Each person has their own way of defining the moment when they know that they’ve really moved in to a new place.  For me, it is when I first fire up my oven and bake some biscuits.  Always from scratch and, whenever available, from buttermilk.

This morning as Tawn and I waited to the handyman and the contractor’s son to come over and fix some things, I whipped up a batch of biscuits.

Above, from left: Taken from the balcony looking in, I cut-in the shortening; mixing in the buttermilk just until the dough starts to come together; kneading just a half-dozen times to create flaky layers but not make the dough tough; cutting the biscuits – pushing straight down and not turning the cutter so the sides of the biscuits do not seal and can rise properly.  Below: Ready to go into the convection oven.

Below: And, just out of the oven…

Above: Gentle breezes, swaying palms, French-press coffee and hot biscuits with pomelo marmelade from the Oriental Hotel Shop.  Below: We’re still figuring out how we want to arrange the drop-leaf dining table.  Tawn and our designer have proposed putting it in this arrangement but when the leaves are dropped it looks awkward to me.  Also, when the china cabinet is installed behind me, there won’t be room for this arrangements.

Elsewhere in the news, I stopped by Markus and Tam’s apartment on Friday to borrow their internet connection.  Their unit is on the 24th floor of a building on Sukhumvit Soi 10 and has a good view of both the park and Queen Sirikit Convention Centre as well as the Asoke and Sukhumvit junction.  There was some spectacular light effects when I looked towards the Silom/Sathorn area:

One more week until DSL is up and running.  In the meantime, I’m becoming fast friends with the staff at the Starbucks on Soi 49 near Sumitivej Hospital, which has multiple power outlets in the store.