So MTV has somewhat atoned for the past decades of sin by finally providing... music videos! I browsed around for an hour and realized it's literally been 20 years since I've really watched music videos... And it's telling to see the #1 watched video on the site (I swear the kids linking to that vid must think Wang Chung is an Asian porn site).

Some of the videos seem to be in fairly high def as well. Go check it out; mtvmusic.com

Timeline: End of July to mid-August 2007

The foundations have been set to floor level (one meter off the ground) and are being extended to roof level.

In this photo, our site is located at the four columns wrapped in wooden supports visible between the man in the blue shirt at the approximate middle of the photo and the first power pole to his right.

The beginnings of our house. Notice the use of eucalyptus as framework; this is standard building practice all throughout Thailand for all types of buildings. In other Asian countries, they tend to use more bamboo but there's not so much of that here.

A couple weeks later, the eucalyptus framework has been replaced with cinder blocks, the stairs and pavilion have been added, and all foundations have been extended to roof level.

Ski mask welding in stifling weather, against a beautiful sunset sky. Most of these guys don't bother with eye protection for arc welding. This guy sure didn't.

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Previous Our New Thai House entries:
Our New Thai House Part 1 - Picking a Plot
Our New Thai House Part 2 - Foundations

We did the cloth diaper thing for a while and I was happy to do my own little part for the environment, but as soon as I realized how poorly cloth diapers performed compared to disposables, we switched. Now it seems that using cloth nappies might not be as environmentally friendly (in regards to greenhouse gas emissions) as everybody assumed: Blow to image of 'green' reusable nappy

"A government report that found old-fashioned reusable nappies damage the environment more than disposables has been hushed up because ministers are embarrassed by its findings...

...The report found that while disposable nappies used over 2½ years would have a global warming , impact of 550kg of CO2 reusable nappies produced 570kg of CO2 on average. But if parents used tumble dryers and washed the reusable nappies at 90C, the impact could spiral to . 993kg of CO2 A Defra spokesman said the government was shelving plans for future research on nappies."

I guess the thing to remember is that the carbon footprint is only a part of the total environmental impact.

From Wikipedia (link):

TENS Electrodes should never be placed:

• On or near the eyes
• In the mouth
• Transcerebrally (on each temple)
• On the front of the neck (due to the risk of acute hypotension through a vasovagal reflex)

Somebody is obviously placing art before safety.

• Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
• And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
• It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
• Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat)
• Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
• Be more or less specific.
• Remarks in brackets (however relevant) are (usually) (but not always) unnecessary.
• Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
• No sentence fragments.
• Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
• Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
• Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
• One should NEVER generalize.
• Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
• Don't use no double negatives.
• Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
• One-word sentences? Eliminate.
• Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
• The passive voice is to be ignored.
• Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
• Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
• Kill all exclamation points!!!
• Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
• Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
• Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
• Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
• If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
• Puns are for children, not groan readers.
• Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
• Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
• Who needs rhetorical questions?
• Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

Forwarded by one of my students.

Following on the heels of my desktop PC's timely death, the Windows installation on my laptop yesterday shit itself. Max is telling me it's all about Baby OS, so maybe I'll switch.

Beef Panang is considered a dry curry (for Thailand at least) because it contains less roux (liquid base), and specifically, less coconut milk than other Thai curries. It is also one of the best uses for lean/tough beef, which is great since that's pretty much all we have around here. Panang is an easy dish to make and my way is even easier than most. I've tried it the normally advocated way, by heating curry paste in coconut milk first, but I've found this is a waste of time when using ready-made curry paste. So without further ado:

INGREDIENTS

• Beef - Any cut. Any quantity approximating that in the photos below (about 1.5 pounds).


• Thai red curry paste - Suitable quantity depends on brand; see photos below for reference


• Coconut milk - About one cup


• Fresh kaffir lime leaves - Slice these into strips. I used 2-3 big leaves in the photos below.


• Nampla (filtered fish sauce) - Suitable quantity depends on brand; I only used a couple dashes since I was using a fairly pungent brand. Remember, the only 2 reasons to use nampla are to make things SALTIER and FUNKIER - it doesn't make a dish magically Thai, but it sure can funktify (esp. if you throw it in a hot frying pan).


• OPTIONAL: Raw cane sugar - A tablespoon or so. I forego the use of sugar because I can't stand sweet curries, and this dish already contains coconut milk.

DIRECTIONS

Cut the beef into strips. Traditionally, it should be cut into thinner strips than this, but I like bite-sized chunks. Cut the kaffir lime leaves up as well. The baggie in the background contains the red curry paste (we only used about half).

Heat a bit of vegetable oil in the pan and add the red curry paste. Fry it for a couple minutes on medium high heat to activate it, stirring rapidly to prevent sticking and burning. Then add the meat and stir often.

Did I forget to mention that Nam was cooking while I took photos? Anyway, the baby started waking up at this point so the coconut milk was added earlier than usual - we usually wait until the meat is slightly browned but it turned out not to make a difference. Also, the Quick 'n Dirty series of recipes is designed for those that need to display adaptability on occasion, so they are meant to be stretched and improvised upon.

After the coconut milk is added, add a couple splashes of nampra (be careful, it's really salty! You can always add more later, as well as sugar if you want) and also the lime leaves. Then turn the heat down to low-medium and let it simmer until either the meat becomes unbelievable soft and succulent, or tempted by the heavenly smell, you start scooping ladlefuls of panang onto hot mounds of rice and let the little piggy in you take over.

Alternatively, you can serve with boiled egg halves and veggies of some kind.

Note that you can eat the lime leaves, but they are a bit tough. I usually put them to the side.

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This is C. Buddha signing off with today's Quick 'n Dirty recipe - funky and delicious, yet simple and semi-authentic-ish Beef Panang.

There are some fools claiming it's all about Wordpress. Get real, have you really read your master's teachings? Is it not apparent with each link he magically conjures up in your footer?

Likewise, there are some claiming it's all about Drupal or Textpattern or Nucleus (or Mambo or b2evolution). I'm not claiming that MT (which is running this blog) is the best, rather, I'm calling for the next true level of blogging software... We are far from the combination of power, features, and ease of use that each blogging platform claims to have but doesn't really deliver... Bring on the next level, please. We are all waiting.

There used to be a blue traffic sign if you drove into Shin Sekai from Namba welcoming you to SIN SEKAI. It might even still be there.

When we were in university there was still an indoor "fishing park," archery range, and competing all-night dirty film theaters in the immediate vicinity of Tsutenkaku tower. Our first trip there was most notable because on the way to eat kushiyaki we walked right by a big Yak loudly berating and repeatedly slamming a woman against his S-class stopped in the middle of the street. People stopped to watch, but nobody said (much less did) shit - even the security guard standing in a nearby parking lot. It was grimy Osaka as fuck.

Passing through such places at night, you can get a glimpse of the hidden underside of an already dark and foreboding area: The police patrolling the perimeters, but not really entering. A skinny wretch of a dog chained to a seemingly abandoned food stall. The shabu junkies clutching greasy banknotes and buying bags of rock sugar at the corner store.

The greatest Tsutenkaku story I ever heard, though, is that back in the seventies or eighties they had an exhibition in the tower and turned it into a zoo of sorts, with caged animals displayed all the way up the staircase. I would have paid money to see that (Hell, come to think of it, my Crown might have been a taxi cruising the streets of Tennoji back then.).

Thanks auntie Mika!

This is the best explanation of the subprime loan disaster I have ever seen, and I've seen quite a few: LINK

Wow, two quasi-political posts in a row and no new baby pictures... I feel like my blog is devolving. Where's my camera? (Where's my photo editing time? It disappeared around here somewhere...)

This is some funny shit: palinaspresident.com

xkcd, bioooooootch!

Man thinks he discovers a photo of Robert Johnson and Johnny Shines on ebay. Tragedy ensues as his woman leaves him, his dog dies, and any number of bourbon/scotch/beers ala the Hook doesn't seem to help. Go read about it here: PORTRAIT OF A PHANTOM

Wouldn't it be cool if Max learned to drive in my daily driver? Manual steering, manual gearbox, manual windows, hell it even has optional (as in factory option) non-retractable seatbelts!

Even with houses being built up all around us, the best views will remain.

These went really well with the snake soup last week. We forgot to take photos of them past the prep stage, though. They were salted and deep fried, and then their heads were taken off which allowed easy deveining ala shrimp. As far as I could tell they were a cross between a cricket and a potato bug (mmm, potatoes), but as large as your thumb.

Little Tokyo seeks to build back Japanese vibe

Would that be the ultrahip fused with impeccable tradition topped with affluence type of vibe, or the overdeveloped danchi and Jusco hell that ends up overrun with mujin loan ATMs and 100 yen stores type of vibe? Maybe I'm missing something. Losing Little Tokyo would be sad. Losing everything else to preserve an empty shell would be tragic.

Wow. Some people really are born with no fear.

Now all we have to do is wait for the results. If everything goes well I'll go to pick up his passport in two or three weeks.

The entire application took less than an hour, including filling out forms for reporting the birth of a U.S. citizen abroad as well as a passport (BTW, did you know there are "passport books" as well as "passport cards" now? The former are standard passports and the latter are for visiting countries bordering the US and US territories or something like that.).

One funny thing is that the interviewer didn't believe that I didn't have dual Japanese/American citizenship although I thought I explained what a Japanese American is very well. Oh well, the mixing pot is sometimes hard to imagine unless you've been there (the interviewer in question wasn't from the US).

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Max did fine on the plane and in the Bangkok confusion. He only threw a fit once, and we happened to be at Nam's aunts' house in Lad Prao at the time, so everything went very smoothly.

In honor of the recent xkcd comic (for which I somehow lost the link): The Last Stand 2

BONUS: Excellent chambara action as well

For the 80's music video nerd in you:

I recently had an 80's themed dream: Adam Ant and Robert Smith were inventing Jolt in Charlie Sheen's backyard as a sort of before-its-time Junkyard Wars competition.

That is all.

For Adam - Ueo Katsuhiro: The Greatest?

We are off to Bangkok to claim Max's American citizenship. Wish us luck!

We should be back on Wednesday of next week. We will probably not be checking email until then...

If this gets to you, wait until I post the appetizers.

I had snake soup for breakfast this morning. It was one of the snakes on this page.

More to follow.

This photo was taken back in March.

This was the last gas station in Maha Sarakham to sell 95 octane gasoline with no ethanol added. It greatly surprised me to find them selling it because all of the other stations had gradually phased it out by the end of the previous year - PTT and Petronas were the first to go, then Esso, then finally, what I thought was the last holdout, Caltex. But I stopped at this station (I even forget what company it was!) on the way back from the road to Borabu, a neighboring town, and got a full tank of the good stuff - unadulterated 95 oc (and it may very well have been the last tank my car will get, ever - it's VQ30 is running fine on 95 gasohol, tho).

The problem is, this station is too far away and off the beaten path. When I went to the labor office (located on the road to Borabu) to renew my work permit a few days ago, I looked at the pumps when passing by and saw that they had finally switched to the ethanol crap like everywhere else.

Sad.

Note: The VQ30 in my A33 Cefiro is running on 95 gasohol. The RB20 in the S60 Crown is running on regular (non-eth) 91. They are both running fine, but I'd still prefer to run them on non-eth 95 because it runs smoother, gets better mileage, and isn't robbing food from people's mouths.

more

I did something today I'd never done before: I lost a chunk of my photo archives. The last 200 photos or so, including the originals of the ones used in the last two posts. The ones on the blog are all that remain... I did this because I was disk juggling and creating backups while I was too tired, overwriting data and formatting a disk that I assumed had been backed up already. Oops. I only write this here as a future warning to all: DON'T FORMAT DISKS WHEN TIRED!!

That is all.