First off, Happy New Year and all that jazz ( Read more... )

There has been a vast fire in the 25 hectare Vietnamese market complex on the southern limits of Prague, near my workplace. See this articleThis market was a major source of Asian foods, especially fresh vegetables, that were not readily available anywhere else. And the 'pho and bun cha diners were well worth the 9 minutes' bus from my workplace ( Read more... )

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I forgot to post a public thanks to hemlock_martini for the package he sent about a month ago. I specifically asked for some Old Spice High Endurance Original Scent, which for some odd reason is available neither in Europe nor in any part of the States I've been back to the last 3 years (AZ, Ohio, Boston, NYC) but is available in St Louis. Go figure ( Read more... )

We were in Bukowski's on Saturday night with an English actress/musician named Lucy and various people coming in and out of the room. Lucy was playing Spot that Accent and for an Englishwoman wasn't too far off with mine (she said Michigan) but thought Eve was from the Midlands of all places. Eve says she's been sitting next to a girl from ( Read more... )

On Sundays, phonemonkey and I have the custom of going to the huge Vietnamese market complex in Malesice. Aside from the household supplies and countless dodgy textile stores, they have a couple of Asian grocers that actually sell fresh green stuff (hey, this is the Czech Republic) and some luncheon places that mainly serve the market workers. We usually go ( Read more... )

BBC 7 plays old archived BBC radio shows.
I've just been listening to "Lines from my Grandfather's Forehead," a Ronnie Barker vehicle from 1972.
It started with a parody of the Paul Temple Mysteries, a series of horridly long and gratuitously complicated multi-multi-part mysteries broadcast on the radio (by different actors of course) in the 1930s- ( Read more... )

phonemonkey and I were in Asia for 20 days before I started my new job at Sun. Hong Kong->Bangkok->Chiang Mai_>Bangkok->Macau->Hong Kong. We had an absolutely splendid time but we need to spend much, much longer in Thailand. It at least gave us a flavor for the place. Speaking of which, we never ate better in our lives. We also took a one-day cookery course ( Read more... )

Having a splendid time. Visited Doi Suthep (monastery on hill) but though sunny it was quite hazy, so both city and hills were perceived but dimly. Cool place, though.
Got some excellent dress clothes from quite a posh tailor, at least according to traveling businessman sites like this and others. Eric, the Thai fellow I know through Travian ( Read more... )

I've recently read the draft of a friend's book, set in 1840s London. This fed into a discussion I was having with Trumpton over the qualities of Theodore Dalrymple's writing. Dalrymple, in short, blames a rise of yobbish entitlement-queen subproles on the abandonment of 'traditional values' by the middle-class, giving the working class nothing to ( Read more... )