New Year’s Eve was thankfully quiet.  It is a public holiday here in Thailand, essentially giving people a four-day weekend.  Roads were quieter than normal, car parks and malls emptier.

In the morning I drove to the Sukhothai Hotel on Sathorn Road, right.  The sister of a friend was in town from Hong Kong and had a package to give me.  I met her and her husband pool-side and visited for a few minutes.

Such an attentive staff and so gorgeous a hotel!  When I arrived, I didn’t see Julie.  Turns out that she had gone up to her room to get the package and since I hadn’t met her husband, I didn’t know what he looked like.  The staff made a great effort to locate her and fortunately she showed up a few minutes later.

In the afternoon, Tawn decided it was time for him to do some cooking.  Craving linguini with pesto sauce, he pulled out the blender and made some fresh pesto.  We enjoyed a light lunch before he headed to his parents’ house.

I worked throughout the afternoon and then started preparing dinner as we had decided to spend our New Year’s Eve at home.  The menu was a bit of a reprise from Saturday.  I had leftover mozzarella cheese and ricotta and spinach mixture, so I bought some more mushrooms and made another vegetarian lasagna. 

There was still some broiled zucchini and eggplant mixture, so that became a gratin.  The flavors of the cucumber-mango salad were nicely melded by now, so that rounded out the trio nicely.

For dessert, the final two individual chocolate souffles were unwrapped from the freezer, puffing up nicely in the oven as if the batter had been prepared just minutes beforehand.  All in all, a simple menu, but a delightful one and spent with the best of company: Tawn.

Shortly before we moved into the condo, I bought a bottle of Möet & Chandon Brut Imperial Champagne to celebrate.  It has been waiting patiently and last night seemed to be the best time to open it.

To kill time waiting for the clock to strike midnight, we watched an episode from season two of “The West Wing” on DVD.  I don’t watch TV and hadn’t really seen this show when it was on the air.  Vic loaned me the discs and the series is really good.  If all TV were like this, I’d be watching all the time.  Heck, I’d even go out and buy a TV.

About three minutes before midnight some over-eager locals began setting off the fireworks.  Limited in the US to only “safe and sane” fireworks or official public displays, it seems everyone in Khrungthep gets their hands on some pretty serious munitions.  There was an excellent view from our balcony of a large display just up Thong Lo from us, complemented by a half-dozen adjacent properties setting off their own Roman candles and other more spectacular fireworks.  For a quarter-hour there were bams and booms and howling soi dogs.

And thus we start 2008 (2551 in the Buddhist calendar).