Evil Penevil

"Pushing" is a joke form often used in the U.S. in reference to people who not the english so good write. Evil

Another update from a meal a couple of days ago at The Balcony. My friend ordered a green salad that he and his companion split. He said the ingredients were fresh, but there could have been more tomato slices. The only option for dressing was oil and vinegar, but he was happy it came without dressing so he could add it himself. I had one of my personal favorites - squid with salted eggs. The flavor was very balanced between the saltiness of the eggs and the sweetness of the vegetables, but the dish would have benefited from a few moe pieces of squid. My fried chicken drumsticks were good and value for money at 90 baht for six. It doesn't come within a light year of the fried chicken Skeeter serves, but for Thai-style fried chicken, it was fine. My friend had the salmon steak again. This time is made sure he got French fries, but it still came with a boat of gravy. His companion ordered a fried fish which came with a spicy side salad. All three of us at our table were pleased with the food we got. However, another BM who was eating in The Balcony at the same time as us wasn't at all happy with the T-bone steak he ordered. He had wanted the same tenderloin steak as in the pic I posted earlier, but was told they were out of it and went with the T-bone instead. A bad decision, it appears. I also noticed he had to wait a long time for it and his companion's Thai meal arrived much sooner. It seems it's not all sunbeams and bunnies at The Balcony. The food I've made as well as that ordered by those with me has been good and I have no problems going back yet again for either Thai or farang food. But I'll definitely steer clear of the T-bone steak. I should also note that The Balcony looked busy for the first time since I began eating there. I counted about 12 other guests in addition to our party of three. Evil

I know. I was just pushing someone's leg, but not yours. Evil

It's a recent problem with the topic history not showing and I've had the signature for several months prior to that without any hassle. But if it helps, I'm more than happy to go back to the Monger Card sig. Evil

Tried that, but will try again. Evil

I thought that might be the case, too. As I understand it, the "Major Participant" group includes BMs who upload a lot of photos and have exhausted the allowance most member have. But I ran out of space for photos several weeks ago and MM fixed that the next day via the "Major Participant" group. The problem with not seeing the topic history began only two days ago. Evil

Say hi back and I'll give you teddy bears to take to them next time. Evil

Yup. It's just the "Go to top" button. Evil

The mystery deepens. I can see the topic history when I am not logged in: But this is what I get when I log in: The same pattern (logged in, can't see; not logged in, can see) occurs across multiple browsers and platforms on my laptop, desktop and in Internet cafes. As I said earlier, there have been brief spells in the past when one board feature or the other wouldn't work for a few days, but usually it didn't affect the computers in the Internet cafes. I'll see what happens, Evil

I tried the seafood BBQ buffet at the Hotel Mercure. It's a once a week event, only on Saturday nights. It cost 600 baht per person for an extensive buffet of seafood and non-seafood items. It's very pleasant to sit by the pool and dine on a cool night. The seafood part included grilled-to-order river prawns, rock lobtsers and crabs as well as raw oysters, steamed mussels, Swedish-style cured salmon (gravlax), "seafood salads and fish dishes. There plenty of other main dishes besides seafood, including beef, chicken and baked ham; sides with potatoes and pasta in several forms; about 10 different Thai dishes and three or four different soups. There was an extensive appetizer station with prepared salads and "make-it-yourself" ingredients and antipasto, cheeses and breads. The buffet also featured farang-style desserts and a lot of fresh fruit. It was definitely a seafood-lover's paradise. I can't eat much shellfish because my system doesn't tolerate it well but my companion was hugely pleased she could eat as many oysters as she wanted, same-same with crab and river prawns. However her efforts were modest compared to some people I saw there who ate oysters by the dozen. One guy loaded a plate with more than half of the slices of gravlax on the serving tray. He took the portion marked by the green arrow on the tray. This happened just a few minutes after the buffet opened. The positive thing was the staff kept re-filling the trays and bowls of the popular items. They didn't run out of anything, at least while we were there. We timed our arrival for the start of the buffet at 6.30 pm, which was a good thing. We got the pick of the dishes while they were still fresh and relatively unmangled. At about 7.30 pm two bus loads of Chinese tourists arrived and swept over the buffet like a swarm of army ants, devouring everything in sight. We were already on dessert by then so it didn't matter. But I sure wouldn't want to have walked in after them. A couple of the side dishes- baked marcaroni and the potato salad- were delicious, as was the baked ham. The spare ribs were good but the beef and chicken so-so. The Thai food was very good, too. Since I don't eat that much seafood, I had a lot of small portions of the other offerings. I plan on trying the Mercure's "ordinary" BBQ on Friday night in hopes the side dishes hold the same quality as on Saturday. I would definitely return to the seafood buffet with a Thai lady who enjoys seafood but it doesn't make much sense for me to go on my own. Drinks were modrately priced for a hotel with a bottle of SIngha 80 baht. The Mercure is located on Soi 15 between Soi Bukhao and 2nd Road, a stone's throw from the backside of the Avenue Mall and next door to the Pattaya Bay Resort. Evil

I don't have the "This topic has been visited by ..." on any browser. No new Add-Ons. Strange. I'll see if it comes back in a day or two. Such things have happened before. Evil

I don't see a collapse option (maybe I'm going blind). Evil

Checked it out on both Chrome and Firefox on my laptop running Windows 8. Will try Explorer. EDIT IN: Same-same on Explorer as Chrome and Firefox. I'll try later on my desktop which runs on XP. This is what it looks like for me now at the bottom of the Agogos News topic which had been viewed by several hundred BMs. Evil

Until a few days ago, there used to be a list at the bottom of each topic with the names of the BMs who had read a thread. It looked something like this: Now all you see at the bottom of the page for every topic are the names of the people reading it in real time, not the names of those who have read it. Is there a reason for the change? I found it very useful to know who had read a particular topic. Evil

Another good meal at Pattayanis Greek Taverna. A friend of mine from NYC and I had dinner there. Because the Greek salad (250 baht) was such a large portion, we split one between the two of us. My friend figured that at least four fully ripe tomatoes had gone into the salad. He was also very impressed by the feta cheese. We both had the lamb mixed grill (350 baht), which was also a substantial portion. You can order various combinations, but I had the lamb chop, beef meatballs (keftedes) and chicken souvlaki. It came with the yogurt, cucumber and garlic dip tzatziki that goes well with grilled meat. There was more salad minus the feta and French fries as well. It was all very tasty and we struggled to clear our plates. I'm glad we lost that struggle (the French fries and salad were mostly uneaten on my plate) because Yanis offered us a complementary slice of baklava and cup of Greek coffee at the end of the meal. The baklava was absolutely delicious and the Greek coffee went down with it nicely. Yanis makes the baklava himself and it's proper Greek style, with walnuts and almonds inside the layers of phyllo (or filo) and not too heavy a dose of syrup. The Lebanse and Middle Eastern-type baklava is often filled with pistachio nuts and swimming in syrup, a much sweeter and stickier pastry. These are signs at the corner of Soi Bukhao and Soi 21 that point to Pattayanis:

Booze is indeed cheap in the U.S. There are still places in mid-town Manhattan with once- or twice-a-week special nights with (brewed-through-a-horse domestic) beer sold at $1.00 a bottle. Many, many bars in NYC and the metro area have happy hours with beer at $3.00 or less. I took the pics below last summer. Turtle Bay is located near the corner of 2nd Ave and 51st St, a prime location. Evil

Today is: It's a classic summertime dessert, simple but elegant. Nothing better than ripe raspberries and whipped or fresh cream. And raspberry is the only word in the English language with the consonants s, p and b in consecutive order. And there is a type of daylily named raspberries in cream: I also noticed that August 1 was: But it isn't really a raspberry cream pie in the above photo. It's some sort of frozen dessert; probably good, but not a pie. This is what raspberry cream pies look like: Evil

This one is mainly for North American members: Happy National Root Beer Float Day! Root beer is a flavor seldom found outside Canada and the U.S. Even there, it accounts for only 2-3% of the soda pop market. ... But both root beer and the root beer float have a long history, with the forerunner of today's root beer first brewed by Native Americans from the roots of the sassafras tree. For several centuries, tea or beer brewed from sassafras root was seen as a medicinal drink. When commercial production of root beer began in 1876, it, like Coca Cola, was touted as a tonic. Ice cream was added to give appeal to a broader set of consumers. ... The A & W Root Beer Co. was the first true franchise operation in the U.S. Franchising began in the mid-1920s and by 1933, th owners had 170 outlets across the U.S. There's another way to enjoy a root beer float. There are cocktails that use root beer liqueur or schnapps. ... There's also a Black Cow #2 that uses Kahlua. Evil

A friend and I had dinner at The Balcony last night shortly after 7 p.m. I finally got around to trying the beef and my friend ordered salmon steak. Both of us were happy with our meals and they were value for money. I'm happy to report that there were several other guests as well; previously, I had been the lone diner except for whatever companion(s) I brought with me. We started off with very fruity cocktails called Thai Parynya for 129 baht. I was struck by the similarity to "paranoia," but apparently Paranya is a Thai male name. The drink was full of exotic fruits and the alcohol kick came from Sang Som, which is a type of rum despite everyone calling it Thai whiskey. I found it refreshing and easy to drink. I had what was called on the menu "Tenderloin beef (Australia)." I was dubious of getting real Australian beef for 279 baht, but I was surprised by how good it was. The tenderloin comes with French fries but I asked for mashed potatoes instead. The vegetables - a couple of spears of broccoli, two carrot wedges and snap peas - weren't boiled to death (surprise! surprise!) and actually had a lot of flavor. The mashed potatoes were good, too. The gravy didn't taste bad, but it was out of the package. That didn't bother me, as I don't put gravy on tasty beef. The meat was good, very tender and cooked how I'd asked for it - medium rare. The seared surface had a nice charcoal taste to it. However, it would have been better if the grill had been hotter. The steak didn't need t be grilled longer, just at a higher temperature. My friend ordered the salmon steak and was well pleased with the fish. But I thought it bizarre he got the same sort of plating as I did. Beef gravy with fish? Come on. now. But since the gravy was mostly in a boat - just a little had been drizzled over the potatoes and veggies - he didn't care, either. He'd rather have had French fries, but for some reason, they gave him mashed potatoes. A service miss, but he decided not to argue about it and thought the mashed potatoes were good. His salmon steak cost 229 baht. Bottom line: The Balcony continues to serve very good food at reasonable prices. I;ll be back again and my friend said he would, too. Evil

Happy National Oyster Day! I found this tidbit of information on a Web site devoted to this important food holiday. Anything about Casanova has a natural connection to Pattaya: I don't eat raw oysters in Thailand, but just about every Thai girl I have met loves them, but only when served Thai style. And oysters seem to be cheaper in the U.S. compared with Thailand. .. And whether or not you actually celebrate National Oyster Day, remember, Pattaya, if not the world, is your oyster. Evil