Life in the slow lane

Here I am again, saddling up to the blog post. Today my belly is extra happy because I finally found some walnuts to put in my oatmeal. I've been searching every store with no luck, and at long last, yesterday I found some a the megamart shopping gargantuan complex (not actual name). The only problem was they were still in their shells, and the house has no nut cracker. No worries, I just took them home and spent about a hour happily SMASHing them with a meat mallet and picking out the good bits. Brown sugar is another foodstuff item they don't have easily accessible here either. I set about to make chocolate chip cookies, but hit a snag with the brown sugar. That was easily fixed with a good hit of molasses. The other problem with the cookies though came about through purely human error. I neglected to have Dave pick up baking soda at the store. Without the baking soda the cookies would have just smooshed out all flat. So the solution to that? I threw in some instant oatmeal and put the whole concoction into a cake pan so as to contain the batter. Honestly, I was not expecting it all to work, but huzzah! It actually worked out quite deliciously. I suppose the only other difficultly I have with the food here is that I live in Seattle, which is the Kingdom of Wholegrain, and I've definitely fallen off the wagon of my healthy eating lifestyle. Before coming here I don't think I'd had a single sugary soda for upwards of about a year. Then Dave handed me a rum and coke, and hot damn it was tasty! The coke down here is made with cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup, and the difference is phenomenal. And when mixed with rum, Shoot that's mighty fine. Then there's the corn chips and the butter and cookies and Dave's cooking, which can only be labeled as a Decadent Meatstravaganza. Damn you saturated fats and cheap carbohydrates! Why are you so good!

Let's see, what can I write about that doesn't revolve around food? Um, well there's power outages all the time. Seriously, like usually at least once a day, sometimes as many as 5 or 6. Luckily my sister is an important gringa and the government provides the house with a back up generator. So the power goes off, but then 5 seconds later the generator jumps to life and helps keep the party going.

The traffic here is insane. And having been in traffic all around the world I can tell you that Asia has crazy drivers, but the traffic itself more or less flows. Here, it's every man for himself. The most dominant car wins. Never in my life have I seen such a stunning example of the term cluster fuck. And it doesn't help that every time it rains many of the traffic lights short out. Plus, most people don't seem to bother with their turn signals, they just gesture out of the car window to indicate where they want to go. It's something to behold. I have been thus far, and so shall I ever be, a mere passenger in this monstrous spectacle. I strap myself securely into my seat, put my life in Dave's capable hands, and try to enjoy the ride.