Category: April 2018

    Did you know that it is actually someone’s job to sit down and name the colour of the year every year?   What a great gig, right?  When I first heard that “colour of the year” was a real thing I had a lot of questions.   Who decides?  How do I know what the colour of the year is?  What difference does it make to me?  I’m not Mr Fashion Conscious.  I’m not some kind of designer or artist that has to keep up with every trend. …

    I’m not very good with social media. It’s probably an age thing.         I’m definitely from the Groucho Marx school of thinking. In the film Duck Soup, he said: “Clear? Huh! Why a four-year-old child could understand this! Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can’t make head or tail of it.”   That’s me! I muddle through Facebook, don’t recall ever Tweeting in my life, don’t know how to get back into my LinkedIn account and wouldn’t recognise an Instagram if it reared…

      When I used to go to the beach as a young lad in the 1960s, we’d see the occasional man with a modest tattoo on his arm or chest. Often it was simply an image of an anchor like in the Popeye cartoons. By the very late 20th century, tattoos began to leave the shadows, so to speak. Today, they are downright mainstream, particularly among young people. And as the popularity of tattoos continues to grow, so does the concern about potential risks. Dirty needles can pass…

  This is the final installment of a three part series examining the desirability of expatriating or retiring in Thailand. Previously we have looked at health care, safety and this month we’ll take a gander at most prospective resident’s number one concern, cost of living.   Before we dive in, allow me to offer three observations as a sort of disclaimer and to pre-argue what are sure to be objections to what I have to say.   First off, there is no one measuring stick for cost of living in…