jsflynn603

I agree with a prior poster.  The title is way off.

I doubt very much that the foetuses were "roasted."  More likely, in the methodology that is usual for enshrining a fetus as an earlier poster wrote, the fetus was dried--a form of mummification.

Black magic?  I doubt it--as a matter of fact, these were intended for sale to bring good luck--apparantly by enshrining and honoring with offerings.  This is a far cry from killing something to curse another person--that's black magic.  And consider...covered with gold leaf?  Does this really sound like ooo....scary black magic, or for something to be enshrined.

Ok, it goes against y'all's cultural values but the concept of enshriing a foetus seems logical in a culture heavily into ancestor worship.

Now if, let's say, it's your stillborn child, for instance surgically removed.  It's a foetus (fetus) and it's your unborn child.  If your religion believes that you should dry it, an enshrine it is that so horrible?

It seems the worst part here is that most likely the foetuses were aborted, and this was done without permission of the parent(s).

Asia is rife with a cultural blend--Animism, Buddhism, Christianity and so forth, often mixed together.  Look at Buddist shrines that incorporate Animistic deities.  Yeah, the guy did bad, but as posted there seems no fear that he killed anyone and surely there is no "black magic" involved.

You worte: "I am a Union Carpenter, in NYC and work exclusively on high-rise concrete , so i have some experience in these matters."

Please post a follow up when all is done.  I'd be interested in the final cost and your experiences.  My fiancee has a small plot of land a bit outside Chiang Mai, and I've suggested that she build a wall around it especially as her new next door neighbor does auto work and has what I'd call here in the States a "junk yard."  My fear is that without such a wall her land might become a convenient dumping ground for old oil/antifreeze/transmission fluids.

I'm curious as how its best to build a 2 meter wall, especially one that would survive a small'ish earthquake.  I'm envisioning a poured concrete "footing perhaps 60 cm wide by (I'm not sure how deep) which is reinforced properly with appropriate (3/8," 1/2", or 5/8" iron rebar--I'm not sure which would be best).

And then there is concrete.  In my opinion concrete is frequently one of the most poorly made (especially for the do-it-yourself'ers) substances on earth.  The concrete on your NYC hi-rise is always to spec and each pour has an independent (from the concrete company) sampler who takes some of the 'crete and places it in a cylinder.  The mix is "rodded" (poked up and down an exact number of times with a "rod."  This cylinder is then taken and allowed to cure a certain number of days.  The hardened concrete rod is then placed in a hydraulic "crusher" and pressure is applied until it fractures.  If I remember correctly the specs usually use compressive strength at 28 days but often the cylinder is crushed earlier and the 28 day compressive strength extrapolated.

Concrete can be made to have a compressive strength of as low as 1800 pounds per square inch (sorry for the non-metric numbers) or higher than 5,000 lbs per inch depending upon the need.  But here is the catch:  If a batch is made of let's say 3600 lb/sq inch concrete let's take and divide it into two batches.  Properly made concrete is both a function of the mix (amount of cement/sand/aggregrate) but also a function of water added.   For instance when filling a 2 meter deep foundation here properly made concrete is quite stiff.  Often the person delivering the concrete and/or the contractor emplacing it will "add water" so that it flows into the forms easily.  But there is a huge price to be paid for doing this.

Let's take our two batches:  One batch we leave stiff.  It is hard to emplace because it flows poorly and we take some of this and place it in the cylinder and rod it properly for later testing.  Then the contractor tires of such hard work and instructs the person in the concrete truck to add some water.  *Poof* it becomes easy to work with, it pours nicely and even flows through the forms.  We also take some of this and put it into a cylinder for later testing.

28 days later we place the now hardened and aged concrete into the hydraulic press and crush it.  We find that the stiff mixture crushes at ~6,000 pounds/sq inch, but the mix that had the added water now crushes at 1400 lbs/square inch.  In short it is very, very easy to ruin a batch of concrete.  A properly rebarred (with emplaced steel rods) footing will not crack easly, but the "wetted" mix will often crack spontaneously.

So, knowing the take that most Thai people have on quality (and having lived in a high-rise in Chiang Mai where visible cracks indicated poor quality concrete) I wonder how hard it is to really get properly made concrete delivered and more importantly emplaced into forms.

Note: There are products called super-plasticizers which allow the concrete to flow more readily yet still retain proper compressive strength and are often a good solution to making the contractor who is building the forms and emplacing the concrete happy while still ending up with good concrete.  For those who might be interested search for "concrete slump test" (wikipedia has a good article on it).

In addition to the perimeter wall I'd like her to eventually make, when building a house, since the area is prone to minor flooding, I'd like to build a foundation wall that rises about a meter above the ground level and the build with blocks on top of this.  I do wonder how easy or hard it is to get a quality poured and made foundation.

I hope you do follow-up and let us know what you built, how you built it and your experiences and costs.

The practice of selling dog-meat goes on in the US too, though in the form of canned meat.  I'm not sure if it's illegal or not (in America) but I suspect it is.  Still I know for a fact that in 1987 there was at least one canner who sought dog meat for canning out of New York.  They were investigated by the FDA, not because the meat was "dog" rather because the canner was attributing "medical qualities" to the product.  Dog meat is more to those who eat it than mere "meat" in is purported to increase virility and therefore increase certain aspects of virility.  The concept is anathema to many, but culturally acceptable to others.

Interestingly dog meat, if properly butchered is legal in Canada.  In Ghana it's a delicacy.

Sometimes the dog bites back though.... Xavier Mertz of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition died of Vitamin A poisoning after eating the livers of some of his sled dogs which were butchered.  At least two confirmed cases of rabies have occurred in China transmitted by the consumption of dog meat.

I'd suggest that you go to visajourney.com and find the Ireland sub-forum.   It's an excellent site and full of people who "have done it, and who are in the process of 'doing it' " rather than people who think it's one way or the other...

Braddockrd states above: " You will most probably never be able to read "at sight" because in order to do that you must have learned the vocabulary using Thai script. This is the biggest common mistakes of foreigners learning Thai. Unlike Chinese or Arabic, the tones in Thai are provided by a combination of class of consonants, length or vowels, type of endings, tone rules and tone marks"

I can understand this point of view, but respectfully disagree.  To learn to read I suggest that you download a tiny e-book from 1steasythaialphabet dot com, or easythaialphabet dot com.  It costs $20US and if you're poor, wait a few weeks after the free period expires and you'll likely receive a secondary offer of around $12.99.  Or just write to Damian Cotter, the author and say I sent you--that might work.  (And no, I am neither affiliated, nor do I receive anything ever as any sort of kick-back).

I think this tiny e-book is one of most clever learning aids that I've ever seen and I've said so to the author.

My fiancee has learned English so fast that the urgent necessity for my learning Thai has diminished.  I tried leaning Thai by various methods including computer programs and have decided that in reality the only way to learn it is with a Thai teacher.  An exception to this, I think would be to do the series produced by AUA's J Marvin Brown.  But I'll get back to that a bit later.

Braddockrd is so very correct and to learn to read Thai one must realize that the characters are not Roman characters, like Chinese or Arabic, they are unique.  To be able to read fluently I believe that the best way is to utilize the characters and that by Romanization, one is put at a terrible disadvantage.

For instance  hello = สวัสดี = saw (low) wat (low) dee (high tone)

Usually classes teach by changing the Thai characters with its marks into a Romanized form.  I think this puts the human mind at a distinct disadvantage because the speaker must translate the Thai character to a secondary Romanized character or character set and then create the sound.  It's rather like building a box and when changing the size of the nails, one places the hammer back into a sealed carpenter's box, only to retrieve it again later-- why bother, it's just too difficult.

I was very frustrated with the Thai "alphabet" and though I tried I could never quite "get it," until I did two things.

First I found this tiny book and second, within all versions of Windows one can set your keyboard to type Thai characters properly, including sub-script and super-script marks.

I recommend that you buy this wee book and spend about ten hours until you can sound out words and to this day my fiancee is still sometimes taken aback that I can properly sound out Thai words, including words she does not know the meaning of correctly.  (Note: Though correctly is certainly neither fluid nor fluent).

Spend ten hours with this book and you will be able to read though any Thai would laugh and then would likely admit that ok, you are correct, but you would speak the word with proper tones, but it would still sound rather stilted.

Then, what I suggest, for those who might be interested (or do this first--it does not matter) is download the free Thai Typing Tutor, search for "Thai Typing Tutor" and "Bangkok Library," it is a free download.  Again you can do this first, you do not need to know sounds to transcribe, but I think it is better to know the sounds because as you type your brain will associate the sounds with the characters.  This free program might seem not to work on occasion but it does work, it just takes some effort to figure out what you're doing wrong when something seems not to work.

Then simply start to learn to type these strange marks (or marks that have sounds in your head).  Get to the point where you can type fairly fast and fluidly.  Fluidly typing in Thai, I would guess would be about 20 words per minute, which might translate to about a rate of 40 wpm if you type in English.  Typing in Thai is slower because some characters are modified with tone marks which indicate hi/mid/low tones, and marks that shorten or otherwise affect the sound and yes, the Thai keyboard can type one character in several ways: the main character (letter) or the character plus one or more modifying tonal marks.

At any rate if you get to where you can transcribe (whether you know the sounds associated with the markings or not) at a rate of about 20 words per minute (or about 100 characters/marks per minute) then if you haven't already, use the e-book to be able to "sound out" the words that you type.

Now you have left Romanized "abc's" in the dust--for you they no longer exist!  For you กะซวก becomes what we'd type "ga" (low tone) "suaak" (falling tone) but for you now, there is no translation into and out of English--the sounds simply relate to what we now see are strange marks and these marks tell you the sound to make, and tell you if the sound is short or long, or if the word contains low, mid, high, rising or falling tones.  

If you do this, you are no longer an English speaker translating into Thai, you now have a Thai language mind--and the marks, once strange, tell you, rather straight-forward how to make the sound.  But as correct as you are--you'll still get laughed at, but......you'll still be understood!

Now, assuming that you know the tones and their rules by spending about 10-20 hours with the e-book; and you have now learned to transcribe Thai at a fairly fast rate (note: a fast rate forces the brain to actually create neural connections whereby the connection to the sound by the character with its mark(s) = "a sound;" to type too slow and your lazy brain will attempt to translate in and out of Romanized translation--the trick is to force the brain to NOT translate!).  Now you can properly read and make correct sounds, albeit without much smoothness, fluidity or style.

If you wish to go farther I would suggest then getting AUA Language Center's Thai Course: Reading and Writing by J Marvin Brown.  There are two books one is Reading and the 2nd is Writing.  You can buy these books (I think) by searching using the following terms: "J Marvin Brown + Thai Course + Cornell University"  (You are looking for Cornell University Press) but the google search will usually find one of the books and lead you there.

Do NOT buy one of J Marvin Brown's books from Amazon or any other bookseller UNLESS you have a guarantee that the binding is flexible.  These books were printed back in the '60's and most from booksellers other than AUA or Cornell will be that old, even if "new."  From my experience the glue has lost its flexability and you will end up with hundreds of loose pages.

By the way, J Marvin Brown has an entire set of books to learn Thai AND accompanying excellent (unfortunately) cassette recordings.  I do not think that AUA or Cornell has plans to turn this excellent set of sound recordings into a CD/DVD or MP3's but you can get the entire set through interlibrary loan, and there are inexpensive (~$25) devices that allow you to play each cassette, and output the sound to an MP3.  Here in the US the store Staples has such a device.

I do not believe that you can become a competent Thai speaker without a Thai teacher just by using this suggested methodology, but if you use this methodology I suspect that given a Thai teacher, you will be able to, since you now have a competent foundation, learn extremely quickly once you have a competent teacher to teach you the nuances which are so important.

Note: Any 'ol Thai person does not a good Thai teacher make!  Teaching a language is a skill and only those who really have made a good effort in learning to teach a language will excel at teaching it.

Oh, by the way, AUA has several locations in Thailand at Chiang Mai, and at Bkk and perhaps others--you can buy these books from them there too though I do not think that they have the cassettes.