HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

Family Money

Personal Directions

The Doctor's Consultation by Dr. Iain Corness

Agony Column

Camera Class by Snapshot

Dr Byte's Computer Conundrums

Ask your local US Consul

Family Money: Congratulations ‘PM’!

By Leslie Wright,
Managing director of Westminster Portfolio Services (Thailand) Ltd.

What was the Thai stock market doing 10 years ago this week? Where were people looking for growth stocks? How did the UK market look at the time? Do you remember? Few will, so don’t worry too much about it.

The only reason I ask the question is because our sister publication, the Pattaya Mail has just celebrated its 10th Anniversary! Congratulations ‘PM’! So it seemed appropriate to take a quick look back at the past decade and what has happened in world markets and to people’s pockets in that turbulent period of boom and bust.

Back in mid-1993, all investors’ eyes were on the boom in the ‘Asian Little Dragons’ - Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, which were enjoying an unprecedented stock market boom that year. This would - as I predicted - peak right before Chinese New Year in 1994, and then plummet.

Indeed, it had taken just 5 years after the notorious “Crash of ’87" (sparked by the property scandals in Japan) for Asia to become the darling of investors once more.

In 1992 Sterling had been under attack by the currency pirate George Soros and his Quantum fund, which brought so much leverage to bear that even the Bank of England could not withstand the onslaught, and had to allow Sterling to float, and plummet some 25% in international value. Not that that affected Sterling investors at home very much, but it had a dire effect on the global balance of trade and overseas investments in Sterling assets.

But history passed, and here we are again with a relatively strong pound and a weak dollar. What goes around comes around, they say - if you wait long enough.

The oft-forgotten “Global Meltdown” of 1994 started with the chairman of the Fed Reserve Bank, Alan Greenspan, and effectively America’s money manager, unexpectedly raising interest rates in February ’94, which took the markets by surprise and caused an unprecedented 20% drop in the bond markets. This in turn caused Mr Soros et al to have to sell off huge holdings in equities to cover their bond exposure (and lose about $800 million in the process), and started the whole snowball rolling down the hill, gathering momentum as it went.

Since then we’ve had the Russian Debt Crisis, the Mexico Peso Crisis, the Argentinean and the Brazilian Money crises, and various smaller ones - not to mention the demise of LTCM, the infamous hedge fund that cost the US Federal Reserve some $2.5 Bn to avoid a meltdown in the US banking system - all of which the stock markets have somehow survived, despite the TV pundits predicting doom and gloom for the world economy every time one of these crises occurs and lights up the TV news, giving the Talking Heads something to talk about as if the financial world was going to come to a grinding halt overnight.

But back to Asia

In the mid nineties the markets wallowed in the doldrums for a couple of years before Asia rose again like the Phoenix from the ashes, and things started to look okay again - until the “Crisis of ’97", sparked by scandals in Thailand and rumours about currency speculation in Malaysia (nicely nipped in the bud by the Malaysian Prime Minister before Mr. Soros’ minions could do to Malaysia what they’d done a few years earlier to the Bank of England). The crisis rippled throughout the region, with stock markets losing up to half their value almost overnight and massive devaluations as well. The economy of Indonesia was so badly affected that the government fell, and lots of moneyed people fled the country.

The same nearly happened in Thailand, but swift action by the government prevented a total collapse of the economy, although some of the miscreants were able to ‘flee the scene’ and have yet to return.

The banking reforms which resulted from brave action by the Prime Minister of the day stabilised the situation, and although we had a rough couple of years, things did gradually improve. It is nonetheless estimated that it will take a generation to clear the massive indebtedness that the government has been forced to assume.

Major Markets in Crisis

It has been the major markets - principally the USA - that have fuelled the bumps & slides of the past three years, starting with the collapse of the TMT (technology, media, and telecommunications) bubble in the 2nd quarter of 2000, about which I warned in this column in March 2000, which was ignored by most at the time.

Many who had jumped on the dot.com bandwagon in the run up to the new century had their fingers at least scorched if not seriously burned when the bubble inevitably burst, and were thereafter reluctant to touch stocks.

This led to massive negative sentiment, which has continued virtually until now - exacerbated by the accounting scandals which lost investors so much confidence, and of course the immediate knee-jerk reaction to the heinous attacks of 9-11. Curiously, although the stock markets did dip markedly at that point - unsurprisingly - they recovered remarkably quickly, and (for those chartists amongst you) returned to the same gradual downward slide quite quickly.

The rally at the beginning of 2002 looked as though it might continue and get us out of the swamp that the stock markets had been wallowing in for the past two years. I freely admit that I was one of those who believed that there couldn’t be a third year of negative returns from equities (it hadn’t happened for 30 years), and although my instincts told me “no” I took a bit of a punt and cautiously went back into major market equities. How wrong I was! Major equity markets in the first 9 months of 2002 lost over 30% of their value on average.

After unravelling that mess and licking my wounds in mid 2002, I moved to a conservative stance (bonds and property mostly, spread geographically), and that ‘safe’ move has saved a lot of the downside that equities continued to experience last year in the run up to Big George’s determination to get Sadam Hussein out of his seat of power, under which might have been hidden a couple of nasty buttons which none of us wanted to be set off.

So a spread of bonds, gold (always a good alternative in times of crisis), and selected property funds have been the ‘safe bet’ that have made money for investors (as opposed to short-term speculators) in the past six months or so.

Of course sentiment - which did so much to hold back the stock markets - is now waxing euphoric and declaring that now the Second Gulf War is over (is it, indeed?), things will soon return to business as usual, and the rallies in the Dow and FTSE we have seen these past couple of months will carry us back to the dizzying heights before all this began.

I wish I could be as optimistic. Perhaps I’m a cautious old cynic, but I don’t believe the uncertain geopolitical situation in the Middle East - ignoring the danger of North Korea and the possibility of that area flaring up again - can lead us to any sense of political security, nor believe the war is really over: the factions are still flexing their muscles and the knock-on effect on the world’s economy could still be far from the positively euphoric that some who look only at the newspapers and nightly TV news would have us believe. I prefer to sit on the fence for a little while longer.

Personal Directions: Prayer is a building block

By Christina Dodd,
founder and managing director of Asia Training Associates

Prayer is not exclusively a tool for the faithful or religious. Last week we touched on spiritual nourishment as a necessary ingredient to purpose, meaning and happiness in life. As John and Melody Anderson so well put it in this essay ... prayer is a building block of our personalities and lives.

“The power of prayer is exalted in selected circles as the individual’s direct link with the inspiration that communion with a supreme being or god provides. However, it would be a mistake to consider prayer as the sole domain of the devoutly religious, for prayer in itself has little to do with worship as such and much to do with inspiration. Prayer is effective only when the individual gives themselves over totally to its power with complete and utter commitment. It is this commitment and indeed trust, which forms the substance of the praying itself. It is a demonstration of trust. But more importantly, prayer is the most intimate expression of desire, if the prayer is sincere.

Looking at desire and the way it tends to lead to achievement, it is possible to observe that very often, it is those moments of quiet and seemingly insignificant feelings of desire that can have the most impact. In daily life, the most powerful examples of desire seem to be those desires that come and go, almost unnoticed, slipping quietly into the ether to work their magic.

It is also possible to recognize a distinction between this kind of desire and those desires that we may be more verbal about, the desires which might seem to preoccupy us constantly. These persistent desires are not necessarily less effective, but we tend to attach other feelings to them that could inhibit the easy attainment of them. Most usually, those small intimate desires that occur in a moment tend to be desires without additional attachments. That is to say, they are things that we genuinely desire without condition, they seem to be without significant implication. We are able to be unconcerned about these desires and thus, they are easily and quickly attained.

Now, it is not practical to suggest that we can turn every desire into the sort of desire that occurs in a moment without concern because many of our desires do have implication for identity and lifestyle. However, there is much that can be learned from the state of being which characterizes the fleeting and pure desire. It is a very personal sort of desire, it is a desire that is often only known to the individual. Not because the individual seeks to hide it, but because of its fleeting nature and sometimes, its way of occurring in the form of an impression. This is why it can seem as though we do not really know that we have the desire. Resonance shows us that indeed the desire existed prior to its achievement, although it seemed more akin to an impression than a specific conscious knowledge of something desirable.

In these private moments we can be sure that the desire is genuine, for there is no motivation to manufacture an impression for others, or to pursue falsehood when there is no one around to perceive it. We are alone with ourselves and in those moments, provided we do not seek to hide from our own company or to ignore it, we can be truly honest about what we want and don’t want. Obviously there is no great panacea to cure the tendency to distract oneself from these intimate moments alone with the self. There is no drug to stop the individual hiding from their own thoughts, feelings and desires, there is no foolproof technique to force an individual into this honest relationship with their own being. Herein lies the catch. However, those with an earnest desire for more, will allow these moments to become very crisp, very clear and very useful.

Prayer then, could be used to great effect as a way of crystallizing those moments of quiet sincere desire and bringing them into conscious recognition. But there is another side to prayer, which can prove to be useful and it requires some sense of a knowledge of oneness. In situations of greatest challenge, it is possible to be consciously aware of a part of ourselves, which seems to be responsible for guiding us through difficulties with a kind of persistent and more enlightened knowledge of what is happening, what is going to happen and how to make it happen. This is often referred to as the second mode but in a sense, that is a rather simplistic way of describing it. For it would seem that with a sense of oneness, it is possible to feel that, not only does this mode seem to represent a part of ourselves, but indeed it seems to be a part of everyone and everything else - a part of the whole essence of life itself. Some might say, a part of God.

Therefore, in all sincerity, it is possible to appeal to this part of God, a Supreme Being, or life or the universe or whatever, and to express our desires. But more than this, to ask for help in achieving them. Indeed to ask for anything at all, with a knowledge and a trust that our desires will be heard and attended to accordingly. All too often we can forget to make use of these what could be called the spiritual part of ourselves that is linked with magical happenings, messages and signs, coincidence and change. We know that genuine desire is always met with the fulfillment of it. In these quiet moments, when identity and pretenses are stripped away, when the individual truly faces themselves, this entreating can be very powerful and very immediate. And although spiritual is a much misused word and concept and although it is less than adequate, we must not be afraid to tap into the spiritual part of ourselves.

We must not forget to venture into these unknown and unseen forces that seem to guide the course of, not only our lives, but the course of humanity and the world. If we are part of some spiritual dimension and that spiritual dimension is part of us, then without it dominating our lives in a very unnatural and unempowering way, in the way that religion might, we can allow that spirit to enter our lives and indeed allow our life to enter it. This union, through the power of prayer, through the intimate relationship of communing with the unseen dimensions of ourselves, could surely be interpreted as a fundamental part of living a meaningful life.

For if it was not, why on earth would it exist at all? ...”

If you are interested in finding out more about how our training programs can assist you or your staff, please contact me at Asia Training Associates (see advertisement) or by email to christina.dodd @asiatrainingassociates.com

Until next time, have a great week!

The Doctor's Consultation by Dr. Iain Corness: Cattle Class Syndrome and Aspirin

by Dr. Iain Corness

Air travel is very much part of my fortnightly routine these days, so it does mean that I am more likely to suffer from Economy (Cattle) Class Syndrome than before. (I have tried saying that I should fly Business Class, but the request appears to have fallen on deaf ears.) However, I do take a daily medication which should mean that I am even less likely to get the economy problems.

Getting right down to tin-tacks, the Economy Class Syndrome is just a fancy title for a Deep Venous Thrombosis, or more simply, a blood clot in a deep vein in the legs. We shorten this to DVT, because we doctors like acronyms, and what’s more they easier to spell than the long names.

DVT’s occur not just in plane passengers, but in hospitals in the post operative period. In fact, the latest figures from Australia would indicate that 50% of people who have orthopaedic surgery are likely to get a DVT. Even 20% of general surgery patients are in line for this condition.

And this gets me back to my daily medication, prescribed for me by the new generation’s hope for salvation, the young Dr. Jonathan Corness, a new breed medico about whom I am very proud - but I digress. Dr. Jonathan prescribed one of the oldest medications in the world for me - Aspirin. So why would this up-to-the-minute medico prescribe something as old hat as Aspirin? Quite simply, because it works!

In therapeutic doses to stop headaches and relieve arthritis, we are looking at something between 300-600 mgms four times a day for most people and Aspirin works well here; however, at that dosage you run the risk of upsetting your stomach, to actual bleeding and ulceration. There are also people who show allergic reactions to Aspirin, from asthma right the way through to anaphylactic shock and death! Yes, this is potent medicine.

However, there are other conditions for which Aspirin is the drug of choice, and not in the big doses either. We are talking here of 100 mgm doses taken once a day only. This way the chances of allergy/asthma and gastric bleeding are greatly reduced. What the Aspirin does is work on the aggregation of platelets. This is where the red blood cells sort of form into clumps and these become clots and are the start of the Deep Vein Thromboses (DVT’s). And this is what happens in the Economy Class Syndrome, if you are unlucky.

Now medical science has found that by taking 100 mgm of Aspirin daily you lower your chances of heart attack, something much higher on my personal risk table than Economy Class Syndrome. You see, clotting can occur in many areas of the body, and a clot in the coronary arteries can be extremely life threatening. And life shortening! And yet so easily avoided, with one little tablet every day. You can buy baby Aspirin, but I used “Cardiprin” - this is more expensive, but comes in a push-through calendar pack, which gets me to remember to take it better than just a bottle of tablets on the breakfast table.

Now getting back to flying, the secret to health in the air is purely to maintain good circulation and avoid dehydration. To maintain circulation to the lower legs you should get up and walk around the plane once every hour. Simple. Dehydration is easy to fix - drink more water, not more alcohol! That’s it!

Agony Column

Camera Class: Time Exposure made easy! And no exposure meter either!

by Harry Flashman

How many times have you used the “time exposure” facility on your camera? Probably the “B” on the dial that stands for the old-fashioned setting called “bulb” but more on that later. So when was the last time you tried using a time exposure? Probably “never”! That is the usual response to that question.

The reason for this is simple. It all sounds too complicated, you need to have a tripod, don’t know how to work it out, the list goes on. It is a shame that people feel this way, because you can get some spectacular shots with time exposure and it really isn’t all that difficult these days. Let me show you how!

Let’s address the “too technical” first. A camera is purely a device that lets a certain amount of light fall onto sensitized film for a predetermined amount of time. This is the old “f8 at 1/60th” sort of routine (also known as the photojournalists creed - f8 and Be There!). The number of the “f” stop (the aperture) tells you how large the hole is that lets the light in, and the 1/60th denotes how long the hole was left open. Is that really technical? No!

Early morning sunrise - pic by Ernie Kuehnelt

Way back, film material was so insensitive that the exposure times were nowhere near as “short” as today. 1/60th was unheard of - it was more like a fortnight at f8 in those days! With today’s super-sensitive film materials and printing papers you can get away with “short” time exposures and you don’t even need to be accurate any more. Near enough is good enough! There is a thing called “exposure latitude” that is on our side.

What do you need for Time Exposure photography? Well, a camera is a good start, but it has to be one with “T” or “B” settings. The “T” setting stands for Time Exposure - one “click” opens the shutter, the second “click” closes it. “B” originally stood for “bulb” and the way that works is by holding the shutter release down keeps the shutter open until you take your finger off, which closes it. Why two settings? Simple, use “B” for time exposures up to a minute and “T” for longer ones (mainly because your finger will go numb holding the button down for 20 minutes!)

What film? The new 400 ASA is fine (but you can use anything, I generally just use the standard 200 ASA film I use for everything). Now you may have read about “reciprocity failure” with long time exposures. Give up reading! It’s photo industry techo-talk and won’t stop you getting good pictures, it just changes the colours a bit.

The final piece of equipment you need is a tripod, but even that is not 100% necessary. But it is easier with one.

The important point to grasp, is that all Time Exposure photography is “hit and miss”. There’s no real way anyone can tell you exactly “f8 and 24 seconds”. There’s too many variables, but all you have to do is to take the same scene or picture with several different exposure times - one of them will be right. Believe me!

Here’s the rough guides. In all of these the aperture (f stop) is set on f8. Now to take a street scene at night, try 2 seconds, 4 seconds and 8 seconds. For the interior of a room, lit with ordinary light bulbs, try 5 seconds, 10 seconds and 20 seconds. To take a picture, just before dawn try 5, 10 and 20 seconds. Now, for a completely dark, night landscape (or seascape) try 30 seconds, 1 minute and 2 minutes. And for a different sunset, try one second and half a second.

Make a note of the order your time exposures were shot in, and jot down the “best” result after you get your films back. Sure, the colours will be strangely different - but if you wanted a “normal” shot you’d have taken it in daylight, wouldn’t you? Try time exposure this weekend!

Dr Byte's Computer Conundrums

This week I am going to look at two really interesting areas of debate. The first is the question of internet control, with special reference to kiddie protection. The other issue is related to Internet hacking and the attack on the Internet during the 5th July weekend.

Q. Dear Dr Byte,

My son and his best friend were suspended from school last week because they were caught looking at some pornographic web sites using their school library computer.

At a meeting with the school principle and their teachers, we discussed how the school could filter unwanted or objectionable content and I have agreed to make some recommendations to them. What do you think? Is there really any way to stop school children accessing pornographic content?

A very worried parent

San Sai

A. Can you really make the Internet kid-safe?

I was happy to see the U.S. Supreme Court uphold a law intended to protect children from “objectionable” Internet content. The ruling goes some distance towards making PCs and the Internet welcome in the children’s sections of America’s libraries. But I don’t think locking down libraries will make a dent in the ability of young people to see stuff that responsible adults don’t want them to. Likewise, that’s all well and good for the USA, but what about a country like Thailand?

So what can be done to make the Internet more welcome in homes with children? How do we protect children who come home from school to an empty house, or whose parents, when they’re home, are too busy to supervise the kids? Or who rush around to the local cyber cafe and start to cyber?

To me, this is like so many other political battles, in which rich parents demand laws that have little relevance to the real world where needy children live. It gives those parents the warm feeling of having done something - after all, their children will be “protected.” But it does nothing to actually address the real problem - which is that children don’t always get the supervision and guidance they need and deserve.

Basically, I’d protect kids by locking them out from anything (and anyone) on the Internet that wasn’t approved in advance. And this ability should be a default setting on your computer - without parents having to buy additional software and figure out how to set it up.

The theory here is that people will do the right thing - in this case, be responsible parents - if you make it easy enough for them. I can’t do anything about kids left alone with only the TV set as company, but I think we can make the computer a better alternative.

The software should only allow access to pre-approved sites and content. I’d also require a “white list” e-mail client that would only accept mail from pre-approved addresses. Same with instant messaging: No chats with users who aren’t approved via a parent’s password.

All new computers should be shipped with filtering software. That software should be on, by default. It should include passwords capable of disabling the filtering entirely or just for a specified period of time, like an hour, when children would be supervised. It should also include a feature that would limit the total hours of use and maybe even do things like reward the completion of educational applications with additional game-playing time.

This software should also be available free to parents who might not otherwise purchase it as an add-on to the PCs they already own.

This option is not available now and a lot will depend on computer OEM manufacturers and Operating Systems like Windows developing and then including this in every new PC. For now, net filtering software is available for a cost. The problem with net filters is that the choice of key words can seriously impact on valid and worthwhile internet searches for information. A filter can exclude material that is valid.

For example a school project on Flower and Plant pollination could be very limited if you include the Sex word in the filter. ‘Sex life of the Bumble Bee’ would be a valid subject for this kind of project, but any search for information on the Bumble Bee would exclude this material. So you can see, Net Filters have their uses but also have their limitations.

Q. Dear Dr Byte

My internet connection has been seriously disrupted for more than a week, with different days and times of the day, having good and more often, terrible connections. What’s going on and is my Web Host Service, ISP or is it someone else that is at fault?

Getting frustrated

Chiang Mai

A. Parts of the internet erupted last weekend in a battle among hackers, as factions disrupted a loosely coordinated “contest” among other groups trying to vandalise thousands of web sites around the world.

Unknown attackers for hours knocked offline an independent security web site, zone-h.org, that was verifying reports of online vandalism and being used by hackers to tally points for the competition, which drew warnings last week by the US government and one company.

Three such vigilante-style attacks forced the hacker organiser, who identified himself only as “Eleonora67),” to extend the contest until 0800 AEST today. But with continued attacks disrupting the ability of vandals to claim credit for their break-ins, some experts said it could be later this week before damage from this weekend’s hacking would be known.

By late Saturday afternoon, hackers claimed responsibility for vandalising hundreds of mostly obscure web sites, such as ones for Security Title Co and the Heart of Montana Realty Services, both of Bozeman, Montana.

“We’re just a teeny little company,” said Barb Asper, whose husband, Don, is one of the owners for Montana Realty. In a telephone interview, Don Asper called the attack “bothersome,” before he and his wife contacted the firm’s web site provider to have the vandalised page replaced.

There were no reports of vandalism involving flagship internet sites most consumers would recognise, a testament to improved online security over the past decade inside large corporations, government agencies and organisations.

“We at least knew it was coming,” said Peter Allor of Internet Security Systems Inc, which distributed a warning on Thursday about the contest using an alert system for technology companies. “We took some efforts to harden our sites.”

Some of the relatively unknown web sites vandalised, such as one for a church in California, were converted into informal reporting mechanisms for identifying other hacked sites.

Many security experts said the nickname of the hacker claiming responsibility for the contest, “Eleonora67),” was unfamiliar.

My thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald for this answer. If you have any questions you would like answered, or have suggestions you would like to make, please contact Dr Byte at Chiangmai Mail. Next time we will be looking at tuning Windows to make it run faster, so get in touch if you have a particular problem or question in this area.

Ask your local US Consul

Dear Consul,

Why you give visa to drug girl ... name [deleted] ... surin home ... live chang mia ... go prison 3 time ... american boyfriend … name [deleted] ... girl have yaba heroin. Why you give visa ... bad girl!11

Dear Mr. 11,

You know the old T-shirt bromide “good girls go to heaven/bad girls go everywhere”? Well, sometimes, they get to go to America, too.

Actually, I’m printing your letter - of course it’s real; you can’t make this stuff up, folks - because it nicely introduces a topic I just want to touch upon briefly: fraud.

We/I often get accused of being too suspicious of applicants, because, after all, whatever happens in good ol’ “Chang Mia”?

Answer: lots. In the brief two years I’ve been here, I’ve seen fake US passports, forged US visas bought and sold on the street, lots and lots of fake job letters, phony bankbooks, letters from alleged US cardiologists that say things like “applicant must visit, has pump problem,” and even some Photoshopped (tm) putative holiday pictures (as in “can’t find my old visa, but here are the snapshots I took”).

We detect some of this because ... well, we’re good. But for some of it, we depend on tips from you. Often, the tips come in like this: an email, a fax, an anonymous letter dropped off at the gate, letting us know about someone’s criminal history or boasts about their intended upcoming move to the US.

On the other hand, I also want to reassure potential tipsters (and applicants!) that we take the information for what it is: unsubstantiated, and subject to verification. In this case, for example, is it possible that the writer is more upset by Ms. Surin’s American boyfriend than her supposed prison record? Sure, and the lack of any other negative information on [name deleted] is why there’s one more “bad girl” in the Big Apple these days. We have to be suspicious of our suspicions sometimes, too. It’s a fine line to walk, but all the more reason why we need all the information we can get.

Keep ‘em coming,

The Consul

Have a question about visas, passports, travel to the United States, services for American citizens, or related issues? Ask the Consul. Send your e-mail to acschn@state.gov with “ask the consul” in the subject line. If your question isn’t selected, you can get an answer by calling the Consulate at 053-252-629, from 8 to 4.

Chiangmai Mail Publishing Co. Ltd.
209/5 Moo 6, T.Faham,
A.Muang, Chiang Mai 50000
Tel. 053 852 557, 081-302 0126 Fax. 053 260 738
e-mail: cnxmail@chiangmai-mail.com
www.chiangmai-mail.com
Administration: md@chiangmai-mail.com
Advertising: advertising@chiangmai-mail.com
sales@chiangmai-mail.com
Subscription: subscription@chiangmai-mail.com

Copyright © 2004 Chiangmai Mail. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.