Old School

Yeah, I know this its an old joke, but it still makes me laugh. I see it all of the time, but don't often see it on a t-shirt. Since a remember the pre cellphone / internet days fondly, I thought I would make it just for nostalgia's sake. It's in my Society 6 shop.

Khmer (Cambodian Coffee)

Whilst chowing down on tasty Mexican food at Casa Azul, a friend mentioned Cambodian coffee (aka Khmer). I had never heard of it before. I had heard that there were several coffee drinks native to this area of Asia that were supposed to be quite unique. Since coffee is cheaper than speed (depending on the blend), and possibly even a little easier to get here, the hunt was on!

Sveta was right when she said that it was not easy to get. Not only are the beans hard to get, but I have had a hard time just trying to nail down an authentic recipe for it. The recipe seems to be a shop / family secret. The recipes that I do come across are very simple, and look pretty much like this. I will keep looking.

To make Cambodian Coffee:

1. Open can of sweetened condensed milk and place the open can in a pot with water (it should come about 1/3 to 1/2 way up the can). Bring water to a boil.
2. Pour coffee into a mug, and then pour the sweetened condensed milk on top. Be sure to admire the layers at this stage!
3. Stir before you drink.

Medical Incarceration: The Final Chapter

Ah, just back from yet another luxurious vacation at the "Thamassat Medical University Resort and Casino". This was supposed to be the surgery to end all surgeries. I have my doubts. Mainly, because of the pesky bone infection that appears to follow the surgeries around. Wherever they operate, it gets infected. Of course, this is all my fault.

This time, they re-aligned the bones in my foot, wired them together, and then bolted this erector set looking brace to 7 places in my leg and foot. Not only is this rig screwed into my bones, but the damn thing weighs several kilos, and makes it very hard to get my pants on and off.

The Osteo department was not nearly as much fun as the Trauma department was. The nurses in Osteo have absolutely no sense of humor. As soon as I was able to snatch a wheel chair, I was out of there! I only had to stay there for 8 days. My wife says that they let me go home early because I wouldn't do what they told me to do anyway. Other than going outside every few hours to have a cigarette, I am not sure what I did. The Trauma nurses dropped by every now and then for a visit, so I couldn't have been too bad.

Anyway, The Osteo doctor is cool, but says that even though the wound is healing well, I have to wear this thing for 7 more weeks. Until then, I am recouping in exotic Pattananikom. I hope to be braceless and working again by March (If I still have a job). Just in time for baseball season. We'll see what happens.

Bangkok Night Ride II

I don't know what got in to her, but apparently, Sveta let Vit out of the house the other night, because he made a new night ride video. I have no idea what they are singing in the background, but it goes great with the traffic. Check this one out...

Medical Incarceration: Round 3

Well, I am off to the hospital...again. This is supposed to be the surgery to end all surgeries. I am not holding my breath. There is a 30% chance that I could wake up missing a foot. If not, then I will be laying there with a metal frame on my foot for a while. It's times like these that I definitely wish I was back in the good ole USA (before the Trumpification, of course). Anyway, It was good to get back to ranting on here again. I will be back in a few weeks, one way, or the other. Wish me luck!

Foot Thing

In the next installment of my never ending medical incarceration, I have to get the bones in my right foot re-aligned. The doctor also says that I will have to wear a contraption on my foot so the bones will heal in place properly. It will look something like this.

He also added that there was about a 70% chance that this would work. If it doesn't, then I will lose my foot so I won't develop any bone infection. The odd thing about this is that after this surgery, It will take at least 2 months to recover. But, if they amputate the foot, it would be healed enough to start using a prosthetic in less than a month. Either way, I will have a limp. Not too sure which is worse. I would really like to be done with all of this, and back to work.

Ba-ba-ba ba-na-naaaaa

Roong made banana muffins today! In the absence of a real oven, we have one of those dual things that is both a micro wave and an oven. It took her a little while to get used to it, but now she is a wiz at doing all kinds of things with it. It takes real will power for me to keep from eating a whole tray of the damn things though!

*Update: I think my dear wife is trying to kill me. I lost more than 30 pounds during my recent medical incarceration. This was due mostly to the fact that the food there tastes terrible and is always served cold, so I didn't eat as much. The weight loss made everyone happy.

But since I have been home, Roong has more than made up for it by making all of my favorites. I don't want to gain the weight back, but it's hard not to when you wake up to a foot tall stack of her pancakes. I ask her to take it easy on the cooking, and she smiles and says "OK", but then does it anyway. I shall seek to decipher her motives more thoroughly ... after just a few more muffins.

A New Mummy? Cruise????

I do not know which scares me more, another Mummy franchise attempt, or the fact that Tom Cruise is in it. The shlocky trio that came out with Brendon Frazier were OK, if just taken for what they were, silly action movies. But this? I can't even imagine the number of boxes of malted milk balls it would take me to get through it.

Cruise only has one style and one look, that "I'm angry, but not sure why" head tilt thing he does. "Jerry Maguire" and "A Few Good Men" are practically interchangeable for Pete's sake!. This may out bad The Rock as the tooth fairy (well, maybe not that bad). But seriously, didn't they learn anything from "War of the Worlds"? This is a whole new can of bad idea! Except for Sophia Boutella, of course, she can rest her camel at the oasis any time.

* Note: On the opposite side of the Hollywood coin, I watched "Suicide Squad" and "Dr. Strange". Those movies seemed to get a lot of bad reviews when they came out. I am not sure why. I was a Marvel Comics kid, and didn't really pay much attention to DC. Maybe that is why I didn't expect anything monumental from "Suicide Squad", but it kept me interested. "Dr. Strange" was pretty good. They changed it up enough to be new, but kept true to the basic idea of the comic book story, as I remember it.

Nipping Naughtiness in the Bud

Coming across odd info chunks on the net is a daily occurrence. But, when I stumbled across this little tidbit on the IFLScience page about what was going on in the UK, I had to do a double-take. The sheer absurdity of it was baffling. The internet would collapse....

"Are you into spanking? Well then, we’ve got some bad news for you if you live in the UK – it’s due to be officially banned from use in all online pornography.
The non-governmental British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) spends most of its time giving age-based ratings to movies, trailers, and advertisements. They have a say over pornographic content too, and although criminal and extreme images are banned already, they have recently opted to ban some much more ambiguously “obscene” sexual acts in pornographic films.

As reported by the Independent, the acts likely to be affected by a clause of the Digital Economy Bill, which was passed unopposed in the UK House of Commons this week, are as follows:

• Aggressive whipping
• Caning
• Spanking
• Role-playing as non-adults
• Physical restraint
• Humiliation
• Water sports
• Physical or verbal abuse, regardless of consent
• Penetration by any object associated with violence
• Female ejaculation
• Strangulation
• Face sitting
• Fisting

Assuming the bill passes unopposed through the House of Lords, then pornographic perusers in the UK will probably not be able to access this type of content online. As pointed out by the Guardian, there is no definitive list, but these acts fall under the “obscene” brief.
Some of these acts do sound fairly extreme, and it’s a matter of debate whether or not they should be featured in pornography. Plenty of these acts appear in works of fiction, including in movies, video games, and books, so their current appearance in pornography isn’t too different in that regard.

However, as you have surely already noticed, a fair few of these acts are not what anyone would call extreme. Face sitting certainly is not, unless of course, it leads to suffocation. Funnily enough, the ratio of face-sitting survivors to deceased is not a major topic of scientific discourse.
Female ejaculation, though, is the highlight of weirdness here. As we’ve previously reported, female ejaculate is comprised of urine and a bunch of proteins that aid fertility. It’s not clear why the act has made the list, but it’s likely the urine component of the orgasm that has caused a fuss.

Obviously, this is ludicrous. The male orgasm, which involves millions of tadpole-like critters often flying through the air in a gloopy white rainstorm, is horrifically messy, yet it remains unbanned. Sex is messy. Few have genuine complaints about this, so what’s the deal with female ejaculation?

Consensual sex between two adults is fun, and whatever people do in their private time is up to them. The BBFC highlighted these acts as being obscene because they pertain in some parts to violent acts, and they are worried it sends the wrong message. Clearly, they have been a little overzealous."

Censoring porn? Let me know how that works out for you. Haa!

Way Home

Ahh, the joys of driving in Bangkok. This is the only place on earth that can have a total gridlock traffic jam at 11pm on a Sunday night. It can be anything, police checkpoints, accidents, or construction. But usually, it's just due to stupid people. Between psycho scooter motards and the fact that most people are oblivious as to where they are, or what is going on around them, it can get pretty bizarre out there.

My friend Vitaly has one of those Go-Pro type cameras and filmed a video of his trip home from work, and then one of what it looks like at night. Surprisingly enough, nothing too weird happens. But, it gives you an idea of how the streets look on a normal day.

My Medical Incarceration

Geebus Crust, I hate going to the hospital! It's never good news. I seem to wait too long too. A few years ago, I got a small cut on the bottom of my foot. It was under my little toe, so I didn't even notice it until I started getting bad cramps in my calf. Turns out that it had gotten infected in the bone.

To make a long story short, after 2 years of having to put a bag on my foot to take a shower, they amputated my little toe. That was all well and good, but just a few months after that, I broke my right foot. The weird thing is, that I don't know how I did it. I woke up one morning and my foot looked like a football (American, not European).

I waited a few days to see if the swelling would go down, but it didn't. Roong took me to the hospital for a scheduled appointment, and they decided that this obviously called for more slicing and dicing. That was 6 months ago. They have been waiting for the swelling to go down, so they can fuse the bones in my foot, and suture it shut.

Pretty gross, right? All of that red isn't blood, it's betadine. But guess what! All that waiting was a wonderful opportunity to get yet another infection. Ain't that a daisy? So now, I am scheduled for surgery on Dec. 8. If everything goes right, it means another week in the hospital, and then 2 months of recovery with an erector set box frame screwed into my leg and foot at home. I am guessing that I have logged about 3 months of sitting in a hospital bed due to all of this, so far. Hopefully, there will only be about 1 more week of that. I am also hoping that I can get back to work some time in March.

Oh, I must give a shout out to the nurses in the trauma ward at Thamassat hospital. My adorable little doodlebugs. Not only did they put up with all of my bullshit, a few of them helped me cause it. Haa! Bpoop Pae, Tee Taa, Nanny, Teh, Mai, Spy, and all the rest, thanks for everything. Love you, miss you! And a special huge thank you to Vit and Sveta for "big oranges", trips to 7-11, hair cuts, and for smuggling above and beyond the call of duty. I don't know what I would have done without you.