Cats in a Basket

In the last year or so I received a couple of gift baskets. I never felt right just throwing the baskets away once the "gift part" was consumed, so they were sitting useless on a shelf at the back of the house. About a month ago I moved the baskets to the front porch with the intention of finally throwing them away. Silly me! The cats immediately appropriated them for their own use. I put a couple of blankets in them and Voila! instant kittie lounge. Every time I turned around a different cat was taking their turn cat-napping in the basket.

P'Josie in a Basket

Suah and P'Josie

NamTan in a Basket

You Want Fruit With That?

Recently, the coffee shop on the ground floor of the office building started offering a couple of Thai dishes for lunch. There's a food market just down the street that I usually go to, but the coffee shop is near, clean and (most importantly) air-conditioned. Yesterday, I thought I'd try a latte after lunch. This is how the order went:

Me: I'd like a hazelnut latte, please.

Coffee lady: Would you like some fruit?

Me: (??) No, no, just a hazelnut latte.

Coffee lady: You want hazelnut and coffee? Hot or cold? No fruit?

Me: Hot, please. Just coffee, no fruit.

I sat at my table and she brought me a latte. It tasted overwhelmingly like bananas!

Coffee lady: How is it?

Me: It tastes like bananas.

Coffee lady: It's good isn't it?

Me: hmmmm

Well, the coffee lady is very nice and maybe she thought banana latte is much better than hazelnut latte, so I just went with it. I have to say that I don't like banana latte and couldn't finish it. I'll keep going for lunch, but will skip on any future lattes.

Weekend Glam Rock

Friday was a holiday in Thailand, so I had a three day weekend. I didn't do much but run errand and take care of chores that I've been putting off. Yesterday, I decided to watch the film Velvet Goldmine.

I'd never heard of the film until last year when a friend blogged about it. The movie would have come out sometime after I moved to Bangkok and I'm thinking it wasn't released here. The Thai censors would surely have cut or blurred many scenes. I've had the movie since January but never made the time to watch it, which is surprising since Ewan McGregor is in it and I have a small crush on him.

Much of the movie deals with the 70s glam rock scene. The main characters are said to be based on David Bowie and a combination of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. David Bowie apparently didn't like the movie script and would not allow any of his songs to be used, but I think they did a good job without them. I was surprised to see Placebo make a cameo as the band Flaming Creatures. They played a pretty rocking cover of T. Rex's 20th Century Boy.

Cats and Bananas

This weekend we harvested bananas from the banana tree. It's a bit of an ordeal involving climbing on the roof with a machete. We got a nice bunch but not as many as last year.

Bananas - 2009

Bananas - 2008

Since it wasn't raining, the cats were outside soaking up the sun and watching the silly humans.

Where's the cat?

Nam Tuam Baan

I've lived through thirteen rainy seasons in Bangkok, but this it the first time my house has flooded. There have been close-calls, but this time the water came all the way through the house. I understand now why Thai houses all have tile floors on the ground floor and the electrical plugs are place high on the walls. It's finally stopped raining, so there's nothing to do but wait for the water to recede. There's still a month left of the rainy season. It could get interesting.

The cats were not amused

the kitchen

the living/dinning area

It time to start up my iTunes "rain songs" playlist.

Lisztomania *brat pack mashup*

A friend sent me the link to this YouTube video back in May. It's a cool video mashup and it reminded me of my university days, but with a new song. Since The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink feature predominately, I though of it when I heard of John Hughes death.

Dry Season

Now is a hot, dry, miserable time of year in Bangkok. We've got about 3 more weeks before the rain is suppose to start. I can't wait. My landlord's yard is completely dry and dead (he doesn't water much). However, the other day his side yard was covered in yellow flowers that had fallen from a tree. It was kind of pretty.

The gardener cleared all the flowers away today and now it's just brown. (The long lacrosse looking pole in the photo is used to get mangoes from the trees before they fall to the ground)
Yesterday the library had an interesting art display by Vietnamese twin brothers Le Duc Hai and Le Ngoc Than. I could only find a few photos online of their work, but I really liked them all.

Thanh-Friend

Hai - Three Ladies

Another recent entertainment has been watching HBO's "True Blood" series. I find the whole thing interesting because the story is set in my neck-of-the-woods, so to speak. My hometown is quite near Monroe, Louisiana which is mentioned several times. It's kind of weird. Never met any vampires, though.

Oddly enough, this month I downloaded Pieta Brown's album Remember the Sun from eMusic. She has a cool song West Monroe (West Monroe is just across the Ouachita River from Monroe)