd monitor was less than 50 euros and tbh you can feel that cheapness, but it works fine... and just as I said that the monitor sparked out for 1 second... I hope thats not a habit). A standing desk was something I had at work, I didn't use it often but I do find it stretches you out a bit to stand sometimes while working, so I took the chance to get one for less than 75euros....lol I mean... why not.

I also got some cheap as chips podcast lights on stands, which really do make a massive difference to the quality of video recordings I want to make for book readers and tutorials.

I had expected to spend a few grand on new gear, but I barely broke 750.... impressive.

So now things are in place its time to find the right time to do work...we need a bit more routine in our lifes. The Jetlag, combined with basic shopping/settling in has been rough, but its a new year so its time to try to make some new routines... not resolutions, they never work.. just a pattern of behaviour that will help us adjust to our new lives as unemployed layabouts :D..sorry retiree's.

The office is also my music room, and I've bought a few things there, which are included in the 750 or so including a cool cheap copy of my roland street cube amp.. This isn't quite complete though, need my electrics to arrive later this month, or next then I can noodle about a bit more (sore fingers permitting)

Yes.. I'm very very happy with my new home office/studio. I hope to be quietly productive here and get all those things I wanted to do done, y'know the things work got in the way of... :D

  

 

Ahthankyew

Did I break em?

9 days later and the 2 fingers I thought I had jarred are still giving me a bit of concern, not swollen now but I still don't have the ability to make a fist, and my ring finger in particular is very painful if I try to press it down into a fist..

I suspect it wasn't a break as it would be much more painful and swollen, but 9 day and still not got full motion is annoying..

Only really a problem for guitar playing though and with just a simple cheap acoustic here at the moment, not a massive issuse.

In other news, I have my new desk and pulled my projects from old drives which lets me finish up the book code content now.. Im working on that right now and hope to have most of the content ready to upload to the now fully working website by the end of next week.

I will rest a bit easier when those files are in place, it was a pain not getting everything up before we left and the minor issues of equipment and content in transit was worrying me but should be able to rest a bit easier when these are up.

And its new year tonight, Jirawan has encourage me to go to an organised event to see the countdown.. it will be fun... :D

Ahthankyew

Shopee :D

My 1st attempt at home delivery, which is a bit daunting since I can't spell or pronounce our address, never mind work out the formtting for what part is the street/project/district/city/provence method they use here.

But I did it, bought a few musical things I had to leave behind, such as my Roland Street Cube ex  amp I used mostly for FBR content. I found an equivilent on Shopee for less than half the price, and also some wireless guitar and in ear stuff... I gave Martin my back up units, and needed similar here to use my Spark 2 Amp which I was able to bring.

Im dead chuffed at how easy this was, quality  of the new amp is ok, its not in the same league as the truly awesome Roland but for me, alone at home practicing and making some recordings its totally fine and a lot cheaper. If I ever do get to perform in public again then this will also work for me... 

Ahthankyew

Jet lag fun

After 3 nights of waking up at 4am  and dozing on the couch for how everlong mid day... I slept from 2am to 2pm today, a good long sleep, with a minor trip to the loo at whatever o'clock

Feels like the jetlag has started to fade out, well we will see. We are both still mad busy settling in, shopping, setting things up etc... there's a lot to do... and its draining in different ways, especially with the freezing 25deg temps (amzing to see Thais complain its cold).

Hopefully just a few more days to find our rhythm and get into nice routines.

We did have a bit of an explore yesterday though and found another easy reach market, small shopping area we can have a good look around at soon. We know all about the big stores, but budget wise its important to find the local places so we will enjoy exploring those.

Ahthankyew