I'm sure you only clicked because you want to hear about Masala. I asked him if he wanted to be at the start of the blog, and he said "meeeeow", so let's not waste your time.

Masala is doing well. Actually it's kind of amazing how much his personality has changed since we first got him. He used to be extremely shy. At the pet shelter, he was often hiding somewhere, and when we brought him home, it took about 2 weeks for us to see him regularly. That's definitely not an issue any longer. He is comfortable in his domain, usually never leaving our side when we're home. When we go to sleep, he usually finds one of us to lean against. He's actually quite polite, all things considered. While sometimes he will get up during the night to use the toilet or eat (don't we all), he usually stays quiet. He's got a good sense of when our phone alarm is about to go off, and will usually sit patiently for it to wake us up first. Then he'll rub his face on you and demand pets. Otherwise, "petting time" is whenever one of us gets home. He will usually walk up to us, and just plop on the floor at our feet. Or just randomly, he'll come over and rub his head against you. He's very much a head/face/neck kind of guy. He's sort of okay with his back being rubbed, but he will remind you with a meow that is not his preferred spot. The belly, like on most cats, is a no-go. However, recently I've learned that if you start at the neck and slowly work your way down, you can get to the belly without him noticing - perhaps the result of the "one orange brain cell". Oh, and if you try to pet him during non-petting time, he will likely just walk away, or you will be on the receiving end of a no-claw slap. Not petting time is usually "leave me alone" time, or "play" time, and play time is all about chasing things. A ball is fine, but he's recently taken to the "jingly things on a stick" line of toys. He loves it when he can chase them around for a while, but then they suddenly stop moving. He goes into "hunting mode" by walking a half circle around it, arching his back, and gradually sneaking up to pounce.

Something I really appreciate about him is that he is pretty chill with being picked up. I know most cats don't like that, but he doesn't seem to mind that much. He usually folds himself into a C-shape with his arms and legs out, and you can just hold him with one arm underneath while petting him the other. One day I carried him around for about 30 minutes showing him random apartment things. He especially liked the freezer, reaching out to touch the bag of frozen veggies, then looking at his paw. And speaking of food, out of curiosity we give him a little bite of people food sometimes. We had to learn a lot about what cats can and cannot eat, and they're honestly pretty much okay with everything. Most of the off-limits things like chocolate and caffeine are pretty well known, but for us the big sticking point is no garlic/onions. Turns out that's in just about everything, so he doesn't get to try things as often as he'd like. As far as his preferences, he will kind of nibble at veggies, but overall, not a big fan. He will sniff fruit, but I've never seen him eat any. He'll lap up a bit of milk, but usually just once or twice. Of course he loves fish, but oddly enough he's not too keen on chicken - he'll eat it, but only after a lot of sniffing/contemplation. The big winner though, is bread. He LOVES bread, of any form. Even plain white rice he is ALL about. I don't know what his deal is, but apparently the fastest way to his heart is carbs. If I ever gave him a breaded fish stick, he would probably explode with happiness. Overall, he's just food curious. Whatever you're eating he also wants to sniff and/or try, and he'll leave you alone after he had a chance to sample it. For example, one day I was drinking plain soda water, which he was very curious about. I put some in a little dish for him, and he was jumping around it, dipping his paw in it, and just being very confused by this bouncy water. Cute~ 

As far as Thailand travels, we've done a bit here and there. For example, it was Constitution Day, and a Rama IX Park had a big night market with live music, food, etc.. Actually the music was really good, kind of big band jazz sort of thing. It was better than most music I've heard at bars where you have to pay a cover charge to get in, and just goes to show Thailand is amazing at A) being artsy, and B) finding an excuse to throw a party. Ella and I ate and walked around for a few hours, just taking in the vibe and consuming a weeks worth of calories. While we were walking, I was thinking - why don't more places do this? There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of outdoor markets in Bangkok alone, many being a normal part of the community. You can get food and drink there for cheaper than a restaurant, because it's just a dude in a tent. For a special occasion like this you had plenty of vendors, selling stuff at pretty steep discounts. I feel in the US these kind of festivals sell things for more money than in a shop, which just seems weird to me.

In further flung travels, our Bangkok family took a day to trip to the beach. Bang Saen Beach is the closest beach to Bangkok, and is alright, but has a ways to go to match the beaches an hour or so further south in Jomtien and beyond - and those don't hold a candle to some of the islands. It's more of a "let's hang out near the ocean and enjoy the vibe" sort of place than an actual swimming destination. Though some people were swimming, we dipped our feet, had some food, had some drinks, and just chatted. We took the train to get there, which has a stop just outside our building. Overall it was about 2 hours, but whew the train ticket was expensive - at 20 baht ($0.60) a person, we'll need to save that for a special occasion.

In other news, I have a new job. But this was after ~2 months of "not working", which was surprisingly much more busy than actually working. It seemed that every day there was something to do with the apartment, errands for Ella and I, or the cat. Actually one day we went to take him to the vet, and he was not so happy about going in the carrier. It was a soft carrier with a mesh netting, and after we finally got him in... he just clawed the heck out of it and slipped out. So, very fortunate he didn't decide to display that superpower when he was on the street or something. Now we have upgraded to a proper hard plastic and metal carrier, so if he breaks out of that one, there is nothing us or even Superman can do to stop him. We eventually did get him to the vet, a process he was very not pleased with. He's actually fine with the vet, but wow he hates car rides. He just lets out constant sad meows the whole time. Thankfully he's all caught up on his shots now, so this is the last time he will need to go there unless for something unfortunate.

Oh wait, I was talking about work. The position with Ella's school didn't materialize, as it unfortunately would start after my visa expired. Instead an agency that I worked with 10ish years ago in Thailand had an opening, so I'm back with them. I'm back to teaching in a pretty low overhead sort of role, not unlike some of my first teaching gigs. Overall it's quite a whiplash from my previous gig of, you know, trying to set up and run an entire school. I'm divided between two different schools doing Computer Science and English. It's very low stress, so I'm not complaining, because this is the kind of Thai life that I remember. Now with a proper residency visa secured, I'm breathing easy in terms of my status. Just in terms of perspective, I went from accepting the job to having a visa in about 2 weeks. Portugal was... 8 months? And we still couldn't get it all done. So. Maybe they should rethink that process if they want people to come.

I'll end with something a bit less serious. An old coworker of mine messaged me out of the blue one day, and asked if I wanted to come with him to a Dragon Ball exhibition - because the tickets are buy one get one, and his girlfriend is like, "No way". While I certainly was a fan as a teenager, I've been out of the Dragon Ball scene for 20+ years. But even though I knew nothing about the new series, the exhibit was actually really interesting. Mostly just a lot of statues you could pose next to, they had a few AR activities like doing a Kamehameha to collect the Dragon balls - and if you got all of them, you could get a free poster. The whole thing is completely silly, and something that would only work in Thailand.

 

I write this blog with a devilish plan - Ella and I have a kitten now. If you want to hear about him and see cute kitty pictures, I am holding your attention span hostage until the end.

 

So, let's begin with travel stuff! Life is pretty good here in BKK. Ella and I went to the National Museum and Siam Museum. I had only been to the National Museum once before, actually just the 2nd day I arrived in Bangkok. It's been remodeled, which is good I think, because I remember it being more like a bunch of warehouses stuck together than a museum. But I still feel it's organized a bit haphazardly, with about a dozen buildings displaying random things with little context. There is some cool stuff, but I feel that the real "national treasures" are in temples or in the ancient capitals. If you're a history buff, it's probably worth it, but also I feel it's a bit expensive (250b) for what it is.

 

The Siam Museum is more interesting I feel, and only 100b (~$3). It's in a beautiful old house, and their main exhibit tries to answer the question "What is Thai-ness?" I love the whimsy, for lack of a better word, they put into this place. They have a model of a school classroom you can poke around in, learn how to make Kha Phrao Moo, or play dress up. And what other museum can you display an old CD-ROM, and say it is used by ancient Thai people as a tail light for elephants? Or have a "wai-ing" Ronald McDonald statue next to a gogo dancer? At the time, they also had an exhibit on childhood toys like Jenga, origami, and even a Famicom. So you can bet I played some Mega Man. Really cool place that is definitely worth your time, and just goes to show how creative Thai people can be.

 

But in other BKK news, some BFFs arrived from Shanghai recently. They went off to India and the UK for a while, before making the big move here, along with their cats. It's great to see them of course, but also just by being here they make this place feel more and more like home. So we've been spending almost every weekend with them, getting them settled, talking about life here, and showing them around some of our haunts. One place we wound up that I didn't expect to go was Lumphini Park. If you've never been, it's downtown in the Silom area, and was the very first place I ever visited in Bangkok, over a decade ago. My hostel was about 5 minutes away from here, and at the time, the entire park was occupied by protesters. These "Yellow Shirts" were Royalists and not fans of the then-current PM, Yingluck Shinawatra. I visited to see what was going on, and they couldn't have been nicer - my first meal in Bangkok was free food and a concert. Not having a single dog in this fight, they won me over pretty quickly. Not two months later, there was a coup, and the new government gave everyone a day off work and threw a party. So yeah, they certainly know how to charm a fellow. Fun times in Lumphini.

Nowadays, it's a far cry from that. It's just a large city park, to escape the hustle and bustle. But actually Lumphini has a bad reputation with the locals, as the ponds and waterways are filled with monitor lizards. They are seen as very bad luck in Thailand, and even their name is perhaps the strongest curse word in the language. To help out with this, years ago the government said they will remove them from the park. There are so many, so even at the time I was living here, I said "Pfft, yeah right." And it turns out that was impossible after all, because they've just given up and embraced them. There are cute monitor lizard signs and statues around, I guess realizing that even if Thais don't like them, tourists really do. I admit they're pretty cool, because they're huge, and fairly harmless unless you're a fish or something. 

That same day we needed to pick up a gift for another friend that was visiting, so we went over to the Jim Thompson Shop nearby. And I need to stop for another story, because if you don't know about Jim Thompson, he's pretty interesting - he worked as a spy for the CIA (then called the OSS) during WWII, loved Thailand, settled here, and revived the Thai silk industry to become the famous institution it is today. He became extremely wealthy, and built a really nice house downtown using traditional architecture with lots of other flair, and now it's a popular museum. At the height of his career, he went on a holiday in Malaysia, whereupon he disappeared without a trace. So there are conspiracy theories abound about what happened to him, but still to do this day, nobody knows. Regardless, his business lives on, with a very fancy showroom, full of very fancy things I could not even imagine buying even if I were very wealthy. We bought a tie, and it is certainly the most I ever have spent or will spend on a tie. But we also got to attend a very fancy dinner, eating things that I would not normally eat myself, such as crab or Cantonese style pig skin. Tasty enough, but I feel I don't have the palate to truly enjoy such things - and I shudder at the thought of how much it probably cost.

But I suppose the real travel story of note is that I popped over to Malaysia for a weekend. Unfortunately I had run out of time to get my visa processed, so I needed to do a visa run. And I might as well take the chance to visit some friends! More Shanghai folk made the move there, and it was lovely to see them again. They were also kind enough to put me up for the night, so I also got to meet their cats (I'm detecting a pattern, here). I only had about 24 hours in Malaysia, but I did walk around downtown Kuala Lumpur to take in some sights. I have been to KL before, so there was nothing that was a must see for me. I did see the Petronas Towers, which I maintain are some of the coolest looking buildings in the world, although you need to go at night to really appreciate them. I also went to Merdeka 118, the 3rd tallest building in the world (after the Burj Khalifa and the Shanghai Tower). It is pretty much finished, but still under construction - but knowing that Malaysian people are, in my experience, the nicest people I've ever met, I thought I'd try asking to see if I could go inside. Yup! The security guard said I could check it out if I promise not to leave the lobby. To be honest, the lobby isn't too notable, but it was still really cool of them to let me in. The outside's pretty though, and well worth the photo. Other than that, I only had about 3 hours to explore, so I just took in some sights, bought some souvenirs, and ate at Uncle Roger's Restaurant - after seeing his Youtube videos for so long, it was nice to see what he considers good fried rice. And yeah, gotta be honest - pretty solid fried rice, 8/10. Although I still think the lady near the canal at Wat Saket makes the best fried rice in the world.

That's about it for travel, so shifting gears to work - Ella's job is going great, so no news there. Mine though... haha. Last time I mentioned I was the Principal of a school, well, no longer. It's a long story that maybe I should not air out in public, so apologies if I'm a bit cagey. But in short, I felt that I had a different vision for how a school should be run. After saying "Well, you'll have to fire me if you want to do that, because I refuse" on a pretty regular basis, they decided to consider that offer. I wasn't fired, in fact, they asked me to stay on as a teacher. But they went ahead and had someone else do the thing I refused to do so that I wouldn't be attached to it. However it involved treating someone unfairly, and I thought there's no reason why they wouldn't do that to me in the future. Plus it burned some bridges, so maybe best to make my exit. Not one day after, I went to Ella's school to inquire about positions, and it seems there will be something opening in two months. So I guess I have two months to have some "me time", which has involved figuring out my visa situation, but also throwing myself into studying Thai. In the future I'll probably write more about it, but it's pretty rewarding to walk around and finally read signs I've passed by a thousands times without giving a second thought.

And now what everyone is really here for, the cat. If you know anything about Ella, she's been dying to get a cat forever, but we just wanted to be settled somewhere before that happened. Well, settled we are, so we decided to go for it. We went to a shelter called PAWS Bangkok, run by this very lovely person who really dedicates herself into taking care of stray cats around the city. Our little guy was found along with his sister in a car park at only a few months old. Both of them were really shy in the shelter, maybe feeling intimidated by all the other cats there. So they stuck together like glue, however, his sister was adopted about a month ago. Ever since, he's been especially shy and lonely. When we visited, he was hiding as far away from everyone as possible in this donut-shaped tunnel thing. But when we opened it, he instantly went to cuddle with Ella and became a purr factory. We decided to adopt him then, but I went back the next day to grab him after we did some shopping. He was actually due to have his next rabies shot, so straight from the shelter I took him to the vet. I also thought that it's probably best that it's me, so he can vow revenge on only me and not Ella. Overall he did very well, though he very much does not like cars. At red lights he's fine, but when the car is moving, he meows up a storm. But now on solid ground in the apartment he's cool. For now he likes hiding, as expected for such a big change. He will come out, insist on cuddles, and then go disappear somewhere else for a few hours. Actually he is very much a cuddly guy, if you scratch around his face he just melts into a puddle. I know orange cats have a reputation for being dumb, but at least for now he certainly is not. He figured out where his food and litter box were immediately, and has been cautiously exploring the apartment. Anyway, meet Masala. I'm sure you'll be seeing a lot more of him.