BrighterDays

Sabai (สบาย) means to be at ease or relaxed, and this book promises recipes that you can cook yourself even on a workday evening. 😍

You can pre-order Pai's new book at this link here. (This is not a paid promo by the way, just helping to spread the word and hopefully a little gastronomic happiness as well.)

On her YouTube channel, Pai also has recipes for some of the dishes you see in Thai BLs (no idea if she watches them though; they're just well-known dishes that she did her own spin on).

You can follow her making them there, and this trained Thai-born chef is also wholly, dazzlingly articulate in English (as fluent as actor Bible Wichapas) so there are never any lost-in-translation moments:

The following is a short sampling of my favorites (on YouTube, but not in the book as far as I know):

Chor muang (Purple Flower Dumplings) that we saw in Until We Meet Again;

Luk choup (Little Fruit Sculptures) that also popped up in Until We Meet Again;

Khanom jeep (Thai siumai/shaomai) that played a big role in Bad Buddy;

Luk chin (Thai meatballs) – we saw these in Bad Buddy and also The Eclipse;

And of course, delicious khao man gai (Hainanese Chicken Rice), the other main character in Moonlight Chicken (Pai is also half-Hainanese BTW 🤩).

I've started just telling them straight up that before about 2010, movies were written and edited in a way that required you to actually watch the movie or you are going to miss things and you do not get a second chance. last time we had a movie night, someone asked questions through the entirety of Lost Boys, and then left their computer for 20 minutes, came back, and demanded an explanation of "what happened" while they were gone.

assuming you are of average cognitive ability and capable of following a plot (and i know someone is going to scold me for ableism, i am NOT talking about people with a disability that prevents narrative comprehension and you know it) it's not just embarrassing for YOU to not simply use your critical thinking skills to perceive a story, it's actively intrusive, rude, and disrespectful to the people around you and to the film itself.

* I might use it in a story someday.

One night, I was working my last hour of my shift covering the Customer Service desk, which meant when I wasn't busy, I was supposed to help clean up around the cash registers, including taking back items people changed their minds about at the checkout. Earlier, I had witnessed a kid carrying thos cute plushy toy. It was a brown and white hedgehog. The kid, at the checkout, saw a remote control car and he told his dad he qanted it. The dad told him, "The plushy or the car- you can't have both" (by the way, I respect boundaries with kids and parents sticking to their guns about it), and the kid picked the car.

So, I'm cleaning up, have less than an hour left of my shift, and I see the little plushy hedgehog. Somehow, he never got put back nor had anyone else seen him and decided to buy him. He was just sitting there, slumped to the side, unattended.

It's Christmas and I'm a sentimental old sap at heart. My brain starts replaying the scene from RUDOLPH where he's on the Island of Misfot Toys, and is told a toy is never truly happy until it is loved. I picked him up and quickly took him back to the bin with the plushies but... It was empty. He was literally the last plushy toy and my boss was about to wheel the bin out. We weren't getting any more toys till November, so that meant any toys left at this point needed to sell or they'd be sent to the dump.

I brought the little hedgehog to the front, figuring someone would see him with the candy, candles, & Christmas brick-a-brack, and fall in love with him. When I finished my shift, I went to ask my manager a question and as I passed the Christmas candle display - there he sat, the sad little slumped over hedgehog plushy. No one had bought him, or even moved him.

My manager, Phillip, saw me and the hedgehog. He asked how the hedgehog got there. I told him how I'd put him there when the bin got sent back, and he was the only plushy left. Philip had kids, I figured he'd probably get sentimental and buy it for his kids. Nope. He shrugged and said he'd send it back to be disposed of.

That night, I came home with a plushy hedgehog in my passenger seat. My mom saw him and just thought he was the cutest little hedgehog and asked what I wanted to do with him. I told her the story, then added I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with him.

My mom is a child psychiatrist, specializing in children with PTSD and brain damage that results in learning problems/issues with processing their emotions. She asked if she could have the plushy hedgehog (even offered to pay me for him, she didn't expect me to just give him over), so kids could hug him when they were upset in session.

Murphy, the plushy hedgehog that still slumps a little to the left when seated, has been hugged by hundreds of kids. Little girls have held him tight while explaining about bullies, little boys have held him tight while crying over their panic attacks, younger siblings have held him to whisper secrets while elder siblings and parents talk about self-soothing techniques, teenagers have hugged Murphy while talking about the worst day of their lives. Murphy has also been hugged by kids excitedly chatting about a new friend at school, a teen girl excited to be called by her name instead of her dead-name, little kids proudly saying they've mastered their ABCs, and even staff members who just need to come chat over a case they are having trouble with.

Every now and then, my mom brings Murphy home for a weekend. He gets washed (she calls it a Spa Weekend, to her coworkers, all of them laughing), dried, and sits outside with my mom in the sunshine to get aired out, then on Monday, they are back to work. Some kids even just ask to hold Murphy while they talk, no matter their mood or what they want to talk about. They just want to hug Murphy.