Another Girly Post...maaf

When the more talkative of the two of us is a girl, the posts on our blog are bound to be a bit girly.

This one is about babies and weddings.

We'll be heading out of town this week for some time up in the COOL highlands area of our country. We hope this will tide you over 'til we're back.

1st is Mrs. Julia Roberts, one of the bridesmaids in our wedding and childhood friend of mine. She's not in Southeast Asia...she's in Florida.
She is holding her brand spankin' new baby girl Ava Grace Roberts who was born this week.
I'm not really sure how she did it, but Ava doesn't have the "I'm a newborn and look like every other newborn does" look to her. Click on the picture...she's as cute as can be.
Congrats Roberts FAMILY!
And this is Kaelyn Joy Diaz. She also lives in Florida. Kaelyn's mom is my sister.
Kaelyn can't help but be messy...but in that messiness(sp?) is a super creative little girl.
Way to go Heather on appreciating your kids...even when they play with their food.
Oh, and Anthony noticed the healthy bread...way to go on that too.

I also had a picture of KaTelyn and her daddy, but I can't figure out how to get it off Kodak picture share...but she's cute and totally a daddy's girl!

The 3rd thing actually happened in Southeast Asia. We went to another wedding!
Actually...we went to TWO weddings today. When we got to the first, Kakak told us there was another one. A great day with LOTS of food (The 2nd wedding people didn't care that we had just eaten at the 1st wedding...they still piled the rice and chicken high!)
We'll have pictures of strawberries and what not in a few days when we get back...and maybe something manly too.

Bringing Balance

If you couldn't tell, the post below was written by Sharon. In the words of our next-door neighbor, "You really like pink, yeah?" Yes she does. We have pink flowers in our front yard and our tree will (supposibly?) have pink flowers as well.

So here's my attempt to even out the post below with things that are definitely not pink or flowery.

Our country has a pretty sweet F1 track and the annual race is coming up soon. To kick off the festivities, several of the cars are on display at our local mall. Here's the Ferrari/Shell car, driven by Kiki Raikkonen (yes I had to Google that):

I don't claim to know much about F1 racing. I'm fairly certain that I've never watched an entire F1 race, or even half an F1 race. Most of my knowledge comes from The Real World: London back in 1995 when they had an American wannabe F1 racer. Which means I know nothing. The car looks cool all the same.

Being that I've been in Asia the past 7 months, I haven't watched a single college basketball game. To celebrate this feat I entered "Yahoo's Tournament Pick'em" and filled out a bracket. My crowning achievement was picking Duke to lose in the first round. Just forget about the fact that I picked Louisville to go to the championship game. Blast you Browns for getting me to like Louisville! Here's my bracket (you can click on it to make it bigger):

As you can see, my final four are Florida (obviously), UCLA, USC and Louisville. Eehh, 50% ain't bad. For those keeping score at home, I'm currently in 5th place in my group, but 788,016th place overall. As a result, I've decided to withdraw my sportscaster application to ESPN but I think I still have a shot as the resident b-ball expert at ym magazine. I've already thought of 183 ways Joakim Noah can add some bounce to his locks using products already found in his gym bag.

Against our better judgment, Sharon and I registered for a MySpace account. MySpace just might be the most disorganized and user-unfriendly thing on the web. No, you can't be my friend Mr. Herbal Supplement Guy. No, you can't leave a comment Ms. 12-Year-Old Girl Pretending to be 22. To all our real friends: can we be your MySpace buddies so we can see your pictures? That's the whole reason we got it - now "unprivatize" us. Our address is: www.myspace.com/speedygoat. Enjoy the epileptic seizure-inducing adds.

Jasmine & Rose of Sharon

So this past week for a "field trip" in our language class, we decided to go to a nursery
(There are TONS in tropical countries and they're so cheap!)
Along with learning words and what not, we bought 4 new plants.
These 2 are Jasmine plants.
We just cut our grass and cut all the "green" stuff off the top...the green will be back in a couple weeks... it's not dead...so stop judging me :)
Hopefully the Jasmine will be climbing all-over our fence in a couple months.
Then, their sweet smell will help soothe me as I wash dishes
(kitchen window looks out at them)
For those of you not familiar with Bath&Body Works labels, Jasmine is a small and very fragrant flower.
See?
For our front yard we bought 2 Hibiscus plants.
Did you know that the "Rose of Sharon" is actually an hibiscus?
Since learning that a few months ago, hibiscus plants have grown (pun intended) closer to my heart. They've already, in 1 week, grown 5 flowers.
These pink ones are perfect for THIS Sharon!
So that's all that's gone on this week. If you have advice on how to make hibiscus plants into a "Tree" shape please comment and help. Also, if you've heard that the Rose of Sharon is actually another flower, lemme know and I'll buy that one too.

Fresh Seafood and Fresh Turkey

Tonight we went with our friends- Justin and Daniela- to Port Klang, to eat some of the famous fresh seafood.
How fresh you ask?
Just take a gander...here's me picking out some stingray (RIP- Steve Irwin)
some ginormous prawn,
and we also grabbed a squid (not pictured)

After selecting your food, you tell the kitchen how you want each prepared.
Stingray- Grilled
Squid- Fried
Shrimp- Sweet and Sour
That's what we chose...
Then you wait for your food here...

Nice. We also ordered "Otak-Otak" which is "Fish Brains"- Abang gave us some one time but wouldn't tell us what it was...so when it came we were like "OH! We've eaten this before..mmm"
Then this kid came in with a very familiar teal and orange jersey. A sight for football-deprived eyes, I tell you what. We couldn't resist asking for a picture...his dad went to school at Univ. of Miami...we knew these people were smart!

And on the other side of the world, our 7 year old cousin Laina Durrance shot her first turkey!
How cool is that? And that's no BB gun either folks...that's her very own rifle...er...Shotgun.
What's even cooler, is that this very well-rounded little girl ate dinner a few nights before this at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota and I'm sure behaved like the young lady she is.
Laina, you're the neatest little girl we know!

You Like?

We updated to the new Blogger and so we lost our cool picture of the Petronas Towers and added the not-quite-as-cool palm tree picture you see there on the right...but as a trade we got cool drop down menus for the archives.
We know y'all like to go back and reminisce about all the fun we've had...now you can do it in a much more organized fashion.
Also a great big thanks to Zach and Heather Diaz for posing with these camels at Disney World last week... it added everything this post was missing.

Oh- The post below has been explained...just click on "Comments" under it.

For John Killus Jones

Ladies and gentlemen: Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana.

Poo-Ket

We just returned from Phuket, Thailand. Our vacation was great and we thoroughly enjoyed time in the sun, and well, basically, a lot of time in the sun and around the water.
We were beach-tired every day.
And they had a National Geographic Channel.
Does it get any better?

We only took pictures the first couple days. Most were from our evening at "PHUKET FANTASEA." Here's some memories from our time at Thailand's Best Cultural Attraction of 2002-2003.
Wai-ing in front of the Palace of the Elephants- inside there was a Las-Vegas (Family style!) type show about Thailand. Very well done.

The whole place was decorated with lights and carnival type games. These were my favorite lights . They were in front of the Elephant Palace and the Golden Cafeteria (Still can't remember the name...but it was big and golden)
Take a look.....

There were also costume creatures wandering around. The one with Anthony is wai-ing, but its fingers are a bit tangled.
Here's me with a....um...not sure, but I think its fun that the picture captured the person inside...you can tell from their eyes that they were smiling inside the costume.
Costume person, you deserve a raise for going above and beyond your duties as a costume creature!
It was neat to pose with the animals there. For 100Baht we posed with Mr.Elephant...
And the coolest one was a BABY TIGER! It was purring and everything! This was totally worth the 300Baht ($9?) We even got a classy cardboard frame to put it in. Be jealous. I would be if you were me.
The rest of the time was us laying on lounge chairs either by the beach or by the pool, or swimming in sea or pool. Wonderful.

The Verdict (Thus Far)

Wow... y'all lit up our inbox and comments with song suggestions. Thanks for the help - keep 'em coming cause we still have about $30 worth of songs to burn.

Here's the run down so far - I'm posting this now because we're leaving for Thailand tomorrow for the Rivers Family First Official Vacation. We've been on several mini-vacations, but never spent a week anywhere with no other motive but to relax.

Many people recommended John Mayer's Continuum. I've been wearing that one out since the first day it came out. Don't hold "Your Body is a Wonderland" or the fact that he's dating Jessica Simpson against him - its a really good CD. And now for the list...

Drum roll...

New Music

Mat Kearney, "All I Need" and "Where We Gonna Go From Here." Good job, Laurie. I love both of these songs.

Celtic Woman, "Orinoco Flow." This is Sharon's doing - she's wanted this song since she saw Celtic Woman on PBS a year ago.

Herbie Hancock and John Mayer, "Stitched Up." This song is catchy as all get out. Justin played this for me a year ago.

Corinne Bailey Rae, Corinne Bailey Rae. I read a review where the critic said the CD sounds like coffee. My coffee maker makes swooshy gurgly sounds. She sounds better than my coffee. One of the best CD's I've bought lately.

Gavin DeGraw, "Belief," Live at the Alice Lounge. This was a stab in the dark, but I ended up liking it.

Old School (by old school I mean like 2 years and back)

Lenny Kravitz, "Again." Sharon again- she thinks he's cute minus the tattoos- but the song is good.

Keane, "Somewhere Only We Know." Corey and Laurie both suggested Keane and I've always loved this song.

Bush, "Glycerine." Sharon's suggestion (she has a funny story about wanting to be cool back in 9th grade by going to a Bush concert with her friends... she borrowed the cd the day before the concert so she would know a song or two...Glycerine actually stuck)

Jack Johnson, Brushfire Fairytales. Bought this to round out my Jack collection - its the only one I didn't have.

Santana, "Maria Maria." We both love the latin flava' and Sharon likes to clean to this song.

Pearl Jam, "Better Man" and "You've Got to Hide Your Love." C-Love made us remember Pearl Jam. Hats off to you, C-Love.

Guilty Pleasures

Styx, "Come Sail Away." Ha. Sharon and I both love this song. What's not to love? It starts out about sailing, then angels suddenly appear - only they're not angels but aliens who take the singer away on their starship. I mean, that's just solid songwriting. Also, there's a killer synth solo in the middle that I've heard on VW commercials.

DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, "Summertime." I will not defend this choice. I like it.

Will Smith, "Miami." Reminds us of home and me of my first 3 years of life in the Latino quarter of Miami-Hialeah, and Sharon wants to get a "cinnamon tan" in Thailand this weekend.

Sittin' on the Fence

DAUGHTRY. Can't bring myself to do it, even though several people recommended it.

Sufjan Stevens. Kelli, Katrin and Corey have all recommended him. Probably will get Illinoise.