mucker

So there's a question on the C2 child's passport form. It asks if the child has/had any other passports or travel documents, and if they are included in the application. Has anyone ever sent their child's Thai passport as part of the application for a British one? When reading the notes it seems as if they are saying you should send in even a foreign passport.

I'm in the market for a new car. I live in the Middle East and I'm married to a Thai woman. She wants to buy a friggin toyota yaris, but I'm having none of it. I'll have the deposit in a couple of months and have read some reviews about all the the aforementioned vehicles. I really like the Fortuner, but have also heard good things about the Pajero. And, just the other day I saw the ford explorer and it turned out to be cheaper than the other two.

My whole knowledge of cars boils down to engine size and what colour it is. Slightly exaggerated but still basically true.

The Fortuner has a 2.7 and a 4 litre engine. i'm thinking the 4 litre which comes in at about 950,000. Give or take 20,000.
The Pajero comes in either 3.5 or 3.8 I think. The 3.8 comes in around 1,050,000.
The Explorer has a 4 litre also. The Explorer is roughly 850,000.

I'll be here for another 3-4 years, so I'm thinking about reliability, resale, maintenance costs, comfort etc. The toyota guys seems to be sitting on their laurels because the Arabs love a toyota, don't seem to want to give a discount. The pajero seems over priced. Ford has a reputation for needing constant repairs (so I've been told).

I'm asking for peoples' experiences driving any of these cars. The car will either be 2010 or 2011 model, probably 2011 as the stock from last year seems to have mostly gone. I won't be driving off road much this year but may be off the beaten track next year and the following. In fact if all goes well the car might have to last 6 years, rather than 3-4. Advice and comments please.

We've had a little girl, she's just over 1 month now. Everything seemed to be fine in the hospital, but then a doctor came around and asked us to have an x-ray. Obviously I wanted to know why and the guy had some difficulty explaining, I think he didn't want to make me worried, but him being hesitant to tell me got me more stressed than a simple answer would have.

Anyway, we took the x-ray and after looking he said there was a possibility that the child would need some slight surgery to amend this 'looseness' between the hip and leg, which was causing the click. I thought he was possibly setting us up for an expensive medical scam. But, it's been on my mind and now she's older I can sometimes hear the clicking sound when I pick her up, so I've put the scam down to my paranoid tendencies.

I would appreciate replies from people with some experience of this kind of situation, specifically hip click in new borns and young children and how it played out. I'm not happy about the idea of surgery and would like to explore other alternatives.

Don't  know if this is the right forum, if not the mods will move it.

I've noticed recently that I'm losing my temper over little things that get my knickers in a twist. People not knowing how to do their jobs, or some over officious little plonker that can interpret a rule several ways but decides to do the way that will make the most trouble for me (just today). How do you keep your cool?

I'm almost at the point of getting medication because I'm losing it daily, with shopkeepers, the wife, at work, people dithering, etc. In fact, I lost my temper last night, then again today. Had to drop the missus at home because of it and go for a drive back to work. Punched the cupboards when I got here, haha. It seems I can't listen to people talk shit anymore. Is it my age?

I want to be clear though, it is my problem. I seem to steam up after listening to anyone for about 30 seconds, and I then make the situation confrontational. I want to stop doing this, I'm sure I'm blowing things out of proportion and I'll end up having a heart attack.

Any advice?

OK, this story takes place outside of Thailand. My wie is Thai, though, and I wanted to ask peoples' opinions. I won't be naming the hospital because it's not Thai, I just want your opinion on the circumstances.

So my wife and I realise we are pregnant and go to a hospital. They take blood for tests and show us the little fella (the wife says it's a boy) on the screen. We make another appointment, pay and leave. Now upon reflection we think the service we got wasn't up to scratch and we decided not to got back for more appointments, butI was going back to get the results of the test and a copy of the first scan.

So, the doc was there and had the results of the blood test but when looking in the file the scan was missing. She said we must have taken it. Of course we havn't got it because all we got was some bloody folic acid tablets, which I told her and asked her to look again. Obviously pointless, no scan. We left the office and approached the desk, told the girls and there were embarressed smiles all around. The doc then said the magic words "It's not important, there's not a lot of detail at that age." Now I have to admit that got me a bot hot under the collar and I told them I didn't think much of their service, especially when it cost about 12000 baht for the initail appointment-scan and blood test.

So, I left then before I really lost my temper. Was I correct in being annoyed that they lost the first scan of my boy/baby? what would you have done?