Jim's quiet musings . . .

I've always had an interest in visiting Vietnam and it's one country on my list of "Places to see and things to do." It's only a matter of time before I make the trip there. Meanwhile, the next best thing has been to visit some Vietnam blogs...

One of my favorites has been "Our Man In Hanoi" which is a site that not only has some beautiful pictures, but is really a very interesting read too. While reading his blog, I was surprised to see yet another "Mooncake" article. OMIH writes:

"Another feature of this time of the year is the Moon Cake. It appears to be a real favourite with everyone and something of a treat but to western tastes it’s a little bizarre. You know those pork pies with the egg inside. Well imagine if the pork bit was replaced with chocolate but with the egg left intact. In addition the whole thing has a vaguely marzipan-like taste plus an unmistakeable hint of fried rice. All in all – not good."

I had to chuckle at this and quickly jot this information down for Aimee, who is collecting sensitive MoonCake information for some sort of sinister Halloween plan, no doubt.

OMIH also writes about a subject that I'd been thinking of blogging about, but couldn't seem to find the right angle. He writes:

"PS Slightly concerned. There’s a trail of ants leading to a USB port on my laptop. I have a feeling that my back home habit of eating lunch while using my computer has left a legacy of crumbs under my keyboard. Hopefully no serious damage will be caused. I’m hoping they’ll just clean up for me."

What a laid back dude! Heck, I've been hopelessly squishing the little pests as I see them, or fumigating them (and myself) with my handy-dandy can of KINCHO red (a water-based Aerosol insecticide).

These little ants seem to come from nowhere and they have totally infested my spotlessly clean house (NOT). They're the little red ones, or amber ones, which my ancient grandmother (god rest her soul) used to call....

PISS ANTS

As a kid I used to giggle to beat the band when she'd say piss ants, because I knew that "piss" was a so-called "bad" word (according to my mother).

"Piss ants" is one of those old sayings that seem to flourish in the southern U.S. I never really understood why they were called piss ants until one day when I was haplessly smashing them with my hand and finally noticed the awful smell my hand had undertook from said smashing. Although the smell was far from what "piss" is supposed to smell like, it was bad enough for me to learn my lesson...or so I'd thought.

So here I am, at my laptop computer, "haplessly smashing" once again, as the little piss ants begin to advance upon my USB port, also uttering another old saying my grandmother used....

"Well shit fire to save matches!"

-Jeeem-