Wide Format Printer Technician

Aloha All,

My name is Mike Comstock and I am currently living on Koh Samui.

I am originally from Rhode Island and a college graduate with 35  years in the graphics industry.

I have lived in Rhode Island, California, and Hawaii with my current residence being on Maui, in Hawaii.

I love Thailand though, and it is time for me to move here to Koh Samui now permanently.

I am in the process of getting my retirement visa and plan on spending the rest of my days here in Thailand.

I could just retire, but my personality is such that I will probably work until the day after I die.

I am currently looking for employment opportunities as a technical specialist in the wide format printer industry here in Thailand.  I have made some contacts but I need to find more opportunities for work.

I am open to other professions and/or opportunities as well.

I am a fast learner and can do anything I set my mind to.

Any suggestions or opportunities regarding employment, including online at home positions, would be greatly appreciated.

Mahalo,

Mike

I don't know if you have any experience teaching computer, IT, computer graphics, etc. There are lots of jobs asking for teachers in computers and IT. Most of them just need you to be a college grad in a field similar to what you want to teach. I'm a Quantitative Business grad with emphasis in statistical uses in business, but I have taught all things like math, statistics, science, social, geography, English, health, even computers for God's sake! I hated teaching computers the most, but they really need teachers to teach that in English at many English programs so they even wanted me to do it even though I'm not qualified and hated doing it. If you are qualified and like to do it, you would find a job. Right now, the positions they are advertising for the most are kindergarten (because they are open since covid-19 doesn't really affect kids that young) and computers (because not many English speaking teachers are good at teaching it, me included).

Aloha and thank you for responding!

I have some teaching experience but I am not an accredited teacher.

I am open to doing almost anything as long as it pays OK and doesn't take all my time and energy to do it.

My degree is in Business Communication and teaching falls within that realm easily.

Ideally, I would like contract work a couple of times a week fixing wide format printers but I don't even know where to start to look for that here.

I enjoy fixing things and helping people with their businesses and I have found that most business owners are will to pay well for my expertise.

I am also an entrepreneur and enjoy trying new things.

If you could point me in the right direction for any of these positions, I would really appreciate it.

Mahalo,

Mike

For your information having a retirement visa does not allow you to work.  If immigration were to catch you working you might face serious problems.

Thank you for your advice.  I have been looking into ways around that and found that while I cannot technically work myself, I can own a company that has employees who work for me.  It is my understanding that the company can distribute profits to its shareholders at anytime, so this my be the route I have to go.

Make sure you have majority ownership in the company with 2 or more other Thai partners. Like a 40-30-30 split. Since over half of the company must be owned by Thais it is good to have the Thai 51% split between as many of them as possible. We had a guy on these forums who put up 40% of the capital, with 2 other Thai partners each with 30% of the investment. However, since he was abroad and he let the Thai partners do the paperwork it ended up that 1 partner got 98% of the ownership with each of his kids with 1% each. He still thought he had 40% controlling say, but he actually had none. The 40% of the investment turned out to a gift on his part (unwilling gift) and he had no ownership at all. Be careful of cases like this. I see them all the time on these forums.

Also, it would be hard to find jobs in Thailand that Thais can do. The government tries to stop it. I would assume fixing printers falls into that category.

Although, it's illegal to work on a retirement visa, many do anyways. Not sure how strict they enforce that law, but they didn't while I was doing it. But things may have gotten stricter now. You should look into this with some good legal advice.