PB #21 Food, Feet, Fame, & Friends

Presenting photo blog #21 in which I cobble together photos from the last six months around the theme, apparently, of words beginning with "F." Locations include Chiang Mai; Rabat, Morocco; Indiana; New York; and San Francisco.















Friends: Min Min Oo and Hseng Ngeun, my former housemates who are now living in Norway, came back for a visit. We went to the restaurant that is now where the Drunken Flower used to be. It was amazing to see them and their son, Seng Oo. Favorite story from their visit: On Seng Oo's first day of school in Oslo, he tried to speak to his classmates in Thai and couldn't communicate in Norwegian or English. When he came home and reported on his first day, he had not suffered any crisis of confidence for not knowing the language everyone else was speaking. Instead, he said, "Mom - those kids at school are SO stupid. They can't even speak Thai!"
* * *















Fashion: I bought a used motorcycle and had so many problems with it that I became friends with the mechanic who was constantly working on it. For this photo, he pulled out his leather bomber jacket for me to wear. Look closely - those are patches of Disney characters. Does something like this happen anywhere but Thailand?
***















Fashion: I ended up selling the bike to the mechanic, despite how good I look on a big bike.
***















Food: In July, I went to Rabat, Morocco for a conference on human rights documentation and it included a visit to the archives of the truth commission that was held there. But mostly, I ate platters and platters and platters of food.
***



















Fashion: Fredy, a forensic anthropologist from Guatemala, brought gifts for all of us, which Samantha demonstrates here: baseball caps that have a bottle opener embedded in the bill. Brilliant.
***



















Friends: When I studied in Spain, several of my friends went to Morocco but I did not make the trip then, so I was glad to have the chance to finally go. And it looks like there's some love for Sevilla in Rabat. I missed the tias and tios.
***















Food & Friends: I was also a bit homesick for Sudsanan, and somehow ended up at this restaurant/bar where the waiter did double-duty as a singer and musician and then one of the customers invited himself into the jam session. By the end of the evening, I was feeling right at home.
***















Friends & Fashion: Back in Chiang Mai for the anniversary of the 8-8-88 uprising in Burma, two modern day revolutionaries sport t-shirts of Uncle Ho and Che.
***















Friends: I started regularly making the ride up Doi Suthep again and convinced Matt & Amy to join. They made it to the top on the first attempt. Impressive. Here, Amy celebrates her arrival at the viewpoint, 2/3 of the way up.
***















Fashion: Vanity glasses and a hippy hat.
***



















Fashion: In September, I went back to Indiana and a young family was sitting behind me making lots of noise, getting dirty looks from the other passengers. I realized pretty early on that they, along with the seven rows of passengers behind them, were refugees from Burma being resettled in the U.S.. And so I started shooting dirty looks at the annoyed passengers in front of us, feeling protective of the refugees, most of whom had probably not been out of their villages for most of their lives, let alone on an airplane and ready to land in the Midwest. Despite the language barrier, I made friends with the family and admired this kid's skull-cap / backpack color coordination.
***



















Fame & Fashion: September in the U.S. was ALL about the election. I saw Madeleine Albright speak at the University of Indianapolis, urging us all to vote for Barack Obama. I was reminded of her gay staffer whom I met in DC in 1998 who complained that she always wore hideous broaches. Apparently his queer eye prodding did not have an impact - I couldn't get a good shot of it, but believe me, it's a fashion disaster.
***















Fame: I went to New York for a few days and got to see Salman Rushdie speak about Burma. I blew my opportunity to go speak to him when he came out of the hall alone because the only two things I could think to say were "I loved you in 'Bridget Jones' Diary'" and "Do you know where the toilets are, huh?"
***















Food: Still in New York - after dinner, we spotted The Dessert Truck which has amazing little treats.
***














Food: The Dessert Truck is SO good that staff from Ben & Jerry's stand in line for a treat!
***















Friends: The first presidential debate between McCain and Obama took place while I was in New York, and Queers for Obama organized a watch party at a downtown bar. One of the highlights of the debate, despite its predictability, was when Obama said something about an "orgy of spending" and before he could even get the whole phrase out, the crowd went wild, like we were Pavlov's dogs.















Food: I brought marshmallows to the debate watch party and handed them out before the start, inviting people to pelt the screen whenever McCain said something idiotic. They all looked at me like I was crazy and it didn't turn out to be a very effective tool for making new friends, as I hoped it would be. But like many artists who are not appreciated in their own time, as soon as the debate started and McCain opened his mouth ... the marshmallows flew, and my brilliance was affirmed. Here's a photo of the aftermath. (Thank you for the idea, organizers of a similar event in Houston in the early '90s.)
***















Friends: Back in Indiana, I enjoyed a reunion with Beth who was in town from El Salvador - a beautiful sunny day at Marian College.
***




















Feet: While Mom recovered from surgery, I brought a Body Shop foot spa package and we had some Mom-Son bonding over the soak & scrub.















Fashion: On my way back to Thailand, I had a long weekend in San Francisco. Jeff and I stumbled across the Love Festival which I'm fairly certain is a party created simply for people who were at Burning Man and want to keep the vibe going.
***















Friends & Fashion: In fashion contrast, Jeff, Kristen, Annette and I went to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival where I didn't see any pink but got my fill of denim, flannel, and corduroy.
***















Friends & Fashion: November 5 in the morning at the Irish Pub in Chiang Mai, we watched the election results pour in and felt ecstatic when Obama was declared the winner. My favorite t's are the ones with Obama spelled out in Thai.
***















Fashion: I got to enjoy a brief snip of the cold season in Chiang Mai before heading back to the U.S. Be looking for more cold season fashion in the next blog posting.
***