Some years ago, I took a trip to Bangkok with my father. Wherever I went with him, to the stores, on trains and in restaurants, people would look at us in an odd, slightly disgusted sort of way. The sight of my middle-aged father, striding around with a girl half his age and dressed in tank tops to cope with the hot weather, was perfectly in line with the images of similar couples who wandered around town in relatively posh shopping complexes, especially if the men seemed foreign.

The dress code was of particular importance. 'Decent' girls from wealthier homes wore the latest Japanese and Korean fashions. They were generally quite fair-skinned, perfectly coiffed and exquisitely made up. I still believe they were some of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen in the region.

The girls who worked the bars expatriate men frequented veered more towards olive. They wore, at least while I was there, almost uniformly tank tops or tight shirts and jeans.

So on the part of the average Bangkok person, the idea that I was an unsavoury trollop was a fairly normal thing to assume.

In practice, what this meant was that I would be spoken to in Thai where my father was addressed in English by strangers. If my father was bargaining with a salesperson, and the salesperson believed he was being cornered out of a good deal, I might be scolded, in Thai, for not helping. When we walked into restaurants or hotels, the staff would serve my father first, and me a little more grudgingly. People were a lot nicer when I eventually spoke up. It just wasn't the sort of thing that immediately occurred to me if all I was doing was following my dad around a shopping mall.

I used to quite resent it, but I learnt fairly quickly to understand that it was the culturally normal assumption to make. I don't think people were deliberately trying to be malicious. To make an assumption myself, I believe that most of the time, it was just that they didn't have any other point of reference.

The story I wrote, based on my observations during that trip to Thailand, became Into the Monsoon. It was originally written to be part of Bandersnatch, but this was swapped out at the last minute with a different story, and has languished for a year or so until it appeared in Fantasy Magazine this morning. The mistaken identity, the discomfort of it, the torrential rain and the darkened marketplace, were based on real life. Everything else, I fear, is delightfully fictitious.

I know I have been dreadful at responding to everything lately. I was sick for a week, then it was the husband's turn to feel unwell for a while. There was a week or two when work decided to rain on me like an opera god. Now, I'm slowly getting sick once again, and the cycle of life begins anew.

And amidst all that, there were two readings for Morbid Curiosity.

On the Saturday before my birthday, we trooped over to Borderlands for my first ever reading in the United States. My whole motley -- literally, everyone who attended my wedding last year a.k.a. that unconventional band of gamers -- showed up to lend their support, which felt pretty awesome. A fair number of the attendees were contributors. It was the first in a series of reading in the city, and Borderlands was the place Morbid Curiosity was last seen, when a wake was held there in its honour three years ago. I was terribly nervous during the reading. I know my capacity for eye contact was low, and I kept worrying people wouldn't be able to hear me over the pedestrians outside. For the most part, I was also quite afraid that my jokes were falling flat, and that people just ... weren't laughing. After everyone had read, I had a very interesting conversation with kn1ghtshade about how horror stories were a substitute, in the US, for mystical experiences that formed part of daily culture elsewhere in the world. In particular, he gave the experience of late night TV horror medleys, introduced by gruesomely dressed hosts, as the direct equivalent of a shaman explaining the world's unknown qualities to an expectant audience. I got autographs from the other contributors, who were friendly and warm, and we had photos taken where I am certain I had my eyes closed -- I have the worst luck with photography.

That night, I worried incessantly about my performance at the reading. I was still fairly sure I had offended someone, or perhaps I just didn't do well. I spoke about this to scanner_darkly and morbidloren, who told me what I was feeling was normal. We all agreed it would probably take some practice and time.

A couple of weeks later, I received an opportunity to read at Pegasus Books in Berkeley. I took the chance, with reservations. I looked forward far more to attending another Morbid Curiosity reading the day before I was due to read myself, at Books Inc. in the Castro. It was the special GLBT Morbid Curiosity event. Among other things, Dean Estes read about growing up gay as a member of the Mormon Church, which I found deeply humorous, and slightly familiar in how growing up in a conservative and religious culture is an unusually homogenous emotional experience. I managed to get him to autograph his story after the read. I was truly nervous asking all the writers for their signatures that night. Dean was awfully sweet though. He picked up right away that I wasn't local, and asked if I was a contributor too. My favourite story that evening was one Loren read on behalf of JD, about assisting in the suicide of a friend with AIDS. It was a beautiful tale, and a beautiful experience hearing that tale read aloud, just one of those necessary things to hear spoken in the Castro. The room, if not the whole store, went totally silent when the crux of the story became clear. When she finished, people were almost too terrified to clap. It is, in no small part because of the reading, my favourite tale in the entire anthology.

I was walked home that night by the very kindly Claudius Reich and his lovely housemate. It was a great night to be out. A little cold, but just enough that a long walk was pleasant, and the streets were busy enough to seem safe, but also quiet enough they felt homely and welcoming. I was deeply glad I attended the reading at Books Inc. The experience was certainly an enlightening one, and the company was utterly charming.

The reading at Pegasus Books happened on a particularly busy day. We were gaming that afternoon, with a special marathon session of 'auditions' from a murder opera module iamfourninjas found for Pathfinder. I got the part of, "the torturer who experiences a change of heart". At first, I was worried I wouldn't make it in time to BART to the reading, but our intrepid GM and bettyscout were kind enough to drive me to the bookstore and have dinner with me to boot. I was whisked off to an Irish pub, where I had a tasty potato pancake topped with cured salmon, and I made it just in time for the reading. I was still worried my throat was feeling a bit itchy and I'd lose my voice halfway through, but it lasted well enough.

The Berkeley reading was quite a sea change from the reading at Borderlands. It was a much more open-planned bookstore, with higher ceilings and quite a bit brighter. There was some kind of sports event happening outside, which meant the entire downtown area was busy, including in the shop. The audience at the reading included a good mix of perfect strangers and a couple of friends -- the intrepid GM and his spousal unit both stayed for my reading, because they are awesome like that. The crowd laughed at all the right places when people read. The stories were generally fairly humorous that night, which may have helped. I managed to hang out briefly with Allegra, ex-copyeditrix of Gothic.Net, and very briefly saw tjcrowley, who read his story and mysteriously disappeared before I could say hello.

I took the BART home with Loren, who is, as always, very sweet and equally, very delightfully morbid. The husband met me at 24th and Mission with a big hug. It was extremely pleasant to walk home with him. I genuinely enjoyed that last reading (the last, as it turned out, in San Francisco), and it was a fun day in general. Both readings were very real educational experiences for me to go through as a writer. I feel slightly better equipped, if for whatever reason, I am called upon to read again. It may take me a while yet to get over my phobia about readings though.

Went for a walk on Mission & Valencia, explicitly to look at the becostumed folk. Saw a family of pirates, two moms and their peg-legged tot between them crossing the street. It was absolutely adorable. Passed by a bondage nun in shades complete with her own choral music hidden somewhere on her costume. Good Vibrations was festooned with devils and angels. Next year, we think we should get a pumpkin. It will be the one time of the year I'll actually have pumpkin in the house, and a lantern sounds like a great idea.

Stopped by Mission: Comics and Art this afternoon to pick up my copy of House of Secrets: Foundation, which Leef, the proprietor, kindly ordered for me two weeks ago. Seth got a whole stack of a series called 52. I'm told the next volume of Mouse Guard might be coming out in paperback, which would be great. I do quite want it. Leef has a pretty awesome establishment going. Lots of series I'd like to read, mostly along the darkly surreal bent. It's nice being in this neighbourhood.

There is sickness and there is work in my life. Halloween is the end of October, and October has never been a good month for me. Every October that passes is another year my writing has gone nowhere. But October, as a month, began improving significantly since last year, the happiest October of my life. From a personal standpoint, I am now happier and more satisfied than I've ever been. I feel like I've achieved a lot as a person. The writing will hang over my head though. It always does.

My birthday was books, honey and a nice dinner, and wonderful creme brulee at Garcon. When the waiter found out I was celebrating, I got a candle in my custard. The very lovely husband and delectable plushie cat both ensured that day went quietly and in a relaxed manner, as is appropriate.

These was also the reading at Borderlands, which I have not yet written about but should. I had intended to attend a large number of the Morbid Curiosity events this month, and quite failed to. I will be attending the reading on November 7 at Pegasus Books in Berkeley, where I may give this reading thing another go myself. At any rate, please look out for me? I'll likely have to trim down The Bomoh if I am reading. When I read at Borderlands, the story clocked in at 20 minutes. I can already see places where my editorial cleaver will be most pleased to deliver.

But for now, there is curling up with Poe and the cat to warm my toes.

My mother has studied Feng Shui, the belief that a place's energy can be altered by careful rearrangement of its elements, for nearly three decades. When I was growing up, she moved the position of my bed whenever I had a major exam coming up.

(I was a bad student -- the operative term is, "lazy". I got one A out of nine subjects in my college entrance exams. She tried.)

She practices it quite faithfully, but refrains from doing more with it than personal uses. As she tells me, "It's not that I am selfish, but helping others takes a strong will." If she used it for anything bigger -- sick children, the hungry poor, saving the world, the karma related to each act would grow. She believes that. She believes that if you don't help people, it reflects on you as a human being. But if you do help them, anything you do is on you. If you mess something up, somewhere, that responsibility, that karma, is yours.

It's why she fused our everyday life with Feng Shui, but it never left our front door. It helped her understand life -- why good people get sick children, why the poor go hungry and why we'd all like to save the world, but we can't.

Superstition is like that. If you're a skeptic living in an environment that's all about people sharing a fantasy that helps make them feel better and understand life, you don't go out of your way to burst any bubbles. That's how society works. You learn to respect the rules, and play them by rote.

The story I'll be reading tomorrow at Borderlands is like that. It's a story about an exorcism -- my uncle's to be exact. I witnessed it when I was in my early twenties. There are no spinning heads, no talking in tongues. But it is about a collective experience growing up Malaysian, and how much superstition pervades our everyday lives. It is about how a group of people, coming together to build a fantasy, can make it real in the most practical, normal ways.

So, c'mon. Borderlands. 866 Valencia Street, between 19th and 20th in San Francisco, at 3 - 4:30PM. If you're in town, there's beignets around the corner, comicbooks and a honey store too. I'll be there, and lots of weird folks and those weird folks I call my friends will be there. Join us. We'll make our collective experience real.

Work has been beating me over the head with a chair these last couple of days, so I couldn't post about this sooner, but I was on the radio for the first time last Wednesday. The DJ was Mister Odom, and I was there at the invitation of Loren Rhoads (morbidloren), who was talking about Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, and Darren McKeeman (tjcrowley), whom I was meeting in real life for the first time. Loren read "Why", the first story in the book -- about the very peculiar things people would collect. Darren talked about dressing as a goth clown and getting held up at gunpoint. I basically called my story boring on air, because I'm dorky. But I got to read a public service announcement about a rat shelter!

scanner_darkly showed up right before we went on air, although work was made of hate for him too. It made me smile and smile.

You can listen to what we were up to at , on this podcast: http://www.piratecat.dreamhosters.com/podcasts/MisterOdom/MisterOdom-20090930.mp3

Loren Rhoads (morbidloren) will be appearing on Pirate Cat Radio this September 30, at 4:15PM to promote Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues. Since the Pirate Cat Cafe is literally six blocks from the hermitage, I will be headed there to sip coffee and spectate (with the slight risk that I will also be appearing on air to taint her coolness -- it is a thing of scary wonderment.)

I think I might be reading The Bomoh, my essay in the Morbid Curiosity anthology, at Borderlands on October 10, at 3:00PM. (The list of readers hasn't been decided as yet, to my knowledge, so it's up in the air for me.) As it is a Saturday, I get to slurp Rodgers' coffee and attend this anyway, and I strongly encourage everyone I know to do so too!

Then, there is the huge wonderful ohmygoshness of the book release party for Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, best summed up in this pleasantly disturbing blue poster. That's happening at the Hypnodrome Theatre at 7:30PM on October 20.

Lots of people-meeting! Eep!

Into the Monsoon, a short story loosely based on my experiences in Thailand some years ago, will be going up at Fantasy Magazine sometime in the next two months. An electronic version of the story will also be made available on Fictionwise, Kindle and Sony. Will be posting more details as they become available.

When we start deciphering the world to the exclusion of enjoying how beautiful it is, we've begun to lose a part of our humanity.

Likewise, Karen Armstrong is very probably not an atheist, but I am the sort of atheist she is:

Over the past month, I've been struggling for even the briefest amounts of free time that wasn't work. In the hour or so I got each evening with dinner, I'd been slowly introducing my husband to an odd bit of humour I'd picked up in Perth -- The Mighty Boosh. Like all things out of my collection that I introduce to other people, even people I live with, I was apprehensive. Many of my friends are weirdos, and even then, most of them find my taste baffling. My best attempt to explain why I like Mighty Boosh is summed up in my favourite Yellow Monkey music video: My Winding Road. The Youtube sample I found is a little blurry, and I'll have to pop up my own copy of the thing at some point to enliven people's lives with the horror, but the basic premise here is that watching and appreciating The Mighty Boosh is akin to watching five minutes of a Japanese rock song set to a disco beat, festooned with a dramatic judge, a jury of cloaked TV-headed spectres, throbbing multi-coloured dance floors and men in tight sequined suits with their chests partially exposed, bedecked in strings of Mardi Gras beads and feather boas.

So far, Seth's patiently sat through the first season of Mighty Boosh, which I'd never seen, and actually found quite banal and odd myself. He's patiently sat through the first four episodes of season two, the season I have watched, right up to the very first episode I ever saw -- Nanageddon. He giggled at the same jokes I did. He's been the one who put up new DVDs on Netflix, so we could watch them together. Why this is significant to me is because it represents how, even though things have been busy and tiring in my life, in the past two years, my life has gained more friends and more understanding than it has in the other 25 years of living.

In exactly this manner, the upcoming publication of Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues represents the pinnacle of why I moved to San Francisco. A bunch of years ago, I worked for a little magazine called Gothic.Net. One of its frequent contributors, Loren Rhoads, would help fill its pages with these moving essays about the cities of the dead she'd personally experienced. I was fascinated by her articles. Cemeteries are for me, like libraries -- gentle places that resonate with silence. To walk in them, to feel their slight chill, is to be at peace. Eventually, I worked up the courage to scribble little comments under her essays online. To my surprise, these tiny exchanges blossomed into pleasant conversations. At Loren's nudging, I submitted an essay about my uncle's exorcism, which I witnessed when I was in my late teens, to her magazine, Morbid Curiosity. That story, The Bomoh, was published in issue #7 of MC in 2003.

When I first visited San Francisco in 2007, among the first persons to welcome me to what would eventually be my new home was Loren. We visited real cemeteries together, and she showed me such things as her very lovely collection of morbid stereoscopes and Victorian funerary photographs. It was very cool to feel welcomed, and in that regard, it was very cool to really not feel like I was a misunderstood weirdo anymore. About a year on, that feeling and that idea has just kept growing.

At the time of our first cemetery visits, Loren was working on compiling stories from the entire run of Morbid Curiosity into an anthology. She succeeded, overwhelmingly, and this compiled collection of stories about the "unsavory, unwise, unorthodox and unusual" will be coming out on September 29 from Scribner Books. It's already up for pre-ordering at Amazon, and it has a lovely website that Loren (morbidloren) and her husband, Mason, have put together, complete with a darkly atmospheric book trailer. Or if you prefer, since Loren would like us to support our local bookstores by buying the book there, I could march you to Borderlands from my hermitage and take you out for a beignet and tea to go with myself.

As I mentioned earlier, this publication is important to me. On a personal level, it reaffirms the idea that I can be weird and I can do that without being shunned. On a professional level, it's the first time I'm seeing my writing in a work from a major publisher -- it's exciting and scary all at the same time. As part of promotional efforts for this book, I may also be doing readings and generally being quite a dork in various places throughout the city, which is also exciting and frightening because it will involve people (people!), and my pronunciation is dreadful.

It has a website. It is real!

As heard from raia, who heard it from the MUCC fan site, there's a 20th anniversary tribute album coming out for The Yellow Monkey on December 9, 2009. I'm tentatively excited about this, which is to say I honestly haven't heard 3/4ths of the people on this album before, but I like the idea of folks picking up some of the songs I really loved from this band and reinterpreting it. If nothing else, I'd get to hear songs I'm familiar with in a new light. That in itself has often worked out.

I am excited about hearing one song in particular, which is The Back Horn's interpretation of Kyuukon. This is very much one of my favourite Yellow Monkey songs in existence. And if there was ever a band I suspected who could capture just how cathartic this song is, framing it in their own words, it would be them. I wonder if they would make it faster? Will there be things crashing and people screaming and quiet little things like dropping pins at the end? I would get this album, just to hear what they have to say about that.

The one other name other than Triceratops that I recognise at all that will be appearing on the tribute is MUCC -- another one of those surprising choices that make me wriggle my eyebrows -- and they're doing Tsuioku no Mermaid. I can kind of see it, and then again, I kind of wish I couldn't. It's a deeply amusing song to listen to, and another one of those that I'm quite fond of. A long time ago, it used to cheer me up when I felt really stuck in things. Perhaps, my reservations are all coming out of some closed-minded fan portion of my brain. I have definitely been surprised by these items of tribute before.

I'm a little surprised all of one song from SICKS made it onto the tribute. I am biased -- I consider that album a pretty definitive idea of the TYM sound at their peak, and Rakuen does seem to be a favourite, but it's just a little weird that something like TV no Singer wasn't picked instead. On the bright side, Suck of Life and Welcome to My Doghouse are making an appearance. Both are big band anthems. I would have been quite sad if Welcome to My Doghouse hadn't made it. Suck of Life is lots of fun, but there's something that makes me laugh out loud and find creepy and wonderful about Lovin howling his head off in the former, something on the shiny side of awesome about Heesey getting his deep and low moment before Emma tears in -- nothing that makes me smile wider about their music than knowing this is the song that's about to come on, because Annie's drums' just started up and it's the most arresting thing I've ever heard.

I'm looking forward to it. I have my reservations, but I really want to see it happen.

Last night, we went to our friend Claud's birthday get together, and got to talk to plenty of nice people, including the birthday boy himself, who is as charming as always. Allegra, of ex-Gothic.Net copy editrixing, helped save me from being short and young-looking by buying me a tasty thing of beer. Getting out of the house was nice. Although I prefer to think otherwise, staying at home and talking to the cat all day does eventually make me squirelly. We walked both ways too, which was great. I like late night walks, and walking with scanner_darkly is always wonderful.

When we got home, I lasted about halfway through watching TV before getting a really awful migraine. Seth made me take some painkillers, carried me to bed, and helped me lie in the dark until the pain subsided. We listened to motorcycles revving down Mission Street, and SUVs pulling up in front of our gate, pounding indecipherable hip hop music into the asphalt. That spot in front of our house is a little colourful at night.

Today, we got Seth a replacement desktop PC. According to the spec sheet the sales rep came up with, this will be a gorgeous gaming rig. Since we got it at Central Computers, where I got my own game/work box, it's actually going to be installed in the same tall case I have, just with literally twice the power everywhere. I'm rather excited by it, and well and truly happy for him.

We also stopped by Borders, as Seth had a gift card he never used. While he wandered around looking at books, I planted myself in the History section and sat against a shelf with The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which I'd noticed the last time I was in the store, but hadn't had the time to peruse. About an hour later, after hanging out in History with me, the spouse grabbed the book from my hands and got that along with a cool set of pearlescent granite World of Darkness dice. I feel happy and loved!

We had dinner at the food court under the San Francisco shopping centre. Seth had a chilli which sadly upsetted him, and I had a stir fried eggplant and tofu dish I got at the Thai stall. The Thai stall was pretty awesome, and very fast-moving. As I stood squinting into its glass case, they kept refurbishing their dishes with fresh stuff off the wok. I was sold when I saw their fresh pumpkin and chicken curry getting wheeled out. Since I don't have eggplant very often these days, it was initially comforting to have very nicely stir fried bites of the juicy, creamy fruit of the nightshade family. Being eggplant, however, about 10 bites later, the great oil absorbing qualities of eggplant hit, and as good as it was, it got too rich for me.

And now, I will curl up on the sofa with the spouse, the fluffy cat and my new book, and if my wifely duties are so required, help out with Eternal Poison.

Made a lovely, texturally-pleasing hot and sour soup for dinner last night. It had the soft, jelly-like bite of fish maw, the tender crunch of bamboo fungus, the mild velveteen smoothness of lightly cooked salted egg yolk and the firm meatiness of julienned beef. All of this was delicately ensconced in a mildly thickened seafood broth.

The only thing I could've added more of was XO sauce, and chilli oil, if I had any. The flavour was rich with seafood with a touch of pepper and lime juice, but it just lacked that special XO fire.

Made chik kut teh last night. Had a pot of chicken stock prepared early in the day, threw in the herb mix around noon, along with fresh chicken pieces, and let it simmer till the husband came home. Tasted wonderful. scanner_darkly liked his first introduction to Chinese herbal soup, which is great, since I like Chinese herbal soups, and like to make more.

There was a lot of soup, as is often the case. I forgot to throw in things like hardboiled eggs and fried tofu for even more good eating. However, as of noon today, the soup is completely gone, so it wasn't wasted. The only problem with a black soup is that it gets a little hard to pick out the edible herbs and meat from the inky darkness. (Cue my father somewhere complaining his soup is filled with 'woody items'.) I may have to invest in paper tea steeping bags to chuck the herbs in.

There's something very soothing about listening to Figlio Perduto playing in the other room, as I lie on the bed with my head resting against the cat's belly, and she purrs and purrs. Labour Day weekend went by quietly. We had stew with Arkham Horror on Friday. Last week, I made a five spice beef stew and a chicken and lotus root stew lightly spiced with chilli peppers. The husband seemed to have taken a shining to both, and we shall have stew more often from now on.

On Saturday, we went out for coffee and beignets with morbidloren and family. Her daughter was absolutely charming about her beignets, and seemed to really enjoy eating it, a fingertip of sugar at a time. When we got back, our awesome landlord phoned up the AAA for us and we managed to get the car's battery replaced at home. This was followed by an impromptu trip to Japantown for warming, soul-enriching ramen, and an expansion set for Arkham Horror. We thought the ramen might tide us over till a light snack late at night, but even giant bowls of ramen don't last that long. We got pizza at the Escape from New York that opened a few blocks out, and this was admittedly very good pizza, and easily the best pizza I've had since landing in the US. So we had pizza while trying out Innsmouth Horror, which turned out to be as difficult as the rulebook suggested it might be. I still stubbornly believe we might just be able to pull off a game with two people. It's like a hard dungeon. Not an impossible dungeon, just hard. The husband thinks our problem is actually one of needing more players, because sometimes, trying to pull off a dungeon with a party of two instead of the standard party of five is pretty much impossible. It is a puzzling and fascinating problem.

On Sunday, we watched Solaris, a movie Seth described to me as his equivalent of In the Mood for Love (in space). The movie hit both of us pretty hard. I thought it was a very good movie, and a good example of what I tend to think science fiction as a genre should be -- that is, a means of exploring human nature that can't be found through other genres. There were a few moments towards the end I felt could've been edited out, but it was essentially taut. I'd have liked to read the novel, but after hearing Seth's description of his attempt to watch the original Russian version of the movie, of which this is technically a remake, and is apparently very true to the book, I'm admittedly daunted by the potential slowness of it all. We are rather much the same kind of person, Seth and I. Marrying each other hasn't made us any less like ourselves, but it has made dealing with our issues easier. And perhaps the largest reason I liked the movie was that it helped us think about why we appreciate each other the way we do.

Monday saw ants pouring out of our heating vent, first thing in the morning. scanner_darkly dealt with it, sat down at his desk, and had a freak accident with his computer, resulting in sparks, smoke and the smell of burnt electronics. We're hoping his video card, which we believe was the source of the smoke, is salvageable. This may be unlikely. The whole PC was due for an upgrade though, so this might be a thing of sooner rather than later. After breakfast, we trooped over to iamfourninjas's for D&D, and salvaged the rest of the day making new characters that were all a bit odd and somewhat crafted to break our GM's brain. They made my thiefling ranger look normal. While there, we also had great sausages with grilled corn and tasty, tasty new potatoes.

Today, because going back to work blows, we'll be having lovely Chinese herbal soup, and attempt to simultaneously finish the first two Valkyrie Profiles.

Vermont, and the weeks running up to it, were hard. If I haven't said anything about it before, it's because I haven't had any real time to myself to process what happened yet, much less articulate it in a way that would make sense to other people.

My family flew in about a week before the Vermont reception to visit us in San Francisco. Largely because I took four weeks of holidays this year, my work decided to squeeze in the assignments I missed, plus regular work I would have received anyway, into July. I worked every weekend right up to the day my parents were slated to arrive. Seth and I did our best to make the house presentable for our guests in the two days we had for that. By the time my parents landed in SFO, we were exhausted. But I was happy to see my parents, who had travelled far to see us.

I was happy that I got to show my family the city I chose to live in. I liked showing my mom all the nifty places to eat I found. This is, after all, the lady who trained me to eat. My parents seemed to enjoy their forays about town. Mom was excited by the medical halls we passed in Chinatown -- which I admittedly never bothered with, though I'm curious about them, because they're far from where we live, and Chinatown gets very, very touristy. Mom got to try what she called the best fries she'd ever had (from The Crab House at Fisherman's Wharf), the best eggs benedict she'd ever had (Jim's, right around the corner where live) and a creme brulee that was a 'slice of heaven' (Garcon, also relatively right around the corner from where we live). I'd have loved to take her out for nachos or Burmese curried fish noodles, but we had the dietary concerns of my father and brother to consider too. My mom gets these unconscious cravings for things New Orleans whenever she steps into the United States. The last time she was here, about 13 years ago, we wound up at a buffet table in Florida that served mudbugs. This time around, she managed to get awesomely fresh Dunganess crabs (high on my list of stuff to introduce to my mother), seafood gumbo and good red velvet cake. My brother, who's never even been to New Orleans, had the most bizarre cravings for chicken fried steak.

We were worried my parents would look around our neighbourhood and sort of figure we lived in a slum. As it turned out, my parents were initially concerned about the hygiene levels on the street -- to which my brother and father are particularly sensitive -- but mom, again being my mother, went nuts over the local honey store, adored the little neighbourhood organic garden and thought the place colourful. She walked up to fishermen near the Golden Gate Bridge and asked them what sorts of fish they caught. Then she made my father take photos of every flower display at Fisherman's Wharf to practice at home. My mother can just about be dropped off by helicopter anywhere and adapt. Both the husband and myself continue to be impressed.

Mom even liked the cat -- and mind you, I was worried she'd not like the cat -- but Mom loves animals (just usually not cats), and our cat is just about fluffy and round enough you can pretend she isn't a cat with some imagination.

I introduced my father to online electronics shopping, and he got a new scanner for himself within five minutes of learning the basics. My mother is not happy about this. It is, however, essential that he is always able to access the latest electronics if we ever hope to get him retired.

About the first five minutes I had alone with my parents, my mother started suggesting I should quit my freelancing stuff and turn into a housewife. My reaction to this is somewhere between not quite sitting well with the idea to absolutely insulted. Mostly, absolutely insulted. I kind of wish this wasn't my last memory of her visit here.

Vermont was a lot of meeting and trying to remember people from my husband's extended family, amongst many other frantic things, and that was made easier by all my family members -- my blood relatives, the family I now share with my husband and the friends who love us (and whom we love) as family. kn1ghtshade and cr0wgrrl helped keep the home fort strong and the bugs out of our carpet monster on such short notice -- it was very, very kind of them to. (Jack and Linda, if you're reading this, I have maple moose for you.) iamfourninjas and bettyscout flew in with us to Burlington, and proceeded to charm and distract family enough so that we could visit things of Vermont, like go all tourist swag on the Magic Hat Brewery, or stare at Tiffany lamps and motorcycles at Shelburne Farms. Admittedly, the Magic Hat Brewery (apart from having great swag), is so bizarre, it was like we accidentally stepped back into SF once we passed its door.

Meeting the husband's family was an interesting experience. For a start, he is indeed still the tallest man I've ever met, but not unusual in the context of the people he's related to. His parents, my father, isabinda, his cousins and that singular ninja friend of ours (not four -- though we're proud of him) said incredibly kind things about us at the wedding reception. Seth's parents put a lot of effort into making sure stuff worked that day, and really went all out to make my family welcome. I got to wear a very pretty stargazer on my wrist thanks to Seth's mom to the dinner too. I'm not terribly sure I got all the name of Seth's uncles down yet. I think I remembered most of the aunts, some of whom are now challenging me to rounds of online Scrabble as we speak. Did not get quite enough maple syrup fix this time in Vermont. Must improve on that next time.

There will, thankfully, be no next wedding reception.

But it was fast, and it was furious, and we may need to hermit ourselves away for a while to let it settle.

Spent the weekend being relatively quiet with the cat, the electronic devices and the husband. We trooped down to San Mateo on Saturday to stare at gaming things. scanner_darkly found and got me the Mouse Guard Role Playing Game, which earned him major husbandly points. I haven't read the comics yet, though I well and truly want to. So far, the RPG manual seems to be setting characters up in a vaguely Red Wall-esque environment. There's lots of skills and roles that sound interesting enough I'd play them -- the Apiarist, for example. I'm not GM material, so running a game with this would be... odd and perplexing. But I'd play a character. (My Inner Seth begs to differ on the GM stuff, but probably because he thinks I'd be the perfect GM to come up with scenarios based around foraging for berries and fighting cats.)

I want dice. Two very specific sets of Chessex dice (pretty! shiny!), and whenever I can afford it, a set of Q-Workshop Dice I'll never be able to read under anything but hard light. I decided though, after all the treats I got during this holiday, I don't deserve an additional present. Seth has hinted strongly I will be dragged to the next gaming convention hereabouts just so I can be tormented by the sight of massive piles of shiny dice, and in that way made to suffer extreme indecisiveness over that perfect pack of dice.

While in San Mateo, we got hungry and Yelped up the closest Asian places to eat. Wound up in this odd little slice of Asianville, with restaurants representing 5 different Asian countries, a massive Asian supermarket that also represented the same countries under one roof, and a Malaysian restaurant. Yelp included reviews from actual Malaysians who flailed about over Langkawi Malaysian Cuisine's rojak, so we ate there. They have good, authentic Malaysian food, the kind I'd expect to find in a Malaysian Chinese family restaurant back home. Their belacan (dried shrimp paste) is extremely good, very pungent and made with high quality prawns. It is however, a good example of an acquired Malaysian taste, as it was that pungent, and filled with enough wok hei (wok flavour) that the husband charmingly described it as akin to, "the flavour of car exhaust". Having said that, their chefs definitely know how to fire up a wok. I got the egg sauce hor fun, which came with smooth flat rice noodles, properly singed by a wok, and a rich, seafood-infused egg sauce on par that's hard to find even in Kuala Lumpur. The noodles even came with a little saucer of sliced pickled green chillies.

We spent a good long time in the supermarket, looking for XO sauce and going slightly mad over different flavours of ramen from various nations and Japanese biscuit snacks. I couldn't find my favourite IndoMee soto flavours, though they had soto noodles from another company I didn't know. By that time, our cart already had enough ramen food to fill up my ramen quota till the end of the year, so there was no sampling of new soto ramen brands. I would go to this market again. Its got a wider variety of Southeast Asian ingredients than 99 Ranch, and was less frantic, even on a Saturday evening. I wanted to get dried scallops, but they only had the expensive giant dried scallops locked away behind glass cases, as opposed to the dinky cheaper small dried scallops I'd use for steamed soups. Sigh. The cashier was really nice, and actually pointed out when I could buy onion biscuits in sets of two for half price.

Finally cleared up all the stuff we packed to Vermont this morning. I've decided my gowns should stay in the suitcases, so they will not get cat hair all over them. The fat princess has been equally possessive of us and a horrible brat the entire weekend. It is hard being the pet of a giant, fluffy pudding who believes, rightly, that squashing your feet in the morning will keep you in bed.

Spent the day on a chaperoned date with scanner_darkly, touring various Adelsvardian sites around San Francisco. We had a delightful lunch at Straits, a restaurant I'd been wanting to try since I first arrived in the city (and discovered Yelp). The coffee beef ribs are a thing of wonderment -- they melt in your mouth and fill it with the flavours of coffee, seared beef fat and five spice powder. The satay is better than anything I've had on the streets of Malaysia, made by elderly gentlemen fanning sticks of meat over a charcoal grill. The only real disappointment was the char kway teow, but that's one of those noodle dishes that's nearly always hit and miss. They used Hong Kong-style kway teow, which isn't nearly as slick or springy as the stuff we get in Malaysia, and sweet chilli sauce, which adds a tang that doesn't feel right to my mind. There also weren't many things in the noodles -- large prawns, lots of fish cake, bean sprouts and sausage. But no eggs, or green veggies, not even spring onions.

We wandered downstairs and got distracted by the CocoaBella Chocolates store. The little eclairs with their shiny, metallic candy shells were indeed very, very shiny. Unfortunately, my mother was able to spot the flies literally resting on a couple of these eclairs, and that killed any appetite we could have had for them.

The husband drove us all to City Hall, so I could show my family where we got married. Both parents were suitably impressed. I love City Hall. It's a very soothing building to wander through. There's always a sort of reverent silence inside, and the large space feels airy, and very much alone. The first stop in our Adelsvardian tour developed this patina when my mother noticed, and explained, the surprisingly good Feng Shui elements lurking in City Hall's plaster ceiling. There are no depictions of fighting, or sharp weapons, on the ceilings of City Hall. There are shields, but no swords. The SF monogram prominently bordering everything resembles stylized, auspicious dollar signs. The swastikas are symbols of peace. Fountains and fruits are details of abundance.

We visited the Palace of Fine Arts, where Seth told me enchanting stories about Vampire LARPs and him in eyeliner, while my parents stopped every two inches and photographed everything. I loved the Palace of Fine Arts, which I'd never been to before. It's absolutely beautiful down by the pond, and the bird life is charming to spot. Lots of broody kingfishers hanging about in the trees, and suitably mysterious cranes hiding out in the deeper places. The ladies peering into the tubs up top were charming. We met a violently territorial duck. Mom told us the Chinese name for this duck is 'mud duck'. We're not sure what the English name for it might be, but it was the largest, meanest, and ugliest of the ducks. Mom also found more of those symbols that fascinated her in City Hall -- more swastikas used in the borders of carvings, and Oriental lotuses. We took advantage of my parents incessant picture-taking to visit the birds and be a chastely un-Victorian couple, which was very nice.

The final stop in this Adelsvardian fantasy was the Coit Tower, which involved going down that odd zig-zagging bit of road that probably stops cars from sliding straight downhill. At the Coit Tower, we got good giggles out of the sneaky book titles hidden in the murals. There was socialist name-dropping in the library one, and the naughty laws to be had in the mural about finance and banking. I suppose some of those laws weren't so much naughty as they were a bit blatantly truthful, but they were interesting to note. The murals in general, depicting the hard work and fruits of San Francisco's workers, were interesting, to use that word. They weren't inspiring, or for that matter, awe-inspiring, but they were a curious, if pointed, snapshot of their time. It fit into the day of Adelsvard-ly fun, at least to my mind, only because the hidden book titles, set in their motivational frescoes of grim working class determination, were whimsically, darkly amusing.

It has been a very long week and a half. I will perhaps need to write more, in smaller bites. Today was no less tiring, but I got a chance to appreciate more of my adopted city, and the dear spouse. There has also been a lot of corporal hugging for the cat, who is squeakier, twitchier and rounder than ever.

Little did I know that there were masses of people on the streets of Kuala Lumpur protesting the use of English to teach Maths and Science in schools last March. Nor did I know that the Ministry of Education is actually bowing to public pressure and reverting the system back to being fully in Malaysian.

I'm quite upset they're deciding to scrap Maths and Science in English. On the one hand, the government's use of grades as a barometer of students' progress is both understandable and contentious. They may be worried about the longterm ability of rural students to get into tertiary education based on their grades. However, the simple truth of the matter is that students who learn Maths and Science in Malaysian will suffer grade issues in university if they don't grasp the concepts in English early on. The extra time required to mentally 'translate' concepts the kids already spent 6 years of high school learning in college is that grinding.

Because college subjects are taught predominantly in English, or using English textbooks, the students will face numerous difficulties first in understanding the text they're reading, and forming answers to questions in exams. They will have had enough traning in writing out essay questions in high school, but in the Malaysian Language. This is actually a problem that isn't just restricted to students who learn Maths and Science in just Malaysian, however, as students who have been taught the subjects in any language other than English have a preponderance to suffer. I've met students in college who learnt Maths and Science in Malaysian and Chinese while in high school, and they had to struggle with language barriers to engage with their lecturers in written and oral communication, even though they technically knew the basics of their subjects. I've also met white collar, working college graduates in Malaysia, who, after scraping through 4 years of English-language college education, can't be trusted to write decent business correspondence. I'm just not sure our workforce needs another dearth of successful entrepreneurs and workers who embarrass themselves in public while communicating with foreign businesses.

When I was in school, the only real option to study subjects in English was to attend expensive private institutions. Incidentally, students in private, English-language medium schools learn to speak Malaysian just fine. The private schooling system typically teaches from Malaysian-language textbooks, with lectures in English. Malaysian is taught alongside English as languages of equal stature. This method does not stop their students from taking the national university entrance exams (in Malaysian) or impedes their ability to excel at them. Studying in English also made the transition to British/American/Australian/Canadian/Irish/Singaporean university life (to name a few foreign locales Malaysian university students strive towards) much less jarring, as the students were both able to communicate with their lecturers and settle down in their new environments much more comfortably. If the government's concern is that rural students should also have a fair chance at higher learning, then it shouldn't make English an elitist field of study.

I hope that at the very least, the government is planning a compromise -- the option for schools or students to study Maths and Science in either English or their native language, an option that, in hindsight, was probably the path they should have started with. By the sounds of it, the current issue is training enough teachers with an affinity for English to teach subjects, and the idea of increasing lesson time devoted to teaching English is encouraging. That nationalist politicians are turning this into any sort of ethnic language/religious identity debate at all is exceedingly sad. This should be about creating students that can compete and participate in the world's leading universities and job markets, not how to racially polarise our country further.

When I first arrived in San Francisco, among the first people I met in the city told me that he thought, "Civil unions and marriages are just a matter of semantics." Prior to that, I had stated that I believed everyone should have civil unions, with marriages left as a personal ceremony removed from the state.

I was disturbed to hear his opinion, more so because in San Francisco of all places, coming from a well-educated, secular, liberal, politically aware individual, this seemed painfully paradoxical.

Initially, I tried to understand this contrast in values as a cultural difference. A well-educated, relatively liberal individual, probably raised in a middle-classed household and having grown up with the privileges and constraints of suburban America, could not have had the exposure to the type of religious and sexual dissonance present in other parts of the world regarding civil marriages.

I do not see civil unions, understood here to be the same as civil marriages, as a matter of semantics. I did not have the cultural or sexual upbringing to afford that view.

Where I come from, civil marriages are also only the privilege of a special class. In Malaysia, civil marriages can only be contracted by non-Muslims with the state. Muslim marriages fall under the jurisdiction of the Syariah Court. Should a Muslim person marry a non-Muslim, their marriage would also fall under the Syariah Court. Moreover, the non-Muslim partner would then be legally bound to convert to Islam. Though there are legal provisions in Malaysia for Muslims to convert to other religions (at their own behest), in practice, virtually all the cases brought to court have failed. It is otherwise a criminal offence to convert a Muslim to any other faith.

In a nutshell:

a) Marriages between a Muslim and a non-Muslim where the latter partner does not convert to Islam are illegal and not recognized by the state.
b) Marriages of the above kind where the Muslim partner converts to the non-Muslim partner's faith are illegal and not recognized by the state.

Both these situations could also result in legal prosecution (through the Syariah Court) on the grounds of adultery (an offence under only Syariah Laws) and forced conversion of faith.

Gays, lesbians and transsexuals are barely legally or culturally recognized as members of society in Malaysia, and far from even reaching the level of discussion required to further gay marriage. Marriages between two people of the same gender are illegal and subject to legal prosecution in both the Civil and Syariah Courts.

From a personal standpoint, what this means is that in Malaysia, I would not have been able to marry my husband. If anything should happen in Malaysia legally with regards to our marriage, the courts there would probably not recognize my relationship with him. In so far as the religious courts are concerned, I am twice over in defiance of the law -- firstly, because I'm an atheist, and secondly, because I married a non-Muslim who has not converted to Islam.

It is for this reason that, when scanner_darkly and I decided to marry, we opted for a civil ceremony in San Francisco. We treasure our civil union as a special contract we have with the state that recognizes our ties to each other under the law. It is a contract above the confines of religious rulings and a right shared by all citizens of the state -- or it should be.

Both of us firmly believe Proposition 8, which was put into place late last year and renders gay marriages in California illegal, is a very real infringement of basic human rights. Based on our personal experience, we do not believe a subset of citizens should be deprived of the same rights to legal recognition and protection under the law that we enjoy as a couple. At its root, no state should divide its tax-paying citizens into separate classes of people, whether these divisions are based on religion or sexual preference.

My marriage to my husband is a treasure. It is one of the most special, and most important parts of my life. I can imagine a situation where I would not be able to openly declare my husband as a member of my family either in my community or before the law, and I don't want that. Because I can imagine having to do this, I don't want it to happen to other people.

In August, we will be celebrating our marriage at a reception in Vermont. It was put forward to us that we should start a wedding registry. However, in lieu of presents, we would both sincerely appreciate it if guests would make a small donation to Equality California to help legal efforts to fight Proposition 8 and other initiatives that deny same sex couples their rights to marry.

The diverse fabric of society should be celebrated, not quashed. Please celebrate our togetherness by helping everyone achieve the same thing.

Ate at Flour + Water, which just opened in our neighbourhood to massive amounts of publicity. After an awful-ish week, and starting on another one, both the spouse and I needed a night off.

Small and not particularly cosy on the inside, the tables were so crammed together, people could barely move. It was loud. We had to shout at each other to be heard, which was what everyone else was doing too, and that only made the noise levels worse. As we waited for our food, I felt increasingly unwelcome there. I don't usually feel that way about eateries, so when it happens, it gets quite disconcerting. It really felt like too many people in too small a space.

I originally read the restaurant's menu online, and was keen to try their egg pizza. Unfortunately, we must have come in on restocking week or some such, since the menu was limited, featuring repetitive (and not necessarily seasonal) ingredients. No egg pizza for me.

We ordered 2 pizzas and 1 appetizer. After a 35 minute wait with no food, the waitress brushed us off with, "The kitchen is backed up," then looked embarrassed when our pizzas came a minute later. She seemed almost ready to argue with us about whether or not our appetizer arrived too, though she eventually just took the appetizer off our bill when we requested that.

Now, when a restaurant has a nice name like "Flour + Water", I tend to assume that their food will taste like a little more than say, flour and water. We both agreed that our pizzas' crusts were some of the best we'd had in the city. They were thin crusts, with a lovely yeasty quality, and just the right amount of bite. However, the toppings did the crusts no justice. My Pizza Margherita was bland. The ingredients (tomato paste, mozarella cheese, a few leaves of basil) tasted fresh, but lacked any distinct flavour. On a pizza as straightforward as a Margherita, every ingredient should shine. It's about the natural zest in the tomatoes, the creamy richness of the cheese and the salt of the pesto lurking beneath it all. It's like the har kau (prawn dumplings) of dim sum -- a litmus text of the chef's skills. Failing this is like a crime against the cuisine.

I didn't try scanner_darkly's pizza (something with mussels, which I don't usually eat), but I did notice it seemed a little bare as well. Literally, a basic pizza base with mussels on top.

By the time we left the restaurant, it had gotten even fuller than it had been before. At the time of writing, it's a 2-week wait just to get a table. There was a pretty large crowd of walk-ins jamming up the doorway too. It's a little sad, but I have a feeling this place may run on yuppie/foodie hype for a while yet.

On the way home, we chanced upon a cool-looking German cafe that had mysteriously appeared a block away from our street. Only opening for lunch, the menu had a good selection of tasty things like cheese spaetzle and sausages cooked in beer. It must've just opened (to no fanfare), since we don't remember seeing it there before leaving for Malaysia.

Today, the husband tells me there is an intriguing creme brulee cart touring the Mission. How is there a creme brulee cart running in a 3 block radius from our house and neither one of us has noticed it yet?! Expect stalking, with spears.