Kumquat Lasagna

This happens to me every time I live abroad for a period longer than a couple of months. I'm kind of confused by this pattern. I stay up really late for no apparent reason, even though I am actually really exhausted and a little sicky and have to get up early for work. I surf the web for really inane stuff, read blogs of friends of friends, etc. I do NOT do anything that would even threaten to border on the constructive, like pay attention to the very riveting FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING! module I am supposed to do before school starts, read one of the five books I've started and would really like to finish so I don't have to lug them home, or even just respond to emails. I don't want to do any of that. After the perusal of a friend of a friend's blog bored me, I clicked on a link to to the first friend's website. That site sparked in me some sort of nostalgia and reminded me of what I DO actually want to do. And that is this:

When we were younger, my brother Hans Tang and I would have these Garfield drawing contests. Sometimes it was Calvin and Hobbes and sometimes our next door neighbor Brian Sharpe would play as well. Those were our favorite comics growing up. In retrospect maybe they just were Hans Tang's favorites, and only by association mine. I mean I followed him around a lot maybe, but whatever. I'm my own person now. And I don't read Piers Anthony novels anymore, in case you were wondering. Anyways these contests were a lot of fun. Neither of us remember who was better, which is kind of an enormous anomaly for us and perhaps telling. I think sometimes we would make our dad be the judge. He's an honest guy.

So that is what I want to do. I want to have a Garfield drawing contest. And I want my dad to be the judge. Nothing more, just that. That is all I want in my life right now.


I guess one could call this bliss.




I would like to recreate this one and replace Pookie with my very own beloved Bunny Ears.

I went to Laos...

And this is what I saw:

Temples paved in gold




Lush prettiness




Turquoise lagoons that begged to be swum in


Buddhas meditating in caves


Mini-monks receiving alms


And two d.o.b.s taking lots of pictures with Thai tourists.

SexpatAdvisory.com Preview

One thing about Southeast Asia that is really off-putting is the abundance of "sexpats" or sex tourists. For whatever reason, even in cases where it is clearly mutually consensual, it is still creepy to non-sexpats in that gets you under your skin kind of way. Of course it would be ignorant to assume every interracial couple here represents those sort of relationship dynamics (I mean look who's talking here), but usually when the nature of the relationship leans on the side of exploitative, you can kind of tell...

Anyways, encountering all this creepiness in Cambodia reminded me of an idea that some of my friends and I had a few years ago when we unwittingly stumbled into a Shanghai "hostess" bar and decided to hang around for a bit. The idea was that if there are all these men who come to Asia as sex tourists, there must also be a good amount of womenfolk back home who are wondering what "business trips" really entail. To fill this much needed information gap in our modern society, I propose SexpatAdvisory.com to save the day. Here's a preview of what's to come!


Everyone, meet Martin from Hungary. Hi Martin from Hungary, this is everyone!