In the past week or so, I’ve noticed that the “Share” icon is missing from my entries as well as other Xangans’ entries. This happens both when I’m signed in as well as when I’m not signed in. The icon used to be adjacent to the “Recommend” icon.
I’ve posted a topic regarding this on the “Help” page and have also sent a message to John. I’m curious if you’re able to share entries or are having the same problem
Later in the week, Tawn and I had a second opportunity to visit with Jason and Daniel, taking them to see a Thai market. Wet markets (in other words, those that sell meat and produce) are often one of the best ways to get a really good look at the culture of a place you are visiting. We chose the modern, clean, and convenient to get to Marketing Organization for Farmers market, known by its Thai initials “Or Tor Gor”.
Or Tor Gor market is located across the street from the Chatuchak (“JJ”) Weekend Market, immediately outside exit 3 of the Kamphaeng Phet subway station and a short walk from the Mo Chit Skytrain station. It is open every day of the year and remains busy until the afternoon, so unlike some markets that are most active at the crack of dawn, you can catch a few winks and still see Or Tor Gor in action.
Here are some of the sights we saw:
There are loads of fruit and vegetable vendors, selling both locally grown and imported varieties. Even though it is a few months before the height of the mango season, many vendors had a large selection of fragrant “Flower Water” mangoes.
Dried fruit is an excellent way to bring a taste of your trip home with you. Here, Jason and Daniel consider the different offerings including mango (lighter yellow) and papaya (orange).
Curries are one of the staples of Thai cuisine, but even most Thais who cook at home will rarely go to the trouble to grind their own curry paste. (Although I would like to try and make my own curry paste one of these days.) Instead, they purchase freshly made curry paste from the local market, available in many varieties. Tell the vendor what kind of curry you want to make and she’ll tell you what vegetables, herbs, and meats you need to buy and in what quantities.
This market also has a significant cooked food section so you can buy your meal here and when you return home all you have to do is make some rice. This vendor is selling curries. By my count, approximately twenty different types of curry! Some use the same type of curry paste but are varied by protein and whether or not they use coconut milk. If you’ve ever tried a “jungle curry” at your local Thai restaurant, that is a curry made without coconut milk.
Lots of snacky items available, too. Here, Tawn and Daniel discuss the different flavors of shrimp chips available for purchase. You can buy these cooked (as you see here) or in small uncooked discs that you fry in oil at home. I can’t imagine the benefit of frying them yourself so much better to buy them precooked.
Thailand is home to inexpensive, high-quality seafood and Or Tor Gor market is a good place to buy it. Above is a tray of small crabs, the type which are brined then crushed and added to one variety of som tam – green papaya salad.
Fresh scallops are another plentiful item. When buying them in the US, I’m used to seeing only the white adductor muscle and not the attached roe. Here they are sold still in the shell with all the bits still attached.
Another popular sea food item is the giant river prawn. These beasts usually have a body about nine inches in length (not including the antennae) and are perfect for grilling. Here, a vendor stacks prawns for display.
Or Tor Gor market also has several flower vendors, including some who specialize in garlands. These hand-made flower arrangements are used for worship, placing them on Buddha statues and at shrines, as well as for honoring elders, guests, teachers, and other people of respect.
This type of garland is especially fragrant. It will last for several days and each evening the room will smell of jasmine.
Another prepared food vendor sells stir-fries and other dishes that are eaten with rice. Thus their Thai name, gap khao, which means “with rice”. In the steamer in the foreground of the picture is an interesting dish called hor mok. It is made with a mixture of flaked fish and red curry, steamed in a leaf cup until it has a mousse like texture, then topped with some coconut cream. Tawn made this for me on one of his first trips to San Francisco after we met, making do with the ingredients he could find at the time.
For our breakfast (it was going on 11:00) we settled on four dishes with rice. From the lower right, clockwise: green curry with fish cake, bitter eggplant and basil; pork belly and boiled eggs in soy sauce; eggplant fried in ground pork and basil; and pumpkin served with scrambled egg. Very tasty.
Finally, after two days of trying we succeeded in getting a picture of the four of us together. This one was taken by a young lady who was sitting at the adjacent table waiting for her food to be delivered. Not only does it show you our handsome mugs but you can also get a good idea of what the market looks like with many of the prepared food vendors in the background.
Again, it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to finally meet Jason and Daniel in person and a treat to be able to spend some time with them while they were in town. Hopefully, the next time we meet it will be in Tokyo!
Happy new year to all of you!
This time of year, when the weather is nasty further north in the hemisphere and the weather is more bearable down here near the equator, Tawn and I find ourselves with an endless stream of visitors. We were fortunate this week to have a pair of unexpected, but very welcome visitors: Jason and his husband Daniel. Jason and I have known each other for a number of years through Xanga but this is the first time we’ve met in person.
The first day we met, I spent several hours playing tour guide, taking them through the city on a few different modes of transportation and then on to the tourist sites of the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. This is something like the “Seven Modes of Transport” tour I did with some recent guests, but with some refinements. Here are some pictures we took along the way:
We began our multi-modal journey at the Art Deco style Hua Lamphong railway station, located on the edge of the old city. The misters along the roof were going full-blast, trying to cool down what was a sunny and warm day. Our journey through the city by rail was only twenty minutes long but it gave us a chance to view a different side of Bangkok life.
The train cars are not air conditioned and are older than any of the three of us. Here, Jason and Daniel wait for the train to pull out of the station.
At one of the stops along the way, I noticed these shoes, sheets, clothes, and chilies that were being dried in the sun. It reminds me of that long-lost Tennessee Williams play, “Chili on a Hot Tin Roof”.
Some of what you see along the train tracks verges on squalor and sadness. This man was squatting barefoot on a wooden shack, a guitar at his side and a vacant expression in his eyes.
From the train we transferred to a canal taxi, racing through the polluted khlong to the end of the line, which is adjacent to the Golden Mount. From there we squeezed into a tuk tuk, a three-wheeled taxi, and weaved through the traffic to Thammasat University, located on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. A short walk down the street from the university was this hidden soi – an alley of antique shop houses that has been roofed in. It is well-ventilated and almost looks like something out of the French Quarter in New Orleans, minus the picture of His Majesty the King.
After lunch we walked a bit further down the street to the Grand Palace. Here are Daniel and Jason in front of a trio of buildings in Wat Phra Gaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. This is His Majesty’s personal temple and is the only temple in Thailand that does not have monks’ residences on site.
The three structures in the background are, from left to right, a Sri Lankan style chedi (or stupa) that contains relics of the Buddha; a Lanna (Northern Thai/Laotian kingdom) style library that houses Buddhist scriptures written on palm leaves; and a Khmer (Cambodian) style hall that contains statues of the eight previous kings in the Chakri dynasty. A rehabilitation of the last building was just completed in the previous few days and workers were taking down the last of the scaffolding.
The exterior of the Royal Chapel of the Emerald Buddha is decorated with a row of garuda – a mythical half-man, half-bird that holds in its claws a naga – the multi-headed serpent that sheltered Prince Siddhartha from the elements as he meditated for forty days before gaining enlightenment and becoming the Buddha. (Which means, “the enlightened one”.)
I was trying to be artsy with this photo, taking a picture of the reflection of a wihan – a Buddha statue hall – in the mirrored mosaic tiles of the Chapel of the Emerald Buddha. My attempts to focus on the reflection failed but I think the result is still interesting.
A common theme that we observed, which I hadn’t been aware of previously, is how much Chinese statuary there is on the grounds of the temple. This is a fine example of a traditional Chinese gate, carved in miniature, with the Buddhist scripture library in the background. Throughout the complex we saw warriors, pagodas, gates, lions, and other sculptures in the Chinese style.
Later in the afternoon we walked down the street to Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. This temple is dotted with dozens of chedis large and small, which contain relics of various major and minor members of the royal family stretching back more than 200 years. I cropped this photo from a larger one as I thought it made for an interesting silhouette.
Sure enough, as is always the case, on the way there a half-dozen different people intercepted us and tried to tell us that the temple was closed. (It is open every day until at least 6:00 pm – actually, I think it is staying open until 9:00 pm these days.) This is a classic Bangkok scam. Do not trust strangers who approach you.
Daniel and Jason in front of the Reclining Buddha, which is 46 meters long and 15 meters high. In answer to a frequent question, the statue was built first and then the hall was built around it.
A popular activity is to donate 20 baht for a cup of small coins, and to drop them into a row of alms bowls, reciting a prayer or giving thanks for a specific blessing as you drop each coin. This picture of Daniel and Jason turned out very nicely, I think. Nice lighting and composition.
This temple is one that tourists tend to miss large portions of. They see the giant reclining Buddha statue and then depart. It is a very large temple, though, and has many areas well worth a look. As we wandered around the quieter portions of the temple, we came across a gardener who was trimming some bushes. His son was conked out nearby, taking a nap on the utility cart. How I wish I could sleep so easily!
After a warm afternoon touring we decided to bypass the long queue for the river taxi and instead hire our own long-tail boat. A little hard bargaining (and a willingness to walk away when my desired price wasn’t met) resulted in the dock manager coming back to me as we sat drinking our water and finally accepting my price. What a nice way to catch a breeze and work our way downriver.
That evening Tawn joined as the four of us had dinner at Soul Food Mahanakorn. Of course we were so caught up in conversation that we forgot to take a picture together!
Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow…
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.
While brainstorming ideas with colleagues for an internal contest at my company, I thought it might be fun to ask employees to come up with an advertising jingle for one of our programs, done in the style of Burma Shave. Many of you may not know of Burma Shave. It was an American brand of brushless shaving cream that came about in the 1920s and was known for its clever roadside advertising.
In the days before huge billboards, Burma Shave jingles were usually five rhyming lines that were arranged on sequential roadside signs. The red signs with white lettering would conclude with the name of the product: Burma Shave. They were clever and are a staple of mid 20th Century Americana.
My colleagues liked the idea and we’ve sent it up the flagpole to see if those higher up approve it. If so, I’ll have to figure out how to announce the contest in a way that clearly explains to our employees, the vast majority of whom are too young to have heard of Burma Shave, what the objective is.
Browsing an online collection of the entirety of their jingles, arranged by year, I thought I would share some of my favorites with you.
| Tho stiff The beard That Nature gave It shaves like down With Burma-Shave | Are your whiskers When you wake Tougher than A two-bit steak? Try Burma-Shave | Your beauty, boys Is just Skin deep What skin you’ve got You ought to keep Burma-Shave |
| College boys! Your courage muster Shave off That fuzzy Cookie duster Burma-Shave | If you think She likes Your bristles Walk bare-footed Through some thistles Burma-Shave | Riot at Drug store Calling all cars 100 customers 99 jars Burma-Shave |
| His tenor voice She thought divine Till whiskers Scratched Sweet Adeline Burma-Shave | Cooties love Bewhiskered places Cuties love the Smoothest faces Shaved by Burma-Shave | A peach Looks good With lots of fuzz But man’s no peach And never wuz Burma-Shave |
| Prickly pears Are picked For pickles No peach picks A face that prickles Burma-Shave | Said Farmer Brown Who’s bald on top ”Wish I could Rotate the crop” Burma-Shave | If you Don’t know Whose signs these are You can’t have Driven very far Burma-Shave |
Maybe we should have a Xanga Blog jingle contest?
A comment
Smiley
Or a rec
Make me as happy
As all heck
Xanga
What do you think?
While I often recommend entries that I think others might enjoy, I cannot remember a recent time when I’ve read an entry that so effectively articulated my own thoughts about friends on Xanga versus friends in real life (IRL) that I was compelled to repost it.
Michael (arenadi) wrote just such an entry on Monday. It had 100 recommendations by the time I read it and I encourage you to read it, too. Here’s a teaser:
Most of us have had our IRL friends and family tell us that our online friends aren’t real friends.
They discount that there are real people out there behind the online personalities we interact with. And that the people “out there on the internet” can’t possibly love or care as IRL friends can; nor can online friends know us as well as real-life friends can. They tell us building relationships, regardless of whether platonic or romantic, is impossible via the online world.
I have always disagreed with that. And as many of you witnessed here on Xanga this past Friday night, my point was proven in practice.
There are many interesting Xangans out there and Alex (Roadlesstaken) is one of the more creative ones. He has a lot of subscribers and has worked with them to compile an interesting series of video entries called Xanga Secrets (watch Volume VIII here).
The thing is, Alex is celebrating his birthday on March 1st. For some reason, he sounds a bit bummed out about turning – gasp! – 24. I can’t imagine why, seeing as how he isn’t even old enough yet to get a discount on his car insurance.
Last week he sent out a call asking Xangans to help lift his spirits by giving him a shoutout to help him remember his birthday, seeing as how in his old age he has already forgotten how he spent birthday number 23.
So here it is, Alex, my birthday shout out to you:
If you would like to help make his birthday memorable, feel free to drop by his site and wish him a happy birthday. If you think it is a bit of a desperate ploy to grab attention, that’s okay, too. (Just kidding Alex…)
How useful do you find blogrings? Over the past four-plus years, I’ve met a lot of people with similar interests that way. From Foreign Film Buffs to I’m Addicted to NPR to Confessions of a Foodie, I’ve found blogrings to be a fun way to meet other Xangans.
One Xangan whom I recently met, Amanda, is new to Xanga. After years of blogging on other services and being frustrated with the attitudes and manners of people she met there, she decided to come to Xanga. Commenting on one of her first posts, I shared the names of several fellow Xangans whose writing I really enjoy. I also told her that one of my favorite things about Xanga is the sense of connection and community that I’ve found here.
In order to connect with more people, Amanda decided to start two blogrings. The first one is called AAA Blogring for Newcomers. While designed as a place for new Xangans to meet other new Xangans, you certainly don’t have to be new to Xanga to join. (Heck, I’m a member of Thai People and I’m not Thai!)
Her second blogring is called UK 50+. Targeting bloggers of a certain age who live in the United Kingdom, of course everyone is welcome. If you are wise beyond your years, a speaker of the Queen’s English, or simply think that cookies should be called biscuits (sorry, stereotypes…) you will fit in at the UK 50+ blogring very nicely!
I’ve joined both blogrings and invite you to join them, too.
In this age of internet relationships and Facebook “friends”, one could be forgiven for questioning how genuine these virtual connections are. While many may indeed be tenuous, several connections I’ve made through this blog have developed into real, meaningful friendships with people from so many different walks of life.
It was because of one such relationship that I carved two days from my visit to the United States to fly to Quincy, Illinois (population 40,000). Lying on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River some 140 miles north of St. Louis, Quincy has been the home for the past 31 years to Dr. Zakiah Ali, her husband Mohamed, and their family.
Visiting Zakiah after getting to know her through her postings, poems and comments on Xanga was a blessing. She and her family are every bit as kind and welcoming as you could imagine. While my twenty hours there were too few, I’m glad I had the opportunity and look forward to a return visit.
Connecting in St. Louis from Kansas City, I boarded a 19-seat puddle jumper operated by Great Lakes Airways, who has the government’s Essential Air Services contract for Quincy. This Thursday afternoon I was the only passenger.
After a 35-minute flight, most of it spent climbing and descending, I arrived at Baldwin Field. Waiting in the tiny terminal were Zakiah and Mohamed.
A few minutes later we arrived at their lovely home, the famous red Mustang convertible sitting in the open garage and the beautiful roses blooming in the front yard.
Above, the place where all of Zakiah’s posts and poetry enter the ether.
No sooner had I arrived then the food began. Zakiah’s gracious hospitality manifests itself in many ways, not the least of which is through the preparation of copious amounts of food.
In addition to some salad and quiche, Zakiah served mango feerni, a soup-like dessert made with homemade condensed milk, pureed mango and pistachios. It was delicate, cool and refreshing.
After resting and freshening up, Zakiah and I hopped in her Benz for the nickel tour of Quincy. It is a beautiful town, renowned for its architecture. There were dozens of beautiful houses in many styles – colonial, Victorian, craftsman, etc. – on the shady, tree-lined streets of the old city.
We drove past several notable sites including Washington Park, the setting of one of the seven debates in the 1858 Senate race between incumbent Stephen A. Douglas and a lanky lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.
Some of the other sites – Quincy’s mosque, which Zakiah founded many years ago, for example – she pointed out when we were half a block beyond them. Perhaps the driver was so careful about her safe driving that the “audio” on the tour was delayed. We also made our way to the banks of the mighty Mississippi, the wide river that has so profoundly shaped Quincy.
Returning home, Zakiah began preparations for an elaborate dinner. I helped a bit but mostly took pictures and notes and filmed the proceedings. After I return to Thailand, I’ll see what I can do about editing the video clips.
While dinner was being prepared, Zakiah and Mohamed’s daughter stopped by with her husband and two sons. If you’ve read Zakiah’s blog, you know she adores her grandsons, Davis and Noah. Davis is cute but very shy and Noah has inherited his grandparents’ cleverness. They are a beautiful family.
Our meal included Chicken Korma, a curried chicken dish;
Beef Briyani, a dish with basmati rice and stewed beef;
Shikampuri Kebab, fried minced beef patties stuffed with sour cream, onions and cilantro;
and a dish of broiled vegetables tossed in Italian dressing and parmesan cheese, our only exception to the otherwise Indian cuisine.
Dessert was faluda, an eggless custard like the Italian panna cotta. Made with milk and a seaweed that thickens the dish like gelatin does. The milk is simmered with sugar, almonds and rose water then chilled.It is refreshing and the perfect end to an excellent meal.
We talked into the evening, covering so many topics. I was especially interested in hearing about the experiences Zakiah and Mohamed had, moving halfway around the world and starting a new life in a strange land and, even more challenging, in a small town where they appeared so different from everyone else. Hearing the stories of the challenges of their first few years, and how they were eventually embraced by the community (Dr. Zakiah received the key to the city after her retirement) and now consider it home, I am inspired at their ability to gracefully triumph against such odds. Truly amazing.
Below, the picture of the town’s well-known doctor in an interview with her in the local paper’s “Women In the News” column.
Their living room, attached to the dining room, has particularly interesting decorations. Everything in it has an intriguing story or history attached. There is the commendation given to her great grandfather by Queen Victoria for his service to the crown. There are the paintings done by an uncle who was a notable artist. There are furniture items from her childhood home in India. So many things, each with deep meaning and significance. The stories from the living room alone were worth the visit.
Friday morning we enjoyed a lingering and elaborate breakfast (she even bought two kinds of ground coffee from the store – they aren’t regular coffee drinkers – to make sure I would have my morning coffee) on the backyard deck.
Above: Mohamed and Zakiah. Below, Eggs Dr. Ali Style, with tumeric, onion, tomatoes, and chillies.
The morning was unseasonably cool and we enjoyed the view of her koi pond and beautiful garden. A gazebo, several rose bushes, other flowers, and a hedgerow sat behind the pond and the surrounding cluster of trees.
As she fed the fish, which truly do come at the sound of her voice, she mused how she wishes she could show the garden to Matt, whom she thinks would especially appreciate it.
At 9:30 I called the airline to make sure the flight was running – after the solo trip the previous afternoon I was worried they might not come back for me – and we headed to the airport shortly afterwards. The terminal is so cute, with one tiny check-in counter, security guards who show up for the three flights a day then go home, and one rental car sitting in the Hertz lot. This time our flight was packed – four passengers! Checked in, I said my farewells and headed through the security screening and across the tarmac to the plane.
As the plane climbed about the endless rolling green farmland that surrounds Quincy, I thought about my visit and confirmed that it had indeed been well worth the time and effort to make this virtual friendship into an in-person one.
In the past few weeks, traffic on my blog has surged. Ever since writing about the murder of family friends in Cole Camp, Missouri last month, my daily traffic has increased from an average of about 95 to about 140 unique visitors. Lots of new people are leaving comments and I feel bad that I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know everyone, or for them to get to know me, very well.
In the four years since I started blogging (well, very close – the uninspiring first entry was August 4, 2005), I’ve slowly built a community of readers, coming to know people and to consider them important in my life. Since that process was slow, I felt like it worked both ways. As people started reading, subscribing to and commenting on my blog, it was easy to find time to visit their blog and do the same. I feel like it is harder to do that as regularly as I would like to with all the new readers.
So to all of you who have recently arrived, welcome. I’ll get around to visiting your blogs and building those connections in the weeks and months to come. Meanwhile, I’ll also try to share a bit more about me. I realize that when we read others’ blogs, we slowly build up a history, an understanding of who they are based on what they share with us. As Matt wrote recently, it is interesting to go back and read the blogs in people’s archives, to see the path they’ve traveled.
In relation to this entry’s title, I’m less than two weeks away from my next trip back to the U.S. This will be my longest trip back since moving here to Krungthep – something like 26 days including travel time.
It will start out in Los Angeles, both for work and pleasure. Hoping to meet with some Xanga friends there. I’ll continue to Kansas City to visit family. Tawn will join me in KC about ten days after I arrive in the US. It looks like there will be a mini Xanga meet in Quincy, IL with Zakiah. After corresponding with her for so long, it will be nice to finally meet in person. (Meg, Judi, Matt, et al – ready to join me?)
Our trip to the US will conclude with several days in New York City, a chance to visit family and friends and, for Tawn, to stroll the streets of Carrie Bradshaw.
The real reason for the trip, though, is that we’re getting married. We’ll bring a few carloads of family and a few friends up to Iowa and finally make this nearly ten-year realtionship legal. I’ll write more about that as the date gets closer.
So much to do beforehand…
christao408 