Category: Photos

RIP Gaijin Shacho Hero Dude

Dear Nissan,
Now that you have ousted Carlos-sama, can you please stop making horrendous cars?
For example, no Skyline is worth a million dollars. Period. But this isn’t even trying:

The best looking part of this is the shadows!!
“Note from management: Please add ugly color swatch on the side.
Now THIS is how you de-accentuate a historical badge… Just bury it in carbon fiber and instead, make those air vents POP!!

Now, it’s rumored that you gangstabbed your Caesar in the back because he wanted to fully merge Nissan and Renault, but really, at this point you need to look at Renault’s current product lineup compared to yours. Although many Renault products look quirky,  they are at least generically modern, while Nissan’s look like they were designed in North Korea:

Nissan’s tribute to the Ssangyong Stavic?

It’s not necessary for you to compete with everybody on all fronts, but please, stop making ugly-ass cars. Please go back to your roots.

80 years old. This production car has more soul in just its tires than a million dollar Skyline.
Available in most parts of the world from around $500.
Aw hell, maybe there is a Skyline worth a million bucks…

Sunset Cast

Sometimes I miss lugging around a DSLR.

We visited a nearby reservoir, Kaeng Loeng Chan (they really need to simplify the official English spelling), on the weekend. They were holding a work rally to cover the newly-created Health Park with grass sod and quite a few people showed up to volunteer (or as a Thai would say, to make merit).

We got bored of the manual labor after less than an hour and walked around the banks of the reservoir instead, taking photos and looking at dead crabs. The water seems too murky and oxygen-depleted to support fish close too shore, but they must be out there somewhere. Maybe I’ll take the kids fishing out there sometime.

Cast Iron Pizza

  • Cheap labor.
  • But happy!
  • And saucy!
  • Spoonwork
  • Sweet Thai Basil
  • Placement decisions
  • Tried a baking pan as well (no bueno)
  • Allowrie four cheese blend
  • Out of the oven!
  • On the cutting board…
  • Bubbly bliss…
  • New mochi knife.
  • Execute! Execute! Execute!
  • Rocky slicing motion.
  • YAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSS

We went all in with Kenji on this one:
Foolproof Pan Pizza Recipe
New York-Style Pizza Sauce Recipe


Actually, for the sauce, I added filtered fish sauce, tripled the amount of garlic, and used the good part of a rotting onion instead of going to the store to buy a fresh one, and it turned out really, really well.

I tried using a cast iron Lodge pan and an aluminum baking pan, and the latter was predictably much inferior to the former because the crust stuck to it pretty badly.

In Thailand, any cheese is expensive, and the one called for in the recipe is unavailable where we live, so we used a cheap pre-shredded mix. It was most excellent. The sweet Thai basil was also a great match.

Next time, I must find a bigger, better alternative to the baking pan.

SPENDYGAMS – Scrabble Knockoff

The kids started playing Scrabble at school and wanted to practice, so I broke out one of the knockoff sets I found at Terminal 21 in Korat a few years ago in anticipation. Unfortunately, the tiles are too big for the spaces on the board and the whole thing is so cheaply made that it affects gameplay a bit. So I’ll probably buy a real board, or at least a better knockoff, in the near future.

Classic JDM Cars in Thailand

Note: My Kujira Crown is still running strong and you can find every post on it by browsing through my Cars category.

Recently, there have been a lot of interesting JDM classics popping up in my Facebook feed for sale in Thailand. There’s nothing I would consider buying as most of the sellers are just asking for way too much, but it’s interesting to see these cars are still somewhat maintained. Here’s a few that caught my eye last week.

Mitsuoka Bubu 501. The 502 was much cooler because it was even stranger, but still… 
Hino Briska (with unspeakably horrible wheels)
Daihatsu HiJet S70 or S80

The HiJet is nearly identical to the one I had at university, except the one pictured has a sunroof. I rode this car so hard and created so many legends in it… We once packed 19 people in it and drove from Nara Koen to Amemura. I stood it up on 2 wheels with a parking brake turn while driving back home from Rumours. It may still currently hold the speed record from the top of Tenri Dam to Nara Kyoikudai via Tenri Kaido.

Climate Change in Thailand

The Nation published a cool infographic about what climate change means for Thailand. Having lived here for over a decade, I have noticed huge changes in the seasons and climate. When I came, the first few years contained long drought periods (one year in particular it didn’t rain for almost five months), and the long-term trend since then has been one of persistent flooding instead of drought.

LINK: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30355898