Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
These are fried on one side and hot oil is ladled over them to achieve the crispeh… This is the de facto national lunch dish, so please stop using recipes with tofu bits and chili jam mixed in them, and I’ll try and stop Asian corpos from topping pizzas with artificial crab sticks and bacon-wrapped cheese wieners stuffed in the crusts…
It seems like a funny name for a safety product, but I guess they paid someone’s 12 year old nephew to design it, so whatever… Toshino actually makes some of the higher end power strips in Thailand, though (in a market filled with dubious/dangerous products).
Seen at the Thaiwatsadu home center near our home.
UPDATE: The Jetpack suite for WordPress now contains a built-in AI for providing feedback on my posts before publishing. It has told me:
The content mentions a safety product with a humorous name, suggesting that it may have been poorly designed. However, it also highlights that Toshino produces higher-end power strips in Thailand. The accompanying images showcase the product at a home center.
Overall, the post captures the author’s opinion about the product and provides visual evidence. However, it would benefit from the following actions to improve clarity:
1. Consider providing more information about the Toshino brand and its reputation in the market.
2. Elaborate on why the author believes the product name is funny and how it may impact its perceived quality.
3. Share any personal experience or observations with Toshino power strips or similar products to enhance credibility.
4. Include a conclusion or final thoughts to summarize the author’s opinion.
These improvements will help readers gain a better understanding of the product and the author’s perspective.
Groovy.
If I had a celestial chariot, that’s the kind of wheel I want on it.
At a holy site in Nam Phong, Khon Kaen, that I possibly misidentified on Maps due to it being next to or possibly on the grounds of a large temple. I have asked some locals about it, and it’s still not clear.
#dharmawheel #wheelofdharma #wheelofthelaw
A stall selling wigs at Robinson Roi Et shopping mall. It must be noted that the number of the stall is also shorthand for the name of the city, Roi Et, which means “a hundred and one.”
According to Wikipedia:
The name of the province literally means ‘one hundred and one’ (Thai: ร้อยเอ็ด; RTGS: roi et ). Correctly, the number should be “eleven” (Thai: สิบเอ็ด; RTGS: sip et ), as the province was named after its eleven ancient gates built for its eleven vassal states. In ancient times, the number “eleven” was written “๑๐๑” (101) and the provincial name was written accordingly. Later, people took “๑๐๑” to mean ‘one hundred and one’ and have since then called it “Roi Et”.[4]
“Roi Et” is also jokingly called “LA” by the locals.
My student wore this to class and when I asked to take a photo, he asked me if I’d heard of it before. I answered truthfully. Actually, with the Thai pronunciation of this word, it doesn’t matter if that missing consonant is there or not, it sounds exactly the same.
We hadn’t been there since it opened, and the food was much improved: Bombay Indian Cuisine Roi Et
Related Newsflare from Feb: Tesla ‘bug’ causes car to brake when it sees ‘people standing on back of bus’
There was a resurgence of interest in “Thai Chicanos” last year, resulting in a few articles and videos across the web. The most entertaining video, however, is the one from almost a decade ago, about the “Cholos of Bangkok,” by Coconuts TV.
Also last year, an interesting YouTube video documenting “Japan’s Chicano Culture In LA” was published by Peter Santenello:
However, the true counterpart to the “Cholos of Bangkok” is “Inside Japan’s Chicano Subculture” by the NYT:
From a language and culture standpoint, all of these are enthralling. I’ve watched them all multiple times and pick up on new details every time.
No photos here, just a link to a 13 year old post I updated about some local lizard species which are called the same thing in Thai/Isan languages: กะปอม/กิ้งก่า), but ended up being distinct species with different common names: Oriental garden lizard (Calotes versicolor) vs. Calotes mystaceus (the Indo-Chinese forest lizard).
For the sake of posterity, I hereby shorten their names to Bob(s) and Dan(s). Bobs are the red ones, Dans are the blue ones (did you know that roughly 75% of people on social media would have used apostrophes to indicate plurality in that sentence?)
Update: Uh oh, there are Emmas (green when mating) in Thailand as well: Calotes emma
Further update: There are also some references to a species called Calotes goetzi which is treated as a separate species on some pages, but is also reported to have replaced Calotes mystaceus (who I just call Dan[s]) altogether according to this page, which also says that Dan is called กิ้งก่าหัวสีฟ้า (ging ga hua si faa) in Thai. This literally means the “gin ga (forest lizard) with a blue head,” which I immediately think is weird, because a much larger area than just the head turns blue, and also, every local I’ve ever talked to has just called it a “blue forest lizard” in Thai – there is no reason to be more specific, especially when it’s less accurate.
