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So, today was a long-awaited Thai cooking class at the home of the teacher in Fremont/Union City. P was supposed to have taught the last class a couple of months ago, but had a catering gig to do, so it was taught by someone else, on the grounds of the Thai temple. It was cold and rainy and windy and not that much fun. Janice drove this time. And I remembered to take my camera. I took the 50mm 1.4, thinking we would be in a well-lighted kitchen or dining room, but would have been better off with the 18-50 2.8 since we were mostly out by the pool, and there were no good angles for group photos at 50mm.
And of course the skies were overcast and it looked like rain.
P was helped by her husband, W. IRL P is a preventive services nurse, who had her own restaurant in San Carlos for a while. W is even more at home cooking, he is the head of food services at UCB. He kept talking about his time in the CIA, but that turned out to be the Culinary Institute of America. W is American, but speaks a bit more Thai than most men who marry English-speaking Thai women.
Both of them delightful people, and wonderful at teaching restaurant-style food prep. We had three items on the menu, Tom Ka Gai (soup), Tamarind Prawns and Chicken Laab. I had never heard of Laab not made from pork before. P had us slicing onions, squeezing limes and shredding roast chicken while she showed us the already-prepared prawns and oyster mushrooms. She is big on shortcuts, and shared her favorite brands of tamarind paste, fish sauce and pad thai mix. She also had prepared galangal and lemon grass for the soup, and while we were shredding and slicing she deep fried the canned pineapple chunks in corn oil for a couple of minutes, just enough to soften their bite.
The prawns were deep fried in corn oil too, with the pineapple added and tamarind paste. Thinly sliced red bell pepper was added, and red chili peppers. This was drained and put on a serving platter with beautifully done green onion trees and butterflies carved from carrots.
After we devoured most of the prawns, she put the soup pot on, water & fish sauce first, then raw chicken breast which she had prepared in advance, galangal, lemon grass, lime juice, oyster mushrooms, cilantro, sliced green onions and finally the coconut milk. She said adding the coconut milk too soon makes it oily.
While that was simmering, we mixed the shredded roast chicken with red onion, mint, cilantro, and a few things I was not paying attention too. P brought out a tray of romaine lettuce, cucumbers, sliced bell peppers and carrots, which were eaten with the chicken laab.
Lots of great conversation, beside Janice, P and W were S, an Asian-American software engineer who grew up partly in Korea, L who is a public health nurse and D, a software engineer from southern India.
After the class, Janice took us to Sweet Orchid, just off Decoto Road, which is owned by a friend of hers. It is a small bakery/gelato shop which also has a variety of self-serve soft ice cream in tropical fruit flavors.
Home, changed the litterboxes, petted the cats.
Plans for tomorrow:
Process the photos from the cooking class
point P and W to my Drink Tank article on the Authenmathai
Pet Club
Jackpot. Found the special utensils which Macy's wanted $30 for priced at $7, a huge granite cooker with canning rack for $19 ($50 elsewhere) and kosher dill quick mix for $2 ($8 for the not-quick mix at Draeger's). While I was at it I picked uphalf a gallon of vinegar for $2.28.
The process was fairly simple, but time-consuming because my little electric stove is underpowered for the large amounts of liquid which needed boiling:
( Read more... )
This made 6 quart jars, about half pickling cukes and half Japanese cukes. The pickles should be ready to sample in a week.
The grape leaves make the pickles crisper, from all I've read.
As I posted earlier, it was a cold and cloudy morning, which is a bummer because Songkran is my favorite holiday, and I had been planning on going for weeks. But the main thing for the holiday is it's to celebrate the start of the hot season, and there are water fights for the kids, and milder water splashing for the adults. The temple also has a recital of classical music & dance by the kids, which looks best in sunlight. And Thais are a lot less tolerant of cold weather, all the best eye candy would have been bundled up. :-)
So I went to the beautiful nearby park, set my lawn chair in the sun, and watched people for a few hours. Then had lunch at the lakeside café, a place I went to a lot when I worked nearby. I was surprised to be able to grab a signal from Google's free wi-fi, I'd never been able to before. Then I saw there was a new relay in the parking lot. Up till recently the nearest one was at Google HQ about a mile across the lake.
Plans for tomorrow:
Make appointments for the cats' annual vet visit and the car's recall notice. And maybe the ophthalmologist.
Try to learn music & monologue for auditions Wednesday, though I am 80% leaning towards canceling, because the location is a PIA to get to. When they first sent out the notice they said it was in the SF financial district, which is easy enough to get to on BART, but it's actually in Chinatown.
Blah, Humbug
Apr. 17th, 2011 10:33 amBummer.
So since I am on a Thai cooking jag, I went out and got the ingredients, and made two batches at home today, about 1/4 was dinner and I am still yummified. Very quick and easy to make, and delicious. I think I would like it better as duck soup, but was too lazy to go to the Chinese restaurant for take-out roast duck. And had not thought of it until after my two trips to Ranch99.
The recipe was out of Nancie McDermott's Real Thai , IMNSHO the best Thai cookbook ever written. Nancie was in my Peace Corps/Thailand group and this is her first cookbook - she has since made cookbook writing her profession.
The continuing saga of preserved turnips took another step forward, I think, this morning. I unpacked the turnip shreds from the brine (the recipe said >12 hours, it was more like 15) and since I did not trust the plastic peanut butter container I'd used for that step for the next step, I went out in search of Mason jars. Came up empty, but bought a big pickle jar, emptied it into an even bigger pickle jar, washed it out and plopped in 4 garlic cloves, the turnip shreds and filled it with white vinegar. That will sit on a shelf for a week or three. I may need to dilute the vinegar with water, but maybe not.
While I was on the pickle run, I also got some more eggs, so maybe tomorrow I'll whip up some Pot Thai. Need to do that soon so the chives and basil don't spoil.
Took a break and went to Starbucks, only to find them closing early. Continued on to the late night one, found a spot to sit, logged in on the netbook for a little but mostly read from a book I bought at BASFA last week, Michael Palin's Hemingway's Chair. I figured a book by this Monty Python alumnus ought to be interesting, and it is. Superbly written, and the chapters are short which somehow makes it harder to set down.
Plans for tomorrow:
Call PA Medical Foundation to find out what the bogus $500+ charge at the end of my bill is about. Looks like they are charging me for Blue Cross payments which I already made through my paycheck.
Do the laundry
Check the job listings
Another dead end
Feb. 26th, 2011 12:47 amMeanwhile I have added the makings for Tom Ka Gai, my favorite Thai soup, to the list of things to make this weekend, and stopped off at Ranch99 to get lemon grass, galanga, straw mushrooms and coconut milk. Tomorrow I'll get low sodium chicken stock and some roast duck, which seems to me a much better soup meat than chicken breast. :-) Plenty of places nearby for those items.
Also bought some Miracle Whip at Ranch99, what I had in the fridge expired sometime in the Victorian era. Deviled eggs tomorrow too.
May make one more foray for preserved turnip, as it seems to be a popular Vietnamese item, and there is a market not far away which does that particular cuisine. I do have a recipe now, but it takes 4-5 days to create an edible batch.
Went to a friend's and hooked up her replacement receiver/amp. It was a challenge, she was sold the wrong model. She was replacing her late brother's high-end surround sound digital unit, and bought a stereo analog unit. I wish she had asked me first. I was able to hook it up and make it work, and she can't hear the difference, but I sure can. Since the right model would cost a lot more, and she loves the sound as is, she'll keep it. The old unit died because she has a plant hanging above t, and when she waters the plant it drips onto the vents and into the receiver. I told her to go to TAP Plastics and have them make a little shelf-like thing to protect the vents without sealing them off.
Photo shoot was very good tonight, it was at what is now my favorite studio in Sunnyvale, the hosts have learned how to keep everything orderly and still fun. The model learned a lot - this was a very low cost shoot because she is trying to build up a portfolio and break into the business. Six photogs plus the two hosts, we shot for 2 minutes at a time with short breaks between rounds for the model to put on different outfits and freshen up. The model has pretty eyes and a great complexion, but she's a bit tsaftig and un-toned. I think she looked best in tight jeans. We kept the lighting simple, which worked well.
No ral plans for tomorrow except a tiny bit of shopping and a lot of cooking and staying inside, out of the storm.
2 out of 3 ain't bad except
Feb. 25th, 2011 12:36 amFirst goal was to get some stuff at Lucky's. BD alcohol swabs were at the top of the list, and for the fourth time in two days there were none of the shelf (at 4 different stores). SO I asked the pharmacist, and she said there had been a massive recall. She had a couple of boxes she could sell, and I bought one, which is about a 3-week supply.
The second goal was to find a Thai market in Berkeley. The printout I had I left home (figures) so I looked them up on the iPhone via Yahoo and Google. Drove the the Great Mall in Milpitas which has a transit center and plenty of free parking. Took the elevator up to what I thought was the new BART line, which I thought ran to Berkeley, only to find it was San Jose light rail, and did not go anywhere near there. At the transit center there was an express bus to Fremont BART which my Clipper card was good for, so I waited about 20 minutes for that. The weather was clear and only a little chilly.
I thought BART accepted the clipper card too, but it does not, but I carry a BART ticket, and it had enough to get me to Berkeley. Looked at the first market's address, and it was only a few blocks away, which seemed okay until it started to get very cold and blustery, and I enlarged the map to see it was more like a mile. Got there and it was out of business. There was a lot of stock in the store, so it looks like they shut the place recently.
Next one was a few more blocks down the same street. Got there and it was no longer a market, but a recycling center.
By now it is raining hard, the wind is blowing and it is cold. Walked most of the way back to BART, stopped for some soup at Plearn Thai. It was pretty good. This is a place which I'd discovered maybe 20 years ago as a hole in the wall very close to campus, but it had been forced to move to make way for a Best Buy (this was at a time when Best Buy was a strange place, they kept all the stock in the back, and you picked it from catalogs up front). The move came when the Thai restaurant fad was in full swing, and they landed a posh location near the newly-opened BART station. Kind of sad to see them not doing so well anymore.
Anyway, back to BART, then the bus, which was a half hour wait this time.
Now that I'm home, I see the two Thai markets are even further down University Ave, not in BART-walking distance, and probably have free parking. But that's a trip I'm not going to take in the heavy rain predicted for the next few days.
While I was on BART, I got a call from a recruiter in LA who was putting my resume in for a contract at Cisco, then about 5 minutes later a 408 area code number calling, saying she was with that recruiting company, and wanted to know if the LA guy had contacted me lately and what the status was. This makes me nervous, because she should have known what her underling was up to. She called again a few minutes later but I silenced the phone. We were in a tunnel and I would not have been able to talk anyway. She did not leave a message.
Managed to get back to my side of the Bay in time to have a latte at Starbucks, and my final goal: to see the preview of Death of a Salesman at Pear Avenue Theater. It is a good production, worth seeing. I'm not sure what to say about Don DeMico's Willy Loman. A very difficult part, the character talks non-stop for 90% of the play, and half the time not coherently. I think I wanted more levels of emotion than I saw, but that's sort of the character too. Alex Shafer as Ben and Larry Raboy as Charlie took two small parts and made them big. The rest of the cast will improve over time, this was just a preview and while there is room for improvement the show definitely was ready for prime time.
The set is very strange, built to fit in the Pear's very small space and avoid time-swallowing scene changes. Some of it worked for me, some of it didn't. They broke the 5th wall, which worked well with Ben's character but not the other times they used the trick of bringing in characters through the back of the audience. The period kitchen was well equipped, but the cast and crew had problems keeping the fridge closed.
Larry Raboy has been a Facebook friend for a while now, one of the rare ones I had never met. He kept insisting that we had seen each other in various shows, but it was always a show I had not been in or had not seen. Now that I have met him, I know I have never met him before. Tonight he said he saw me at something at San Jose City Lights, but I have never performed there. Sigh.
Plans for tomorrow:
Not much. Lousy weather. Photo shoot in the evening.
While I was in Hawaii, the boss put out the usual "our company does not have formal holidays, so send a calendar item if you're going to be out of the office" message. The newest contractor, whom we shall call Linus (not his real name) emailed back saying his agency requires permission for him to work holidays, at holiday rate. Boss replied that not only does he give permission, he will buy us lunch for the two days. I was planning on working anyway, because last week was an expensive unpaid vacation, so Monday I let the boss know I would be here. Two other contractors also said they would be here.
Long story short, Linus was a no-show.
Thursday me and one of the other guys went out for Chinese food at the shopping plaza near my bank. I finished up a project from Wednesday and sent in the daily wrap-up. I'd been told to join my lunch buddy on his project, he dragged a TV set to my cube for me to start testing, and told me to take all the tests which could be done on the public servers, because it was old firmware not supported by our test servers. So I got to watch another episode of Lie To Me Season 2, and started watching Driving Miss Daisy. I have always admired Jessica Tandy ever since Soap. and she has apparently become one of Hollywood's stock old ladies. Unfortunately for my test purposes this was not a good film to use, because they did some fiddling with the picture to make it look grainy and 1960s-ish. I watched something else instead. A Thai take-off on Charlie's Angels called Chai Lai Angels. I didn't know it was Thai until I started playing it, saw the subtitles and put on the headphones. It is so very amateurishly scripted and acted, but the cinematography is pretty good, excellent in spots. Lots of action, lots of talking heads, a good test movie. Strange but true, the English subtitles are grammatically correct, spelled correctly, and synced well with the audio. However they took some liberties with the translations to make the bad guys sound more vulgar.
Before leaving work I ordered a roast duck and a dish called rainbow shredded duck from Kirin, one of the more popular Chinese places in Mountain View, and picked it up on the way home. I like duck a lot more than turkey. Put the rainbow in the fridge and had about 1/3 of the roast duck with rice and cole slaw for my holiday dinner, followed by chocolate chocolate chip ice cream, while watching the NFL game.
Today when I walked into the office only the maintenance lights were on. Very strange, since people would be working. We had just enough light to work by, having the glow from a 46" TV set on my counter helped. Did some more playback tests, and managed to watch about an hour of Miss Daisy in 5-minute snippets while I ran tests like "play for 5 minutes, pull the plug" and "play for 5 minutes, pause for 5 minutes and play for 5 minutes". It did not click with me and many things about it rubbed me the wrong way. And it moves too slowly.
Once again Linus was a no-show, and the third guy was only in for half a day so the same two of us went to lunch, this time we walked to a new place a block from work, called The Garrett Station. Very noisy place, lots of children. Probably will be more sane on a regular work day. It's your basic grill & pizza place, has a bar too. I may go there next time there's nothing edible in the box lunches.
Set up the old test server on my desk, and it worked fine for the non-playback tests, but the people who are in charge of which movies we have available removed all our test clips, and all I was left with was a documentary on a band from Sierra Leone. There may be more, but it's a chore to find them. Will be mentioning this to the boss as a major blocker.
Home, via a quick stop at Safeway for zucchini for the plecosthemus and Q-tips for me. Watched some of the Boise State/Nevada game while vacuuming up the yummy rainbow shredded duck. Had a tough time finding the duck among the portabella mushroom chunks, but there was plenty there.
Got email on Flickr from a Polish Thailand web site asking if they could use some of my Thailand photos. I said yes, and they put a couple on their elephant festival page immediately. Here's the link.
Plans for tomorrow:
Change the litterboxes
Take out the garbage
Break down the cardboard boxes and haul them to the recycle dumpster
Laundry
Haircut (?)
Not tired but must to bed
Sep. 20th, 2010 01:07 amLast night I signed up for a free trial of Carbonite, an online file backup service. I figured $55/year for unlimited backup was a good deal. I did the math, and with my 5Mb/s uplink speed, 8 hours overnight ought to upload 144GB of data. 100GB would have been acceptable. This morning when I checked it was only up to 1.2GB. Nope, that's not going to work. Uninstalled the program and told their survey to let me know when they increase their speed by about 70x.
Remembered to push away from the computer at 10 to take my meds. At 11:30 I was showered and dressed and on my way to Wat Buddhanusorn in Fremont, and was surprised to see both parking lots full. I had to park up the road a bit where they had a van to bring us back to the temple. After buying some tokens and using them to get BBQ pork & sticky rice and a soft drink, I looked around for familiar faces. P, the woman who had called me last Sunday was busy making somtam at one of the food stations. I never understood somtam - it's made by running a grater over the outside of a papaya, and then adding garlic, chilies, tamarind and a bunch of other things which make it (to me) even less edible. I wandered away from the main seating area, walking around the wat building, and just as I was about to give up and find a place by myself my ex-boss B waved, and made space for me where he and his wife and daughter and another couple were sitting on a mat on the lawn. They said there was some sort of special occasion going on, but didn't know what. While we were having lunch and chatting, a woman came by with flyers, and in Thai said they were having some people from the Thai consulate giving a talk nearby for Thais only, about the legal stuff around living in America, including getting married.
I told them my story about P**, and the woman of the couple in our little group asked me if I was looking for a Thai wife. I said sure. We joked about how old she could be, and she said a friend of hers who was divorced was coming at the end of the month, and she'll introduce us.
**The story goes like this. We were at B's party last weekend, and P said if I would like to meet a Thai woman, and I said yes. After three margaritas, P decided she was that woman.
After the traditional three times around the temple parade, we all decided to split, so I found the van back to the car and headed home. I still had most of the BBQ and a whole serving of mango with sticky rice, which I reheated and finished while watching football.
After all that heavy rice, I went upstairs to take a nap, and slept for about 2 hours. Probably why I'm not too sleepy yet. I had a weird dream but it was too short for a separate post - it went like this: I was online filling out a form. Each time I clicked on a box which said "check this box" the form refreshed and the came back up with the check box unchecked. It just kept doing that for the whole dream.
Watched Sunday Night Football, gave the kitties their evening treats, then went upstairs and put in an hour editing the first 8mm --> AVI transfer. I had done a DVD in a rush back in June, hoping to give it to my dad on a trip I'd scheduled for the 12th, but he died on the 11th. I brought it with me anyway and all my sisters got a chance to see it. Now I'm re-doing it the right way, taking out the bad end of reel edits, compensating for the more blatant exposure errors, and putting in transitions and chapters. I got 30 minutes of video done. It will go faster as I learn the routine of the software, and as the quality of the videos improves. The ones I am editing nhow are the first times Mom & Dad had used a movie camera, and the quality of Kodak 8mm film and processing improved over time as well. And the newer film has had less time to discolor and fade.
And in other news, I got a feeler for a full time permanent job at a place which does the kind of video I am interested in. I've asked for a job description.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Kaiser - pick up a prescription
BASFA (?)
Photo Poll
Jan. 8th, 2009 10:37 pmThis is going to be photo-intensive, so I'll put it behind a cut, but first, some simple directions. Click on the thumbnail to pop up a bigger version on my flickr page. Or you can just go clicky clicky here to see the whole set there. Vote for the three you wouldn't mind having on your wall.
( Poll starts here )
Who Is That Scary Man?
Mar. 28th, 2008 09:55 am
Bill Sykes
Originally uploaded by how3ird.
My latest nostalgia project was to scan in all the slides and cast materials from the Bangkok Community Theatre 1975 production of Oliver! in which I played Bill Sykes. This is a self-portrait taken in the dressing room pre-makeup. Follow the flickr link to see the rest of the set.
My theater friends will especially get a kick out of the tech letter - a letter from our tech director "inviting" us to help build the set.
It was an interesting show. Haydn Stradling, who played Fagin, was a superb actor from New Zealand, Nancy was played by Rosemary Hazell, who had a flute-like soprano voice, taught me a couple of fun British and Aussie folk songs, and worked in the British embassy. During the run of the show her fiance was killed in a car crash, and the director (Sally Anderson) filled in the part for that weekend. Rosemary returned for the final weekend, but it was very difficult for her, for all of us, especially the final reprise of As Long As He Needs Me.
You Know How To Whistle, Don't You?
Nov. 16th, 2006 10:42 pmOn another album, Dangerous, there is a very beautiful song in Thai which is titled in English Love Song in the Wind. It is one of those rare songs where the tune is gorgeous and the words match. And it has a little gimmick at the end which I just adore.
My Thai is not that good, but the song's lyrics are mostly pretty simple, so I'll take a stab at it:
Hear in the wind which blows everywhere
A song may enter your heart
and also bring tears
(something about the heart)
Can you remember when we used to meet?
I didn't know if you would leave or not
Chorus:
One word only
I wanted to say to you
Held in my heart till we meet
That word is love
I love you
But speaking (something something) you, do you agree?
Could speak to many people, one person would hear
I've seen that, but it's stingy(?) love
I'll give it to the wind which blows, floats by
Repeat Chorus, change the last line to:
I love only you
Repeat last verse
[Singer takes a deep breath, pause, blows]
It's not a complete translation, and I'm sure I've got bits wrong, but the general idea is there. I'm a sucker for romantic songs. Especially romantic songs about LDRs.
Listen to it here. (it's a big file, wait for it to load and to find an MP3 player). Let me know what you think. IMHO, you don't need to understand Thai to enjoy it.
Many Goodies
Oct. 4th, 2006 03:28 pmThat done, I fired up the PC and it only showed 3.2GB of RAM. Should have shown 4GB. So I go on the ASUS web site, and they have a FAQ note saying my BIOS will allocate almost 1GB of RAM for background use - especially for my PCI-Ex video card. That's okay, sort of, but I'll probably be buying a non-ASUS motherboard in the future.
The new mouse is very right-handed, and a bit large. I don't like the tilt or the size. The keyboard is whacked - they have tiny function keys, and have put the Print Screen key in line with the Fkeys. The DEL key is huge and vertical - 3 keys tall. Bummer, but at ZZF's prices I can put these in the closet or donate to a friend (if you're going to be at Silicon, and want this, let me know and I'll bring it along) or maybe the local senior center.
This morning I picked up two packages, one is a contact sheet holder which I will try to use with the scanner for my old B&W negatives. I wonder if there are any darkrooms around I could use to print about 100 contact sheets? Probably not. And who needs the dark, the fumes and all that standing? The other package was from eThaiCD, my favorite vendor of Thai music and video. Lightning-fast and cheap shipping, and reasonable prices. Got the latest Tata Young CD, and her music video DVD to go with the Greatest Hits CD set I already have. It includes the video for Cinderella, which I am almost as interested in seeing as the one for Naughty, Sexy, Bitchy.
As I write this I'm listening to the second of 4 compilation CDs, and have found a couple of artists I will buy albums from. N&J (if I make out the tiny Thai script their names are Niw and Jiw), Fahrenheit and Mike & Golf. One of the songs has a very sweet name - it would translate as something like My Tears are for You. It sounds better in Thai.
The songs make me aware of how much Thai I have forgotten, to the point where I keep trying to translate the words into English, instead of just thinking in Thai.
A (sword) stroke at the State
Sep. 22nd, 2006 07:54 pmTalking about Thai politics is like declaring variables in programming. What Americans think is a global variable is, in the case of Thailand, a local one. Some Thail local variables:
1. The King was born and raised in the US. He did not want to be king, he wanted to be a doctor like his father was. He also wanted to be a musician (he played well enough to jam with Benny Goodman) and composer, and he's a world class photographer despite having lost an eye in a car accident in his teens. He has tried several times to bring democracy to Thailand during his 60-year reign. It's a constitutional monarchy, with similar powers to England, the difference is for 60 years he has done a lot more than cut ribbons and wave at the tourists.
2. The military is incredibly pro-US, has been since the end of WWII. The bases where the US bombed Cambodia and Vietnam from? Provided by the Thai military, near the Thai section of the Mekong River. Many if not most of the general staff are West Point grads, or have solid relations with their US counterparts. Like the US general staff, they are strong protectors of democracy,while at the same time being fiercely loyal to the King.
3. The Parliament was very much like our House of Representatives - a decisive majority belonged to the far right wing (a party whose name literally translates as "Thai loves Thai".) TRT. Since Thai can mean either the Thai people or Thailand, it's a very catchy title, and very very very much like the hard-boiled partisan Republicans we are cursed with.
4. Prime Minister Thaksin (sounds like "toxin"), made his billions founding and running Thailand's biggest cell phone company, which he sold when he became PM, as a ploy to make people think he was getting rid of a conflict of interest. He actually sold the shares to his wife, and other close relatives. In January, in another attempt to duck criticism, he had his his family sell their shares. First of all, he waited for the price to go up, and secondly he sold them to a branch of the Singapore government. The $2 billion sale put such a dent in the balance of trade, the Thai currency value went down. This caused a political furor, there was a vote of no confidence and he lost.
So with that background, the rest of the story. Thaksin called new elections. The Thai constitution says if a candidate for parliament is running unopposed, there needs to be a certain percentage of voters coming to the polls in that precinct before the election is valid. When there are opposition candidates, there is no such requirement. Thaksin and his party hired bogus candidates to be on the ballot in scores of provinces to get around this rule. The courts threw out the results and called for new elections, but the resources of one of Asia's 40 richest men and a Republican-like national party organization assured TRT would win a huge majority and Thaksin would be back in power. Though he had promised to step own in the interim, he did not.
To put this in perspective, TRT "won" 460 out of 500 seats in the fraudulent election. 1/3 of the voters boycotted the polls, which had something to do with it.
So, with a completely corrupt, power-hungry PM whose party had an unbreakable lock on government, democracy in Thailand became as big a sham as it is in the US. The difference is they have a military which has the balls to do something about it. Bear in mind that nobody would dare make a move without the King's permission. In 1973, the King went on TV and suggested people protest the government's dropping the rice and pig subsidies and a million people showed up the next day. He is even more loved today.
Thailand will have elections in a year or so. Hopefully by that time the acting government will have broken Thaksin's hold - he'll probably stay in exile - and the TRT party will be broken up enough so they don't have a strangle hold on Parliament.
<hr>
Some history. When I was living in southern Thailand in 1976, I had come to Bangkok for a Peace Corps Volunteers rep meeting, and was on my way to Thammassat U, where the national museum has a display I wanted to see which debunks the book Anna and the King, the basis for The King and I. As I was walking through Yoawarat District (aka Chinatown), busloads of "village scouts" started rolling by, headed in the same direction. And busloads of vocational students. This would be like the KKK and the Ag college ROTC teaming up. They were out to get the liberal arts students at Thammassat who were protesting the corrupt government and the US (Vietnam was still a war, though the US was no longer officially in it).
As I passed a TV store, I saw tanks on the video screen, and pictures of vocational school students lynching Thammassat students on the lawn in front of the University. I decided to stay and watch on TV. Especially after seeing a bazooka fired at the U by a soldier.
Hundreds of students were killed, many machine gunned while they tried escaping by jumping into the river behind the campus (the Chao Prya is almost as wide as the Mississippi).
The soldiers chased away the Village Scouts and the vocational students, and while this was going on at the U. tanks had surrounded Parliament. What caused the coup was Parliament and the PM's inept non-handling of violent student protests.
When the smoke cleared, the top generals formed an administrative committee and started re-making the government. They threw out the corrupt/inept/old boy cronies of the PM and stocked the cabinet with people who actually knew what they were doing. What I remember hearing on the radio included:
The head of the ag university was made minister if agriculture
The head of the biggest teacher's college was made minister of education
A law school dean became justice minister, and the chief justice role went to someone similarly qualified.
And so on.
The committee changed heads several times, usually without any bloodshed, and eventually they re-established Parliament, and brought it up from rubber stamp to actual authority.
Thailand has a history of the politicians screwing up democracy, and the military, with the King's blessing, fixing it. I kind of wish we had that here.
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I hope my facts are accurate. If you have first-hand knowledge to the contrary, leave a note here. Messages to this post will be screened, excpet for my friends' list.
Room With a View
Jul. 20th, 2006 02:00 am
Room With a View
Originally uploaded by how3ird.
Chengdu Airport - I've uploaded some of my photos from Sechuan, where I traveled on business during my Thailand vacation. Much photo goodness on Flickr
Batik: ocean2
Jul. 12th, 2006 11:06 pm
Batik: ocean2
Originally uploaded by how3ird.
Lower res versions of this have been posted before, but today's Flickr goodness is high-q versions of some batiks.
Silly Tourist
Jul. 10th, 2006 10:55 pm
Silly Tourist
Originally uploaded by how3ird.
I've made my Thailand photos into a set on Flickr, because I'm letting the folks at work experiment with another set of photos I took when we moved to our new location. We have a product under development which could allow our customers to see their Flickr photos on their TV sets. I've helped them iron out most of the missing technical details, but they still need to get Yahoo's buy-in. Since our founder is now a Yahooligan, it may happen.
I'm done posting my Thai people and scenery, and I've started adding the best close-ups of batiks I bought there. Will also put in embroidery and sapphires.
Then I'll post any China photos I think would pass muster on NikonStunningGallery. And will fake it from there.
Rock Star ?
Jul. 9th, 2006 09:25 am
Rock Star ?
Originally uploaded by how3ird.
In the park across the street from the grand palace. Another 6 photos on fllickr
Suzie Wong
Jul. 7th, 2006 11:46 pm
Suzie Wong
Originally uploaded by how3ird.
More Flickr photos. I can't remember her name, but I do remember I was staying in a hotel on Soi 19, a quick walk from Soi Cowboy, one of the lesser known bar alleys in Bangkok. She was luring customers into her bar, I decided to see if she wanted to come back to the hotel with me. Which she did. But all she did was pose in front of the curtains, and help herself to most of the munchies and a couple of drinks from the mini-bar. Somehow the bangle on her right wrist ended up on the floor, which I didn't notice until my girlfriend Noi came over later that night. I managed to pick it up and put it in my pocket before Noi saw it, and it's sitting on my desk as I write this.
Suzie Wong is Thai slang for any bar girl, from the old American film The World of Suzie Wong starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan.
Soi Cowboy has some history for me. When I lived in Bangkok, for a while I lived at the end of Soi Asoke - which is Soi 21 off Sukhumwit Road, a main drag from the center of the city to the eastern border. At the time Soi Asoke was a narrow street with a few fruit and vegetable shops, and ended at a canal which was black with pollution. For about 3/4 of a Baht I would take a one-passenger wanter taxi (a small skiff) across the canal to my dentist's office.
Today Soi Asoke is The Super-Highway, complete with tollbooths, and Sukhmwit is the street which hosts the skytrain. The house I lived in is still on Soi 21, but now it has a multi-storey hotel built around it. My room is just another room in the hotel.
Soi Cowboy is a one-block-long alley between Sois 21 and 23, and there was one particular bar there which was relatively quiet, and became my "local". I met someone there who became my girlfriend for several months.
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