Press Release August 6, 2006

Pattaya Expats Club (PEC) - Est. 2001

Founder of the ‘Association of Thailand Expats Clubs’.

Email From David Dallimer, Press Officer, Pattaya.

daviddallimer@hotmail.com Tel. Mobile 07 131 1008

Our Web-Site is well worth a visit and receives and average

Of 18,000 hits a day, Go Here: www.Pattayaexpatsclub.com

PRESS RELEASE – August 6th 2006

The Pattaya Expats Club, was founded by our Board Member Pete Mills in 2001, and our web master continuously since then. He can be reached by email on info@pattayaexpatsclub.com was the only expats weekly advice forum in town for its first couple of years service to our community – check the local press archives, you won’t find any other back then !

You’ll see us listed these days as Founder of ATEC, the ‘Association of Thailand Expats Clubs’ as we have helped in the formation of a number of clubs around Thailand. We had our fifth year anniversary in March attended by Pete Mills who is still our webmaster. We’d like to send our congratulations this week to Pete, marooned in California at present, and to one of our sister clubs, The Chiang-Mai Expats Club (CEC) whose new website is just recently launched.

The Venue for our Meetings every Sunday

Why not come along next Sunday morning 10:30am, Breakfast, 11:30am program start; to the Grand Sole Hotel (in the Theppraya Room, up on the Mezzanine level), 370 Pattaya 2nd Road (North), near the Pattaya Mail Office. Hotel tel: 038427555 Fax: 038427550.Located halfway way between TOPS supermarket & BIG-C supermarket - bring a friend. Go to:

http://www.grandsolepattaya.com/location.htm

Membership Cost

Every Sunday from 10:30am you can get PEC Club memberships at only 300 Baht expiring 31 Dec 2007 or 600 Baht for Life Membership. (Bring two very small 'visa' photos and your card is laminated and ready at the same meeting.) Display tables have in-depth information from regular expert contributors in their field. Our Microphone announcement at 11.10am confirms who is available to give advice before or during the meeting.

Weekly Admission Cost

Our Meeting Entry cost, paid at the friendly admission table, pictured on the right, is now set by the Hotel at 80 Baht (Members), 100 Baht (Visitors) per person. The entry tickets also include a voucher for a free breakfast, American or Thai food. Tickets are sold

at the door from 10:30am when hall doors open for seating. The table plan is usually in friendly format tables for eight or ten – so please allow the ‘gaps’

at your table to be filled by new arrivals.

Golf Club of Pattaya Expats Club (PEC)

The PEC Golf Club offers free tuition to members and also stage a Monthly Golf Tournament. For Information on future PEC Golf events is available from Pattaya People Office, Soi Day Night, or the ‘Globetrotter’, just off Soi 7, or of course at PEC Club meetings every Sunday. Alternatively, contact Ossi Viljanen on 018519620, (ossigolf@yahoo.com).

New Time: The very popular Sunday Golf Driving Practice (with free tuition from Ossi Viljanen for PEC members) now runs from 8:30am to 9:30am each Sunday at the usual location on Sukhumvit Road just across from Central Pattaya Road – Pride Driving Range. This is to allow members to attend the PEC new Meeting time on Sundays at 10:30am (program start 11:30). High Handicap players welcome!

Our Sunday Meeting Agenda

10:30 Door Open Breakfast is served

11:10 Announcements

11:30 Meeting Opened by the Meeting Manager.

11:40 Brian Maxey with News & Views, Jokes Too!

12:00 Feature Speaker is handed the floor.

13:00 PEC’s famous ‘Open Forum’ led by Brian Maxey.

14:00 The Member’s Lucky Prize Draw

Open Microphone Forum

Brian Maxey is our formidable M.C. and always in his dual role of MC and our open forum moderator. Members on the floor are keen participants with questions and answers about nearly everything for living safely and legally in Pattaya.

Members Weekly Lucky Prize Draw

Lucky Draw prizes are of dinners for two at fine restaurants around the city, another great reason to be a member and to come into the Pattaya Expats Club on Sundays at 10:30am for breakfast or just for the meeting at 1130 am at The Grand Sole Hotel, 2nd Rd. We are indebted to the contributors tat donate these prizes.

Information Point Every week our local business information Display annex always has a large selection of leaflets and publications from hundreds of member to member services available in Pattaya. This service is open until the end of the meeting, so members have plenty of time to browse and take-away information of interest to them.

Members Preferences – Speakers & Entertainment

Please tell us what subjects you wish to be presented to you in future meetings by suggesting a competent speaker. There are usually a few ‘Short Notice’ vacancies for ‘Keynote speakers’. Contact Richard Ravensdale our current ‘Feature Speaker’ Manager. Give him your suggestions and let him arrange the details. Please do not fix dates in advance. Contact: Richard Ravensdale 04 135 7010 pecrichard@yahoo.co.uk

Consular Contacts in Pattaya

Barry Kenyon is the British Embassy local representative for emergencies. His contact is 017827363. Barry can confirm your UK pension for Immigration purposes if you can show proof.

Gary Hacker is the US Embassy local representative for emergencies. His contact is 098030388.


Our feature speaker on Sunday 6th August 2006 was

Mrs. Gillian Thom; who is President of Pattaya International Ladies Club.

Our eloquent main speaker this Sunday is Gillian Thom, who is the current President of the Pattaya International Ladies Club. She was born in Calcutta, India in 1957. She worked as a tour guide ending up in Dubai. She and husband Andy emigrated to New Zealand, but now on a Thailand posting. Her theme to the PEC will be the social and welfare aims of PILC, her recent appointment as president, monthly get-togethers, and support network for newcomers, sports and activities clubs and the many hands-on projects undertaken in Pattaya & Rayong areas.

Gillian’s presentation focused upon the founding and development of the Pattaya International Ladies Club from it’s beginning in 1990. The knub of her particular passion for their work in the 21st century is the sponsoring of children in schools and orphanages in Pattaya using realistically sized projects to provide an enjoyable educational experience developing the children’s interest and vocational skills at important life support activities such as cooking.

Gillian was recently interviewed by William Bryan, editor of Pattaya People Weekly, who kindly provided these quotes from his feature article. “A large part of what makes an area unique is the personalities that you find there. One such person who’s given not only personality to our town but considerable time and effort is Gillian Thom. It’s what she has done, where she has been. Life began for Gillian, July 6th 1957 in the city of Calcutta, India. Like those well-traveled busy streets, so goes her life to this day.

The comprehensive school that she was sent to at age 11 in London, soccer superstar, David Beckham would attend the same school, adding just a hint more intrigue. She thrived on the road less traveled, and after school became a tour guide to places like Spain, Greece and Switzerland. At twenty, she hit pay-dirt and hooked-up with the company Kuoni, which specialised in packaged tours. It would provide her with her first experience to Thailand and Pattaya at age 23. “I remember coming to Thailand (the first time) and thinking ‘I’m home.’”

She said that Thailand bared such similarities to her childhood home of Calcutta that it allowed her to feel at ease when others flinched at the some of the vast cultural differences from the west. She came here during Pattaya’s genesis. She met Father Ray, who had just started at the Pattaya Orphanage, and she recalls when there was only one road – Beach Road. But while the shores and comforts of Thailand soothed her childhood memories, the traveler’s heart is a wandering one.

Typical of her character, she not only lived in a castle, [in Scotland] she even began selling them. But Scottish life wasn’t enough for Thom, and she eventually took a position in the Jebel Ali Hotel in Dubai. Dubai would be the place that Thom’s heart was won by an English oil and gas engineer named Andy. In 1999, the two married in New Zealand because “we both just really wanted to visit there…I told Andy that he never took me anywhere,” she said, “he immediately went and got my passport and showed me that in two years we’d been to 13 different countries.”

A year after their move to New Zealand, Andy was called by Rayong oil and gas company and offered a 4 year contract. It’s been two years since, and Gillian being Gillian has adapted to her move by becoming the Pattaya International Ladies Club’s newest President.

Mrs. Thom felt her previous experience in speaking to groups and juggling / coordinating multiple events would be beneficial to the group. In February of this year, she took the position. The adventurer’s spirit is never settled.

Any women interested in contacting or joining the PILC can do so with the following: President Gillian Thom at 0-1762-6003, email: gillianthom@csloxinfo.com.” - William Bryan.

Steve Dickens

Steve Dickens of Liberty Computers on Yorkshire day and Urgent and topical news on major Computer Viruses Steve Dickens of Liberty Computers (and Yorkshire) will be with us on what is ‘Yorkshire Day’ in UK with a dual purpose of celebrating this, and also to give some urgent advice on major computer viruses.

Steve took us though the different alert levels that indicate how much risk there is to IT systems from viruses and ’Trojan Horse’ infection that can redirect a users emails to everyone email address in his address book. Steve went on to explain that although there had been elevated risk reported recently there is no need undue concern because all of the most popular anti-virus packages, including but not limited Norton and McAfee have already the alert level.

Steve continued his presentation with a power-point slide show of scenes of the Yorkshire Dales in England. This slide had been preceded by providing all of the members present with a ‘Yorkshire Pudding’ with onion gravy, a traditional complement to a ‘Roast Dinner’ back home in Yorkshire. And so it was that Steve shared his celebration of ‘Yorkshire Day’ with the members.

Lucky Draw

Our Lucky Draw prizes were of dinners for two at the Premiership and other fine restaurants around the city, such as Jameson’s and The Globetrotter, another great reason to be a member and to come into the Pattaya Expats Club next Sunday 1130 am at The Grand Sole Hotel, 2nd Rd.

JR Travel, Jomtien…

For one week only we added a special prize to our Lucky Draw when we announce a free tour to Koh Samet to be won, donated by the popular Jomtien travel agency JR Travel. It is being donated in honour of Her Majesty the Queen’s Birthday.

Meeting Programme for Sunday 13 August 2006.

This week our M.C. is Richard Ravensdale, Vice President. Richard will also lead our Open Microphone Forum. Please come this Sunday morning, at 2nd Rd’s Grand Sole Hotel and participate with questions and answers about nearly everything for living safely and legally in Pattaya!

This week first of a new regular feature on ‘Do’s and Don’ts in Thailand’ hosted by Khun Sombat.

Feature speaker Khun Tong of SOQI hot spa, on a dramatic weight-loss system with a clubhouse demonstration.

News of several needy Banglamung school sponsorships to be awarded by PEC News of a celebrity birthday party you can attend with Pattaya Thai VIPs and movie stars MC is Richard Ravensdale and our new Meeting Manager - Paul Moore

Pattaya Motorcycle Taxi driver and PEC’s own eastern psychologist Khun Sombat is back on stage this week with another episode of both serious and amusing advice for expats in understanding Thai thinking, where east meets west, in both domestic harmony and friction and the cultural ‘head-on’ collision’s are not all road traffic accidents. This week we have asked him to start the first of a regular feature, suggested by our Club President, on advice with the ‘Do’s & Don’ts in Thailand’.

Main feature this week by popular request of expats wanting to shed a few Pounds (in weight) is a presentation of SOQI hot spa a company with a local branch on 2nd Rd, down toward Pattaya Tai from the Marriott Resort. Khun Tong the branch manager, from the Philippines, will give a power-point slide show and demonstrate the ‘Chi’ machine, with willing victims in the audience. When I went to SOQI to book this speaker, carrying a magazine advert supplied by club member ‘Big Ken’ which claimed a loss of 1 to 3 inches off your waistline after the first treatment – I didn’t expect it to happen to me but it did. Me and an American club member were invited to try it out. A rather painful massage later, pummeling liver and kidneys, basted with ginger cream and wrapped in cling film I went under the grill…you’ll have to come Sunday to hear the rest of my story. (But I did lose an inch!).

Khun Tong will describe the Hot House, a product which arches over the body transmitting ‘far infrared rays’ – FIR, the most beneficial rays produced by the sun, thermal heating the target area of treatment. It increases blood and lymphatic flow and removes toxins, says the literature, via vibrations.

The Chi machine which we hope to have onstage gives a passive therapeutic massage – developed by Dr Shizuo Inoue, president of Japan Oxygen Foundation, after 38 years of research. The machine is a foot rest which slowly jiggles the feet, and so moves body organs to and fro sideways. The exercise it provides in 15 minutes use is said to be equivalent to the oxygenation the body gets from a brisk 90 minute walk. The Chi machine is said to provide steady weight correction, more energy, restful sleep, balances the spine, improves immune system etc.

So, a fascinating topic for anyone concerned with their weight and good health.

Charity activity and Events

We will have Club News of education scholarships to be awarded with PEC charity funds to needy Banglamung school children and also...how you can join some Thai movie stars at a celebrity birthday party organised by a former City Council member. Our club members have been invited to mix with high ranking Thai's at a 12 rai estate, which has 'five a side' football pitches and so there will be a team competition featuring England, France, Germany and Ireland, plus a show match with Pattaya VIPs vs. Thai movie stars. Plenty of food and beverages and Guest of Honour will be the City Mayor. Your invite details will be given this Sunday.

Lucky Draw

We also have Lucky Draw prizes of dinners for two at the Premiership and other fine restaurants around the city, such as Jameson’s and The Globetrotter, another great reason to be a member and to come into the Pattaya Expats Club this Sunday 1130 am at The Grand Sole Hotel, 2nd Rd. For one week only we add a special prize to our Lucky Draw when we announce a free tour to Koh Samet to be won, donated by the popular Jomtien travel agency JR Travel. It is being donated in honour of Her Majesty the Queen’s Birthday.

Come Early and Make New Friends

We will have our late-morning start time of speakers programme from 1130 am, with the optional brunch from about 1030am till after 12 noon. The meeting entry cost is 80 Baht and for non-members 100 Baht. For that cost we enjoy the excellent technical presentation facilities of the Grand Sole Hotel conference room.

Get advice

Our foyer exhibition displays, throughout the meeting period from 1030 are worth a visit for practical advice from experts. In the club’s greeting, programme and memberships area you can get Club memberships at only 300 Baht expiring 31 Dec 2007 or 600 Baht for Life Membership. (Bring two very small 'visa' photos and your card is laminated and ready at the same meeting.)

Gather Information

Display tables have in-depth information from regular expert contributors in their field. Our Microphone announcement at 11.10am confirms who is available to consult free of charge. For example The Pattaya International Hospital table usually includes regular FREE testing of blood groups, blood sugar, blood pressure and lung function to help you stay healthy. Advice on Insurance policies is available from AA Insurance – including the club's own low cost 'group' health policy, now in its second year - as well as a range of Insurances such as property, house contents and motor cover are available.

Access Local Business Info

Plus, our large take-away information point with leaflets and publications from hundreds of member to member services available in Pattaya is open until the end of the meeting.

Our club is affordable to everyone

Our Meeting Entry cost, now set by the Hotel at 80 Baht, per ticket from 1030 am when hall doors open for seating. The table plan is usually in friendly format with tables for eight or ten people – so please allow the ‘gaps’ to be filled by new arrivals at your table.

Pattaya Expats Club est. 2001 www.pattayaexpatsclub.com

Founder of the ‘Association of Thailand Expats Clubs’

From David Dallimer. Press Officer Tel. Mobile 071 131 1008.