A braise in Bangkok

Posted on 25 May 2008 by christao408

With all this cloudy, overcast weather as of late – providing a wintry look, if not wintry temperatures – I’ve been in the mood for something braised. A nice chunk of meat, slowly cooked in a pool of simmering liquid until it is just falling off the bone… mmmm, that’s good eating!

Tawn doesn’t eat a lot of meat, so I had to provide plenty of advance notice about our dinner. Thankfully, he was willing to try so long as I also made mashed potatoes.

The recipe was a fairly simple one, adapted from the Junior League of San Francisco’s cookbook. Lamb shanks, aromatics, potatoes, tomato paste, chopped tomatoes, and red wine. I was supposed to include parsnips and pearl onions, neither of which I could find at the market.

I started by seasoning the shanks, dredging them in flour, then browning them in an oven-proof pot. This is supposed to be a Dutch oven ideally, but I haven’t one of those. Maybe Santa will bring me one…

After browning, you remove the shanks and cook the aromatics (carrots, celery, onions and in my case, Japanese spring onions and garlic) until they are lightly browned. Add the tomato paste and cook for a minute or so, then add the chopped tomatoes and red wine. Stir well and then add the potatoes.

Partially cover it and then put it into a medium-low oven for three hours or more, turning the shanks occasionally, until the meat is super-tender and loose from the bone. From that point, cook about one more hour so that the connective tissue is fully dissolved.

From there, remove and reserve part of the sauce, and allow the remainder of the ingredients to cool. They can be refrigerated overnight to allow the flavors to develop further. When you are ready to eat, reheat the food in the oven for about an hour or until warmed through.

On the stove, you’ll strain and reduce the liquid until it has made a nice sauce. I added some additional wine and a little beef stock to round out the flavor. I probably should have added the stock to the original dish, but those are lessons learned for next time. Below: the first time I’ve used all four burners!

Finally, after all that work you will have your finished product. Serve it with whatever other dishes you like. In my case, buttermilk horseradish mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus with lemon-olive oil dressing.

The meat turned out delicious and flavorful, although I hadn’t cooked it quite as long as I mentioned above so some of the connective tissues were still connecting. Not a problem, just a little more work with the fork and knife. Still, a very nice attempt at a wintry dinner.

The next day, though, skies were clear and summery again!

Truck Envy

Posted on 24 May 2008 by christao408

Walking down Soi Lang Suan after brunch, I snapped this photo of a young boy – probably not even three years old – squatting on the sidewalk playing with his toy truck. As near as I could figure out, he’s waiting for his father, who is in the cab of the Caterpillar.

What first crossed my mind was that he seemed to be looking on with a certain sense of jealousy, envious of the much larger truck his father had to play with.

Questions that also crossed my mind included, “Why is this young boy just sitting there on the sidewalk while the construction equipment was producing a deafening racket (I had walked with my hands covering my ears until I snapped this photo) as it tore up the street?” Also, “Why is nobody, including the father, wearing any hearing protection?”

Posted on 23 May 2008 by christao408

Sitting here at my computer, even though it is early afternoon the sunny sky has turned as dark as dusk. The wind picks up from dead stillness, rushing through the bedroom balcony and slamming shut the bathroom door before leaving through the living room windows in a furry.

After that brief outburst the stillness returns and the air feels as if it is solidifying. If I wave my hand through it quickly enough, I imagine that water will condense in its wake.

Then the first few drops fall on the open windows, splatting against the panes with ripe fullness before the intensity can no longer be held back and the storm lets go its torrents.

Posted on 22 May 2008 by christao408

Every third Wednesday of the month, the Bull’s Head Pub on Sukhumvit 31/1 hosts a trivia night. Tucked away behind the Villa Market, next to a Japanese bakery, the Bull’s Head is one of a half-dozen pubs in the mid-Sukhumvit area designed to cater to the expat Brits and Aussies who live in our fair city.

Stuart had previously invited me to attend the trivia night and this time the stars aligned and my schedule opened. I discovered a scene much different from the smokey, crowded contestants-put-on-the-spot-by-a-witty-host scene that I had imagined. This is in part due to recent legislation that bans smoking inside pubs and restaurants and also in part to the fact that Wednesdays are a slow night at the pub and they are trying to encourage, not discourage, potential customers.

Participants operate in teams of their own making, composed of as few or as many members as they choose. Stuart plays with two other people, a British man named Richard and a Thai one named Jay. Each team sits at their own table and food (and of course, drink) can be consumed as the match occurs. When ordering, the waitress asked my name, which I thought was quite unusual and forward of her until Stuart explained that they did that so as to keep separate bills.

The match is composed of five rounds of ten questions each. The host announces the topic categories for each round prior to the match and each team can select a “joker” round, for which they will earn double points for correct answers. Last night we chose “Current Events 2007” as our joker round. Other topics were “Music”, “Sports”, “General Interest” and “Sci-Fi Shows”. As the host reads the questions, the team writes answers on a sheet of paper. Afterwards, teams exchange papers and score the answers.

Questions favor British and UK references and on several political and sporting questions we would have been at a loss without Richard. The music questions (in which snippets of each song were played with one point given for correct artist and another for correct title) were all about very contemporary artists so Jay’s knowledge of music was helpful. The sci-fi show questions were actually a sheet of thumbnail pictures of different shows’ casts and we had to identify the shows. Stuart and I were able to help with that although I was very disappointed that “Doctor Who” was not a correct answer.

We concluded the first round with a massive lead over the other six teams as it was our joker round. After the second round we had a narrow lead. By the third we were a bit behind and by the fifth we were in third place with the leaders (who apparently win every time) a good 20 points ahead, out of 120 possible points. The winning team received a bottle of vodka. Members of the second and third place teams received a warm bottle of Heineken each. Lower-placed teams received a variety of useless crap.

Still, it was good fun. We need to expand our team by at least one person to incorporate some additional general knowledge expertise. If you have such qualifications and will be around the Big Mango on the third Wednesday of the month, please let me know.

In other important news, the Japanese Tourism Authority has announced that Hello Kitty has been signed on as an official ambassador for the Yokoso Japan! (Visit Japan!) campaign. The cartoon feline, created by Japanese company Sanrio, is one of the world’s most recognizable characters and will be used to target potential tourists from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, where she is especially popular.

Kitty’s online profile indicates that she lives most of the time in London, so one wonders if she is planning on relocating back to Japan for the duration of her assignment as animated ambassador.

Left: Kitty in kimono accepts this prestigious assignment. As usual, Kitty was speechless as she apparently has no mouth.

Spontaneous Singing in the Boarding Area

Posted on 21 May 2008 by christao408

Above: Not quite 5:00 in the afternoon and yet the sky is dark as a storm consumes the central part of downtown Khrungthep. Picture taken from the Thong Lo station looking northwest.

According to the guides, charts and historical patterns, we’re a little bit ahead of the normal rainfall for May, which as I understand it, marks the first of the two monsoons (the other is in September, the wettest month by far). For the better part of the past two weeks we’ve had daily rains. Not just the late afternoon thunderstorms mind you, but drizzly, temperamental rains that come at all hours of the day and night. Our power cut out twice yesterday evening and once again while we slept last night, waking us up a while later when the unconditioned room became too warm because the air conditioner had been reset by the power interruption.

The rains are okay by me as they keep the temperatures cooler, especially with the dark clouds blocking out the tropical sun. Sure, you have to plan a bit so you don’t get caught on the back of a motorsai without protection, as Tawn did on his way home this evening. Actually, he had protection, but he sacrificed his sweater to wrap his bag.

I encountered this funny advertisement on, of all things, airliners.net. It is for a British travel website called lastminute.com and as far as I can tell from a bit of research, the advertisement is exactly what it appears to be: a Candid Camera-type moment in which a group of professional actors conduct an ad hoc musical performance in the waiting area at London’s Stansted Airport to the surprise and amusement of those in the lounge.

From my perspective, this is pretty much the story of my life: breaking out in spontaneous song to drive my personal story line forward. Does that happen to you?

Pigeon-holing Farang

Posted on 20 May 2008 by christao408

When I lived in the States, I felt that I was a more tolerant than average person. I made a conscious effort – and largely a successful one, I think – to not prejudge people I saw or met. Walking down the street, I would not categorize people on first look and I tried to radiate compassion towards everyone.

Somewhere along the process of moving to Khrungthep, my compassion burned out, my prejudices returned, and new ones were born.

As much as I’m ashamed to admit it, when I’m walking down the street here in the Big Mango, I make perfunctory judgements about many of the people I see. For the most part, I’m making these judgements about farang as I don’t know as many of the cultural signifiers for Thais as I do for westerners. There are some exceptions, of course. I can spot the Money Boy and the Hi So pretty easily.

Among the farang I can recognize instantly the Clueless Tourist, the Angry American, the Drunk Aussie (easily confused with the Drunk Brit and somewhat less easily with the Drunk German), the Sexpat (homo and hetero versions), the Lonely Planet Backpacker and the Gone Native.

Let me be the first to admit that it is inherently unfair to others and unskillful to my own growth as a person to have relapsed into this prejudicial shorthand. I know that and am actively trying to relearn the lessons I was much better at living while in the United States. It just seems that there are so many people who so readily live up to these various categories of farang that it is easy to lazily slip into the habit of categorizing them instead of getting to know them first.

All of which must make me the archetypical Self-Righteous Expat, subgenus Holier Than Thou Anthropologist.

Hopefully that is not the case!

A pilot and a flight attendant get married

Posted on 17 May 2008 by christao408

Moving from the subject of same-sex marriage to the subject of different-sex ones, Saturday we went to the wedding of Tawn’s school friend Bua and her fiancee Pom. Their engagement party was thirteen months ago and it is hard to believe a year has passed so quickly.

Bua is a Qantas flight attendant and Pom is a first officer with Orient Thai Airlines (a mostly domestic Thai carrier) and so their engagement party and subsequent wedding was airline themed. Here’s the wedding invitation:

We arrived at the Hyatt Grand Erawan with Pim and her husband Arm to find the area just outside the ballroom converted into a check-in lobby, completed with two “Love Airways” podia, below.

We sat at a table of Tawn’s school friends, all of whom have had babies recently. Unfortunately, with 600 guests the bride and groom were never together long enough for me to get a picture of them! We had plenty of time to visit with our friends, though, and to play with the babies. Actually, there were a lot of guests with young children. Bua had arranged for a play area outside the ballroom complete with small jungle gyms, toys, and a clown armed with incredible balloon animal making skills. He made a good Mickey Mouse, a passable Ultraman, and an amazing Little Mermaid.

Below left, Tawn and a shocked Nam-ing, Jaa and Teuk’s 6-month old. Below right, me with Jae Jae, Saa and Job’s 3-month old, in his cute little jeans. Unfortunately, Pim and Arm’s nearly 3-year old daughter, Tara, decided she would rather go visit her grandparents this evening. Tawn even tried to convince her by telling her that her Uncle Chris would be there, but that didn’t seem to be much of a selling point.

The food was a Chinese banquet with an especially tasty Peking duck. The skin was super-crispy and the plum sauce was unusually not sickeningly sweet.

Another mysterious visitor

Posted on 17 May 2008 by christao408

Quite a number of people read this blog, few of whom I actually know. Every so often I will receive a random message from someone and it invariably starts out, “You don’t know me, but I read your blog…”. This has led to any number of interesting acquaintances and more than a few friendships, so on the whole I think it is a good thing.

A few weeks ago I received another one of those messages, this one from Mario in Chicago. A United Airlines employee (my former employer, Tawn’s former employer, my father’s former employer, the former and current employer of many friends, etc.), Mario stumbled across my blog while reading trip reports on airliners.net. As he was heading to the Big Mango on a business trip, an opportunity existed to say hello and to meet up.

Friday evening, Tawn and I picked up Mario at his hotel and then met Ken (who is also a former UA employee who also met me through airliners.net) at the Saladaeng Cafe. This restaurant, run by the Jim Thompson Foundation, is a pleasant nice-but-not-stuffy Thai restaurant located off Thanon Sathorn.

Right, Tawn with the food, which was tasty but definitely seasoned for western tastes. No chilies at all!

We had a fun time visiting and of course the common aviation industry background provided plenty of fodder for the conversation, what with merger speculations and rumors being the news of the day.

Ken and Mario actually know several people in common, so we spent a while playing the “do you know so-and-so” game. I’m not sure who won. Also, since Mario used to live in San Francisco there was another point of commonality there.

Below from left: Mario, Chris, Ken and Tawn. The picture behind us is pretty strange, I think. The green and blue long-necked women look like zombies.

After dinner we stopped by the Millennium Hilton for a drink and some jazz music at 360, their top-floor bar. It was a pleasure meeting Mario and we’ll have to find ourselves in Chicago one of these days for another visit.

Speaking of visitors, a spate of them are arriving. Darrin will be in town very briefly on his way from San Francisco to India. He arrived last night late and leaves early Monday morning, so I think we’re meeting up for lunch. Big Michael will be in town from Hong Kong the week after next, and we’re already looking ahead to Bruce’s visit in October.

CA Justices strike down limitations on marriage to only different-sex couples

Posted on 15 May 2008 by christao408

The war for equality is far from over but another important battle has been won. Yesterday the California Supreme Court ruled that statutes limiting marriage to only between a man and a woman are not constitutional. The 4-3 ruling drew heavily on its 1948 ruling in a case that ended restrictions on interracial marriage.

The opinion is a fascinating read and you can find the full text here. Some key thoughts:

The court ruled that differential treatment provided to same-sex couples (through domestic partnership laws) did not serve a compelling state interest:

“…permitting same-sex couples access to the designation of marriage will not deprive opposite-sex couples of any rights and will not alter the legal framework of the institution of marriage…”

“…affording same-sex couples only a separate and differently named family relationship will … impose appreciable harm on same-sex couples and their children, because denying such couples access to the familiar and highly favored designation of marriage is likely to cast doubt on whether the official family relationship of same-sex couples enjoys dignity equal to that of opposite-sex couples.”

“…providing only a separate and distinct designation for same-sex couples may well have the effect of perpetuating a more general premise – now emphatically rejected by this state – that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects ‘second-class citizens’…”

As mentioned before, conservative forces in the state are gathering momentum and will likely place an initiative on the November ballot to change the state constitution and define marriage specifically as between a man and a woman, a move that would invalidate Thursday’s ruling. There is also the question of if – and how – the court’s ruling will play out in the Presidential campaign.

There seems to be good reason to think that it won’t carry the weight that it had in the 2004 and other previous elections. Matthew Dowd, one of Bush’s chief strategists in the 2004 campaign, was quoted in the NY Times talking about the effect the ruling will have in the general election: “At best, it doesn’t move voters, and at worst for the Republicans, it moves them against them. Not so much on the issue, but it becomes, ‘Why are we having a discussion on this issue when we should be talking about things that matter, like the economy, or health care, or the war?’ “

But don’t relax and let your guard down. Christianists – those hard-line fundamentalist Christians that have more in common with their Jihadist brethren than they do with the teachings of Jesus – won’t rest until the world is remade in their own image and each of us either march in lock-step with them, or are (in their assumption of how it will work out) roasting in hell.

Tonight, though, Tawn and I will open a bottle of sparkling wine (with Mario, a visiting guest from Chicago) and toast the victory in this battle. In doing so, I will make a wish that those who would oppress us will perhaps be moved upon seeing that even in their loss, the world has not ended: Marriages will remain marriages, faith will remain faith, and respect and compassion will remain the abiding ways with which we should treat each other.

California Supreme Court set to announce gay marriage ruling

Posted on 14 May 2008 by christao408

On March 4th the California Supreme Court heard case S147999, in re Marriage Cases. This is a compilation of six appellate court cases that have been filed on the issue of whether California’s statutory ban on marriage between two persons of the same sex violates the “equal protection” clause of the state constitution. The recording of the arguments before the court and the questioning by the justices is available here in the audio archive. It is 214 minutes long and is tremendously fascinating to listen to.

One of the most interesting challenges the justices made to lawyers on both sides of the case was about the fact that California already gives domestic partners virtually the exact same rights and responsibilities as different-sex couples receive through marriage.

For the petitioners on behalf of overturning the ban on same-sex marriage, the justices asked why, when the state already gives the same functional rights and benefits to same-sex couples as different-sex ones, is it discrimination?

For the petitioners on behalf of sustaining the ban, the justices asked whether the very existence of a “separate but equal” status proves the discriminatory nature of the ban.

My general impression after listening to the audio is that those in favor of sustaining the ban faced much tougher scrutiny by the justices. This makes me hopeful that the justices will rule in favor of overturning the ban.

Right: Does its visibility in popular culture mean that the nation is ready for gay marriage?

Already, there is an effort underway to put an initiative on the California ballot that will alter the state constitution to define marriage as only between one man and one woman. If this were to happen, it would be a tremendous setback. I’ll be asking for your support whether or not you are a Californian (or even an American) to encourage the voters of the state to make the choice that preserves the rights and liberties of all the state’s citizens and does not enshrine discrimination into the constitution.

The court has announced that it will release its ruling on Thursday, May 15th at 10:00 am PDT (5:00 pm GMT). Stay tuned as the announcement, regardless of the ruling is, will represent an important and significant milestone in the march towards equal rights for gay and lesbian people.

It is worth noting that it was this same court that in 1948 was the first supreme court in the nation to rule that anti-miscegenation laws (prohibiting marriage between people of different races) were unconstitutional in the case Perez v. Sharp. This landmark ruling preceded the nation’s Supreme Court ruling on the same issue by 19 years.

I hope that on Thursday the state supreme court once again serves as a bellwether of changes to come across the nation, so that one day Tawn and I will have the legal right to be married in the United States and enjoy federal benefits such as immigration rights.