A few days ago, I finally caught the film Certified Copy at the local art cinema. Directed and written by Iranian Abbas Kiarostami and starring Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, the movie is an afternoon-long discussion by a man and a woman as they visit a Tuscan town. Their conversation covers a lot of ground and it is never clear whether they are or are not a married couple.
As the story opens, we see that he is an author in town on a Saturday afternoon for a speaking engagement about his new book, in which he argues that copies of masterpieces are as valuable as the originals themselves, in that the copies can bring us to the originals and a greater appreciation of them. She is in the audience but has to leave early, giving her number to the organizer of the event.
The following morning, he shows up at her shop and she drives him to a nearby town to see a famous painting there that was, after hundreds of years being assumed to be an original work, determined eventually to be a copy. It is on that journey that their conversation happens.
I won’t talk about the film as a whole, although it is worth watching. What struck me, so much so that I grabbed a notepad from my bag and scribbled it down, was a phrase uttered by a secondary character.
The man and woman stop for a coffee at a small shop. The man steps outside to take a phone call and the old lady running the shop speaks with the woman. She assumes that the man and woman are married, an assumption the woman does nothing to dispel. In fact, the woman complains about her husband’s long absences for work, propensity to shave only every other day, and his other faults.
The old woman running the shop observes that it is a Sunday morning and the man has taken his wife out for some coffee, whereas most men would instead choose to sleep in. “It would be stupid of us to ruin our lives for an ideal,” she admonishes the woman.
It would be stupid of us to ruin our lives for an ideal.
That line seems a very apt piece of advice, both about relationships (certainly!) as well as our lives in general. It also seems to balance nicely the entry I recently wrote about being the best possible version of ourselves. While perfection cannot be achieved and we should certainly strive to be our best, what is the value of striving if the cost is the ruination of our lives?
Quick plug for a Xanga site you may not know about. It is titled MyWinningPhoto and it holds a weekly photo contest. A theme is announced, Xangans go out and take photos related to the theme, then the photos are posted in one place and we can vote on them. Turns out (probably no surprise to you), there are some pretty talented photographers on Xanga.
If you’d like to check out this week’s contest, which is on the theme of “yellow”, the link is here.
Here’s the third video in my “Great Eats in Bangkok” series. In this chapter, Tawn and I head out for a typical Thai breakfast in our neighborhood, Thong Lo. While Thong Lo has developed over the years in the “Beverly Hills of Thailand” it is actually still a very local neighborhood with a wide socioeconomic range, various cultures, and everything from Mercedes Benz showrooms to sidewalk vegetable stalls.
Our breakfast consists of two things: jok (congee), a Chinese style rice porridge served with ginger, green onions, a fresh egg, and white pepper; and khao gaeng, a “curry and rice” shop that serves various curries, soups, and stir-fried dishes that you pick and choose from in a “Panda Express” sort of way, but much better. One thing that was interesting is that we ordered the jok at one shop, then carried the bowl down to the khao gaeng shop, returning the bowl after we were done.
Not to get on this bandwagon, as I’ve largely kept myself unplugged from the silliness, but I read an article in the NY Times about how this hooey about the impending end of the world is tearing families apart. I just have to wonder about something:
On Sunday morning when the true believers wake up and discover that they have not ascended to heaven, will they come to the conclusion that the prophesy was wrong, or will they conclude that perhaps they weren’t true believers after all and have just been left behind?
As for the rest of us who are still around, we should hold a “I survived the rapture” brunch at my place. LOL
One of the nice things about knowing Chow, the author of Bangkok’s Top 50 Street Food Stalls, is that I get exciting offers like, “Oh, there’s this really good beef noodle vendor on Sukhumvit Soi 16 I’ve been dying to go back to. When are you free?” To paraphrase Renée Zellweger’s character in Jerry Maguire, “You had me at beef noodle.”
Sukhumvit Soi 16 is this stubby little street near the intersection of Sukhumvit and Asoke Ratchadapisek Roads. It branches off Asoke about 100 meters down from the main intersection and then forms the back exit for all of the office buildings and condominiums that line Asoke Ratchadapisek Road, overlooking the beautiful Benjakiti Park next to the Queen Sirikit Convention Center.
Lining both sides of the soi at regular intervals are these street vendor stalls, the classic types of Thai street food that hug the street and, where one exists, generally push pedestrians off the footpaths. Across from the street vendor pictured above, on an unpaved shoulder lined with a masonry wall, we found our beef noodles.
The tables were overflowing and since we had arrived about 1:00, the tail end of the lunch rush, the wizened old uncle who runs the stall told us that he was out of everything but the thin rice noodles and the stewed brisket and beef balls. We ordered one bowl apiece and one of the other people working there – a relative, no doubt – found us a spot as a table of office workers finished up the last drops of broth in their bowls.
A few minutes later our order arrived: a simple bowl of thin rice noodles swimming in deliciously rich cardamom-flavored broth, with slices of brisket, beef balls, green onions, and bean sprouts. As we were eating, the uncle came over and apologized that the brisket wasn’t as tender as normal – the meat vendor had arrived late this morning so it hadn’t stewed as long as he would have liked. We assured him it was not a problem – and it wasn’t – especially as we enjoyed the wonderful broth.
After finishing our noodles and paying – including weak tea we paid something like 28 baht (US$ 1) each. Chatting with the uncle after the lunchtime rush, he explained that he’s been in business at that location for 40 years, gaining his reputation during the Vietnam War with American servicemen who were stationed nearby.
He explained how one building just down the soi, which is now the home of a nice brunch restaurant called Kuppa, was the headquarters for the American FBI. They found this out when one day a stray soi dog was clipped by a vehicle and was lying in the street, howling in pain. After a while, an American came out of that building, pulled out a gun, and put the dog out of its misery. And that, uncle explained, is how they found out the FBI worked there. Never mind that the FBI was a domestic agency and probably wasn’t here in Thailand during the Vietnam War, it was an interesting story that provided a spicy not to the end of our lunchtime adventure.
A year ago today, mobs set fire to various parts of Bangkok in the wake of the breakup by the military of a 40-day long anti-government protest. Those events, along with a related confrontation in April 2010, resulted in the death of 92 people (13 of those deaths have been attributed to “action by government forces” and if I recall correctly, four journalists were killed including two foreigners.)
The fires, set in at least a dozen locations around the city, resulted in an estimated 24 billion baht in damage (about US$ 950 million) and destroyed several structures including shopping centers, a department store, and one of the city’s oldest cinemas.
As of today, there are more than 130 people identified as participants in the protests who remain jailed, charged but not tried for their crimes. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was unable to draw conclusions on many of the points it was asked to examine, including what role the military had in the deaths of protesters. The commission complained of the military not being forthcoming in providing requested evidence.
About a week ago, the Prime Minister dissolved Parliament and elections will be held 45 days from today. The only thing that seems certain is that, regardless of the outcome of this election, there will be further unrest from one side or another of the political spectrum. Whether the unrest is expressed in the same way is unclear. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail.
In my coverage of the protests last spring, I received comments from various people passing by my blog, accusing me of being blatantly pro-government or blatantly pro-protesters. Of course, I have no horse in the proverbial race. I’m a foreigner living here over the long run, a person who loves Thailand and the Thai people and who wants them to be able to continue to develop as a country and not end up getting caught in the middle income trap.
The Central World shopping center at the Ratchaprasong intersection, where the protests had been centered.
The burnt-out remains of the Siam Theatre, one of the oldest single-screen cinemas in Bangkok. Today, the property sits empty, awaiting a redevelopment plan by its land-owners, Chulalongkorn University.
Along Rama IV Road, barricades of tires were set aflame and buildings were looted and burned.
Also along Rama IV Road near the Lumpini Boxing Stadium.
This weekend we enjoyed a return visit by David and Chor Pharn, a Singaporean couple who make frequent visits to Bangkok and whose presence at our dining room table made for a very pleasant Sunday brunch and garland making exercise.
We met the two (Chor Pharn is on the left, above, and David is on the right) through another couple we know from Singapore. In fact, since I met my first Singaporean while in university I’ve learned that once you know one, you soon seem to know nearly all of them. Sure enough, once I met Yuen Ping, I met Otto, then Han, then David and Chor Pharn, and the list cascades from there. Not to mention another two strings’ worth of Singaporeans, most of whom seem to know each other or, at the very least, know of each other. It’s a small island, after all.
Having them over for brunch gave me a chance to try some new recipes, continuing to refine an easy-to-prepare brunch menu that doesn’t require me to slave away in the kitchen while guests are here. Above, a beautiful loaf of homemade bread.
As an amuse bouche, I prepared some homemade muesli, served with unsweetened Greek style yoghurt with a slice of canned peach and drizzled with some peach syrup.
Tawn insisted on using his ice cream goblets that he hand-carried back from Paris. The coffee was some of the 100% Kona beans I brought back from our March trip to Hawaii. Perfect for a French press.
From there, we enjoyed plates with a trio of room temperature tastes: a couscous salad with mixed vegetables, pine nuts, raisins, and homemade preserved lemon rind; over roasted Japanese pumpkin glazed with Canadian maple syrup and a sprinkle of black truffle sea salt; and a mixed salad of rocket (arugula) served with a rice wine vinaigrette, shaved Parmesan cheese, and cherry tomatoes.
The warm dish was individual baked egg souffles with sliced pork loin, onions, and jack cheese.
For dessert, we had khao niaw mamuang – sticky rice and mango. Mangoes are very much at the peak of their season right now. The garnish is na gung – a shredded coconut that is flavored with shrimp, palm sugar, and kaffir lime leaves. This may not sound so good, but once it is cooked it becomes the perfect, slightly savory counterpoint to the rich, starchy sticky rice and sweet mango.
After lunch, Tawn and Chor Pharn set up the table to try their hands at an activity that has caught CP’s curiosity: making floral garlands, called puang malai in Thai. (Literally, “bunched together jasmine”.) Used as objects of decoration as well as veneration and welcome – left at shrines or statues, given to teachers, parents, respected elders, and visitors – the puang malai are made of small, fragrant flowers threaded onto a string using a long and very sharp needle. The above image is taken from Sakul Intakul’s book Dok Mai Thai: The Flower Culture of Thailand. Khun Sakul is one of the masters of the Thai floral arts, an engineer turned floral arranger, and his book illustrates the beautiful designs he creates.
Tawn and Chor Pharn get ready to start, while David and I try to document the occasion and stay far away from the long needles.
A quartet of blossoms: in addition to roses there are, from the left, dok rak (love flower) which is a very sculptural form of jasmine, dok malik (the highly fragrant Arabic jasmine), and dok put (talk flower) also known as gardenia.
Tawn starts arranging the jasmine blossoms in a rotating pattern. After you get a group done, you thread it onto cotton string. Traditionally, though, you would use a thread made of banana leaf.
A close-up of the progress, with rose petals folded in half, speared by the needle, then trimmed into shape with scissors.
The work ended up being quite a bit more tedious that expected. When you watch the vendors at the side of the street you mistake their speed and dexterity for the task of making a phuang malai being easy. It turns out their speed and dexterity is a result of their skill and experience and they make an intricate art look deceptively simple.
While lying in a massage parlor a few blocks from home, letting someone with strong forearms unknead the knots in my back muscles, I listened to an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with author Pete Hamill. A journalist and columnist starting back in the 1960s, Hamill also wrote novels. He was on the show speaking about his most recent book, Tabloid City, a thriller that takes place in an old-school tabloid newsroom that is struggling to deal with the digital era.
During the discussion, interviewer Dave Davies asked Hamill about a previous book he wrote, A Drinking Life, and his own struggles with drinking, which he eventually gave up cold turkey. It was Hamill’s response to the question, “What did your drinking take away from you?” that caught my attention and got me thinking.
Here’s his answer with my own added emphasis:
I was [a] very prolific journalist because I could always squeeze enough from my talent to get a newspaper piece done. What it took away from me was the courage to test the extent of whatever my talent was.
… From a professional and personal standpoint a lot of it was about trying to find out what was there as a writer. Because my ambition was not to be better than Faulkner or Hemingway or anything like that. It was to be the best version of myself that I could conceivably be.
This resonates with me because my own upbringing was very much along these lines. Both sides of my family, but particularly my mother’s side, really emphasized the idea that each of us has a responsibility to live up to our fullest potential in life.
Unlike many of my friends, whose parents expected them to follow a specific career – doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc., my parents emphasized success by pushing me to be the very best I could be, regardless of what field I chose.
To this day, when I look at my own performance I can be very critical of myself in areas where I recognize I’m not being the absolute best version of myself I could be. And, likewise, I can be very critical of others when I see that they are not making full use of their potential.
What about you? What does it mean to you, to be the best version of yourself that you could conceivably be?
From the innocuous “men” and “women” signs on restroom doors to the urinating cartoon Calvin on the back of many a vehicle, stickers and decals play a much larger role in the life of Bangkok residents than one may realize.
Two years ago I wrote about a taxi I was in that had the following information conveyed on its passenger door window through a series of stickers: No smoking, weapons, drinking, sex, durian, dogs, or water buffaloes allowed.
But where do these stickers come from? I don’t see sticker stores in the malls nor do I see sticker aisles at the local Big C hypermart. The answer turns out to be unsurprising: like most things of universal importance in this city of nearly ten million people, the stickers can be bought from a street vendor.
Up and down the streets, waiting at filling stations and stopping by the street food stalls where taxi drivers like to congregate, the sticker vendors drive these wagons powered by modified motorcycles, the panels of decals hanging like blinders, blocking their peripheral vision.
Upon closer inspection, some of the stickers tell a lot about the people who would buy them. There’s a popular cartoon of an Issan (northeastern Thai) boy with his pants dropped, peeing. The Playboy bunny is a popular brand here, even if the magazine is not locally available. And the classic Harley Davidson logo is popular even among the drivers of Japanese brands of scooters.
San Francisco, the area I come from, is a great place to eat breakfast. Since moving here more than five years ago, I’ve regretted the lack of good San Francisco-style breakfast places and if I had the money and free time, I’d probably open one myself. In the meantime, I’m glad to have recently learned about another candidate for my breakfast baht: Gastro 1/6.
Located at the RMA Institute, a gallery and art space buried deep in Sukhumvit Soi 22, Gastro 1/6 is just a small cafe, really. It is already busy on weekends and I suspect will become so popular that its charm will quickly wear off. That said, it is a charming place in a way that eludes most restaurants in Bangkok.
All the seating is in an outdoor, although covered, space that is thick with foliage and decorated with a motley assortment of chairs and tables. There is no table service – you order at the counter and pick up your own food.
The kitchen is a tiny, open affair with a limited selection of dishes. Pastries are available from Le Blanc, a local bakery that is improving the quality of baked goods available to us denizens of Bangkok. There are both breakfasty type dishes as well as specials more suitable for a lunch, making this an appealing place for brunch and those who can’t decide what they’re in the mood for.
The grounds are home to a friendly dog who greets visitors and generally manages things. We arrived at what we thought would be a bit late - about 10am – on a Sunday and were surprised to find things not very busy yet. Some other people breezed through, mostly it seemed for a quick bite and then on to whatever else was on their docket for the day.
Tawn had French toast with a side of bacon, which was very tasty. There’s a drop of syrup about to drip from the bacon on the right end of it. Caught it with the camera!
My breakfast came with a bowl of toasted bread, thin slices that definitely wouldn’t appeal to the Thai palate, which doesn’t seem to like crispy and crunchy. Perfect for me, though, who likes his bread willing to fight back a bit.
I had the traditional English breakfast, which was spruced up so nicely I barely recognized it. Scrambled organic eggs with fresh cracked pepper and sea salt, homemade baked beans and baked tomato, salad with a lovely dressing, homemade sausage, and some bacon. This was really tasty and just the perfect serving size.
Afterwards, relaxing with my latte as an English family with three adorable children decide what they want to order.
Tawn, fresh off his fashion show, looks so much more relaxed without the stress of an impending deadline looming over him.
My impression? Gastro 1/6 is a cute and satisfying choice for brunch or even pastries and a cup of coffee. Probably not the place to linger for a long time, but a good start to your morning. Cash only, closed Mondays.
Several people told me they are having problems viewing the video I posted of Tawn’s fashion show, receiving a notice that some content is copyright EMI. I think that is a result of the first song I used, which is by the Pet Shop Boys. I’ve removed that song and stuck only with the second song. Let’s see if that works any better.
After a year of studying fashion design at Accademia Italiana, Tawn had his first fashion show Saturday night. Here’s a look at this exciting evening.
Some of our friends who made it to the show. (From left: Per, Ko, Linda, Tawn, Fluck, and Bim) We were blessed to have more than a dozen friends show up to lend their support, with many others who sent their regards and best wishes.
Here’s a 3-minute video summarizing the evening.
The Collection
The assignment for the students was to take their inspiration from Italy, a fitting assignment given the Italian roots of the school. Tawn thought about his last visit to Italy and a trip he took to Siena. Inspired by the city and the Piazza del Campo, the fan-shaped public plaza at the heart of Siena, Tawn interpreted this shape into the skirt and the pleats which appear throughout his collection.
He used body suits with all the outfits, interpreted for women and covered in different ways to transform the looks while maintaining a cohesive theme. This being a spring/summer collection, Tawn chose lighter fabrics, primarily grey, black, and nude color silk chiffon for the outer garments with black crepe for the body suits. There is significant bead work on many pieces which give the appearance of a subtle pattern.
The story behind Tawn’s collection is of women gardening. Each model carries props that convey this story.
Look #1: Tawn’s first look is a one-shoulder body suit covered with a gauzy silk chiffon long skirt. The hem of the skirt is cut in a train with the back longer than the front.
Look #2: The body suit from the first look evolves into short pants evocative of 1950s swim wear. The blouse features a sophisticated bow and detailed hand-sewn bead work as well as black piping on the cuffs and the bow. All four models wore these custom-designed pleated ankle cuffs with black velvet ribbon.
Look #3: An elegant hybrid of evening gown and night gown featuring pleated multi-tier skirt with black piping worn with a simple black corset body suit.
Look #4: This final look (which the picture does not do justice to) is a sleeveless nude color body suit with a rear black chiffon bow and an accompanying pencil skirt. The detailed hand-sewn bead work subtly decorates the skirt.
Tawn, fellow students, and their models pose with the director of the school for a group photo.
After the show, Tawn with his proud husband.
We returned home to a low key evening, letting all our friends head their own way and declining invitations to celebrate. Dinner was Homemade chicken and garbanzo bean enchiladas with a mole poblano sauce and a bottle of Moet Chandon champagne.
After a very long past few weeks as The Annex (as we call the adjacent condo unit which we use as an office and work room) has turned into a whirlwind of fabric, thread, accessories, and needles, the post-show stillness is eerie. The sudden lack of adrenaline coursing through our veins is like going over a cliff. Nice to have a calm and quiet Sunday afterwards with nothing to worry about.
Oh, and in case you are interested, here are some of the outfits shown by Tawn’s classmates:
It’s Saturday afternoon here in Bangkok and Tawn’s first fashion show, in which he’s participating after only two semesters of studying fashion design – begins in less than three hours. I’ve spent a good portion of the day at Paragon mall, helping him get everything loaded in and documenting the process in the hopes that years from now where he’s a famous designer and they need to do a retrospective of his work, I’ll have some pictures they can use.
Just returned home to freshen up a bit before heading back to take pictures and video of the show. Here are some sneak peak behind the scenes photos:
Tawn organizes outfits as models (mostly Russian) chat.
Lots of “hurry up and wait” during the rehearsals.
After final dress rehearsal there is chaos backstage as designers make adjustments. Here, Tawn, assisted by another student, adds padding to the model’s shoes so they fit better.
Pictures and video in the next day or so. Stay tuned!
People relate to data in different ways. I’m very much a visual learner and putting data in charts, graphs, or other sorts of illustrations help me understand, absorb, and put the information into context. I’ve also found it useful to track data that is important to me. Many people use tools like this – think of exercise logs to keep track of your progress towards fitness goals. Several companies now provide software solutions that make it easier for people to tabulate whatever it is they want to tabulate, then turn it into graphs and charts.
Recently, I tried out an application from TouchGraph, a New York-based company that specializes in visualization tools and they created this Facebook application as an experiment to demonstrate the capabilities of their technology. Other companies that provide other visual relationship applications include LinkedIn and Daytum.com. After entering your username and password – TouchGraph accesses your information only with your permission - they application generates a variety of charts to map the relationships of your Facebook friends.
Here are thumbnails of increasing numbers of my Facebook friends, from my 100 “top friends” on the left (no explanation on what constitutes a “top friend” in TouchGraph’s scheme of things) to all of my more than 600 Facebook friends on the right. I’m fascinated to watch how the groupings make small shifts as more people, and thus more relationships, are factored into the graphic.
I also found it interesting just to observe how these relationships are mapped out. Using the 300 friends setting, I found nine primary identifiable groups from which my relationships arise. AMC Theatres was my first real job after being a newspaper delivery boy and I continued working with the company through university and even for several years after. Needless to say, a lot of my connections were made there.
One area that is missing is a significant number of friends from post-secondary school. I changed schools twice en route to my degree, and only lived on campus for six months total, so my number of university friends is less than a dozen.
What’s also interesting to me is the California-centric nature of my contacts! No surprise, I suppose, given that I grew up in the Bay Area and lived in Southern California several times. But everyone to the left and above the dashed line is pretty much in California or else that’s where I originally knew them.
Anyhow, that’s more than you probably wanted to know about my life. I found it interesting, though.
Last week I finally made the time to watch Inside Job, the Academy Award winning 2010 documentary about the recent financial crisis. The film does an effective job of clearly explaining the complex series of factors that led up to the crisis, including a headlong rush into deregulation of the financial services industry as well as the creation of ever more complex and risky financial tools. The root of the problem, though, was the revolving door between government and business and the corrupting influence of money on both.
Needless to say, my blood was boiling after watching the film. You can imagine the effect, then, when I learned that on Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee passed three bills that will cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the most important innovations in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that was a response to the conditions exposed in Inside Job.
(Details on the three bills are here, if you’d like to read them: HR 1121, HR 1667, HR 1315 on OpenCongress.org - a great non-partisan resource to keep tabs on what your Congress is up to.)
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a simple and reasonable purpose: to shield consumers from unfair, misleading, and deceptive lending. While we can rail on and on about people getting themselves into bigger loans than they could afford, a large share of the blame (if not the majority of it) belongs to lending companies that made loans they knew the borrowers couldn’t afford. If you’ve ever looked at the fine print of a lending contract, a credit card agreement, or any other consumer financial services legal document, you know that it is unclear and opaque even for the most educated of consumers.
The purpose of the Republican bills is to deprive the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of the power to fulfill its mission. Oh, and the fact that they stand to attract a lot of campaign money from financial firms by indicating their willingness to gut laws that protect consumers? Well, that’s probably a motivating factor, too.
As much as I love the idea of free markets and unfettered capitalism, I think there is a place for regulation: when an industry’s actions causes harm to the larger society. Especially in regards to the financial industry, we’ve seen over the last thirty to forty years that as it becomes less regulated, it takes greater and more irresponsible risks. Ultimately, it is the taxpayers of this nation who end up bailing out the shareholders of these companies.
I don’t know if this is an issue that bothers you. I try to keep this blog apolitical, but sometimes I think something of concern is worth sharing. If you’re so motivated, perhaps a quick email to your Representative and Senators to let them know your thoughts about gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would help ensure that the voice of the citizenry gets heard over the sound of all that money.
Here’s the email I sent to Kevin Yoder, my Representative:
Dear Sir:
This week, the House Financial Services Committee voted to approve three measures that would considerably weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I want you to know that as your constituent, I would like you to VOTE NO on these measures, if and when they reach the floor of the House.
It seems that our politicians have forgotten how we got into the financial mess of 2008. As much as I like free markets, the financial services industry is incapable of policing itself and needs stronger, not weaker, regulation. This is particularly true of consumer finance, where every effort is made by financial institutions to be as opaque as possible in an effort to entrap consumers in a web of bad decisions.
Again, I’d like you to vote in favor of consumers rather than in favor of the financial industry and monied interests. VOTE NO on any reforms or weakening of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
One recipe that caught my eye a week or so ago while browsing the New York Times’s website was Caramel Rice Flan. This egg-enhanced rice pudding is made with risotto rice, giving it a nicer “toothy” feel when you eat it. The best part is the homemade caramel which lines the bottom of the souffle dish, subsequently becoming the sauce for the flan when it is flipped upside down and unmolded onto a serving dish. I decided to try the recipe for dinner last Friday at Ko and Per’s place, where Tawn and his girlfriends gathered to watch the royal wedding.
The recipe takes about an hour of active time to prepare and then around two hours to bake. After that, it needs at least six hours in the refrigerator so it really is a “make today for tomorrow” sort of dessert. Ingredients include arborio rice (one of the types you use for risotto), milk, cinnamon sticks, ground cardamom, lemon zest, cardamom pods, cream, eggs, egg yolks, salt, and sugar.
The recipe said it serves 8-10 but looking at it, it appeared to be a big recipe so I cut it in half.
The recipe is moderately complex, requiring several saucepans, a few bowls, and a strainer. Helpful to have everything prepared in advance and maybe even an extra pair of hands along the way. The first step is to simmer the rice in boiling water for about 15 minutes to start cooking it.
You then drain the rice, then add it to a medium saucepan with most of the milk, the cinnamon, and ground cardamom, bringing it to a boil and then lowering the temperature and simmering it for 30 minutes, cooking until the rice is very tender.
Any unabsorbed milk is poured off and then the rice is put in the bowl and lemon jest is stirred in.
You then make the custard, cooking the rest of the milk, the cream, and the cardamom pods. While that is coming to a simmer, in a separate bowl you whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, and part of the sugar.
When the milk comes to a simmer, you temper the eggs by adding the milk and cream mixture to it a little at a time, whisking constantly. This keeps the eggs from scrambling.
You then strain the mixture back into the pan, discarding the cardamom and any bits of egg that scrambled. Next, stir in the rice.
This was the point where I felt like too many things were going on at one time and the recipe would be easier if a second set of hands was helping. That way elements of the dish could come together simultaneously.
The next step was to make the caramel, heating the remaining sugar and a little water in a saucepan until it boils and starts to caramelize. I think I had the heat too high because it burned a bit, leaving the caramel with a slightly bitter taste. Must remember to be gentle when making caramel, something I have little experience doing.
The caramel is poured into the buttered souffle dish and quickly swirled around the sides before it starts to cool. This was easier said than done! Then, pour the rice and custard mixture on top.
The souffle dish is placed in the middle of a baking pan and boiling water is filled about halfway up the side of the pan. This water bath helps the custard cook more evenly, instead of the outsides cooking too fast and the inside still being uncooked. Cover the pan with foil, making some small slits in the corners of the foil for steam to escape.
Pop it into a 300-degree oven for about 2 hours, checking after 90 minutes. Try to use a better bending technique than I did as I was just begging for a strained back.
Since I had a half recipe I failed to anticipate that the cooking time would be less. When I checked at about 1 hour, 40 minutes the flan was a bit more solid than desired.
Remove and allow to cool. At this point when I shook the dish it didn’t jiggle very much. The idea would be just a little jiggling in the center when it comes out of the oven, as it will continue to cook for several more minutes. Once cool, cover the flan with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours.
The real moment of truth was how well it would unmold. You set the souffle dish in a larger pot with hot water in it for about 20 minutes, letting the caramel melt again and then loosening the edges of the flan. Invert it onto a serving dish. Expecting a potential disaster (after all, the recipe warns of this possibility), I decided to film it for posterity.
And the result is….
Quite pleasant to look at, actually. Not quite as beautiful as the picture illustrating the Times’ article, but they probably had a better set-up for photography.
The texture was like a pretty thick rice pudding, a little eggy but not overly so. The caramel was burned, there was no getting around the bitter flavor. I attribute it to making a half-recipe, which is so little that in even my smallest saucepan, overheating was a risk. Next time, maybe I’ll add a dollop of butter at the end to tame it a bit.
All in all, though, it was a nice dessert. I’m going to try it again soon at the full recipe and see how it turns out.
During a March visit to Singapore, I decided to ride the subway out to the nether reaches of the island to visit the light rail lines. Singapore has three light rail lines that form four loops connecting to stations in the rail-based public transit network. They were built with the express purpose of serving master-planned housing estates, giving residents a door-to-door rail service that allowed them to get around without increasing road-based traffic.
The light rail itself is clean and efficient, with the automated cars running regularly on elevated tracks that weave between housing towers. Below is a video that overviews my experience on the system, including a startling discovery I made about how technology is used to solve a perhaps unforseen privacy problem.
Matters of urban planning and design have always interested me and for a short while in university I was an urban planning major. Examples of transit-oriented land use, like the developments that surround the light rail lines in Singapore, make me think about ways that similar lessons could be applied in the United States.
A country with a plentitude of land, since World War II development in the US has been oriented towards the automobile, resulting in more and more sprawl and fewer and fewer neighborhoods where one can walk from home to anywhere useful. With rising fuel prices and ever-increasing congestion on the roads, it amazes me that there has been continued resistance not only to public transit, but transit-oriented development.
There are a few examples in the United States of what is sometimes called “New Urbanism”, a design philosophy that promotes more walkable and transit-friendly neighborhoods that include mixed use buildings – shops, businesses, and residences in the same general area. Not unlike traditional older neighborhoods in an urban environment, there are small shops on the main streets, some apartments overhead or in the surrounding blocks, and then single-family dwellings set further back. Orenco Station, a neighborhood in the Portland, OR area is a good example of this type of planning.
(Comparing the “suburban sprawl” photo earlier in this entry with the master plan for Orenco Station, you’ll notice that suburbia has a lot of dead-end streets, which means there’s always a long way to go to get out of the neighborhood.)
Some defining elements of this new style of development include:
The neighborhood has a discernible center. This is often a square or a green and sometimes a busy or memorable street corner. A transit stop would be located at this center.
Most of the dwellings are within a five-minute walk of the center, an average of roughly ¼ mile or 1,320 feet (0.4 km).
There are a variety of dwelling types — usually houses, rowhouses, and apartments — so that younger and older people, singles and families, the poor and the wealthy may find places to live.
At the edge of the neighborhood, there are shops and offices of sufficiently varied types to supply the weekly needs of a household.
An elementary school is close enough so that most children can walk from their home. There are small playgrounds accessible to every dwelling — not more than a tenth of a mile away.
Streets within the neighborhood form a connected network, which disperses traffic by providing a variety of pedestrian and vehicular routes to any destination. The streets are relatively narrow and shaded by rows of trees. This slows traffic, creating an environment suitable for pedestrians and bicycles.
Parking lots and garage doors rarely front the street. Parking is relegated to the rear of buildings, usually accessed by alleys.
As I look at these design elements, I see of list of things that have a whole lot of “pros” and very few, if any, “cons”. While the US will never go the route of Singaporean style land use – there’s no comparable acquiesence to the wisdom of the government, for starters – it does seem that a more comprehensive approach to land use would benefit the United States and our quality of life in the decades to come.
The past few weeks we’ve had the opportunity to cook at other people’s houses, which is always a fun change of pace. I find cooking outside my own kitchen to sometimes be a challenge – What do you mean you don’t have a potato ricer!? - but also fun because many friends have kitchens larger and more geared to socializing than mine.
Over Songkran we went to Ko and Per’s house. Ko was Tawn’s university classmate and her husband, Per, is from Sweden and moved here late last year. We decided it would be fun to try and make Swedish meatballs although we didn’t have a specific recipe and I’m not sure any of us knew what we were doing.
Nonetheless, we intuited our way through it, and wound up with something that despite looking kind of gloppy, tasted good and seemed close to the real deal. At least that’s what Per said. Maybe he was just being polite.
Ko takes pictures of the meal: Swedish meatballs, roast potatoes, mixed green salad, and I think we made spaghetti with meat sauce, too. It was tasty and, more importantly, the company was wonderful.
The following week I went to cook at another friend’s house. Chow, who is the author of the must-buy and use guide Bangkok’s Top 50 Street Food Stalls, invited friends over to cook Mexican food in honor (kind of) of the upcoming Cinco de Mayo holiday. Never mind that we were a bit early. Unfortunately, Tawn was not able to make it. That didn’t stop us from having fun, though, and making too much good food.
Enchiladas stuffed with avocado and smothered in red sauce and cheese sauce. Tasty!
Chicken enchiladas baked in a homemade mole poblano sauce. Pronounced “mo-lay”, this sauce has cocoa powder in it, lending an unexpected flavor to its spiciness.
For my contribution, I resurrected a recipe for fish tacos from Michael’s blog, using his avocado cilantro lime sauce. This sauce just goes perfectly on fish tacos!
And finally, a random picture not related to cooking with friends. We had a visit from Ty, someone who was a very active member of the Xanga community under the username Just2Tyght when I first started almost six years ago. We met in person several years back in SF and while Ty has gone AWOL from Xanga, we’ve stayed in touch through other channels. Glad we had the opportunity to meet here in Bangkok.
When my blog started out, it was a tool to keep family and friends up to date about my experiences living in a new land. An easy way to stay in touch with everyone, if you will. Over time, I’ve realized that my entries are more like articles in a magazine. Not in quality, mind you, but in terms of how they tend to focus on a particular story, event, or subject. One entry is about a type of dessert in Thailand, another is about a new mall that is being built, another is about a trip to Hong Kong. So this entry is not driven by a particular event. It’s just some random musings about what’s going on.
Since returning from Kauai nearly four weeks ago, life has been very busy with work. With it being the start of a new fiscal year, there are lots of projects under way and I’ve been putting in extra hours in order to get them accomplished. While it can be tiring since all my work is done sitting in front of a computer, I enjoy the work I do and the people with whom I work. To top it off, I feel like the work I do – creating training materials – has a positive impact on people, so it is meaningful.
Barely over the jetlag, the final bits of planning are falling into place for our June trip back to the US. Normally, I wouldn’t travel again so soon but there’s this tricky bit about my yearly visa. It expires in June so I need to return to the US to apply for another one. Had I had my way, I would have waited until later in the summer of even the autumn before returning.
Speaking of the June trip, our original plan was to connect in Tokyo and spend a few days on the way back visiting Daniel and Jason. Unfortunately, because of the unsettled situation there, Daniel’s employer kept them out of the country for several weeks just around the time we needed to finalize our travel plans. They’re back in Tokyo now, but it is too late for us to change our tickets. Maybe if we can, we’ll fit a long weekend visit in later this year. But if we do it, it needs to be before another friend in Tokyo, Taro, moves back to the US to get married. (See? All of these logistics to deal with…)
The trip to the US will not be only for visa application purposes. While there, we’ll meet my sister, brother-in-law, and nieces for a week in LA. That’s right, we’re going to Disneyland! Also a chance to meet two of Tawn’s cousins and their families, along with his aunt and uncle. They’ve been very welcoming to me over the years and I’m excited to see them again. Plus, the cousins’ children are just about the age of my oldest niece, so they should have fun playing together. Of course, I have my own cousins there, too, as well as a few Xangans with whom I need to catch up.
As for Tawn, he’s been very busy with his fashion design studies. He’s supposed to present four looks at a student fashion show in a few weeks. Needless to say, “the annex” (our second condo unit which serves as an office and workroom) has been a frenzy of fabric, thread, and the occasional needle on the floor. I’ll share photos as the time comes. (Seriously, I think of my life in terms of potential blog entries.) In the meantime, I’m just trying to keep my head down and stay out of the way.
Finally, I recently went to the doctor about some pain in the ball of my left foot. He diagnosed it as capsulitis, an inflammation of the capsule surrounding the joint where the fourth toe and the foot connect. Doing some online research, the cause is probably from wearing shoes (esp. running shoes) that are too narrow. I have wide feet and while I purchase some of my shoes from zappos.com when in the US, I also have some pairs that aren’t sufficiently wide. That’ll teach me! Right now, I’m trying to stay off the foot as much as possible and am wearing support pads to help redistribute the weight into the arch and away from the ball of the foot.
Well, not an event, but that’s an update of what’s going on. Oh, as I’m writing this there’s a caramel rice flan in the oven based on a NY Times recipe. That’s an event you can be sure I’ll be writing about soon!
This year marks the 85th anniversary of United Airlines. In a post last November, I mentioned that they were holding a contest for employees to vote for their favorite previous livery. The winning livery would then be painted onto a “retro jet” to commemorate the anniversary. Five previous color schemes were presented, voted on, and I recently saw that the Airbus A320 painted in the winning colors recently took to the sky:
Sigh…
I’m quite excited because of the five liveries, this was my favorite. It is the one I associate with my early childhood in the 1970s. I remember drawing airplanes when I must have been in my early elementary years and this was the color scheme I could recreate from memory.
The other four liveries that represent the different eras of United Airlines.
While I’ve had my rough patches with United over the years, it is the company that my father, my husband, and I (not to mention countless friends) all worked for at various points in our lives. Happy 85th anniversary to the Friendly Skies. May the merger with Continental make the skies friendly once again!
A few days ago, I finally caught the film Certified Copy at the local art cinema. Directed and written by Iranian Abbas Kiarostami and starring Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, the movie is an afternoon-long discussion by a man and a woman as they visit a Tuscan town. Their conversation covers a lot of ground and it is never clear whether they are or are not a married couple.
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