japanamania

i came across my first muji shop in london years ago and since then i haven't been able to get enough. cool clothing, bath products and pens and pencils, all in the same place and all with that distinct, clean, simple muji style. it's heaven. i could browse the aisles for hours (although i confess i start to feel like a messier and more disorganized version of my perfect self when i'm finished). i recently discovered that the muji shops in singapore sell muji food products, too. and not just tea beverages in cool pet plastic containers and wasabi peas, but also baking mixes. brownies, pizza, focaccia, and even those chocolate yule logs with holly branches (huh???). but the funny thing is, the packages are really small. there's supposed to be a pan inside the box, too.
when i make the mix i'll post the results. for now the package sits on the shelf as a sort of kitchen curio.

what i'm eating

the best chicken recipe i've ever found

yup, it's that simple. i came across a recipe for korean chicken on aromacookery.com, a great food blog from singapore. i was dying for korean food but, since it was already 5 p.m., couldn't make anything that required a long marinade time. i found the aroma recipe (which says to marinate overnight but in fact it's not necessary).

interesting.

i'd never used gochujang as a marinade, but i thought i'd experiment with it a bit. wow. it looks a lot spicier than it is. it's mostly just savory and tasty. delicious. despite being bright red, gochujang is actually quite a mild chili paste (well, compared to chili pastes in thailand). it's one of the staple ingredients in korean cooking, so you should be able to find it in any korean food store. or find it here.

the panel of experts (consisting of a lone man named john whose primary household duty is food taster) says this is one of the five best things i've ever made. bear in mind that's not necessarily saying much, but it is really good. and easy.


korean spicy grilled chicken

1 pound boneless chicken breast, sliced
1 large onion, sliced
4 crushed garlic cloves
3 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1/4 cup gochujang
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 cup water

mix gochujang, soy sauce, sesame oil and sugar together in a bowl or large plastic bag. add garlic, onions and chicken and mix well to coat chicken and onions with paste.
marinate for at least an hour, preferably overnight.
heat coals or fire up your grill (or turn on your toaster oven or broiler, you can even make this in a frying pan!). grill chicken till done. DO NOT DISCARD MARINADE.
while chicken is grilling put the remaining marinade with onions into a sauce pan and add 1/2 cup of water. cook till the onions are soft and the liquid has boiled. serve onion chutney with chicken.

ok, enough about cooking and weddings...

i love the bridal websites. i read them everyday, a couple of them are on my Google RSS reader. but i was just thinking -- isn't it totally absurd that women will spend hours of their lives figuring out a way to hand make invitations in order to save $75 dollars (inevitably, this involves buying a mini printing press called a gocco and DIY brides have single-handedly saved the gocco company from rehabilitation)?

ok, in and of itself that's not totally absurd. but think about harnessing all that creative, cost saving thought towards something that actually matters. such as... finding renewable energy?

steak house dinner at home
sorry to the vegetarians!



not something you want to eat everyday, but when you're in the mood, nothing beats a steak. you can head to a local steak house but it's fun to recreate the experience at home, too (and it's a pretty easy meal to make). this meal is centered around a couple of big, juicy delmonico steaks from new zealand. here in bangkok we can get thai beef, australian beef, and new zealand beef pretty easily. for most recipes, where meat is just an ingredient, local beef is fine. but when it's the star of the show, you gotta get the best you can find and afford. to pay our respects to the steak house, i'm also making a cobb salad, corn on the cob, grilled vegetables and mashed potatoes. ok, it seems like a lot of work but in fact the meal takes about 30 minutes to prepare. since you'll be using the grill to make the vegetables and the steak, and you'll be using some of the corn for the salad, timing is everything! boil the corn early so it's ready for the salad, and start the grill in advance so you can thrown your roasted garlic in (it needs to cook for at least 20 minutes) and so your veggies can cook for while you're making the salad. while you're waiting for steak and potatoes to finish, whisk up the salad dressing (once you start making creamy dressings at home, you'll never go back to store bought).

note that all of my recipes generously serve two people.

grilled vegetables
this works with zucchini, squash, portobello mushrooms, even broccoli spears (although you should boil them for just a couple of minutes before grilling)
slice vegetables into generous pieces a little thicker than 1/4 inch. drizzle with olive oil and salt.
when grill is hot, place veggies on grill for a few minutes on each side. don't worry if there's some charring, it tastes great.

cobb salad
one ear of corn, boiled
1/2 avocado, cubed
bag of lettuce
1/4 cup blue cheese, crumbled

salad dressing
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp mayonnaise
olive oil
juice of one lemon
fresh pepper
1 tbsp fresh dill

combine the salad ingredients together in a bowl. whisk mustard and mayo and slowly add lemon juice. once incorporated, add a thin stream of olive oil just to get the right consistency and mellow the flavors of the mustard and lemon juice. add fresh ground pepper and some fresh herbs. pour over salad and toss.

as long as you stick with the basic order of operations and ingredients (mayo, mustard, acid and oil) you can make an infinite number of dressings from this recipe.

garlic mashed potatoes
2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into sixths
head of garlic, roasted on your grill or in the oven till tender
1/3 cup milk
olive oil
salt and pepper

boil peeled potatoes in salted water till tender
drain potatoes and squeeze in the roasted garlic. mash together with milk and olive oil. add salt and pepper to taste.

what i'm eating

people trash singapore as sterile and boring all the time, but when you live in bangkok and have to put up with the traffic, the pollution, and the general insanity, it's really lovely to spend some time in a city that's organized, clean and pretty. think southern california in southeast asia. except it's a lot cheaper, and there's a comprehensive and efficient public transportation system.

but aside from that, singapore has wonderful food. the city state has existed for barely fifty years, so there's really no specific "singaporean cuisine." but singapore does have the cuisines of the chinese, malays and indians who settled the country. yum. the annual dumpling festival was beginning just as i was leaving. bad timing.

what i've been drinking

you can still order a singapore sling at the bar it was invented in, the long bar at the raffles hotel. and singapore has tiger beer, which is more than decent. but there are also some very strange, potent things in the local 7-eleven. we're always up to try something new, although having done so, i would not recommend that you do.

yes, you read that right. green tea & whiskey. combining two lovely things to create something really terrible. and the beer's... 12.2%. is that even still beer?

a new lens

i've been hanging out in singapore for the past week. i've mostly been working and catching up with people here, but i've also been playing with my new toy, a canon 50 mm/1.8 lens. oh my, what a world of difference a few f-stops makes! so, the next few posts (as i catch up on blogging) will feature pictures with the new toy. if you have a DSLR with the standard lens kit, spent a bit of money and buy a brighter lens. it will make all the difference in indoor and night shooting!

what i'm eating

most great chefs will tell you you don't need much to make a decent meal -- fresh ingredients, a good knife and a heat source should be sufficient. in principle i agree, but in my experience, a comfortable environment is key to cooking. that doesn't have to mean a fancy, expensive environment. but one you feel happy working in, since, at its best, cooking is a creative endeavor. a real kitchen was one of my priorities when we were looking for a new place. having just left our old, hot, cramped little kitchen in favor of a modern one with counter space and a real oven, i have to say it makes all the difference.


for our first meal in our new apartment, i asked john what he was in the mood for and he mentioned mango salad with avocado. this is one of my favorite salads to make. it's colorful, the flavors are a little surprising together (especially here in thailand, where we eat lots of mangoes but rarely eat avocado), and it tastes and smells really good. serve this salad at any dinner party and i guarantee people will be raving about it!

but how do you build a meal around just one dish? there are different schools of thought on this, but i really like it when the different pieces of my meal compliment each other in one way or another. i wouldn't serve korean bulgogi with paella, for example, as they have few flavor elements in common, both have very aggressive (and very different) flavors and they're both heavy. too confusing! it's hard to enjoy either of them.

the mango salad john wanted me to make has strong citrus, onion and cilantro flavors in it. while i don't want to outright copy them in the rest of the meal, i want to connect them. one flavor that works well with the ones i already have is cumin. i don't know why it is, but cumin is really yummy with avocado and citrus flavors, and you see this combination in lots of mexican dishes. since i have some chicken in the fridge i don't want to waste, i'll marinate it in a mixture of lime juice, soy sauce, garlic, cumin and bit of sugar. really just a bit for its meat tenderizing properties, the mangoes are enough sweet for a meal! so if you want to try this as a vegetarian recipe, ditch the sugar.

although i'm hating carbs lately for their fat creating properties, i just can't deprive myself when i'm making a home cooked meal! we love rice here in asia, but i'm going to mix it up a bit by adding a little saffron. the saffron and the cumin will make this meal... assertive. no boring flavors here!

mango salad
1 ripe mango, cubed
1/2 ripe avocado, cubed
1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half
2 tablespoons red onion, cut into long strips (the amount varies with the strength of the onion. no one likes a shy salad but it's no fun when the onions are burning your mouth, either)
1/2 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
juice of 1/2 a lime
salt to taste

toss the mango, avocado, tomatoes, onion and cilantro with lime juice. add salt to taste. cover and refrigerate for an hour. this can be eaten immediately, but it tastes better once the flavors have had a chance to mix.

cumin chicken
2 whole chicken breasts, sliced in half as though you were butterflying them except that you will actually split them into two thinner breasts

marinade
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 white wine (you can skip this entirely)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 cloves garlic, crushed
juice of 1/2 of a lime
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon ground cumin

mix marinade together in a plastic bag. add chicken, seal the bag, squish it up to make sure all the meat is covered and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, preferably 4.

grill chicken over coals, bake in the oven or cook in a pan (the chicken breasts are thin, so get the pan really hot and cook for just a couple of minutes per side).

saffron rice
add a little salt and few threads of saffron to your rice while it's cooking, whether you make it on the stove or in a rice cooker.

what i'm reading

Welcome to the Working Week, Paul Vlitos

Letter writing has become, for most of us, a relic of a bygone age. With blogs and Facebook and the consequent broadcasting of one's private life, journal writing is probably in decline as well (is there anything we won't share anymore?). So too, I thought, had the novel or short story told through letters or journal entries, such as Alice Walker's The Color Purple or Alice Munro's A Wilderness Station.

But, literature adapts to the times. Instead of journal entries and letters, the contemporary epistolatory story writer has email. Welcome to the Working Week is a story about a guy trying to find himself after breaking up with his girlfriend, and it's told through a series of email conversations he has with his friends and family.

Clever, for sure. And at times pretty funny, too. But the problem with emails is that... they're just not letters. They are generally typed up and send off without much thought and they are augmented by text messages, instant chat and even real, live conversation. Read through a recent email conversation you've had with a friend. Is there a story there? Probably not.

Emails with recaps of whole evenings/weddings/weekends with the family (necessary to move the plot along since the reader would otherwise have no idea what happened outside of cyberworld) are hardly the norm. So Welcome to The Working Week feels forced and contrived.

On Friday at 12:30 Barney replied:

Well, you were on the table to demonstrate your Jagger dance. You'd just got everyone's attention when you went over and took all the drinsk with you. That was when you managed to whack Laura in the contact lens. So we were all looking for it and I thought you were too, but it turned out that you were looking for the slice of lemon peel you 'slipped' on, in order to prove you weren't drunk.

You were certainly claiming to be able to speak Japanese last night. You went off to find the management at one point in order to tell them we wanted another hour, and claimed you would negotiate a discount with your master of the language. Bit odd since the people at the desk weren't actually Japanese.

The book also employs another very contemporary habit of storytelling (thanks Seinfeld!). It talks about nothing, albeit in an entertaining way. For sure, there is a bit of a plot in there -- guy gets dumped by girlfriend, disastrously tries to win her back, then moves on. But the main character doesn't really change from start to finish. He and his friends just keep sending out those clever emails. And, like reading one of those email threads someone forwards you, it's just not that interesting after a while.

the new apartment...

rocks. it is such a great place! big, sunny, nicely furnished. our bedroom has huge floor to ceiling windows, and it's big enough that we fit our extra couch in, so now we have a little reading corner. and we have a gigantic wrap around balcony (will post pictures once it's organized enough to take any) and it has a comfortable, homey feeling that's difficult to pin to one attribute or another.

today was move-in day. we suffered a bit this morning as we invited a bunch of friends out to join us for our last night in chinatown and ended up at a cabaret, karaoke, and an all night snooker hall till 4 a.m. it was one of those mistakes you only realize clearly once you can't turn back.

fortunately, our maid and her family came and helped us today. buie has been working with us for about a year, and in that time we've built a really nice relationship with her. since i work from home, we spend a lot of time together. with all the traveling john does, i think i see her more than him.

this morning she brought her husband, two of her grown kids and one of their friends to move us. after a hot, tiring day, we all sat down and had a late lunch together and talked and laughed and had such a nice, comfortable time. i also saw a different side of buie -- the mom/boss side. usually she's deferential but in front of her kids, she's much more in charge.

coming from america, it's very strange to have a maid. back home i had cleaners, but they were just there to clean and usually were the ones giving me orders (such as, do not be here when i am cleaning, or please make sure to sort your laundry for me). buie takes care of us. she asks me every day what i want for lunch. she picks our dirty clothes up off the floor. she brings me special treats when i'm sick. this week she brought us some home-made isan satol, which is a really yummy, alchoholic rice-based beverage, just because john was asking her about it and mentioned that he'd love to try it (it is so good! like a rice wine cooler).

we could view this woman as our servant or employee, but frankly (for us at least) it's tough to see another human being solely in that manner. most americans can't jibe with the master/servant mentality. anyway, it's especially tough with buie, since she's really become our friend and part of our family.

the old apartment

here are a few pictures of the old apartment. new ones to be posted once we move in tomorrow!

first, the cistern. see, i was not joking. you can see the coconut shell, too. and that's also in the middle of our shower (i say that generously, as it's really a room with a toilet, showerhead and cistern all rolled into one).


and our tiny kitchen. this kitchen was a hell of a lot nicer than most we saw.



one of the bedrooms.


one of the many landings.



and our "energy center."

moving...

so, life has not been all that interesting lately. mostly bogged down with work and book proposals and the like. good stuff but nothing to write home about.

we are moving out of our chinatown shophouse, however, which may or may not be exciting news (depending on what else is going on in your life). we've been living here for about a year, in the chinatown district of bangkok. in many ways it is an amazing and wonderful place to live. lots of great food, very convenient, and wonderful neighbors. but it's also very loud and dirty, and our shophouse, although cool in many ways, is dark and not so modern. one of our toilets doesn't evne have a flusher. no joke. you have to scoop water from a clay cistern with a coconut shell.

and so, we've found a great new apartment in ploenchit, which is a very central part of the city. the new place is really wonderful. gigantic, 3 bedroom/3 bath with a wrap around balcony and lots of sunlight. oh, and a real western kitchen, which is a considerable step up from our closet like, leaky, two burner, cold water room in the old place.

packing has not been so fun, but we are spoiled and lucky to have someone who helps out around the house. she keeps asking me why i have so much stuff!

expanding the scope

i started this blog about a month ago to focus on wedding planning. but since then i've realized that my life is full of lots of other things. maybe not so interesting to the rest of the world, but hey, i like talking about them. ;-)
and so, i'm expanding the scope of the blog, and working on a new name. i'll be blogging about:

• living overseas
• being a reporter
• books i'm reading
• a book i might be working on (more to come soon)
  
• yummy food
• and, of course, wedding planning

yeah, it's a small target audience...

themes and places

my friend megan tells me every wedding has a theme these days. she had a creative, fitting theme in mind for her commitment ceremony. secretly, i thought themes were silly. just another outlet for women to expend obsessive energy. but then we were talking about our wedding last night, and considering adding some sort of asian theme to it. not like tacky chinese food takeout containers and all that. something elegant. anyway, i remembered a lovely shop in paris with a chinoiserie theme, Laduree.

unfortunately i could not find any pictures of the interior, but will post when i do (also they have great mail order items and the most amazing macaroons i've ever had).
i think the theme, with bits of bamboo and celadon green, will go great with the venue i am hoping for, the gamble mansion in boston:
what makes the chinoiserie style so interesting is, it's not really quite "chinese" despite how the word is translated. really it's about old europe's perception of all things asian; a romanticization and a misinterpretation. it's how i thought asia looked before i got here. still, despite it's controversial roots, it's a beautiful design theme.

a bit of the conversation, or, why women plan weddings

ME: honey, how many guests do you want to have at the wedding?
FH: i don't know. not too many. between 100 and 200.
ME: well, depending on how big your guest list is, here's are some possible places in boston.
FH: that's so boring, isn't it? let's have a guerilla wedding. we can invite all our friends to a crazy location and get married before the security guards kick us out.
ME: any preferences on food?
FH: yeah. good food, for sure. and lots of food. but i hate wedding cakes. we should have some banana bread. it's important that our wedding be classy and elegant, but simple and casual at the same time.
ME: music?
FH: do you think we can find a rock cover band, like the kind that used to play on the jersey shore when i was in high school? and we have to have the chicken dance.
ME: what do you want to wear to your wedding?
FH: something nice. either a suit or a tux.
ME: what about decorations, how do you want the place to look?
FH: i guess everyone has flowers at weddings these days. we don't need them, right?

making some decisions

tuesday was a holiday here in thailand, so we took i took it as a free day and slept in, went to the mall to buy books, sat around at a cafe reading, ate sushi and ice cream and drank a bottle and a half of wine when we got home. during/between all that we finally had a real conversation about our wedding. yay! lots of stuff is still up in the air, but we made some concrete decisions:

• live band
• full open bar
• possible asian theme wedding
• in boston

still lots of open issues. for example, where we're doing this thing. neither of us is really keen on a hotel wedding, but is it possible to find a venue in downtown boston that's big enough but isn't a hotel?

why i wish i were getting married in thailand...

flowers.
i went to the flower market this morning and picked up some orchids for the house. it's a really beautiful place, a few blocks of flower merchants selling there stuff on the street. lots and lots of beautiful orchids, plus roses and all sorts of other flowers, too! i bought four bunches of orchids plus a really tall, thin bunch for $7.00. sadly, you won't be finding them at our wedding. :-(

pictures!

ok i poached these from one of FH's friends. i think i explained the madness of songkran before, but perhaps a few photos would help? the first is the general insanity. note that this is a large street in the middle of the city. now imagine that for four days.

second photo is of me, getting soaked by seemingly innocent and friendly man (who smiled as he poured a bucket of water on me) while the four men i was with watched and took pictures. yeah, thanks for that. thanks a lot.

and last, a photo to illustrate the bender week it was. a crotch shot of FH.

wedding bee

a few weeks ago, i stumbled upon a wonderful wedding blog. not a website that tells me i have to have a cookie-cutter wedding and tries to constantly sell me stuff. but a real community of fabulous women who are asking lots of smart questions and approaching their big days with humor, grace and great attitudes. real women, except that they are probably better DIYers and writers than the average! some of this stuff is like macgyver level brilliance -- three popsicle sticks, a hot glue gun and and some old pigeon feathers will become a lovely centerpiece in the hands of these able-bodied women.


and one of the bloggers, ms. kiwi, posted a question i had posed about what to do about registering since we are so far from home. what a wonderful community!

http://www.weddingbee.com/2007/04/26/lets-help-suzie/#comment-112574

where have all the sleeves gone?

i've been thinking a lot about wedding gowns. because, you know, before we pick the date i should probably know what i'm wearing, right? ;-)

there's a trend that's been going on for a while, and i don't really like it. seems like every single lovely gown i've looked at is a strapless a-line. of course, they will put rhinestones on it, give you some tulle, even an accent sash. mermaid, plus size, taupe, sure. but all the dresses look pretty much the same.



but why do i want to look like every other bride? aren't i supposed to feel special on my special day?

elephants?

well, it's been a little busy the past couple of weeks! aside from the friends visiting, i've also been really busy with work. freelance is wonderful because i have so much freedom and flexibility, but sometimes i have to do many things at the same time, and that's stressful. oh well, at least i don't have to go into an office!

i'm covering a vacation for a friend of mine who's a tv correspondent and it's been tough to transition from print to tv! but, lots of fun in its own way. here's the story we did today (not the tv version, but you can see what it's about): http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/272480/1/.html
let me tell you, it was 102 degrees here in bangkok today, and after making sure you have all your interviews and b-roll, the last thing on your mind is how you look on camera. i think i'll go down in history as the sweatiest girl ever to be on tv.

what does this have to do with weddings? nothing at all. ;-)

where have i been...

it's been a very busy couple of weeks here. john had some friends visiting from philly and it was non-stop while they were here. now the guys are gone and john's on a business trip till saturday night so i can finally focus on all the things i need to get done.

the worst of it is that we have not yet been able to have a real conversation about the wedding! we promised each other we would discuss when he gets back, but... there are two girls coming to visit from france on saturday, and there is a chance i will have to travel to new delhi next week! someday we'll have some quiet time together to make some decisions.

one of the visitors, the guy who got engaged after us and had his wedding planned in record time (i call him the vince vaghn character because, well, he's pretty tall and big and funny in that vince vaghn sort of way) is getting married on december 30. and he's asked john to be his best man. so there goes a new years eve wedding! vince was like, no way guys! you'll be so hung over from my wedding, you need a couple of days to recover.

back to square one. does anyone get married in january? it would be so much easier for us to do it while we're home for the holidays.

picking the date: new years eve wedding

we've finally decided on a wedding in the US, but the when and where remain. it's got to be somewhere between boston and philly, but we can't pick a venue until we pick a date. i was talking to my friend julie, another american here who got married in boston, and she suggested a new years eve wedding. could it be?

pros:
we'll already be home for the holidays
people in their 30s are generally looking for something to do on december 31
we can have a formal wedding and a big, fun party

cons:
one of fiance's friends from home is getting married on december 30 (and he got engaged after us!)
people might already have plans

is it really selfish to have a wedding on a holiday? i was recently at a destination wedding in jamaica the weekend of thanksgiving and thought it was a little tough to have to fly all the way from southeast asia to america just to miss turkey dinner with our families!

grace kelly?

for formal events i tend to gravitate towards sleeveless styles, but i want something different for my wedding gown. my singaporean friend's gown (well, one of them) had a beautiful mandarin collar and see-through-lace sleeves. not sure i want to go that extreme, tho. that looks totally normal in the middle of asia, but back home might seem a bit dramatic.

but, what if i did a sleeveleess bodice and a sheer top with a mandarin collar? i came across a photo of grace kelly's dress and was thinking that something like that might work.

i'll probably have everything made in bangkok, since it's so much cheaper and we can select everything, so i can customize as necessary.

a couple of ideas for the bridesmaids...

i know i don't want that shiny satin every other bridesmaid's gown is made of. i'm thinking silk shantung. maybe in tiffany blue, since the groom looks good in that color.

why am i picking out their dresses before mine???

bridesmaids, gotta love 'em

i've just asked 5 of my sisters, my 12 year old niece and my closest friend from home to be my bridesmaids. seems like a lot, but i couldn't imagine having my wedding without them by my side. :-) fortunately, fiance has lots of close guy friends, so ushers won't be a problem.

bigger problem, what are we wearing??? all of 'em are beautiful, but they come in various sizes, from tall and skinny (niece) to tall and not so skinny. depending on what i end up wearing, i'm tempted to just let them pick out the dress themselves.

first decision made

well, we've done it. we've decided where we're getting married...

somewhere in america.

this is a groundbreaking decision for us. really.

and how did we decide, you may wonder (since we haven't been able to come to a decision for 3 months)?

well, future husband has three guy friends visiting from philly right now. it's songkran here in thailand, which is a five day new year celebration involving lots of water fighting. not kidding. originally, people would pour a little water on each other as a symbolic cleansing for the new year. now it's totally out of hand. you walk down the street and get ambushed by people with super soaker water guns and buckets of ice cold water. it gets a little boring after the first couple of days, but the guys seem to love it. it's their third year in a row visiting during songkran.

one of them got engaged 4 days after we did, on christmas eve. he and his fiance had already picked their date by the time i saw him for drinks on december 30. as you can imagine, this guy stresses me out, too, because he seems like the last dude on earth who could beat me at wedding planning. he's the vince vaugh character and i'm supposed to be the responsible girl.

anyway, something about those guys from back home all being here made me start to think we'd better get working. so, after a very long night of revelry (and the biggest bar tab i have ever seen in bangkok) fiance and i got to talking and decided we'd get married back home. it would be a lot easier for our parents, plus two of my sisters have small children. i don't want them to have to spend thousands of dollars dragging their families across the globe.

although we will have to kiss goodbye our dream of a casual, elegant beach wedding in southern thailand, we will have another reception here for all of our friends on this side of the globe.

hen party: good, clean fun

last weekend i went to a bachelorette party (as in europe, they call them hen parties here) for two brides to be. they're on either side of the bartender, wearing the veils.

all 15 of us, 2 brides and 13 friends, wore red. actually it was a pretty straightforward event. we all met up for a nice dinner, then hit the clubs for some dancing and general mayhem.

i knew we were in for a hard night when we did our first shot -- tequila, tabasco sauce, and something else that made it even more disgusting.

the brides-to-be had a list of tasks to accomplish:

get a guy to write your name on his chest in lipstick
gather as many phone numbers as you can
gather as many condoms as you can
get at least 3 guys to call or text the future husbands and tell them how lucky they are

the body shot was just for fun. ;-)

the two brides accomplished their tasks with lightening speed. hot chicks!

the day after was not as much fun tho. i ended up staying at the house of one of the other girls and the next day we laid out on the couch until about 2 pm, when we got up the energy to go out and find some breakfast. one of the guests, whose name i cannot mention, was so sick she couldn't leave the house the next night. yikes. i'm thinking my bachelorette party will be a spa day...

btw, does it make me a hippocrite that i would be really upset if my lovely fiance were out doing body shots before we got married?

other couples' weddings stress me out

i've just seen the three page email for the wedding of a couple we know here in bangkok (i'll get to the lovely printed invites momentarily. they sent out the email since there are people coming in from all over the world for the event).

the wedding is a two day event. ceremony and dinner at super-posh hotel in the city on the first day. dinner and dancing at very trendy and chic night club the second day.

we all have to wear some orange for the ceremony, since it's a lucky color in Thailand (the bride is Thai, the groom is Dutch). for the night club part, we are instructed to wear all white.

there is a website dedicated to this event (is that normal now?)

and the invitations...

well. they are lovely. the couple had a designer create a logo for them. two actually. one for the back and one for the front. the first one is a siloutte of the two of them, done all in white. the second one (on the back of all the pieces of paper) is a little padlock with their names on it, since they got engaged in Rome on a bridge where everyone apparently puts padlocks with their lovers' names on them.

did i mention that at the singapore wedding i was at a few weeks ago, the bride changed 4 times (including hair and makeup)?

i now resigned to the fact that no matter how hard i try, my wedding will never be the best wedding i've ever been to. :(

i'm not a slacker

my dad met john for the first time a few weeks ago. i think things went well. they laughed about their ivy league rivalry (barf barf barf) and chatted away comfortably for a couple of hours. after the first day in so. california (where my dad lives) he and my step mom surprised us with a cake and a toast.

but later, when i was alone with my dad, he asked if we'd decided where and when the wedding will be. when i told him i hadn't really thought about it, he said "if you really think this is the right guy for you, what are you waiting for?"

yikes.

trust me, there is no weird subconscious reason i'm not getting this done. but our situation is complicated.

1. we are from boston and philly but we live in bangkok.
2. we were in boston for an extended time after the holidays, and john's been traveling almost every week.
3. we have no idea where we want the wedding to be. not as in -- which lovely venue in new york city. as in -- which continent. i've been living overseas for the past 3 years, and many of our close friends are here. but... our families and old friends are on the east coast. and i'm dreading the thought of having to plan a wedding from so far away.

what now?

it's been more than three months since the engagement. the ring has already made what looks like a permanent groove in my finger.

we haven't planned a thing.

normally i wouldn't be so concerned, but i just got back from singapore, where i attended the wedding of two friends, and i am starting to worry. it was a beautiful event. but it took a lot of work, and jani (the bride) got going pretty soon after she got engaged.

i guess i'd better get on it.

engaged!

as most of you already know, at the end of the year, john and i were on a two day layover in seoul on our way home for the holidays.

after dinner, at a painfully hip, young soju bar in apku, in a fit of poor judgment, mr. brown proposed.

i said yes. left bangkok a single girl, arrived at JFK bethrothed.

[this is not an april fool's joke]