Friday, April 27, 2012

True Ped for Saturday

Ped was from Laos and I was from Thailand, but we had many things in common. For example, Ped lived next to a Buddhist temple. I lived right behind a Catholic cathedral.

Ped lived next door to a boxing camp. My dad was a Muay Thai boxing promoter.

But we had big differences, too. Ped's dad was in the Lao Royal Army, but no one in the Prasomphol family ever went into the military. War ravaged Laos, but never touched Thailand.

One other thing we had in common. We have both run out of gas in America. The big difference is that I lived to tell about it.


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Thursday, April 26, 2012

True Ped for Friday

Life was not easy in Laos, but that did not stop Ped's grandfather from living to be 105 years old.

Americans often seem to think that they live longer than anyone else, but my great-grandmother lived to be 107, and she spent her life working as a street vendor. Great-grandmother Mai worked until she was 100, and then she retired.

For more links about the trial, click here.
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True Ped for Thursday

Ped lived a simple life. I made him get a cell phone, but it was a point of pride to him that he did not know how to retrieve or send text messages. Ped could leave a voice mail, and that was good enough for him. If you wanted to talk to him, you had to talk to him because if you left a voice mail, he'd never listen to it because he never bothered to learn how to retrieve them.

I am sure there are many, many voice mails and text messages on Ped's cell phone because while he never checked his messages, he also never deleted any of them.

To read all the latest trial links, click here.

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

True Ped for Wednesday

Like many, many Southeast Asians, Ped did not like to have his picture taken because he kind of believed that each picture of you shortened your life. But he loved his baby nephew Sebastian so much, he could not resist having his picture taken with Sebastian.

You can see that picture again here. Everyone is welcome to use it, but please credit True Thai.

Again, all links to new news stories about the trial are here.
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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Testimony and tears

After the prosecution played the first 911 call from a nurse who worked at Riverside Hospital, they played the second 911 call. The woman was crying because she had never seen a dead body before. The force of the collision did not tear Ped's pants down to his knees as reported earlier. They were around his ankles.

The woman that called in that information to 911 was crying on the stand as she listened to herself cry on the 911 tape. Ped's family and I were all crying too.

Today's testimony was very hard to listen to, but this trial will not get any easier for Ped's family or me. This is much, much harder than I thought it would be. In the picture, all the clothing Ped was wearing except his socks and underwear were gifts I had given him.

Ped was wearing a white t-shirt with a map of Laos with a red dot showing where he was born. I gave him that t-shirt years ago. Actually, I gave him two Lao map t-shirts, but the other one was yellow and he never wore it.

Ped always wore jeans, but he had been with friends earlier that night and he was wearing some khaki pants I had bought him. What made me cry out loud was seeing his shoes. .

When Sadé's manager paid for the food Ped made for the singer and her band, the manager gave me a $200 tip and told me to buy some new shoes. Well, I split the tip with the cooks but I also bought Ped a new pair of tennis shoes for $89, size 8 1/2. I never saw him wear those shoes but when they showed the picture of his body laying on that exit ramp, one was next to his body and the other one by his car, forty feet away.

Too many tears today.
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True Ped for Tuesday

Today's true fact about Ped. He did not eat junk food. Ped only ate food that he had prepared, or that his mother had cooked.

All new links about the trial are here.
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Monday, April 23, 2012

The waiting is over

I was shocked at how fast jury selection went, and barely made it to the courtroom in time for the opening statements. I will keep updating the links post with every story I can find about the trial, but I also have a restaurant to run so the links may be late some days.

I have lost track of how many people I've told Ped's story to who, after hearing that on the night of his fatal accident Ped was going to the restaurant to give the cleaning staff a ride home, said to me, "And Amy Senser was going to pick up 3-4 young women who had each gotten the gift of a $47 ticket to see a Katy Perry concert." Like most restaurants in the Twin Cities, True Thai pays our clean up crew a buck an hour over minimum wage, so with taxes taken out they would have had to work six hours to see a Katy Perry concert. But instead of going to concerts, at least one of the clean up crew was saving for a bicycle so Ped wouldn't have to give him a lift home. The clean up crew, by the way, were 17, 18 and 21 years of age, and all now have bicycles.

Another person wondered to me how Amy Senser could have gotten lost when she went to college at the University of Minnesota, especially since one of the Senser girls lived only two blocks from the crash site. Others are saying that Amy Senser turned herself in because her step-daughter said people were accusing the stepdaughter of having done it. Well, I heard that rumor too last August. There are too many rumors going around, and I hope this trial will bring out the truth about what happened.

Buddha said there are three things you cannot hide: the sun, the moon and the truth.

Here is something that is not a rumor, and is the truth. Ped was such a fast cook he averaged one entree per minute by using three woks at a time, and they were the best entrees we served. It was a joy to watch him work because he was so focused on making everything perfect. You cannot make Thai food slowly, wok cooking is fast and if the cook is not precise, the food will not be good.

Another true fact is that today, Monday, April 23, is the 243rd day since Ped died last August 23.
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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Trial links


Jury selection starts tomorrow, and there will be many news stories about the case. Rather than post about the trial each day, I am going to put all the links here, updating the list as they are published.



Oldest stories last, new links at the top.



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