What is a cause you really believe in? What causes do you support?

Posted on 7 October 2010 by christao408

There are many causes that are important to me, especially those related to education and opportunity for young people. But the cause that speaks most closely to me is immigration equality. A citizen of the United States can marry a foreign national of the opposite sex and sponsor his or her immigration to the US and eventual citizenship. In fact, a citizen of the United States can sponsor the visa for his or her unmarried partner of the opposite sex so long as they get married within six months of moving to the US. But because of the federal government’s “Defense of Marriage Act“, I cannot sponsor Tawn for immigration to the US even though we have been together more than a decade and been legally married in a US state more than a year.

The sad thing is, most American citizens (including gay ones) are not aware of this. Many people, both conservative and liberal, to whom I’m explained this nuance of the law find it disturbing because it goes against Americans’ general sense of fair play: laws should be consistent for all citizens. But for me, because I’m gay, there’s a double standard. Immigration laws do not afford me the same rights and privileges as those of my married and even unmarried heterosexual fellow citizens.

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

Killing Time…

Posted on 7 October 2010 by christao408

Sorry, this entry is a bit of a time killer while I wait for the server problems to be fixed at Xanga. You see, I have several photos to upload both of some interesting cultural things as well as some tasty food porn. But after a few attempts, I’ve decided to wait. After all, I have a lot of work going on plus two guests in town, so the time for trying and trying and trying to upload my pictures is limited.

So I’ll leave you with the remaining unposted picture that I uploaded last week:

Italian sausage, rocket (arugula), and rigatoni spiced up with some red chile peppers. Served at Greyhound Cafe, Central Chidlom department store, Bangkok, Thailand.

Coming soon: Novice monks, great Thai food by an American at Soul Food Mahanakorn, and a second attempt at Macadamia Nut Cream Pie.

Kiosk and TCDC

Posted on 5 October 2010 by christao408

On the top floor of the Emporium shopping center, next to the Phrom Phong BTS Skytrain station, is the Thailand Creative and Design Center. TCDC was formed in 2003 and is a 4000 square meter (40,000+ square feet) design knowledge hub offering an extensive design library, materials and multimedia resource center, exhibition galleries, workshops, and lectures. It is a pretty nifty thing to have and it is well-used by our creative professionals and university students. Tawn has been using it to do some of his fashion design studies, in fact.

TCDC is also home to a cute cafe, Kiosk, owned by friends of ours. It has good drinks and food, a place for live music, and a nice atmosphere in which to hang out. Not a plug for them, just explaining where Tawn and I were for an hour or so last weekend.

Chocolate chip muffin.

Apple strudel.

While we enjoyed our snacks and coffee, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1958 film Vertigo played silently on a screen in the background with English subtitles. We engaged another customer, a Thai man in his 50s, in conversation as he used to live in the US as was trying to figure out which of film it was.

It was nice to see scenes of my native San Francisco, albeit from a dozen years before I was born.

In other news, I am picking up some guests this morning who are arriving from Singapore. When I went to view their flight status on Singapore Airlines’ website, I was amazed to see that SQ considers themselves delayed even one minute after schedule. Don’t most airlines give themselves a 15-minute window?

Fettuccine with Green Olive and Mint Pesto

Posted on 3 October 2010 by christao408

The macadamia nut cream pie was not served alone, although it would have made a pretty enjoyable meal. Instead, I served it with pasta in a green olive and mint pesto, a recipe I found on Domestic Daddy. The Domestic Daddy describes his site as “a fresh take on cooking, entertaining, decorating and other domestic arts and sciences from a real daddy … since my partner and I had our daughter Julia last year, I’ve learned to keep my projects simpler, faster and more fun.” Okay, Tawn and I don’t have a child, but the idea of keeping projects simpler, faster, and more fun appeals to all of us, right?

“Pesto” just means “paste” so there are many other types of pestos you can make than the basil and pine nut pesto you may be moth familiar with. DD’s pesto is made with green olives, a lot of mint, Parmesan cheese, and some garlic and lemon juice. This combination of ingredients wouldn’t have initially jumped into my mind, but they worked together surprisingly well. (Recipe here)

The challenge for me is a lack of a food processor. Instead, I had to chop things by hand and I don’t think I got quite the consistency that I was looking for. Still, I ended up with this pesto that I then mixed into fettuccine.

To add some protein, I marinated some chicken breasts in a buttermilk brine then grilled them in our quasi-panini grill. Sliced thin, they went into the past very nicely.

To go with the homemade rye bread I roasted some heads of garlic. This is so easy that when I have the oven on for some other task, I like to roast garlic before turning it off. The harsh flavors turn mellow and you can mash up the garlic with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar for a nice spread to put on the bread. Much more interesting than butter.

My appetizer idea was also taken from Domestic Daddy: miniature Greek salads. Dress cherry tomatoes, seeded cucumbers, and bell peppers in a red wine vinegar dressing then stir in some olives and feta cheese. Salt and pepper to taste (not too much salt since you have the cheese and olives, which are already salty) and add a little fresh rosemary. Serve in a small dish that you can hold while mingling with other guests. (Recipe here)

I had to laugh to myself a little while I was preparing this. Those who criticize the “gay lifestyle” must be talking about our penchant for changing up traditional recipes (“pesto made with mint!?”) and ways of serving food (“Greek salad in a coffee cup!?”). Such an unconventional lot!

Macadamia Nut Cream Pie

Posted on 2 October 2010 by christao408

The final days of September were crazy busy for me so I had to take a few days off from posting. Nonetheless, September was a productive blogging month for me. I managed to post 25 times, my busiest month since April. And I feel good about the quality, not just the quantity. There was a lot I wanted to share, from Tawn’s 30th birthday to old time-exposure photos, with lots of lemon, lavender, and dates thrown in!

Taro plants growing on Kaua’i – circa 1986

For my first entry in October, I’d like to share my adventures trying to make macadamia nut cream pie, which I prepared for a small dinner party last Saturday. This pie holds a special place in my childhood memories. I can’t vouch for how accurate or authentic the memory is, though. As a child in an airline family (my father worked for United) we had the opportunity to vacation in Hawai’i several times while I was growing up. One of the treats we would enjoy while in the islands was macadamia nut cream pie. One year in particular, we had an especially good pie from one of the local bakeries and so macadamia nut cream pie entered the mythology of my childhood.

Macadamias are also grown here in Thailand and are relatively inexpensive – a 500 g (about one pound) bag of unsalted whole nuts is available for about $12. Recently, I started thinking again about macadamia nut cream pie and decided it would be fun to make.

Searching for recipes, almost all of them seemed to be based on the same recipe from University of Hawai’i. Something about the way the recipe was written just didn’t seem right to me. Perhaps not clear enough, perhaps the proportions seemed off. I don’t know – but I had a bad feeling from the start.

Sure enough, the first attempt on Friday night didn’t work out. Macadamia nut cream pie is basically a custard filling chilled in a pre-baked pie crust. The custard, though, never came together and thickened. By the time I cleaned the kitchen at midnight, all I had was a finished pie crust and a bowl of sweet, macadamia-flavored egg soup.

Saturday morning I pulled out Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and perused the recipes. A crème pâtissière – a basic pastry cream – sounded like a good start because one of the options included stirring in some ground almonds to flavor it. Surely I could substitute ground macadamias? And as I read some of the other variations, a crème saint-honoré – a crème pâtissière with meringue (whipped egg whites) folded in – sounded like it would make a very nice, light and creamy filling for my pie.

Since I hadn’t made a cooking video in quite a while, my trusty cameraman Tawn set about filming me. Here are the results. Let me apologize right now for my repeated mispronunciation of “crème pâtissière”, which I pronounced as “crème pâtisserie”. My bad. Je suis très désolé.

The pie after being filled. I had quite a bit of extra filling, so I ended up filling two martini glasses, too.

Those were kind of difficult to store in the refrigerator. There you go – a chance to see what is in my fridge. Maybe that is a future blog series? “Refrigerators of Xanga!”

The finished product once plated. What I learned is this: while the filling is very tasty, a crème saint-honoré does not have the structure or stiffness to stand firmly on its own. Once sliced, it spilled forth from the pastry shell. Quelle domage! But it was very tasty and my guests, even those without major sweet teeth, cleaned their plates.

Next time, I may try just the crème pâtissière. Or, better yet, one of my guests who lived in Hawai’i for fifteen years asked an auntie of his to share her recipe, which turns out to be from Sam Choy’s cookbook. Reading it, it sounds much more like what I’m looking for. I guess this calls for a second attempt. Any volunteers to taste the results?

As for the filling in the martini glass, that actually made for a very pretty follow-up dessert the next few days, dressed up with a dollop of whipped cream and some bittersweet chocolate shavings.

The chef didn’t seem too disappointed with the outcome! I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

How Does Your Partner View Your Virtual Friends?

Posted on 29 September 2010 by christao408

Virtual friends: How do they stack up in the pecking order of friendships? Are they real? This is a topic that has probably been discussed a thousand times on Xanga but I don’t know if we’ve ever discussed what our partners, spouses, boyfriends/girlfriends think about it. This comes to mind because I recently had a conversation with another Xangan and this person’s significant other is very uncomfortable with the idea of this person having these virtual friends with whom details of his or her life is shared.

I’ll be the first to admit, back in 1997 I dated a guy who liked to spend time on ICQ, the first internet-wide instant messaging service, and I was perplexed and somewhat dismissive of the “friends” he claimed to have made online. When he moved to Los Angeles I had the opportunity to meet one of them, and he and his partner did seem to be genuinely nice people. Still, I was suspicious of how well you could really know someone with whom you only interacted in a chat environment. This, of course, was before blogs really started.

When I started blogging five years ago, I did it just to keep family and friends informed of my experiences moving to Thailand. The idea of making new friends through the blog never crossed my mind. Over time, though, I did start making online friends and eventually had the opportunity to meet several people in person. Initially, they were friends of people I already knew in real life. Then, they were people who were traveling in Bangkok so we would meet for coffee or a meal or I would be visiting somewhere and would make the time to meet them.

I even traveled a few hundred miles out of my way two summers ago to visit the famous Dr. Zakiah and her family. When I was flying on the prop plane from St. Louis up to Quincy, the thought crossed my mind, “Her family must think she’s nuts, inviting some guy flying all the way from Bangkok to stay in her house!” But if they did think those thoughts, they kept them well hidden and were so wonderfully welcoming.

Over the years, Tawn has met many of these Xanga friends and he has found that they usually turn out to be warm, thoughtful, stable individuals. Nobody longing to break up our marriage and tempt me away. Nobody frightening. Nobody trying too hard to insinuate themselves into our lives in an overly-familiar way. So I’ve come to take for granted that he has no worries about my virtual friends and in fact has come to enjoy the company of many of them.

What about you and your partner, spouse, etc? How does he or she view your virtual friendships?

Additional reading: entry on The Change Blog about building positive virtual friendships.

Recovery and Donuts

Posted on 28 September 2010 by christao408

September 28, 2010 will go down in the history of Krungthep (Bangkok) as the day when the scars from May’s political violence truly began to heal for the Big Mango’s shoppers. It will also go down as a red-letter day in the spreading influence of American fast food and the subsequent spreading of Thai waistlines.

To the first point, Central World Plaza, the largest of the buildings that were badly damaged in the fires set by angry protesters after their leaders surrendered to police on May 19, reopened today.

While about 70% of the mall reopened today, the 70% that suffered no damage in the attacks, the remaining portion depicted above is expected to be rebuilt and open next August. The portion opening today includes the Isetan department store, the 15-screen SFX World Cinema, and the grocery store.

Can a mall’s reopening indicate political healing? Of course not. That was just a banal attempt to hook your attention as a reader. Under the surface, the issues and power struggles remain, yet to be resolved. But for those of us who live here, whose lives were disrupted by the political events of April and May, the opening of Central World Plaza is another sign of life getting back to normal.

In other news – and possibly an attempt to draw away some attention from Central World’s reopening – the first Krispy Kreme doughnut franchise in Thailand opened today at the Siam Paragon mall, just down the street from Central World. Doughnuts have been popular in Thailand for at least a few years, as evidenced by countless Dunkin’ Donut and Mister Donut outlets. Last year, a Malaysian chain called Daddy Donut entered the market and they even have a mobile donut truck that sets up in different locations to sell donuts to hapless passersby.

Nonetheless, there is no lack of hoopla surrounding the opening of this first Thai Krispy Kreme. If you want my opinion, I think the fad won’t last. The Hong Kong locations of Krispy Kreme only lasted a few years before they closed and I don’t think the Bangkok crowd, which is quite fickle with its fads, will turn Krispy Kreme into an overwhelming success.

The big question is this: What’s the big deal? Thai culture has so many fantastic desserts and snacks and they are inexpensive, readily at hand, and perhaps slightly healthier than a doughnut. As I notice the Thai high school and university students in their uniforms, bigger, taller, and heftier than their counterparts were even a half-decade ago, starting to approach the bodily proportions of their peers in the American Midwest, I can’t help but wish the influence of Western style fast food chains would wane.

So here’s to progress, as it were. A reopened mall and a new fast food shop. Bangkok, you’ve come a long way.

Fire and Light Part 2

Posted on 27 September 2010 by christao408

While I eventually stopped burning rubber cement to illuminate my photos, my interest in light, movement, and extended exposure didn’t wane. For some shots, it was a matter of holding the camera steady by hand, without the use of a tripod, just long enough for a slight sense of motion. For other shots, a tripod was still necessary.

This photo is actually upside down. It is the reflection in the mirrored ceiling of the pedestrian tunnel that connects the two concourses of Terminal 1 at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The focus is on the reflection rather than the neon tubes of the light sculpture.

Christmas lights in suburban Kansas City. I printed this up and used it for handmade holiday cards one year. Same effect as the Golden Gate Bridge photo in the previous entry, except I was rotating the tripod almost the entire time.

This photo was shot at a county fair in Oregon the summer of 1988. I was there as part of a family reunion on my mother’s side and there was a fair near the town we stayed in.

A Flying Tigers B-747 takes off on runway 1R at San Francisco International Airport. Instead of moving the camera, as I did in the Golden Gate Bridge and Christmas photos, the camera remained fixed on the tripod while the plane moved. The Flying Tigers logo is visible because the plane pulled into position at the threshold of the runway and stopped for about fifteen seconds before releasing the brakes and taking off. The red dots above the line of the fence are from the strobe light on top of the plane, which blinked as the plane taxied.

In March 2001, I shot this photo of Tawn on top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. This was a handheld shot with an exposure of about 1/15th of a second. I used a flash so that the image of Tawn would be fixed and sharp but the background and the railings would have a sense of movement.

That same evening I took this picture at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Thousands of strobe lights were flashing at 8:00 pm and I shot the exposure at about a half-second handheld while the strobes fired. This picture captures exactly how this first trip to Paris felt for me.

I even experimented a bit with extended exposures in Bangkok before I moved here. This photo was taken in the same alley I visited for last month’s entry about the Old Market in Yaoworat. This picture from that entry must have been taken within a dozen meters of the above picture. Funny that some seven or more years later – probably closer to nine! – I went back to the same alley and took more pictures. I particularly liked how the sky was still purple in the background.

This shot was taken the same evening in the same area, along the main road that cuts through Yaoworat (Chinatown). I found it fascinating because the neon signs look like something out of the sixties or seventies, so I added a slight sepia tint to the photo. I also liked that I captured someone else photographing the same view.

As I responded to one comment in the previous post, my current point-and-shoot camera, a Panasonic Lumix LX3, has a lot of manual controls. I should experiment with it a bit and see what sort of extended exposures I can take. Maybe moving to digital hasn’t cost me the opportunity to explore my artistic side.

Fire and Light Part 1

Posted on 25 September 2010 by christao408

In high school I started learning about photography, buying a Minolta 35mm SLR camera and learning the techniques of exposure, composition, focus, etc. from a few friends who were very skilled. In those days, of course, there was the expense of buying film and paying for developing and it wasn’t unusual for a roll to produce only one or two interesting images.

One of my interests was extended exposures: leaving the shutter open for a longer than normal length of time in order to capture multiple layers of light or a sense of motion. This is a tricky technique because more often than not the pictures don’t turn out very well. Additionally, a tripod is a must because taking these pictures by hand will result in too much blurring.

As I was pouring through the scanned images from those years, I thought I would share a few with you.

This shot was taken from the Marin Headlands just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Taking an extended exposure (manually locking the shutter in the open position so the frame of film was exposed for probably 20 seconds or so), I rotated the head of the tripod to produce this streaked effect. Basically, I took the photo of the bridge, unmoving, for about 15 seconds and then slow rotated the tripod to the left for another 3-4 seconds to create the streaks.

A few steps away from where I took the bridge picture is a set of old concrete bunkers, part of the extensive fortifications that lined the Marin Headlands. Working with my partner in crime, Denise, we did a series of these extended exposures, some lasting a few minutes, that featured multiple exposures of us in different positions in the frame. This took some planning and the roll was filled with failures.

The technique involved having the model stand or sit in one location and then the photographer would fire a hand-held flash at them to get the exposure. Then we would move to another location and repeat. We also set a small, controlled fire inside one of the buildings, putting a strip of rubber cement on a piece of foil and then lighting it. While the flame looks large in the picture, that is only because of the cumulative effect of the extended exposure. In reality, it was a very small flame.

This photo features me and didn’t make use of the fire. We did another series at the Rodin Sculpture Garden in Stanford, setting a little rubber cement fire in front of the “Gates of Hell” sculpture to create an interesting effect or flames and shadows. Unfortunately, campus security arrived before we could get a decent exposure.

This photo was the interesting result from an evening shoot taken at the beach. Denise brought a trumpet with her, something I don’t think she could play but it made for an interesting prop. We took this photo nearly an hour after sunset and to our eyes the sky was fully dark. But over the course of an exposure that lasted about two minutes, the faint light in the west built up, adding this dusk effect. To get the lines, I used a flashlight to trace Denise as she posed with the trumpet. The brighter spots are when the light was pointed directly at the camera and thus created a stronger exposure.

This final shot was made the same year, using my high school friend Allen as a model. It was taken in a parking lot of the Anaheim Marriott Hotel and it was only a few seconds long, since there was a fair amount of ambient light. He was holding a book of matches that he had ignited. I liked the shadow that it produced and there was something Buddha-like in the pose and then the opening in the wall behind him was an interesting contrast.

Lest you worry about all of the use of fire, rest assured I wasn’t a pyromaniac. Everything was done with a great deal of thought to safety. Fire was just an interesting medium because with an extended exposure, it provides very dramatic light for the picture.

I’ll share some more tomorrow.

Weeknight Roast Chicken

Posted on 24 September 2010 by christao408

By Wednesday night, the leftovers were finished. The black bean chili was gone. The braised pork in star anise and ginger was gone. The refrigerator was looking bare and it was time to cook again. Wanting the warmth of a homemade meal without too much hassle, I opted for weeknight roast chicken.

What makes it perfect for the weeknight? For starters, it doesn’t use a whole chicken but instead uses pieces. This cuts down on a whole lot of roasting time. Additionally, I can make a double batch just about as easily as I make a single batch, so I can get plenty of leftovers – leftovers that can be repurposed into other dishes!

The first step when you walk into the door is to get your chicken ready. There are a variety of ways you can do this depending upon how much effort you want to put into it. My favorite way is to take a couple of cups of buttermilk, a tablespoon of salt, and a couple of hearty dashes of cayenne pepper and mix them together in a plastic zipper bag. Dump in the chicken, shake it up so the chicken is completely coated, and then set it aside to marinate. If the buttermilk brine is too much work, just sprinkle both sides of the chicken pieces generously with salt and set in a bowl to give the salt a chance to work its magic.

Turn the oven on to about 350 F / 180 C. While it is heating, prepare some root veggies. I had some potatoes, carrots, and Japanese pumpkin on hand. Other tubers or root veggies would be fine, too. No need to peel potatoes and carrots if you don’t want to – a good scrub of the exterior is fine. Now, when it comes roast chicken with root veggies, the veggies are the things that can take some time. A shortcut, if you want to take it, is to boil a pan of water with some salt in it and parboil (pre-cook by boiling) the veggies. The softer things (pumpkin) only need a few minutes then pull them out. Potatoes need more time and carrots could use eight minutes or so.

Put the parboiled veggies in a bowl or save yourself the washing and put them directly into a baking dish. This is a good time to throw in some sliced onions and/or some whole cloves of garlic, if you would like. Add a generous pour of extra virgin olive oil, another sprinkling of salt, several turns of the pepper mill, and then you can add some herbs, too. Rosemary makes the kitchen smell marvelous and some thyme (I happened to have fresh on hand) is really nice, too. Stir the veggies a few times so they are coated with the oil, salt, etc.

If you haven’t parboiled the veggies, you should go ahead and put the dish into the oven and give them about fifteen minutes head start on the chicken, covered with aluminum foil.

If you marinated the chicken, take it out of the buttermilk, rinse the pieces off, and pat dry with paper towels. If you didn’t use the buttermilk, you can just pat dry with the towels. Add some fresh ground pepper and a drizzle of the olive oil, and then place on top of the veggies with the skin side of the chicken facing up, and bake, covered with foil, for about twenty minutes. After twenty minutes, remove the foil and continue cooking until the chicken is nicely browned, about another twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Check the veggies with a knife – they should be cooked to the tenderness you like. I like mine to still have a little firmness to them but not too much. Check the chicken with a thermometer – you’re looking for an internal temperature of 165 F. Pull the dish out and let it rest for about five minutes before serving. There you have it – a healthy and easy weeknight dinner.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

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