Archive for July, 2008
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
The first thing I would like to clarify is that I am NOT a photographer or an expert, but in this case I do not think I need any qualification to back up my opinion. One of my favorite thing to do is take pictures, look at pictures and buy pictures! I LOVE art of any form be it a sculpture, painting or photographs. What I especially love about photographs is the fact that it captures a moment, a time, a history, a memory of something or someone without anybody having to say anything. What I consider a good picture is one that inspires me to write a thousand word about it or verbally describe it to someone else with such clarity that they are able to ” see” it in their mind’s eye. A good picture is one that showcases its subject in a revealing way, a way that sheds new light about the person or thing. Take for example, the picture of this cake on the front of her brochure. I do not need or have to know whose wedding cake it is in order to imagine what kind of couple picks this nontraditional concoction. I can write my own story about this couple. That is the beauty of photograph, if it is well done, it will speak to us or invoke thought.
It takes a talented photographer to be able to tell a story about their subject without having to say anything. Oubon Phommavong or you can call her MissPhom, is an amazing Laotian photojournalist who is an expert story teller. How does she do this without saying anything? Simple, one click at a time or one frame at a time according to her. She is definitely, “Capturing life one frame at a time.”
To see more of her work, make sure you visit her at: http://missphom.com/blog/. If you are in Florida, give her a call and let her tell your story one picture at a time.
4 comments July 30, 2008
Cucumber and Avocado Cold soup
1 Avocado, 1 jalapeno, cilantro
4 peeled, cut cucumber, lime to squeeze in soup
Throw all ingredients into blender to blend
Finished product
Ingredients
4 cucumber peeled cut
1 jalapeno (but I like it spicy so I put two) deseed it
cilantro ( 2 or 3 sprigs, your choice)
2 stalks of green onion ( not in original recipe, I like onions so I put some in)
half a lime to squeeze in to taste
salt to your taste
Directions:
Throw everything together and blend. You are going to have to shift the ingredients with a wooden spoon during the blending. What I did was, pulse it in the blender, stop it then flip blender upside and put back on stand, blend it again. At first, my blender was being stubborn and it didn’t want to to blend, that’s why I had to shake it and move ingredients around. Once it gets going it will blend well. After it is well blended, just squeeze lime and throw salt (1/2 tsp) into the mix and blend for a few seconds. Then it’s done. I made steak, corn and then ate the soup for dinner one night. Sooo good! I know it might not look it but it’s a great summer soup.
This recipe is from Chef Joy Pierson from lastest issue of First magazine. I wanted some soup, but since it was hot as hell outside, I decided I needed to find a cold soup recipe. This is very tasty and healthy. It was easy to make as well.
Add comment July 28, 2008
Lao Food
For some Americans, starting a pot of coffee signals the start of the day, but for many Laotians, it’s putting on the rice steamer. When I was living at home, my parents would always get up early to cook the rice and that’s how we would wake up, with the fragrant smell of rice wafting through the house. To us this meant, delicious food was not too far off.
Both my mom and dad have their speciality when it comes to meals. One of my dad’s speciality is pork sausage which he makes from scratch. He usually uses a hind portion of the pork to make it. He does not use a meat grinder to cut the meat. Instead he chops it up because he likes the rough texture and chewy texture of the finished product. He uses many seasoning, spices, and herbs such as thai pepper and lemon grass in the sausage. The end result is a delicious sausage that you can freeze and cook and eat later like I did one afternoon. To balance out the slightly greasy taste of the sausage, I accompanied it with brown rice.
7 comments July 26, 2008
Mor lam: Lao traditional music
I love listening to all types of Lao music, including the more traditional mor lam which means expert singer or expert song. According to Google mor lam , “Typically features a theme of unrequited love, mor lamalso reflects the difficulties of life in rural Isan and Laos, leavened with wry humour. In its heartland performances are an essential part of festivals and ceremonies”. The more traditional mor lam is accompanied by a khene.
One interesting type of mor lam is mor lam glawn (หมอลำกลอน) which is a vocal battle between the sexes and it has two main parts. According to Swisspedia, the two main parts are:
* lam tang san (ลำทางสั้น) — (“short form”) took up the bulk of the time, with the singers delivering glawn poems a few minutes in length, performing alternately for about half an hour each from evening until about an hour before dawn. They would pretend gradually to fall in love, sometimes with rather explicit sexual banter.
* lam tang yao (ลำทางยาว) — (“long form”), a representation of the lovers’ parting performed slowly and in a speech rhythm for about a quarter of an hour.
If you really think about it, this back an forth takes an accomplished musician to master breath control because the mor lam has a very specific rhythm and flow. Also, the person who plays the khene must also have breath control to be able to continuously play for hours. I wonder if these musician have a six pack because of this? Just a wild thought!
Another type or version of the lam glam is the lam jot. According to Swisspedia, “lam jotgae or lam jot (ลำโจทย์แก้ or ลำโจทย์) is a variant of lam glawnformerly popular in the Khon Kaen area, in which the singers (often both male) asked one another questions on general knowledge topics — religion, geography, history etc. — trying to catch out their opponent”. I find this vocal battle between the sexes interesting because it reminds me of the MC battles in the hip/hop world where one rapper verbally “attacks” the other MC to make him/her look bad. The objective of the MC battle is very similar to the mor lam because both “singer” is trying to outdo the other and in a way make the other musician look unskilled. If you really want to see a good example of an MC battle just watch the movie 8 miles starring Eminem.
Now that am more educated about mor lam, I can actually say it is one of the oldest form of Lao ”rap”. Also, now that I know more about the different types of mor lam, I can see why my parents and their friends were laughing and snickering when they were listening and singing it. I’m almost positive now that their lam contain some “adult” issues. I guess I was too naive back then to understand!
The next time I go home, I am going to ask my mom’s friend if she can lam for me. She was pretty good singing mor lam especially when she was drunk. I have to give her some credits now looking back at all those gatherings at my parents.
Overall, mor lam singers are prolific story tellers who are able to entertain us for hours!
Add comment July 23, 2008
Lao Song
I love this song and the video. I like the message of the song about how it doesn’t matter what kind of Laotian we are whether it is Lao Lao Loum , Lao Theung, or Lao Soung because we are all kwun Lao. The important thing is to stick together and make Lao matter.
Watching the dancers bring back memory of when I danced at the cultural festival at my university. The old lady at the loom reminds me of my grandma. The scenery brings back memory and emotions connected to my childhood. There really is nothing else to say, except enjoy the video.
Add comment July 23, 2008
Arrange marriages
(left to right: sister, cousin, and I)
When I was about thirteen, my cousin was married off. She was about seventeen or eighteen I believe. It all started when one of the single men who was an acquaintance of both of our family, saw my cousin. I guess he fell in love with her, but the feeling was not mutual. My cousin was in love with someone else. Unbeknown-est to my cousin, the man was serious in his pursuit of her. He was bound and determine to make her his wife.
One weekend he brought his parents and relatives to Clovis to ask her sister and brother-in-law for her hand in marriage. Her sister agreed without my cousin’s consent. The adults set the term of agreement for the marriage, like how much dowry he was going to give to her sister and brother-in-law. My cousin was devastated because she was not remotely attracted this man much less love him. She was already in love with someone else, but that did not matter because once her family gave their word, it was a done deal!
A couple of weeks before the wedding, her betrothal came down from Canyon to Clovis to take her shopping for something. I don’t even remember what for, but I think it was bed linens because I remember we looked at some. He asked her if she liked it, and she practically snarled at him that she didn’t care. Since my cousin dragged me along, I had no choice but to go because she was my favorite and I knew she didn’t want to be alone with him. I think she was being rude to him, in hopes that he would not want to marry her. Poor my cousin because he still did not cancel the wedding even when she tried to run away before the wedding.
I was given the ‘honor” of washing the groom’s feet on the day of the wedding. At thirteen, I really didn’t want to wash anybody’s knarly feet, much less those of the man my cousin despised. However, since I was asked I couldn’t say hell no. Sometimes it’s difficult to be an obedient Lao girl!
There was a procession of musician and people leading the groom to the bride’s house. When the groom gets there, and before he can enter the house, I pour perfumed water on his feet after he passes the “questioning’ from my cousin’s family. Questions like what are his intention? Why should they let him in? Of course, this is all done goodnaturely, and they didn’t ask the most important person which was my cousin. I’m sure she would have grab the perfumed water bowl from my hands, throw it at his face, tell him to go to hell and slam the door. However, since she was not the one at the door, she did the next best thing, she got stinking drunk on her wedding day at the feast.
There were rumors that the guy she loved was going to attend the wedding. I don’t remember if he did or not. I know that he did not get married for awhile.
What happened to my cousin is not an isolated case. One of my good friend was about 16 when she let it slipped that she like this man from Amarillo. Once again, he was a family acquaintenance. After she said she liked him, the planning started. My friend said, the details were ironed out and the next thing you know she found herself married to a man who was 10 years older than her. I recently asked her why did she give in when she was not sure. She said, ” You know as well as I that we were raised to obey and respect our parents. I didn’t know how to say no.”
I believe the marriage last about a year before my friend took off and called home and told her parents that she was not coming back home until he husband was gone. When he left she came home.
Sixteen and absolutely no sense of style
When I was sixteen or seventeen, my dad’s best friend’s son told me a secret. He said he heard his uncle tell his dad that he wanted to marry me because I was so sweet and such a nice girl. I have to admit at the time I did think his uncle was kind of good looking and nice but I saw what happened to my cousin and my friend. I decided the best way to stop his admiration was to act dumb, immature, and goofy. I didn’t think my parents would marry me off because they always told me I was not to get marry until after college. However, I am ashamed to say, I misjudged my parents. When the subject was brought up, my parents laughed and told everyone I was not going to get marry anytime soon since I was going college. This is one area my parents and I agree on!
Do I agree with arrange marriages? It doesn’t really matter because it is up to the individual to decide how they want to live their life.
Add comment July 22, 2008
Proud to be a nerdy Asian
Me the nerd in high school. I was a junior when we went to Washington to compete at the National FHA Convention
A recent comment made by one of my good friend, Peu reminded me how after all these years I still have not escaped my image of “the nerd”. She was in the middle of telling me about her struggle in a Literature class she was taking at the college when she paused and said, ” Hey, I bet this class would be easy for you because you were so smart when we were in high school”. It has been over 14 years since I graduated, but yet people still remembers me as the “smart” one, the nerdy one as my friends fondly remembers. I guess I fit the profile of what they describe as nerdy characteristics: studies a lot, always completes assignment, and gets good grades.
Because of this image of me being smart and nerdy, people would love to sit by me in class because they wanted to cheat off of me especially in my history class. I can still remember, Sammy who almost fell out of his chair trying to see my test answers over my hunching shoulders. I guess once he realized that he didn’t have any x-ray vision, he would do the next best thing which was pretend to be elastic man and stretch his neck over my shoulder in a vain attempt to get those answers!
Another of my ‘cheater” friend is Jackie who by far has no shame when it comes to cheating. She didn’t beat around the bush, or waste time trying to be discreet about cheating off of my test. Oh, no she didn’t make a pretense of trying to pass the test on her own , she straight out told me to give her the answer. After that she would have the nerve to ask if I had a quarter or a dollar, like I would give that to her even though I wouldn’t hand over my answers! Okay… sometimes I did give her money because I felt sorry for her.
In retrospect( now that I’m older and wiser) being a nerd in high school was not so bad even when my little sister would make fun of my extra-curricular activities. Yeah, she would laugh and teased me about being the president of the Future Homemakers of America, Home Economics Related Occupation Club, but she did it goodnaturely. I have no shame being the head of that club because my team went to national competition for our community service projects because we placed first at state and earned our spot. Yes, I acted too mature and serious for a high schooler, but that was part of who I was and still am to a certain extent.
I am a proud nerdy Asian even though I consider myself average in intellect. However, if my high school friends still would like to hold that image of a smarty pants, then who am I to persuade them to think differently!:)
Add comment July 19, 2008
Cheating on the AP exam
As a teacher, I am always paranoid about following rules and regulation when it comes to formal testing like the AIMS test or any type of test that we have to give to our students that is state mandated. Recently, I read an article about a high school in California who was accused of cheating on the AP exam. I was shocked that the some of the kids were able to cheat on this exam because at a conference I attended in California we talked about this. I can not believe that some of the proctors were sleeping, reading, or left the room. What they should have been doing was walking around the room and monitoring the students and making sure that they had nothing on their desk except their test and writing utensils.
In the article it talks about how some kids confessed to cheating by texting the answers to each other. Because of this allegation of cheating, all 385 student’s score has been nullified. It is true that it is unfair to the kids who are innocent. However, I have to agree with the zero tolerance policy that is mandated by the College Board and the Educational Testing Service when it comes to this issue. If the College Board gives in and reinstate the scores for the innocent party then other kids might get the wrong message which is, it’s okay to cheat because you will only get your hands slapped! Like I said it is unfair to those innocent kids who abided by the rules, but it is necessary to keep the integrity of the test. Shame on the cheaters for “punishing” the other students!
A couple of weeks ago, at my AP conference, my instructor, was telling us about how the Educational Testing Service ( the company who writes the AP Tests) spends millions of dollars to guard the integrity and secrecy of the AP test. I find it ironic that a couple of kids from California has been able to show how easy it is to cheat on the test with the help of technology.
Why do kids feel it necessary to cheat on test? It is sad that a handful can ruin the validity of the test scores.
If you would like to read the article click on this link: http://chronicle.com/news/article/4814/students-and-parents-in-calif-protest-after-ap-test-scores-are-canceled
Add comment July 19, 2008
Marathon Workout for the week
While I was visting my siblings in Phoenix, I went to the Runner’s Den where they have experts to help you pick the right shoes. The guy who helped me was very patient. He had me walk in front of him, back and forth to see what my problem was. I had told him my right knee hurt from running the day before. He had me tried on several shoes and took me outside to see how I ran. Also, he wanted for me to see which shoes felt the most comfortable. They all felt great, I wanted to keep running! However, the people driving by did give me strange looks. They probably thought I was running off with the shoes without paying!
The shoe man figure out that I over pronate and gave me several shoes to try on to correct my foot issue. According to New Balance shoe website:
Over-pronators generally land in a pronated position and continue to roll significantly inward as they go from heel strike to toe off. They exhibit excessive inward motion and are best served with shoes offering medial (inside edge) support via a Medial Post or shoes featuring the ROLLBAR® technology.
Running shoes I finally settled on
Felt about the same as NB shoes
Loved the design, but Nike felt slightly better
To make a long story short, I tried on several shoes that would help with my over pronation issues such as: New Balance,Nike, and Asics. All comfy shoes, but Nike felt a little better.
Monday: five minutes warm up, 45 minutes run/walk= 3 miles, 5 minutes cool down. New shoes definitely help with my over pronation.
Tuesday: 1 hour Yoga, felt great.
Wednesday: T-N-T: Tight-N-Toned! Hour long total body sculpting class using dumbbells, bands, steps…etc (didn’t get to TNT so I did upper body and abs instead)
Thursday: Pilates, Tai chi or Yoga. I haven’t decided yet. Maybe 30 minutes (2 mile run) before or after. ( Went running hills with my club member)
Friday: 20 minutes bike, 20 minutes elliptical, and 20 treadmill ( 2 hours yard work instead)
Add comment July 16, 2008
