Category: Photos

Tabasco? Wasasco? WASABI-O!

Last year, I wrote an e-mail to my Santa Claus impersonating buddy in Japan (impossible to find a link for you, dude – there are at least 7 “Santa Daves” on Facebook and even a “Big Wave Santa”) telling him that they had brought a Tabasco-like wasabi sauce to market: Wasasco. He recently tried to find some, but couldn’t. I remembered that I’d seen something similar at Big-C, so went to check it out.

Wasabi-O, possible intentional copy of a trademark-infringing Japanese product, from Thailand (Tabasco --> Wasasco --> Wasabi-O) Do unto others, bitches!
Wasabi-O, possible intentional copy of a trademark-infringing Japanese product, from Thailand (Tabasco –> Wasasco –> Wasabi-O). Do unto others, bitches!

OK, the most shocking thing about this product is that it is not only edible, it is FUCKING DELICIOUS! Serious noms. It’s like the perfect dip for potato chips, creamy and atomic. I could see doing capfuls of this for losers of drinking games.

The thing is, Big-C had a whole shelf of these bottles on clearance, so I hope the Wasabi-O company isn’t going under or something. Time to go stock up, because the last favorite hot sauce I had here, Wolf, which tasted kind of like Cholula and Tapatio mixed together, just disappeared one day. Although I’d stocked up on half a dozen bottles of that, it didn’t last a year. I’m going to Big-C to buy up their stock, I guess.

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It occurs to me that McDonalds is possibly vindicated from Adam’s online criticism from a decade ago.

Golden Shower at New City Hall, Maha Sarakham

C. fistula - binomial nomenclature courtesy of the man himself, Carl Linnaeus
C. fistula – binomial nomenclature courtesy of the man himself, Carl Linnaeus

 

The Rachapreuk tree has naughty names (only for perverted minds?) in English (golden shower tree), Latin (Cassia fistula), Spanish (caña fistula), and translated Chinese (sausage tree). It’s name in Ayurvedic medicine is aragvadha, or “disease killer,” and it’s the national Flower of Thailand as well as the state flower of Kerala, India. It blooms at the hottest time of year here in Thailand, and I think serious modern research into its medicinal properties is long overdue.

I need this part

This post is a simple plea to the monkey in the sky to help me find a working turn signal assembly for my 1971 Toyota Crown. The molded plastic latch lasted many decades before succumbing to normal wear and tear. Looking at modern cars, I’m pretty sure none of them will last quite as long.

Juju booster +10!

2013-03-05 12.33.52

2013-03-05 12.33.59

I really don’t want to try replacing the whole steering column.

Mystery VIP Car, Khon Kaen

I raced this car home back to Sarakham last week.

Perhaps the ugliest sedan I've ever seen.
Perhaps the ugliest sedan I’ve ever seen.

I guess the driver was worried about spilling his Grey Poupon, because he had me on the straightaways (kind of rare because my wife’s VQ30-powered Cefiro A33 smokes almost everything under 2 million baht; such is the sad state of affairs in many road-tax-by-engine-displacement countries) , but slowed way down on the curves. I’m kind of sad because I don’t even know what kind of car it is, but if I had to guess — Chinese Bentley? Korean Cadillac?

Either way, it was hideous. Almost as bad as the ugliest car ever made, which I’ve been seeing kind of often lately.

UPDATE: Of course, Chris the master of all things with engines, called it – this is definitely a Mitsuoka, probably a Galue-III. It’s the first I’ve ever seen, having been in Thailand almost the whole time they’ve been produced, and it totally matches with what I saw. On another page it says this car “incorporates styling touches from such classic designs as the ’94 Cadillac Fleetwood.” Also, the specs indicate it was loaded with the same type of engine in our Cefiro, but newer and with higher output – either a VQ-25HR or VQ-35HR. Interestingly enough, the Galue-III was made in both RWD and AWD.