We’re breaking it down Shark Style at school today. Baby shark, do do do do do!
Happy Father’s Day to the world’s best dad! Thanks for always being there for me, for taking me camping, for cooking amazing food, for talking to me on the phone no matter how far away I am, for encouraging me to travel, and generally being a wonderful, supportive parent. I love you!
I went to the beach. While I was gone, chipmunks ate all of my underwear.
“You are cooking some obscure pie for me. It is called q-u-i-c-h-e. I have never seen it before. On the bag it says:
Even Real Men Eat Quiche!
Quiche, q-u-i-c-h-e. I can’t believe it when I am swallowing this piece of shapeless hot stuff. Such an ambiguous piece of food. Totally formless. I wonder about what my parents would say if one day they come to this country, and they eat this. My mother probably will say: “It is like eating something from other people’s mouth.” And my father will say: “It must be left from earlier meal so they re-cook it but inside are already messed up.”
I will agree with my father: it is a piece of big mess indeed. You tell me it is actually from France. I don’t believe you. I think the English are too ashamed to acknowledge it is their food. So they say it is French to defend themselves.”
-Guo Xiaolu, A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers.
Almost all of the English language books about Thailand that I’ve found are either travel books or books about “expat adventures.” You’d think maybe a few of the latter would be able to capture the experience of being a foreigner integrating into Thailand, but they are unfortunately all unamusing and sympathetic so far. Fortunately, I’ve found this book by Xioalu Gu about a young Chinese woman moving to London to study English that I can strangely really relate to. Even though our experiences living abroad are almost the inverse of each other (east-west, teacher-student), it’s definitely one of the books I’ve connected with the most since being here because it captures the strangeness and uncomfortableness of being a stranger completely immersed in a new place, without being trite or obnoxious. The book is also written in a style that is meant to capture the narrator’s English ability, so it starts as nonsense English fragments and moves into more fluent language as time passes, which I love so much right now since I often feel like I can’t string three words together in Thai or English.
Listening to my little brother on the radio at work! Thank you Internet for making the world smaller and larger every day.
The 7-day forecast for my town. I guess rainy season has begun!
Last night, I killed a spider that was literally the size of my hand. First, I maimed it with my copy of Healthy Living in Thailand, then finished it off with Poor Economics and Thai Reference Grammar. What kind of crazy spider takes three different book squashings to kill?
I’ve seen it 3 times in my room, but never gotten up the nerve to take a picture. It looked a lot like this:
Like this spider, except BIGGER. Aah.
Guess where I spent the weekend? Beautiful Koh Samet! It’s nice to check out of site life and sit on the beach sometimes.
Meet pla rad prik, or fish with tamarind sauce. This is a dish that I made many times in Korea based on a recipe on the Internet (and the accompanying terrifying photo), without ever having tried it at a Thai restaurant and unsure of how the final product was supposed to taste. Towards the end of my time in Korea, I went to a friend’s apartment who had also never tried this dish at a restaurant but was curious about the same Internet recipe and decided to cook it up for dinner. It was interesting to taste how the same basic recipe could be interpreted very differently by two different people: Mine was very sweet and sour, while his was much spicier and saltier.
Now that I am in Thailand of course, I know how the real thing is supposed to taste and it is still very different from either of our versions. Much sweeter and spicier with very crispy fish. Definitely worth trying if you find yourself in a Thai restaurant and one of my favorite meals that my host family makes.
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach: Mary Roach is my favorite non-fiction writer and this book about NASA and astronauts is hilarious and informative. True facts I learned: Astronaut helmets have built in ‘snack bars’ with fruit roll ups and juice boxes. No human has ever had sex in space or in zero gravity. Dolphins have prehensile penises. And so much more.
Irin Carmon’s article on The Obama Administration and Plan B: “You’re disadvantaging young people, African-Americans, the poor- that’s the policy of the Obama administration?” The story of how a Reagan-appointed, right-wing judge took the Obama administration to task for trying to keep Plan B behind the counter. And it’s not just that the Obama administration is bring to make Plan B more difficult to purchase, they’re also inflating the price by continuing to renew and re-extend Teva’s patent. This effectively keeps Plan B at $50.00 a dose, whereas in Thailand, you can purchase the same exact thing for $1.50. Pretty disappointing.
“Heading to Hawaii for Dolphin Assisted Birth” from The Charlotte News Observer: Particularly terrifying in light of what I learned about dolphins from Packing for Mars.
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri: Jhumpa Lahiri is the best. This book of short stories about Bengali immigrants in New England is beautiful and perfect. I read it for the first time when I was in India several years ago and it still holds up.
Harry Potter: You already know all about Harry Potter. I already knew all about Harry Potter too, but decided to re-read all the books since they are the longest English books in my school’s library. Good decision. These books are just as good when you are an adult, maybe even better.
(Things I Read That I Did Not Love: Gone with the Wind. So much more racist than I remembered. It is good if you read it pretending it was intended as a satire of the South, but then it just gets really long winded.)
