Photos
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Scenes from a Hoi Tod Shop
Hoi Tod is a Thai dish made by frying mussels (or sometimes, other shellfish, squid, or shrimp) in an eggy batter and wrapping up beansprouts and garlic chives with it. Those in the know usually prefer this dish to Pad Thai. It’s often served as street food, especially at night markets, but there are also small shops that specialize in it. This particular joint was crowded when we visited at lunchtime on a weekday in a busy Bangkok district, but I thought it was pretty average — I thought it was too stuffed with undercooked sprouts, but that might just be due to my preferences. I’m used to a greasier…
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PP Pedestal
This is in the refurbished (!) restroom of one of my favorite restaurants in town. After careful observation, I have determined that it’s a MacGyvered pressure plate flushing mechanism that stinks of piss. It looked disgusting, so I just straddled it and stepped on the cleanest part when I was done… So weird.
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Chit-chat Corner Ice Cream Session
The US embassy-sponsored conversation project that Mina and I have been facilitating on Wednesdays at Mahasarakham University every Wednesday in the evenings goes on break between terms. For the last session of the term, we usually do a special cooking project. Since there’s no kitchen facilities in the American Corner, I usually have to think of projects that require minimal cooking and no running water, etc. This term, I decided to do a throwback to simpler times. We made ice cream in Ziploc bags with ice and salt, and it turned out much better than expected. Normal Thai milk contains about 10-11% milk fat, so I spent the week before…
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Piebald Python in Khon Kaen
Finally, a song I can play on the piano!
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WordPress — undefined constant error
I try to follow cardinal rules of data management that were drilled into me since I got into computers at university by (#1) taking backups often and (#2) keeping stuff organized. Well, the first one caused my site to go down today because I didn’t really follow the second one. I try to keep on top of things by doing a full site backup at least once a year, on top of doing periodic database and blog backups. When I finished the full backup today, it stored the tarball (a compressed .tar.gz archive) in my hosted account right next to two other huge ones from last year that I forgot…
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Looking Back
This year has been filled with business trips, mainly to Pattaya for some reason. Just looking back on some photos from May.
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Pattaya Sunset
I think Max took this one. We were there just a week ago! He is back in the states now, missing Thai food and people. Hurry up and graduate, dude!
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Blue Lotus
Also known as the blue water lily, or blue star water lily, which is slightly confusing since a “blue lily” is a completely different thing. The plant pictured could be Nymphaea nouchali or one of its several varieties including Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea which contains the psychotropic substance aporphine, which lead to the outlawing of possession of the plant where tripping ancient Egyptian balls is apparently frowned upon. The lotus has roots in many countries and religions, and it’s said that everywhere the baby Buddha stepped, lotus flowers bloomed and that when the Buddha died, they reappeared everywhere that he had walked the Earth. The fullness of bloom and color of…
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The Dogs of Lad Prao
For as long as we’ve been visiting Nam’s auntie and uncle on Lad Prao 33, there have been a huge pack of dogs running the middle area of the street. During the day, they lounge around in the heat and disappear through holes in nearby gates, but at night, they run around free. It is scary walking there alone at night. The neighbors all complain about the danger and the shits left all over the place, to no avail… We’ve been going and staying there for decades, so we have probably seen several generations of this wild pack.
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I am 50 yo
