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Previous entries

Returning Home - Again

The God Illusion

Going Home

2022

A Change of Direction

Dogs and Pandemics

The Forgotten tenors

Nine Things I will Miss about Thailand

Circles

Just Do It

Ayr on a Shoestring

Oh Lonesome Me

Tipping Point

Movie Reviews

Putting Pen to Paper

A Year to Remember

A Year to Forget

10 Reasons I Cannot Go Home

China Girl

The State of Play

Veggies

Mind Your Language

New Horizons

Injustice

Honeymoon

Taxes and Death

Also-rans

Stinkhorns

Grey is the Colour

Beating Myself Up

Nothing More to Say

Better Late than Never

Staying Put

Musical Chairs

Wanderlust

A Dog's Life

A Sabbatical

A Welcome Diversion

A Guide to Business Ethics

Remembering the Austin Allegro

Our Lords and Masters

In Transit - Part 2

In Transit - Part 1

Nagging Doubts

While Bangkok Burns

An Evening to Remember

Thai Business Malpractice

The New and the Old

Christmas Lights

Groundhog Day

Singapura

Possessions

Adventure is Out There

Education

Grabbing it While You Can

A Few Ups and Many Downs

Limbo

Pack Up Your Old Kit Bag

Salmon

Bananas

Religion

Football

Grateful

Yummy

Ate Two Caesar

Swine Pie

The Thai Rollercoaster

Stuck in the Middle

There's no Regrets

Profit and Loss

Running on Empty

Getting it out Your System

National Mistrust

Bring in the Old, Out with the New

Humility

I am Reviewing, My Situation...

Wat Phrabhat Nam Poo

Today I will Mostly be Eating...

Mortality

The Thai Experience

Wat Khaowong

Reality Bites

Wat Simalais

Amazing Thailand

He Must have a Big Wand

Right Place, Wrong Time

Carousel

Tin

And it does go on

Mangos

Bring Him Home

Resurgence

Protege

Listening to my Reader.

 

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Diary Archive 18.

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Diary Archive 12.

Diary Archive 11.

Diary Archive 10.

Diary Archive 9.

Diary Archive 8.

Diary Archive 7.

Diary Archive 6.

Diary Archive 5.

Diary Archive 4.

Diary Archive 3.

Diary Archive 2.

Diary Archive 1.

 

 

Pack Up Your Old Kit Bag

 

A customer has asked me to visit them to help with the validation of one of our products. They are in New Jersey, the other side of the world. The flight from Bangkok to Singapore to Frankfurt to New York is probably the most direct route, (and allows me to use Singapore air all the way, and they have an offer of double air-miles on that flight in October too), but is 30 hours airport to airport to say nothing of the trips from house to airport and airport to hotel. With a 12 hour time difference I doubt I will be in any state to any work but they are insistent and I put them off once before so I think I will have to go.

It is not the worst time to go, I am on top of the work at the moment, for the first time in a long time, although a trip like this can easily put you behind again. It means running around getting re-entry permits (because I have a new visa) and booking flights and hotels and trains and trying to remember to pack everything. When I travelled regularly I used to keep two of everything I needed so I rarely forgot anything important, but now I guarantee my first stop will be the pharmacy to buy toothpaste or Radio Shack for a charger for my phone.

Alone again last night I made myself a nice pork dinner. Pork is inexpensive here and my favourite available meat (lamb would be my favourite). Ploy had bought some pork fillet so I trimmed the little fat off and used a steak hammer to make it into an escalope. It was fried in a little olive oil with just some coarse ground black pepper.

I boiled some potatoes and also simmered some milk with finely chopped spring onions (green onions or scallions). I left the onions to infuse in the milk. When the potatoes were soft (but not mushy) I mashed them adding the milk and some butter. The Champ potatoes are served with another large knob of butter and with a dusting of black pepper.

For vegetables I sauteed some orange rind and cumin seed in a pan and added some small stick shaped chopped carrots.

The coriander was because if you buy spring onions from the corner shop it is bundled with coriander as the two are nearly always used together in Thai cooking. 5 baht for the pair.

For accompaniment I watched Terminator Salvation which, partly due to my non-attention and partly because of a soundtrack which made it difficult to discern the speech, I got rather confused about. It wasn't that good a film anyway so it wasn't worth the effort to try to work out who came from the future or the past and having the two male leads look like clones of each other didn't help at all. They should have worn badges with their names on so I knew who was who.

 

 

 

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