Mixed Thoughts and Experiences

I guess I’ll start this entry off with an explanation of the seemingly random picture of a middle aged women in a jewelry shop. The woman in the picture is my mom and after 5 years of living here in Thailand, she finally made it out to visit me.

This being her first time here, I obviously wanted to show her (and my 72 year old aunt) the best (most wholesome) side of Thailand that I possibly could. When my mom was planning the details of the trip, she would send me hotel names that she was finding online and asking for my input.

I would say that about 80% of the hotels she sent me for review were right around the seedy Sukhumvit area. Obviously I talked her out of those options as walking by market stalls at the side of the road displaying Viagra, porn and giant dildos probably wouldn’t have given her a good impression of the city that her son has chosen to live in.

Instead, I convinced her to stay at “the Aetas” Lumpini, which was in a much better area. The rooms turned out to be awesome there and it was directly across the street from the stadium; although I never got around to taking them to watch the fights.

Back to the picture in the jewelry shop. I had 2 weeks with them and we had spent time in Bangkok, Phuket and Chiang Mai. It was the last full day and up until this point, I had made sure that they hadn’t been exposed to anything seedy. My mom wanted to exchange a bracelet for a friend of hers so we went to Chinatown.

Last day in Thailand; a quick exchange of a bracelet in an area known strictly for its shopping – what could go wrong? Well, have a close look at the picture above and you’ll see that the shirt the Thai girl is wearing says “stop teen pregnant .. take it in the ass”. When I saw it I just had to laugh and snap a quick picture.

Anyway, it’s obviously been a long time since I lasted posted an update so this entry will be mixed up with a lot of different topics. I guess I’ll start off with something that’s been taking up a lot of my time lately..

My Awakening (Precious Metals, Currency Creation, Illuminati etc.)

One of the guys I was training with a few months ago started telling me about investing in precious metals. At the time, I sort of received his advice with about 30% of my attention as I was hitting the heavy bag during the discussion. A few days later, I was on Youtube and typed in something about gold investment.

Actually, I think the first thing I searched for was the term “Joe Rogan Gold” because Rogan is awesome and I wanted his opinion on it.. apparently he’s not a fan. I’m glad I didn’t stop my research with that though. As I watched more videos and read more books, I realized what a Ponzi scheme our entire monetary system is.

Banks don’t have the paper currency on hand to back up the deposits (fractional reserve banking) and the paper “fiat” currency we use isn’t backed by anything tangible and can basically be created out of nothing; and in unlimited amounts. The currency we use is entirely debt based, which only creates the illusion of real wealth. Every dollar in existence is represents someones debt plus interest tacked onto it.

Once you start researching this stuff, it becomes pretty obvious that current monetary system is bound to collapse at some point (perhaps in the near future). In fact, every single “fiat” currency system throughout history has eventually collapsed. Conversely, the monetary precious metals (gold and silver) have always maintained their value.

Before I made my first big silver purchase, I considered the following question..

“If you had to bury your life savings and come back to it in 20 years, would you be better off storing it in gold/silver or the current paper currency?”

When it’s put like that, the answer is pretty obvious. Gold and silver have always been “money” and up until 1971, when Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard, the paper currency we used for transactions was basically just receipts for stored gold. Now it’s like we’re just using the receipts but there’s nothing actually being stored for us.

Instead of gold, the US dollar has been backed by the military and the fact that other countries have had to use it when conducting international trade. Meaning, if China buys oil from Iran, the transaction would be carried out in US dollars – which in turn brings demand and value to the dollar. This is changing though as China and India have been buying oil from Iran using gold.

China has also been using their US dollar currency reserves to buy up all sorts of commodities and they’ve been importing gold in record quantities. They’ve been converting their gold into 1kg bars as well, which has lead a lot of speculators to believe they are going to back the their currency, the Yuan, with gold and have it replace the US dollar as the world reserve.

The more you research this stuff though, the deeper it gets. The federal reserve central bank for example is NOT part of the government. It’s owned by international bankers who have funded both sides of every war. The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Warburg families; you start reading about this stuff and everything starts to make sense.

Being Canadian, I felt it particularly frustrating to learn that we’re paying 160 million dollars per day towards our national debt when we have it in our rights to get our currency interest free from the Bank of Canada.

From reading about the control of the currencies, I got into learning about the Illuminati conspiracies, the plans for a new world order/one world government etc. For some of you, this might be something you already know about but it was a huge eye opener to me. Anyway, I could go on and on about this topic as I’ve spent so much time researching it but instead I’ll just give you guys some resources to check out in case you want to learn more..

About the Federal Reserve: Book / Lecture / Cartoon
Canadian Financial System (made by teenagers): Video
Illuminati: Video
Interesting Videos by a guy named “Chris Duane”: Playlist 1 / Playlist 2
Guide to Investing in Gold & Silver: Video

I think it’s a good time to learn about this stuff because the federal reserve recently announced a third round of what they call “quantitative easing”. They will be injecting 50 billion dollars per month into the US economy .. indefinitely.

If you have a big savings account, this effects you because the excess currency will dilute the value of your existing dollars. Even if you don’t have a lot in savings, you’ll still be effected because your daily expenditures will rise due to inflation.

In Thailand, there are gold shops all over the place. The Thai people really seem to understand the importance of storing their wealth in hard assets as a means to hedge against inflation. I think they learned the hard way though because Thailand went through an inflationary currency crisis back in 1997.

Training Update

As I mentioned in my last entry, I’ve moved back to Bangkok and this time I’ve improved my living situation. Whenever I’ve lived in Bangkok before, I was always in the outskirts of the city and while getting around was easy enough, as metered taxi’s are cheap here, it was very time consuming because I had to deal with the traffic.

This time, I found a nice 1 bedroom condo about 50 meters from the subway station. Having easy access to transportation means I have a lot of options for training. I have Watcharachai gym within walking distance, which is great, but lately, I’ve been going to Silom to train at “Fighting Spirit Gym“.

I like the laid back vibe there and the weights they have there are a huge bonus. I’m not big on gyms where everyone gets in a circle and stretches together etc. I much prefer to do my own warm ups, hit the bag and then jump on pads when I’m ready. Fighting Spirit definitely lets you do that and they give you a full 5 rounds of pad work (4 minute rounds) which is nice. The last couple times I went I even got called into the ring for a bonus round focusing on leg kicks.

The gym is owned by an Australian guy named Dan. Dan is MASSIVE, but he’s a nice guy and he’s quite a good trainer himself (just try to avoid being kicked by him .. not fun!). I’d definitely recommend stopping by the gym if you’re in Bangkok. It’s easily accessible by both the sky train and the subway (Silom area).

I also finally started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu the other night at Bangkok BJJ. It was my first time wearing a GI; though I’m not too sure what I think of it yet. I noticed that wearing the GI really slowed the pace down and getting repeatedly strangled with my jacket collar was a new, “interesting” experience. I’ll definitely stick with it though.

Anyway, this has gotten pretty long (due to my rambling about the monetary system) so I’ll cut it off here. I’ll most likely get back into updating this site more often so my upcoming posts should have a bit more structure and relevancy to them. I also did some training at KC Muay Thai and Phuket Top Team so I’ll write about that in my upcoming entries.