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Thai Yellow Eggplant
I bought these golf ball-sized eggplants at the fresh market after not seeing them for a few years and never having tasted them. Up here in the Isan region, some people eat them with various savory/spicy dishes, but I don’t think they’re very popular. To me they tasted very bland, with a hint of astringent tang associated with certain fruits… The green variety, which are the size of ping pong balls, have a bit more flavor and are at least crunchy. These yellow ones were unremarkable in every way flavor-wise.
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Cheap Nikon Body
We picked up a Nikon D40 body, the successor to my trusty D50, with a charger and two batteries for 3,000 baht (exactly $100 US today). On the D50, I’ve mounted the old Nikkor AF 70-210mm f/4-5.6 lens I bought in Japan, and the D40 will sport the lens from the D50 kit, the Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED. I’m very happy with these cameras because they’re still much better than a pocket camera in most cases, but they’re cheap and worn enough now that I don’t feel like I have to baby them all the time. Also, sadly, I have very little time for hobbies at this particular stage in…
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face deco
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The second best Wired article, ever
The first, of course, being Neal Steph’s Mother Earth Mother Board (I miss his entertaining writing for us serfs; I would give my left nut for another Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, or Zodiac) Anyway: How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet…
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Who’s out there
A car could be heard pulling up to the front of the house… “Who’s out there, Max?” “Fishies and turtles, and a shark!” I hate it when marine life tries to bumrush. ———————
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Prime Harshness
From my student’s essay on problems in Thailand: “If I were Prime Minister, the first thing I would do is help beggars in Thailand, because the beggars are pathetic. They can’t find a good job…” She must be a transfer student from Public Administration.
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I, cultural interpretor
WARNING: If you are vegan, watching these videos will melt your eyeballs. There couldn’t possibly be a western equivalent to this horrifying act of culinary cruelty, right? Wrong: Attributing this reaction to ionic exchange somehow doesn’t make it less difficult to watch (again and again).
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Max’s first fish
A couple weeks ago, we went to my coworker and good friend’s father-in-law’s place for his new house celebration. He’d built a new house on top of the foundations of an older one at his 15 rai (1 rai = 0.4 acres) property five minutes walk from our home. There are several fish ponds on the site, stocked with all kinds of fish including tilapia, catfish, snakehead, etc. Max was so excited about going fishing for real, he couldn’t sleep the night before. Until then, we’d been practicing for safety with hookless tackle (a rubber door stopper tied to the line) at the ponds in our neighborhood, but Max was…
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Sewious Biznis
FYI: This is what happens when you insist that daddy draws on your face with mommy’s lipstick pencil. There are some great photos in this set that I’ll post later.
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Things I replaced on our car over summer vacation
You may understand part of the pain and frustration we experienced if you can recognize the complete set of gaskets and ferrofluid engine mounts (replaced with solid urethane mounts). Yes, the whole front end of our Cefiro A33 (USDM: Infiniti i30) was taken apart and put together again. It runs really sweet now, except for a noisy power steering pump, another set of wheel bearings, some paint bubbling up on the roof, etc., etc., and so forth…. And my car, the 40 year old Kujira Crown, will be totally done sometime this year, hopefully (that’s a story in itself; not enough space or patience to cover it here).
