After having the baby, I ran out of money to complete my list of thing to do with the Kujira Crown. Since I reverted to stock tires I alleviated bottoming out problems and can hence wait on any suspension upgrades. She needs to be stripped and repainted, though, before the rust gets too bad. I don’t think of it as overly humid here (compared to Japan or even Bangkok), but paint started flaking off as I used the Kuj every day and rust started appearing in those places as well as under the paint in some spots.
Additional victims to the humidity were my plugs. Behold:
I can’t even believe the car was still running – I noticed sputtering on the low end and suspected the plugs since they were the only consumables I hadn’t changed – but there was no indication that they had degraded this much. This car is a witch. And now she runs so smoothly…
Category: Photos
Pond Scum Soup
It doesn’t sound or look appetizing, but it was actually pretty good.
On Sunday we went to an outdoor market in a park downtown where many fresh produce vendors gather. It’s an excellent place to find strange new (to me anyway) fruits and veggies, and sometimes even plants for our garden. This day proved to be no exception and we found a lady selling what looked like Japanese aojiru powder (green juice powder made from barley and other healthy crap) from a bucket. Upon closer inspection the granules were too large to be aojiru and were also quite damp. The old lady didn’t really explain what it was that well to Nam, so we had our nanny go ask. Nanny already knew what it was and said she could prepare a soup with it, so I of course bought some, about a pound, for 15 Baht (45 cents).
It turned out to be some kind of vegetation that grows on the surface of a pond, or as I like to call it, pond scum.
The soup she made was quite good; it smelled pleasant and tasted hearty with a hint of lemongrass, and the texture of the scum was like miniature flying fish roe, or soft grains of sand. Nanny said it would have been better if she’d had pork belly to add to it, but really, what food couldn’t benefit from some pork belly?
Max is almost walking by himself
Although in this photo, he’s just omnomnomnom.
Mommy and I sit on the floor a few feet apart and make him walk alone back and fourth, and he does that just fine… But he’s not quite comfortable walking instead of crawling yet. Friends tell me that any spare time I’ve enjoyed while the baby’s awake will no longer exist after he learns to walk.
It’s Mango Season
Around these parts, mango season comes at the hottest time of the year. This year, luckily, we have been blessed with rain almost every week, which brings down the temperature and gives everybody a nice respite from the dry heat. The first five months or so when I first came, it didn’t really rain at all, so it’s been nice having a cooler hot season last year and an even cooler one this year.
Back to mangoes, though – everybody seems to have mango trees growing in their yard and a single mature tree can produce perhaps hundreds of fruit every season. So visitors over the past few weeks have kept our fruit baskets overflowing with all different varieties and flavors of mangoes. Combined with the fruit on one of our banana trees ripening a couple weeks ago, Max and family have been enjoying a truly bountiful harvest.
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Natchan’s mom plating a particularly delicious variety of mango, “oklong,” from her trees at home, with Nam.
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One of my favorite sights in the whole world – a pile of fruit ready to be devoured!
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Max is just like daddy – he loves getting his hands dirty eating the pits.
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This afternoon while Max slept, it rained again and I sat on the porch with a pocketknife, a plastic bucket, and a few dozen mangoes. I started peeling them one by one and sucking all of the flesh off the pits. Before long, the bucket was filled with pits and skins and sweet mango juice was dribbling down my arms. About the closest sensation I can think of back home is eating fresh peaches: Sweet, sticky fun. The only difference is that mangoes grow all over the place here – it’s one of the most common fruits grown in people’s yards. Thank god for that.
After I could eat no more, I planted the pits outside our fence to begin a new cycle.
Purple Max is Omnomnomnomnom
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Previous colors of Max:
green max
monokuro max
red red max
orange max
sepia max
coppermine max
blue max
No escape from the barbie
Monster freshwater shrimp trying to get away on Max’s birthday a couple weeks ago.
They were delicious, especially the ones rich with roe. Nam made a traditional nam chim dip with lime, chili, vinegar, fish sauce, and sugar. I secretly added pork bouillon for the hell of it, and it turned out very well.
