…ly could deal with the eating habits since childhood, long before I could mumble any word of the language, but it was nice not having to ask). The H watched the other (Western) tourists eat for a while, and said, “you know, when you look at them from the point of view of someone who’s always eaten Asian-style… not only do they seem very greedy by not sharing the contents of their plates, but they’re also eating from the serving dishes”. I had to f…

…iety. The other GOH is astronomer Marek Kukula. I’m also likely to hang around in London for the weekend (basically, I want to avoid getting up early and returning late, so I’m looking into being there Sunday as well). More details as I have them. (PS: as some of you on FB and Twitter know, I jammed my right hand in a steel-reinforced door. I’m currently typing with my left hand and an index finger, so I’m not exactly fast on my feet at the moment…

…Going to Worldcon? Thanks to Nancy Fulda at AnthologyBuilder, I’ll be handing out shiny badges like this… For more details, see here. Several authors are involved, most notably T.L. Morganfield and Vaughan Stanger. Collect all the badges, and win a prize!…

…ly sure they’re books I’d hand to my children. Every single nationality around the globe basically got skewered in a racist fashion (including but not limited to Africans, Arabs, Asians, Gypsies–you name it, he skewered it), and it’s very much boys’ adventures–wimmen need not apply. There are other BDs from my childhood that are far, far better than those. Also, this quote? there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & h…

…didn’t want to rinse the rice more than once or twice before cooking. I insisted. Being a man who likes his sticky rice, he also put a lot more into the mixture we cook [1]). So now the H knows how to cook rice, or more accurately which buttons to press on the rice cooker 😀 That’s all from me. As mentioned above, still not very easy to type more than a few paras. I’ll save my energy for working on a crit. [1]I cook 9/10 normal jasmine rice, 1/10 s…

…e Elements), better known in English as Marble Mountain: it’s a major Buddhist temple complex near Đà Nẵng (centre of Vietnam), which has a slew of pagodas and shrines on moutaintops, as well as temples carved within caves that are truly impressive. Easily my favourite place (though not very favoured by Western tourists; the crowd was mostly local) of the trip: serene and unearthly, and with fabulous views over the surrounding countryside. Easy to…

…… is that, even while getting home relatively late, there’s still a good half hour of wonderful sun to enjoy while walking in a park. *happy writer*…

…Chinese kind, has a low smoke point at 180°C, which means that it starts decomposing into a lot of components if you use it on high heat–including a fair amount of carcinogens. Most cooking oils, by contrast, have a higher smoke point at 230°C or something like that, and are thus suitable for frying on high heat. Sesame oil is more like a dressing: you put it on cooked stuff, or in salads, but you certainly never ever use it for frying. So, no, th…

…that were obvious mismatches, but I didn’t check everything (it’s a long list, and some of those books sound like they have more than a few “non-standard” magical creatures around). I also left some books in there that didn’t fit the criteria (like The Night Circus) because something in the description appealed to me. Without further ado, and in case anyone else is looking for that kind of UF: -Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London, Moon Over Soho (t…

…Very pleased to announce I’ll be a Guest of Honour at Eurocon 2016 in Barcelona, along with Richard Morgan, Jun Miyazaki, and Enrique Corominas. Dates are 4-6 November 2016. (yeah, you’ll have noticed I seem to go to Barcelona quite a bit those days. Not complaining, it’s a great city, the food is awesome, and I get to practise my–ailing–Spanish…)…