A couple more sketches from my very New Englandey weekend.
Sade Olutola

Product Placement
Show & Tell
trying on a metaphor
d e v o n
Peter Solarz

Andulka

blake kathryn
tumblr dot com

shark vs the universe
KIROKAZE

@theartofmadeline

Xuebing Du
cherry valley forever
Mike Driver
RMH

PR's Tumblrdome
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

pixel skylines
seen from United Kingdom
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A couple more sketches from my very New Englandey weekend.

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I spoke on a panel at Dartmouth College a couple days ago, as well as ran a zine workshop. New England tends to feels a bit itchy to me - something about the mix of colonial revival architecture and spring pollen and in Hanover, the somewhat overbearing J. Crew sort of whiteness. It is beautiful, though, and I had a very intimidating cruller french toast at Lou's.
I finally finished the last chapter of my Petrified Forest comic! I loved every minute of being in the desert, and I’m very excited to go back again(I’m visiting again soon, as I drive all that’s left of Route 66!).
Bodie is an abandoned gold-mining town that once held 10,000 people, but it is also a historic state park, maintained in a state of arrested decay. It is reached by a thirteen mile road, off Highway 270 near the California and Nevada border, three of the miles little more than a dirt path.
I walked the town alone, easily able to avoid the small groupings of photographers in search of abandoned house porn(without suffering the risk of actually trespassing anywhere), if I walked off the main road. I stood in the graveyard, up a small hill, set apart from the town and entirely empty and quiet. I stood reading the gravestones of immigrants and children, all seeking the American Dream in a remote and barren town. I stood outside the graveyard, where the Chinese graveyard might have been, but no one knows where that actually is, because the labour of the Chinese workmen did not earn them a place within the boundaries of of a small town’s graveyard.
I ate a peach, alone, and I looked at tin shingled walls, tracing the embossed patterns of little round dots with my fingers, and I wondered what it would feel like to hold myself in a state of arrested decay, like this place. To leave the tools scattered around the wood shop, to embrace the creaky walls and the rusty machinery, and to always remember this particular mess and measure of feeling, and to merely acknowledge and accept it, instead of demolishing it, paving it over, or fixing it.
I feel weirdly self conscious about writing about my home country, because I’ve been gone for so long, even if I still visit every two-three years or so. Still, during my last visit a couple months ago, I did a batch of drawings of my most favourite foods.
Nasi Lemak
When I was a kid, growing up in Malaysia, I ate nasi lemak in the most finicky way possible. I’d eat most of the rice, eat the peanuts and ikan bilis individually and save the cold cucumbers for last. I’d avoid everything spicy. I learned to love sambal and chicken curry in the Philippines, where my family and I were expats for six years, at a resort hotel restaurant that had a Malaysian chef that would make laksa for my dad, even though it wasn’t on the menu.
I still eat nasi lemak in a very finicky way, making sure each spoonful has the right balance of rice and sambal and curry. The ikan bilis and peanuts get eaten separately, still. The cucumbers are for when the spicy gets too spicy.
I’ve tried to cook the rice many times, and it hasn’t turned out right - the coconut milk affects the moisture and it sometimes ends up too dry or far too wet. I finally got it right with the recipe from the Lucky Peach cookbook, and being absolutely reliant on my rice cooker.
Wantan Mee
One of my favourite noodles of all time. The variant I love most is “Kon Lo Mee,” which is very much a Chinese Malaysian thing, made with dark sauce and char siew.
My brother, despite being super into eating healthy and low carb, will always make an exception for this, and easily eat three plates of it.
In my mom’s hometown of Pontian, there’s an amazing variant made with tomato ketchup and chili sauce.
Roti Canai
We’ve ordered roti canai at every Malaysian restaurant we’ve been to in the United States. It’s what all my friends fall in love with, and it’s hard for me to tell them that it’s still never quite right. It doesn’t matter whether the chef is Malaysian himself, whether he’s the son of a roti canai hawker, by the time it’s plated neatly and served as a $4.99 appetizer, it’s never quite right.
The closest we’ve found to the roti canai that my brain and tastebuds accept as roti canai is frozen, and found in some Korean markets in the Los Angeles area. It’s Raya’s “Puff Paratha” and we buy it in bulk and keep it in our freezer. I eat it the way I used to as a child, for breakfast, with lots of white sugar.
Hainanese Chicken Rice
This is an ultimate comfort food for me. It should be simple enough to make, but as all things that seem simple, I’ve never gotten it right.
In my hometown of Malacca, the rice is often served in pressed balls.
Bak Kut Teh
Another one I often try to make from home. It is best, after a while, to stop getting wrapped in notions of authenticity(which is, by the way, a myth), and start using delicious premixed spice packets.
I feel like a thing you learn very quickly as an immigrant, especially in California, is which other countries have food that’s “close enough” to your own. Vietnamese bakeries make an excellent you char kway. Indonesian nasi bungkus is often close enough to nasi lemak. It’s a little odd sometimes, to talk to my traveler friends, and hear them opine on Southeast Asian foods. For them, discovering that this curry being similar to this other curry is an interesting tidbit. For me, it’s a nostalgic revelation, something that scratches an itch, an desperation to taste something that reminds me of what I grew up eating. It’s still never quite right, but close enough is close enough.

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Petrified Forest - Part 5.
I’m a pretty cranky person by default, but I’ve been getting better at talking with people, and I really did meet some remarkable people during my stay at the Petrified Forest. I met most of the other people when I was doing my demonstration at the Rainbow Forest Museum, and I was very nice and polite to everyone. But, y’know, be nice to everyone...you never know when you might be talking to a cartoonist.
Petrified Forest - Part 4.
Even before I arrived at the Petrified Forest, I was pretty excited about the idea of getting to barrel out into the desert at night, and wander until I got lost enough to want to find my way back(or had gotten through 1/2 of my water). My friend Nathan came out to visit me for a couple days, and was a perfect “wandering out into the desert” companion, especially when he had to physically shove me up a cliff.
The Triassic critters pictured are a phytosaur, a metoposaurus and a chindesaurus. Out of the three, only the chindesaurus is a dinosaur, a fact that I was reminded of many times during my stay.
Petrified Forest - Part 3.
I’ve spent the past few days catching up on my other work, and goofing around in this beautiful park, but I’ve finally gotten a chance to sit down and...paint more rocks. :)
The geologic formations of the Painted Desert are primarily made up of the Chinle Formation, which you can read up about on the NPS website.
Petrified Forest - Part 2
I had a very science filled day at the Petrified Forest a couple of days ago. It was pretty excellent, getting to poke at toads and listen to a lot of stories about fossils which are Not Dinosaurs.
I thought I’d be painting more rocks and beautiful landscapes here, which I’m sure I will(it’s been rainy; I haven’t gotten out much), but the thing I’ve been loving most about this place is meeting all these remarkable people that make the park run, who are so unabashedly enthusiastic about their jobs.
You can learn more about the Petrified Forest’s fossils on the NPS website, as well as about the various animals here.
A short poem for new friends. It's a bit outside of the scope of standard Tiny Adventure Journal fare; and yet not really, because my life is so much richer and more fulfilling for all the new friends I've met on the road, and all the old friends that I have gone on new adventures with.

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I had a really nice time walking around in Vancouver sun at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens. It’s basically 55 acres of entirely manmade(man-planted?) gardens, but it’s so nice to have something like that in the middle of a city.
A lot more information about the place is here(http://vandusengarden.org/); the hours were all over the place, so I didn’t include them in the comic.
As much as I love the Mütter Museum, my favourite part of my time in downtown Philadelphia was actually the Wagner Free Institute of Science. It’s a Victorian science museum that’s been largely untouched since 1891, except for the occasional necessary restoration(like the one ongoing for the entomology collection, after a dermestid beetle infestation in the 1990s).
It’s basically cabinets upon cabinets of meticulous, systematically organized, specimens and lots of old taxidermy, some of which is maybe not particularly great(part of the charm, really).
An interesting note, Joseph Leidy was also the person who exhumed/discovered the Soap Lady’s body at the Mütter Museum. He’s a pretty big deal, and is considered the father of american vertebrate paleontology...but I still don’t feel bad calling him a hottie, because he sort of was.
It’s honestly difficult to capture how beautiful the place is, so here is a picture(theirs - the no photography rule is very strict).
More on the Wagner Free Institute on their website and on Atlas Obscura.
About at this time last Saturday, I was at the Mütter Museum(in Philadelphia) with my awesome comic friends, alisonwilgus, careydraws and mollyostertag .
It was without a doubt, one of the most compelling museums I’ve ever been in, and I’m still thinking about it. Like the comic says, the gift shop was kind of jarring to me, but the rest of the museum was fascinating, respectful and solemn.
For more information on the Mütter Museum, visit their website.
I went to Bryn Mawr College as part of their Mellon Creative Residency program, right after doing ECCC. As part of the program, I visited a couple classes and ran a zine workshop, but also got a nice amount of downtime to work on my own projects - which included starting Tiny Adventure Journal!
The zine workshop ended up on the Bryn Mawr blog, and there are pictures from the workshop as well!
The campus was beautiful and everyone I met was absolutely delightful.
I really enjoyed Seattle! I’ve been before, but never with much time to wander. ECCC was amazing, and so full of love for comics.
I stayed at the Green Tortoise Hostel, which is basically right in the middle of Pike Place, which wonderful and convenient(also cheap - I think it cost me $180 for 5 nights). I’d definitely recommend going for the 4 bed dorms, though. The 8 bed ones are ridiculously small.
Foodwise, The Crumpet Shop, as well as Ellenos Greek Yogurt were definite favourites for me.
Some pictures that I took: Seattle Underground | Seattle Waterfront | Pike Place Market
Technically, this sort of launches Tiny Adventure Journal, I guess! It’s exactly what it sounds like - me making journal comics about my travels. Coming up next - The Mutter Museum, Bearizona, the Wagner Free Institute, Bryn Mawr College, and more!

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