quote of the day

「人間には二種類いて　出来ない理由を探す人と　出来る方法を考える人。」

：石田純一、2005

There are 2 types of people;
1. Those who seek reasons for not being able to do it, and
2. Those who think of the way to make it possible.

-- Ishida Junichi, 2005

Finally... it's Vietnamese time!!!

For some reasons, I have been craving Vietnamese food in a while. There's definitely no Vietnamese restaurant around here, or even if there is, it wouldn't be as good as the Vietnamese home-made. So yeah... my craving was over-satisfied by my lovely friend, Trang, who cooked really yummy Vietnamese food for us yesterday (2006.09.24). Thank you, thank you, thank you :)

Sheuo-Hui and I went up to Trang's house by bicycle. It was a really good ride uphill for nearly an hour. Trang's new house is in a neighborhood called Iwakura-Muramatsu, on the foot of mountains up north of Kyoto City. The weather is already chilly up there.

Once we got there, Trang came out to welcome us.

Trang and Sheuo-Hui

Lotsa food on the table -- so happy

Trang's husband, Hoai, was sooo cute. Once he knew we were stopping by for dinner, he cooked us these two dishes before he left for work.

Shrimp and Mayo

deep-fried chicken -- lovely food decoration, huh?

Our two main Vietnamese today was Sheuo-Hui's request of nama haru maki or fresh spring roll, and my request for Bahn Cuon <-- i don't know how to explain what it is... -"-

Fresh Spring Roll:

fresh spring roll filling 1

fresh spring roll filling 2

fresh spring roll wrap

1. fold the wrapping paper in half (or cut in half)

2. put some veggies and meet on the wrap

3. wrap and roll

4. it's ready. just dip in the sauce and enjoy the taste :)

Bahn Cuon (<-- my forever favourite Vietnamese food!!!)

Trang said it's really difficult to cook this dish since most of the ingredients could only be found in Vietname. I'm very touched that she tried to find the way to cook for me !

you eat it with this sauce

this filling is what's inside Bahn Cuon

add that filling in the sauce

dip Bahn Cuon in

and eat it!!

then, we had this dessert + yummy grapes

And then, we were totally stuffed!!! It's always nice to have great friends around. The best part was that we never see each other as guests and we can just pop up to each other's place whenever we want to. haha =P Thanks a lot Trang! We had a really great time at your house. Let's see when our next fiesta's going to be!

then, we had this dessert + yummy grapes

Contrast of perspectives (Thai Coup D'Etat)

Just ran across a news clip about Thai Coup D'Etat in my friend's blog and found it should be an interesting thing to show how contrast people can be when viewing the very same scenerio from different perspectives.

First, with the CNN, on the day of the Coup.


Now, with the Thai local channel, a day after the Coup.


I have been getting a lot of questions concerning the situation from many foreign friends. The one thing I realized was this - it's about different perspectives. Most of the people stated their surpriseness on this army movement. They never expected anything like this to happen in a country like Thailand. On the other hand, when we asked the Thais, a lot were not that surprise this day eventually came. Though this is not something we all wish to have, but it wasn't a difficult thing for us to undestand why it happened.

Westerners claimed the action as being anti-democracy. Only little that they knew, the democracy we had hasn't been that liberal for a long while. I like one saying I ran across in YouTube: "Democracy is over-rated. Good governing is under-rated. This is a sad." Maybe there should be a more careful interpretation of what it means by being "democratic" (?). Definitely, it shouldn't be easily associated to only having a constitution!

Let's wait and see how this is to end and what it will lead us to...

p.s. one thing I knew what it led into - a request from many foreign tour groups to visit those streets with tanks and on duty-soldiers that they could stop and take pictures with!! OMG!!! It's turned into a tourist benefit than a loss?? Are you sure it's really a Coup?!?!

Pictures of the history...

Well, speaking of the present situation in Thailand, it may not sound as wonderful as it should with the Coup. But... under the usually threatened Coup control, we found interesting things there. Let's see what it is like over there...

Source: www.bangkokbiznews.com

Source: www.manager.co.th

Coup d'etat in Thailand

Just to let people know things are alright. It's not as bad as it's seen on the International Broadcasting Networks since last night.

So far, the Coup's intention is just to take over the control from the former government ruled by Thaksin Shinawatra, but with no intention to take the power to themselves. As we have already known for quite a long time that this billionaire-telecommunication-business-owner-turned poliltician has been facing a lot of acusation in abusing the country's system of checks and balances and bending government policy to benefit his family's business, he has shown no sign to voluntarily step down. Thai Presses had been under government control and could not freely deliver news as how the press should be. The Supreme Court and many government related agencies were off from justice. People started breaking up in two groups. The overall atmosphere of political situation in the country was at odd.

I don't think people like having Coup. The last time was 15 years back and we lost lots of lives there. But this time, somehow, a lot of people feel at ease to see the Coup taking over things. The political battle has been like an overblown balloon and is about to burst at any time. The Coup is probably the last thing people want to happen to gain back our country's peacefulness. But if there isn't a Coup, wouldn't it be another life-losing scenerio?

It's interesting to see people peacefully run usual daily activities while the Coup is taking over. Some people go out taking pictures with the tanks. Some people give flowers to soldiers!

Well, this is just a start. Let's wait and see what's going to happen next. I hope things will be back to normal (I mean the real "NORMAL") soon.

FIESTA~~!

It's the time of the year when people start leaving back to Thailand. I have done 2 farewell parties so far. The first time was with N'Dao who actually already left Japan a few weeks back. Then the second time was for N'Bow who will leave Japan next week. The parties were held at the same SASHIMI PLACE near school. For N'Bow's party, we also went to Marikoji Cafe for some deｓserts too. There's nothing much to say. We really had a good time with great food. So, this blog is going to be all about the food we had :) Let's start!

August 31, 2006:　N'Dao's little lunch farewell
Members: N'Dao, Donut, P'Ton, P'Nha and Mai

Donut and Dao

September 13, 2006:　N'Bow's dinner farewell
Members: N'Bow, Palang, P'Ton, P'Nha, P'Au+, Nott, Kee, Net, Kuk, Nhong, Lar+, Chua and Mai (Donut came only for Marikoji)

sashimi~~
steamed fish
grilled fish
sweet egg roll
แร้งลง
... at the end of the meal...
We asked a lady to take group photo for us. She then asked, "What's your name?". We said "Wassana" <-- which is P'Nha' name. Then she did something we totally didn't expect. She started yelling "Wassana-chan, Wassana-chan, Wassana-chan, BRAVO!!" while taking a snap shot of us!!! Was it some kind of a trick to get us smile?!?! haha =P
That lady was this Mika-chan, someone who's related to the owner of the restaurant. Oh gosh.. this lady was just INDESCRIBABLE!!!

Then, we moved to Marikoji Cafe and had all this

Seasonal Fruit Moose
This one I'm not sure of its name.
Green Tea Cake
Caramel Cake
This one was Fruit something
Cheese cake
Chocolate Cake
great atmosphere. (Today's party proves that to be a Kyoto person, you need to be ปากดี!)
such a pity way to collect our cake money! =P
Hope this induce a bit of your appetite for today :)

** All cake pictures are slightly adjusted. A few pictures from Sashimi place are credited to N'Bow's camera **

Thai Students Ambassadors

Before updating about my long Hokkaido trip, lemme go ahead with a short blog for now. ^^


Today a few friends and I went to Kohoku Kotogakko School to talk to students about Thailand. This school has an aim to create good relationship with Asian countries, so they do have lots of cultural exchange programs. As fas as I know, they do exchanges with schools in Korea, China and Thailand. Every year in December (this year for the 2nd time), 11th graders go on a school trip to travel and visit high school in Thailand for 4 days. That's why they wanted us to visit the school and get students familiar with Thai cultures and all.


The school is in Kobe, so it took us 2 hours to get there. We were told that we can begin with a bit of our self introduction and then simply answers students' questions which they have already prepared. But oh gosh... NO QUESTIONS from my students!!! I just had to come up with something to talk about right there. So yeah, I did a bit of geography + language classes with a few quizes on and off the whole 1 1/2 hours!!

Oh yeah... one student asked whether I know "Golf and Mike"!! For those who don't know, Golf and Mike are pretty famous here now. They did a Japanese debut song with Yamapee. The song was used for Volleyball Tournament a few weeks back and became a big hit. They appeared on several famous shows on TV since then. So yeah... the classroom turned to an entertainment report. I told them Golf and Mike are brothers and they have 3 more siblings, blah blah blah blah... just to kill time. (แบบว่าหมดมุขสุดๆ....ฮาฮา)

Golf and Mike with YamaPee at UTABAN program

The song's called "Fever and Future"

what a costume!

N'Bow said to put an MV here too. Haha.. what a dance!

Anyways.. anyways... let's not get too much about them. Well, where am I now? Ahh.. ahh... I started losing what to say. haha =P Well.. well.. I had a good time. The teachers there were so opened and friendly. Students were quite ok too. (They asked to teach them how to say "where's toiley?" in Thai. They insist it's a necessary thing to remember ^^ Maybe they are right! =P) I hope they have a good journey to Thailand. :)

members for today : N'Bow, Mai, P'Chompoo, Nott (from Kyoto) and Kob&Snow (from Kobe)

with one of my students I accidentally ran into on the train.