A friend I never got to meet.

I find myself very upset tonight. As our plans to retire progress, part of my research has been to watch a lot of youtube videos of houses for sale/rent and also some personal vlog style videos of people who have also moved to Chaing Mai and document their expereince. 

Its quite a treasure trove of useful info to hear from someone who's been there 16 years and someone only just arriving and finding their way around.

I have a few that I regularly follow and subscribe to, and drop the odd comment on their channel. One  chap was an Aussi, my age, who has been there a year, during the course of one of his livestreams I discovered he was a model builder. A hobby I really want to get back into when we settle. We had exchanged a few simple comments and I liked his content.

He had a motorcycle/scooter accident 10 days or so , and got a bit banged up, but despite a few broken bones and bruises he did a nice livestream praising the medical teams and care he had... I dropped a few comments about wanting to pick up the modelling hobby again soon, and he said some encouraging words that when you retire having a hobby is good for you. I agree.

Sadly I just found out, he passed away suddenly a few days after that exchange, from a heart attack, walking into town for a coffee. Probably in part caused by the accident, but either way... 1 year on from moving to Thailand he dies..

Dammt, thats very sad, and he was alone over there, no family/partner.  I am sure we would have met up at some point when I move, picked up some tips on modelling  and good model shops, and been friends. So even though I never met the chap, it feels like a loss. RIP Peter at Oz ScaleModeling  https://www.youtube.com/@OzScalemodeling

 

Once again, life just isn't something you can always rely on, the dumbest things can take you out in an instant. Make sure you use up every ounce of your allocation doing nice things for yourself and others.

Ahthankyew

Or are they.....?

hmmm strange, got home today to find a letter from HMRC asking for 29.20 for a year I already paid.....

not at all sure why, but I've paid it and drafted a quick query later that will no doubt take time to have a response but... hmmm that year is now showing as not compelte so I will assume its a mistake, not going to worry about it.

Ahthankyew

Pension up to date now

Ok

made the last of the shortfall payments HMRC  allow, and now I just pay my yearly class 2's so that in my old age, if I make it, I get my UK pension while living in Thailand.

Lets hope there's no strange changes in the pension laws between now and then. But overall I think this is good, having not realised I could make those shortfalls was a major error in my understanding of the pension system, that I wish someone had informed me of many years ago and I would not be in a mad panic now. Our HR dept really need to have someone there who handles or advises non dutch employees on such things, so many of us were unaware, and I've been spreading the word. At least 2 have found out they had shorfalls they needed to fix so thats good, but lucky the younger ones still have lots of years to make up their minumum.

So, its all done...cost a few grand but the return is very worth it. I was however expecting a bill for this years class 2, instead I got a bill for class 3, of 0,00 which I have of course paid :D

I suspect it will come through in due course. Im no longer bound by or afraid of any time deadlines. I've paid up, in time, and can now just deal with normal stuff.

phew..

Ahthankyew

Never buy from facebook scammers

Its not fair to say all facebook ads are scammers, but so many of them are, some deliberate, but most just incompetant drop shippers acting as middle men for cheap warehouse sales being scammed themselves.

Almost every time I've bought something on line from a facebook ad, I've had a totally different product sent or missing parts etc.

I think out of 5 online purchases for me and 3  or so for Jirawan, only 2 have been legit.

I recently bought a neat looking set of rechargable batteries in a nice self contained charging case. Think earpod style but for AAA and AA batteres. I tend to use a lot of them in pedals and things so having a case that kept some on charge while others were being used appealed to me.. So I risked my $35 or so and waited nearly 3 months for it to arrive... a very nice case... with no batteries.

hmm so begins a series of where are my batteries and, send us pics, and $2 offers of refunds culminating in, this item doesn't come with batteries... so escalate to paypal.

I should get a full refund, paypal tends to be pretty good at dealing with these types of scam, but not heard back yet.

Just annoying that you get so many of these daft scams, or useless dropshippers falling for other scammers promises of wealth and reward from home. Which is why I give them the benefit of the doubt sometimes. It might just be some granny with a laptop trying to make a few bucks with a shitty website, taking orders and passing them on to a chinese warehouse thinking that the 20c they make for each one adds up.

Annoying.

Ahthankyew

Test ok

My Oral cancer surgeon didn't remember me at all :D lol I feel not at all special, but no matter my appointment with Dr Van Gemeert went fine, the spots on my gums are caused by my brushing, maybe my electric brush heads are too hard, so I have to switch to softer ones.

I was a tiny bit worried, but its fine, the dentist was right to make sure.

Ahthankyew

284 days

Till my 62nd Birthday, its not going to be my actual final day here in NL but its the cut off point I've set as my retirement date. I will stiill have a final few days of work to wrap things up and close out the year. As well as to  hopefully finalise the last few things before we head off to Thailand.

We might get there before Christmas, or just after, there are things we won't have total control off until the house is actually sold, but we have set that target date to keep us focused on the clock ticking down.

can't wait.

Ahthankyew

Delay chats are hard

How bizzare

I got a letter, an actual paper letter :D from HMRC. Which actually detailed the confusion over the allocation of some class3/2 payments. 

Given it was in response to a letter I sent dated 9th Dec, replied to on 20th Feb, and recieved 7th March... its kinda out of sync.

But it does confirm they messed up the allocation of my payment which was a combined class2/3 payment for different things.

Yesterdays post about it all being resolved means that my email 2 weeks ago has in fact resolved things. So it does now kinda make sense why my NI shortfals went mental for a few days... and then all got fixed..

I also got a bill, an actual paper bill as well, fom HMRC today for...0 pounds and 0 pence.... for 24/25 class 3.. :D 0. zero.. I might have to save up to pay that.

ummm ok, there will be a bill in a few days I assume for class 2 which I will gladly pay.

It might be petty to bitch about something after its sorted but... its not a very effective system is it...

oh well..

Ahthankyew

Lots of good things

The concern about the NI payments has been resolved, and much quicker than expected. No email response, that may come later but checking the site today, I can now see that ALL my payments have been accounted for and I'm now close to the full amount of pension entitlement when Im 67. There are stll 5 years of payments to make, and I think 4 or 5  shortfall years left that will take it over the minumum contribution needed, but I'll make the shortfall payments comfortably now, and that wll give us the full amount when I hit the official age.

REALLY  happy about that. I will pay all the shortfalls even though there's no real benefit to it, since the future is uncertain I don't want to get trapped by a government change that says you need to have more years contrbution that I have now..its not a massive amount of money and the return is well worth it, so I will do my bit to keep the UK revenue funded :D

Also, though I was fairly sure about this before, a collegue at work caused me to doubt myself, and I had to call the bank to check. He suggested there was a penalty for clearing the mortgage early. Which is indeed not uncommon in the UK and other places.. But I was sure I had read somewhere that there were no charges with my bank...I called to confirm and indeed... no charge for clearing the mortgage early :D.

And a final bit of good financial news, when we sell the only real expense is the real estate agents fees, called makelaar here, about 1-1.5% yeah it sucks but needs to be paid. I've factored that into our costs. 

Our finances are firming up really well now, every month that goes by our savings are increasing and small things get sold to added to it. Time is now starting to really move fast, I mean its March already.... only 10 full momths to go.

Ahthankyew

There's some dumb shit going in in the world

Its astoninshing isn't it.. just how utterly disturbing the world is, and how its more and more being run by utter utter idiots. 

So much so that I'm starting to really lose faith in humanity. The rise of conspiracy theories in particular fascinates me. Flat earthers being one main group, who just like religious zealots utterly refuse to spend even a few moments reading a half decent science book to take note that ermmm gravity is real....and the earth is not flat!!

I mean... going through life denying the most basic of facts, we have known for 1000's of years and these days can even point to fucking photo's of... which apparently are fake.

WE, collectivly are entering an age where opinion, no matter how absurd,  is more valid than fact, and if fact does not support or even disproves our opinion, then the fact is wrong and someone, somewhere, a mythical they.... are behind it to keep us all in the dark.

Madness... just madness, flat earth, moon landing deniers, young earthers, anti vaxxers, 5G death rays, Cloud buster copper tubes, Lizard people, grounding, Adrenachome harvesting, QAnon, holistic meds, auras, spirit channelling, etc.... those are the ...good??? ones..

Not one of which, not fucking one, stands up to even a primary school kids level of scientific research... but still grown men and women proclaim proudly on social media that they know and have the truth, and gather followers to their cause.

It's levels of stupidity that I find appalling to see, and of course you get grifters cashing in writing books and holding courses to increase the following and all these idiots gather their confirmation bias as proof of their positions that have no prood of their positions.

This is clearly something hard wired in our human brains, before social media, even before literature we had religion indoctrinating the stupid into people, now its open season on whatever bullshit you want to spread.

And now... we come to politics... where more and more and more we see that history is repeating, the rise of Nazi germany is now a blueprint for political grabs for power and consolidation of that power and we have the stupid now leading the stupid to vote in even more stupid people into power... and we know what happens when you give power to people who have no idea how to use it?

We are most certainly on a road to damnation as a species, nothing can stop the march of opinon over facts, and it wont be long befoe we see cvilizations end when some moron wants to see what happens when you press the big red button.

phew... rant over... not sure I feel better, because I still have 30 or 40 years to live and watch this get worse and worse.
 

Ahthankyew