"Hello, Burma!"

Last week during a project kickoff teleconference with a brand-new client, a team member perks up at the mention of my whereabouts. It turns out that his very good friends, fellow Portlanders, have just embarked on a one-year family adventure living in Chiang Mai. Without so much as a reconnaissance visit they up and relocate themselves and their 8-year-old son halfway around the planet, because why not? My kind of folks!

The next day email introductions are made and we arrange to meet up for a welcome dinner Saturday night at a Burmese restaurant near Thapae Gate, in the old city. Saturday also happens to be Lian's birthday, so we have another reason to celebrate.

But Lian is less than enthused to learn where we are dining. She makes an I-smell-poo face and says: "Food Burma maybe not good. I think I don't like." Never mind that she has not actually tasted Burmese cuisine before.

Lian pronounces "Burma" the way Jerry Seinfeld used to seethe: "Hello, Newman!" At the sight of a grubby beggar in the street, she's apt to speculate: "I think he not Thai -- maybe from Burma." The smoky haze that hangs over Chiang Mai this time of year? Slash burning from forests in the north ... "from Burma." When I inform Lian that much northern Thai cuisine such as khao soi has Burmese origins, she is horrified and refuses to believe it.

Andrew & Pati Goodell with son Ethan.

Finally I play the "polite" card: our new friends have chosen the restaurant, so we can be gracious and enjoy ourselves -- which we do. The Godell Family is perfectly delightful (although still a little jet-lagged) and the restaurant turns out to be a real find -- over the course of two hours we work our way through plate after plate of skillfully prepared dishes, and the tab for five is just over thirty bucks, including tip.

A few days later Lian asks: "We can eat in that restaurant again?" So maybe there's hope for this girl.

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A previous post last week was something along the lines of: "Golly, this Buddhist monk sure sounds a lot like Dave Matthews." But now I'm entertaining the possibility that he might actually BE Dave. I was seated behind an enormous stone column in the temple when I recorded the chanting, so I never got a good look at him. Supporting this theory is the following mashup created by bro-in-law Brian, who reported: "Strangely, no pitch correction at all."