Yard Moose

We had a transient in our yard when we got home this evening from the Yom HaShoah-Holocaust Memorial today.

Ben's 60th

Last night eating at the Thai Kitchen we were invited to a surprise 60th birthday party today for Ben, the co-owner of the Thai Kitchen with his wife Sommai. 60 is an important year in Thailand. It's the fifth cycle (of 12 years) when a person is in his or her prime. We were gathered at the Sheraton, a private room near Josephine's restaurant on the 15th floor.







Getting ready for the guest of honor to arrive








Ben is in the yellow shirt. I mentioned these shirts on a Thai post. They first were sold to honor the King of Thailand's 60th Anniversary on the throne. Thais are wearing these shirts all the time. Mondays in particular. But many people wear them other days. Walking through Thailand you see many, many people in these yellow shirts. They are also now getting ones that also are to celebrate the King's 80th birthday in December. These are really a special phenomenon that became far more popular than I think anyone imagined and now come in various designs, different color stripes, but all basically yellow.



Sommai, Ben, and one of their granddaughers.









Ben's sons were supposedly taking him to brunch for his birthday. After Ben was surprised, in walks first son Steve with his two daughters. They'd already called 'from Seattle' to say happy birthday. There were probably 40 or 50 people there - united through being good customers of the Thai Kitchen and a few other friends. Here they are all together.















And here Ben has just gotten the keys to the last surprise (I think) of the day.

Baan Orapin - Chiengmai Bed and Breakfast

Riding the bus from the Lao border to Chieng Mai, back in Thai cell phone range, I called Grib to tell her we were on our way and in the conversation she recommended we stay at Baan Orapin. Their website calls it a 'boutique' bed and breakfast. "Boutique" is tacked on to all sorts of fancied up for Western tourist magnets in Thailand and Laos. In fact one could call Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos, a boutique town with its world heritage site designation, but that's another post.

Baan Orapin is an old Thai family compound. A large house with other buildings in a walled in garden with large old trees in a beautiful flowering garden. Here's a ripe jackfruit - yes that's how they grow. It's a little bigger than a football. Yes, it looks something like a durian, but it's not.






On a tiny two laned, sidewalk-less street just east of the Menam (River) Bing, what was obviously once a quiet Soi (side street off a main street), Baan Orapin is an island of old Thailand, quiet, green, relaxed, just off the busy hustle and bustle of modern Chiengmai.


We missed the new swimming pool by a couple of weeks. That's our room just behind the black curtain next to the pool.

The Arizona educated owner, is trying to keep his family compound viable as a bed and breakfast, maintaining the old house, and building a few guest houses on the property. The rooms - you can see them in the link above - were beautiful Thai style with Western style bathrooms. This is not your run of the mill hotel where everything is like any cookie cutter hotel in the world. It's a chance to be back in a touch of the old Thailand that is quickly disappearing. And while it was one of the more expensive places we stayed on our trip at 1700 Baht per night, that still comes out to under $50 per night. He said he's trying to keep the prices reasonable, that the pool won't raise the prices. The local competition is too tight.




And in the early mornings, before breakfast in the old house, I got to look at the various birds also enjoying the garden. Here's a red whiskered bulbul, a fairly common Thai bird, particularly in Chiengmai. I left this picture fairly big so if you want to see the bulbul, click on the picture. He's near the top of the picture to the right slightly, left of the main branch, above the green leaves.

Dinner with Francisco at Yamato Ya

Bright sunny day. Forties. Snow going fast.
Dinner with Francisco at Yamato Ya. A place we've run into each other now and then. Talked til closing, about India and Thailand. About making it through immigration even if you have an American passport, but have a profile look. About the joys of condo living - someone else clears the snow and takes care of the garden. Summer in Mexico working on sorghum and corn. Definitely not organic. Changes with the new ownership at Yamato Ya.

Francisco moved to LA in high school speaking no English and being treated by most teachers as a Mexican unteachable. But one teacher saw something more and helped him get into college. Now he has a PhD from Yale and is a Professor of Spanish.

Karaoke in Korat

This goes with yesterday's post. I had really wonderful students and we all had a good time that night at Arnut's beautiful home, great food, and the Karaoke.

Great House, Great Party

At the end of the Korat class, one of the students invited us to his house. He'd built it out of town in the rice paddies. It combines the best of Thai and Western design and finishing. Thanks Arnut for being such a gracious host.

Mainstream Corporate Scam Artists

In Seattle recently we got a car at Hertz. I had a prepaid package deal and after saying no to the optional insurance, I was offered gas fill up for the car for $2.91 per gallon. (I'd just been in LA where the gas was about $3.45/gallon, but didn't think that Hertz would give me a great deal and figured it would be cheaper outside the airport and said no.) If I didn't take this option, they'd top off the car at $6.99/gallon. When we got out on the road, gas was around $2.99 and I thought, hmmmm, maybe I should have gotten that. Until my daughter said that at $2.99 I needed to bring the car in empty because they'd charge for a full tank. That certainly wasn't clear at the counter. And one would have to work really hard to bring it in totally empty. And why $6.99 to top it off? That's more than 100% surcharge.

It used to be that there were reputable businesses that treated their customers with some level of respect and then there were scam artists. And while there were gradations, there was something of a gulf between the two. The first basically let you know the terms and conditions of a transaction and if there was a problem they would make a correction. Of course, businesses always were out to make a profit, but many in the past had some level of integrity (shame?) that kept them reasonably fair with customers. There still are some places like that - Nordstrom and Costco come quickly to mind. You can bring products back, no questions asked. The scam artists were like the guys who'd offer to resurface your driveway cheap because they were "in the neighborhood and had some hot asphalt leftover we need to use up." But all they did was paint it black and when it rained the scam would be revealed.

But nowadays we have mainstream, well known companies that act like scam artists making you guess which shell hides the pea. Either the rules are so complicated that few people actually read them or they offer you 'deals' that turn out to cost far more than you expected. Like the gas scheme at Hertz. Or like phone companies with all those free minutes, that suddenly become outrageously expensive when you go over the limit or out of the area. Or they set up arbitrary fees such as the ridiculously expensive late fees many credit card companies charge.

These aren't customer friendly. They are purposely devised to trick people into behaviors that will cost them much more than they were expecting to spend. And banks and phone companies, the sorts of formerly mainstream businesses that used to be reputable, are scamming customers with legal sleight of hand too. Why?

Some thoughts here, and maybe you have some other explanations:

1. Corporate mergers and concentration have had several affects here:
----First, there is much more focus on the bottom line and pressure to find ways to squeeze out more profits

----Formerly locally owned businesses answer to some distant headquarters, that don't have local accountability

----Large trade associations heavily lobby legislatures and government agencies to get rid of any consumer oversight or regulations

----The concentration of ownership means there is less competition and consumers have fewer choices (One might argue that there are lots of choices for credit cards arriving in the mailbox daily. But the hype ("0% Interest") is highly misleading and the small print is impossible without reading glasses not to mention a law degree and an extra hour a day. And once you have a credit card, they can change any of the conditions they want and it's take it or leave it.)

2. Consumers are not taking their responsibilities to be savvy shoppers.
----They are too lazy or too tired to shop around. (The internet usually gives me several choices, of say, decent car rental places that charge a half or a third of the Hertz' and Avis'.)

----They just can't say no. We do have the option to not buy on their conditions. We can shop around or even do without. When we stop accepting these outrageous conditions, the companies will respond with better options. Though it is hard to not have a credit card if you want to buy an airplane ticket or rent a car, so in many ways not having a credit card is like not having a car. You can do it in today's world, but not easily.


Even with the influence business has today on legislative bodies at the state and national levels, we can be more intelligent consumers. The market does work if consumers are discriminating. Though the outrageous bilking of the consumer raises serious questions about the fundamental assumption of market economics - the so called 'rational man.'

Some places that offer more information on these things:

Credit Card Nationis a book by Dr. Robert Manning which examines how credit card companies prey on cardholders and would-be card holders.


Justice Talkinghad a show yesterday on consumer debt that discusses many of these issues, including how the poor are especially hard hit by check cashing stores.


An Unreasonable Man, the movie on Ralph Nader's long consumer advocacy reminds us that large corporations have always gone for profit over consumer safety.

Midnight Soapscum: PORN!

Mad Myrna's website explains






Midnight Soapscum this way:

"This is a live action soap opera with a new episode going up every two weeks. Come find out what straight boy Rex and Gay boy Basil are going to do when the evil Oleg Smirnov and his dreaded mother get the addicted to drugs and force them to work in the Porn Industry!!!!"

Christian, a former student of mine, and the director, writer, and an actor in the play, told me it was going to be a comedic look at the porn industry. We missed the first two episodes, but episode 3 was fun, Though any commentary on the porn industry was pretty light. The actors were great and we had a good time.

Meetup.com hike

I've been getting emails from Doug about joining an outdoor meetup group online. So I checked it out and decided to take advantage of someone organizing a hike while Joan was at Tai Chi this morning. Another great use of the internet to get people with similar interests to meet. This got me out into the woods for an eight mile hike from Rainbow to Potter Marsh. Lots of snow and some ice still. Wet feet at the end. Thanks Doug.





























We even had a photographer from the Anchorage Daily News come part way to take a picture. Reminded me of how the media shapes the news to fit their needs for a good photo. Would we have taken a group picture without him? I don't think so. In this case it isn't a big deal, but in other cases the picture (even if not set up by the media) tells their story of the event.

And we even had some blue sky for a bit.

Travelodge Basics - Face, Body, Hair

In this age of increasingly frou-frou hotel toiletries, Travelodge is refreshingly straighforward and unpretentious.