Friday night after arriving in SF at 8:05 I rushed to Anita’s house.  After a little freshening up I walked down the street to Martuni’s, the piano – karaoke bar.  Anne Marie was singing.  While singing isn’t her profession, she takes lessons and has a beautiful voice.  You’ll find her there about once a month, singing from her big book of showtunes and standards.

Below, Albert, Anne Marie and me.

There was quite a crowd and AM had her fan club.  Her parents were in town as well as her sister and brother.  Her sister is also quite the singer and took a couple of turns at the microphone.

Anne Marie’s second set included “I’ve Got the Sun in the Morning” and “Close to You”.  Wonderful job on both.

Later, the pianist was entertaining the crowd with any number of songs that had the audience eating out of his hand, singing along with him.  Below, Albert gets into the act as AM’s sister Carolyn and friend Bill look on.

Arriving home quite late, about 1:00, I took half a sleeping pill and called it a night.  Thankfully, it was a full night’s sleep and I was uninterrupted until the morning’s glow woke me at 8:00 Saturday.

I’ll be heading off to San Francisco, Kansas City and Los Angeles in a few hours.  I’ll try to keep my blog updated but my apologies if there are some gaps in coverage.

In the three years that I’ve written this blog, the look and feel have remained largely the same.  Sure, after the first year I modified the colour scheme a bit, but only by a matter of a few shades.

At one point I added the “What’s Happening” box on the left hand side, to enter upcoming events.  But that was very time consuming to update and, frankly, I don’t think too many people were coming to my blog as a source of current entertainment information in Khrungthep.

Along the way, I’ve stubbornly stuck to the old look and feel while a new “Xanga Skins” feature was added that allows much greater range in terms of graphics. 

But maybe it is time for some sprucing up, a little bit of of nipping and tucking, a fresh coat of paint, and some slip covers to give the place a fresh new look for the start of the fourth year.

Perhaps while I’m on holiday I’ll play around with it a bit and try some things out.  I can always come back to this skin, if needed.  Thoughts?

The lead up to Friday’s trip has included the checking off of dozens of items on our “to do before leaving” list:

• Go to the dentist
• Stop by the bank
• Choose gifts for people
• Complete my “to buy” list
• Etc, etc, etc…

I’m happy to report that I’m quite a bit further along the list than I usually am at this point in preparation, so I won’t be too stressed out over the next few days.  That said, I have a ton of work to prepare before leaving so that will make up for any stress I avoid by being organized.

Late last week I baked my final loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread.  The day before I leave I’ll have to feed the sourdough starter again, but it should survive twenty days in the refrigerator okay.  You’ll recall that I had some problems with my baguette pan last time – the loaf rose into the perforations and I couldn’t remove it. 

This time I wisely used some parchment paper to line the pan and the results were much nicer.  The natural yeast was getting a bit out of hand, though, as the dough was rising over the side of the pan and resulted in a slightly deformed loaf.  I’ll have to keep working on this next month.  One of these days, it will look right as well as taste right!

Below: Before (left) and after (right)

On Tawn’s list of things to get done before leaving is some writing for magazines. 

He’s writing a guest article in Elle Thailand, this one about climbing the career ladder.  We did some brainstorming beforehand – I write corporate training materials for a company in the US, Canada and the UK so have addressed this topic before – and then he applied those ideas to the likely Elle readers, giving it a Thai twist.

Tawn’s becoming a male Thai Carrie Bradshaw, what with all his writing.

He’s also preparing some recipes for an upcoming interview by a health and fitness magazine.  The column for which he is being interviewed focuses on various Thai men and asks them to include a recipe they like to prepare.  He’s been experimenting with salmon baked en papillote served with a couscous salad.  So far the results are tasty.  The interview and photo shoot (“I promise it won’t be crazy like the shoots for the house were!” he says) are on Thursday.

Sunday night we joined a group of friends at The Esplanade, an self-styled “arte-tainment” mall, for the touring production of We Will Rock You. 

Based on the music of rock band Queen, We Will Rock You is set in a Matrix-esque future in which the world (now named Planet Mall) is run by the Globalsoft Corporation, which controls all aspects of consumer culture.  Music (other than the computer generated bubblegum pop made by Globalsoft) is forbidden.

One young misfit, Galileo, hears strange sounds and words in his head, not understanding the significance of them.  It turns out that he is The Dreamer, who a prophecy has foretold will find the hidden musical instruments and return rock and roll to the world, freeing the populace from the grips of Globalsoft.

Critically panned, the musical was enthusiastically embraced by audiences in London and elsewhere, thanks to the familiar music and accessible storyline.  Khrungthep audiences haven’t been so receptive.  Despite scads of publicity, the theatre was only about one-quarter full last night.  Rock musicals probably aren’t very appealing to Thai audiences.

It was an enjoyable enough show, although played at such an amplified level that I couldn’t understand most of the lyrics.  It is funny that when you listen to the songs from the soundtrack, they are mixed and amplified in a way that allows you to hear the lyrics, which really help drive the story.  But live, it is played so loud that the words get lost.

I know, I know… I’m becoming one of those grumpy oldsters who complain about the volume.  Let me add one better to that, then:

When we arrived at the mall, there was a full blown concert going on in the center courtyard, above.  This is an inside section of the mall and the sound was unbelievably loud.  Here’s a little video I shot to give you a sense of the experience:

I think it is unreasonably loud, especially since any number of the restaurants in the mall face onto the courtyard.  Very difficult to enjoy a dinner there with this music blaring.