Author: Justin

Khon Kaen Passport Office

We spent this morning getting Max and Mina’s Thai passports. The only reason this is remarkable is that the passport office, located at city hall in Khon Kaen was the most clean and efficient government office I have seen in a long time. There was ample staff, and they were friendly and helpful. The offices were well-equipped and modern, and they completely obliterate the usual Thai bureaucratic need for duplicate signed copies and other such nonsense – it’s a totally paper-free operation (well, except for the end product, of course)! The passports take about a week to get to you by mail and cost a thousand baht ($30 US).

Tool’s 9-8-7 on the Koto


This is Tool’s song Lateralus (originally titled 9-8-7) played on kotos and bass kotos. It’s also surely the ultimate traditional Japanese music/Fibonacci sequence nerd jam of all time.
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I’d like to mention here that the new YouTube layout is absolute crap and apparently I’m not alone in thinking so. And changing the five-star system to a like/dislike one is pretty much the worst user feedback decision I’ve seen in recent times. I guess the user testing groups were firmly set in the Keewl It’s Just Like Facebook demographic.

Mosquitoes Eating Fruit (Part 1 – Jackfruit)

In or new Thai house, we’ve noticed mosquitoes sucking moisture out of sponges around the sink area, or from damp towels or rags. I suppose this is normal behavior, but we never really noticed it until we lived in this house. The past year, we’ve started to notice them sucking on various fruits we leave out on the counters. I’ve decided to start recording these images because I feel there’s a greatly underestimated demand for knowing what mosquitoes that aren’t sucking blood are sucking.
In this case, it was jackfruit.
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Click to see the entire Mosquitoes Eating Fruit Series.

restless night

Last night was pretty hard on all of us: The babies fell asleep waaay too early, meaning they were sure to wake up in the middle of the night and not sleep again until it got light. Then Nam came down with symptoms of food poisoning around midnight and started cramping very badly. She tried to tough it out, but at around two in the morning, she called her sister to come take her to the hospital while I stayed with the babies.
They gave her a muscle relaxant shot and she was instantly better. She was back at home a little after three. Both babies woke up and I fell asleep holding a hysterically grinning Mina on the couch. The rest is a blur, but there were definite times we had to take turns attending a crying baby while the other got some precious sleep. Tonight should be better.