Fine Dining

I'm cooking for myself most of the time, but for Thai meals I've been frequenting a mom-and-pop place down the road. They make a pork sausage stuffed with vermicelli. Delicious -- I just wish I had known the secret ingredient before biting into it.

"Pop" made a small show of offering me chili sauce in English. I reciprocated his warmth by complimenting him on the taste. It was good, but even I realized I was gushing over the "ketchup" -- in fact, the sauce was likely a Heinz product.

BTW, while shopping the other day, I could not resist the lure of a $6 pair of computer speakers. My rental unit has wi-fi but no TV, so I'm now in the habit of streaming radio broadcasts (especially the BBC) through my laptop. But if I'm cooking at my outdoor kitchen-space, I can't hear anything. You get what you pay for, of course, so I should not have been surprised when I plugged the speakers in to find that they were no more powerful than a pair of earphones. I exchanged them less than 24 hours later for two boxes of granola, pasta, fresh guava juice, and a pair of socks.