Liver 'N Onions. With Hair!

There's something on my mind that's really been bothering me lately. More precisely, there's something on my head that's really been bothering me; or rather, there's something NOT on my head.

Namely, this is hair.

Under normal circumstances, I have literally enough hair on my head for at least two other people; as if to mock this fact, it generally floats in a large, uncontrollable, puffy halo around my face. However, I am no longer living under normal circumstances.

I am living under the tyranny of an out-of-control thyroid. And one of the (many) things that out-of-control thyroids do to you is make you lose hair.

Clumps of it are lying on the ground, sitting on my keyboard, floating in the breeze. When I wash what remains of it, it clogs the drain. When I touch it, it comes out between my fingers; and when I cook, it gets into my food.

I hate when it gets into my food the most. I have to spend a lot of time searching for hairs and pulling them out of the way, and it's not fun to exercise that restraint when you are unbearably hungry all the time.

• French toast. With hair!
  
• Ginger-chicken and rice! WITH HAIR!!
• Liver 'n' onions...with HAIR.
  

My fast food needs no condiments; my ice cream needs no toppings.

Hair is an eco-friendly, recyclable, high-protein food source. I am the future.

The only problem is that there's not a lot of it left on my head. So I'm just going to have to pretend I'm really, really fond of hats.

Shocker: White People Can't Afford Everything.

The word is back on my computer--it's dead. Dead as in, the motherboard is broken and will cost more than the damn thing is actually worth to get it replaced.

Which means that I'm stuck using this overheated, semi-functional internet cafe indefinitely. It also means I've lost total access to all my personal documents, my passwords to various websites, my photos, my Chinese lessons, my Khmer lessons, and my global intelligence network, to name a few.

Last week there was a big uproar when Libya's intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa, defected to NATO. They thought for sure Libya's regime would crumble. The demise of my laptop is to me what that defector guy was to Moammar Qaddafi: I think I will crumble. I AM VERY DEPRESSED ABOUT THIS.

You: Why can't you just repair it, freak? Instead of always making outlandish comparisons between yourself and Middle Eastern despots.

Me: Because every single entry I write has to reference Middle Eastern despots, that's why.

And because I don't happen to have an extra THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY PLUS DOLLARS lying around my house that I can just fork over to the nearest technician who tries to tell me I need a new motherboard.

And because I also spent hundreds of dollars on an extended warranty with Best Buy, knowing this would happen. That warranty doesn't expire till July. Why the hell should I spend obscene amounts of money on something that's supposed to be under warranty? I don't care if my computer is 12000 miles away from the nearest Best Buy. I WANT IT FIXED FOR FREE, DAMMIT.

And tomorrow is the start of Khmer New Year. This means that, because it looks like my laptop won't magically heal itself, I may or may not be able to get on the internet for three or four days, if ever, depending on what's shut down in Phnom Penh. I hate being at the total mercy of everyone else's work schedule. Dammit.

Laptop Down

I've got a lot of stuff I want to say right now, but you will just have to wait for it. Like me, my laptop has been partially destroyed by the force of its own heat.

Over the last several months, it kept becoming harder and harder for me to get it to start. Finally, I had to start keeping it in the fridge; then I had to keep it in the freezer. If it wasn't cold at all times, it would stop working. On Friday, it stopped working entirely. I'm pretty sure it's the cooling fan.

Anyway, I had to take it into the shop. Lord knows if they'll actually solve the problem, or if they'll just charge me a lot of money. I'm using an internet cafe right now, which means I can't stay in here long (it's unairconditioned and I still can't handle the heat as well as normal) and that I can't publish the entries I want (I have no digital and artistic capabilities on these computers, and darn it, I've got illustrations to put in).

So hang tight; if you try to contact me via other means, I may or may not respond right away. And I'll let you know all the tribulations of the Laptop Affair when--if--I ever get it back.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go get some fresh air!!

Electricity Costs A Lot of Money in Cambodia

So, I got my electric bill this weekend. And apparently it costs more to run things here in Cambodia than it does back in my Ohio, USA homeland.

Heads up to anyone coming out here thinking living expenses are cheap.

I fully confess that my time here has been marked by inexplicably high bills. I also fully confess that, due to hyperthyroidism and my consequent difficulties managing hot temperatures, I have spent the better part of my February running my air con full blast.

But NINETY DOLLARS? I mean, come on!! That's more than a lot of folks in this country even make in a month. That's like twice what I ever spent on electricity in the USA!! Phnom Penh has one of the most cheap, efficient and safe-to-drink water systems in the world, but electricity costs me such a large percentage of my monthly wages? I think my soul just broke in half.

Look, you can even see the source of my agony:

WTF?

I discussed it with my landlady, my co-teachers, and even my tuk-tuk driver. No one seems to know how one person can ring up all that. I do know, however, that the bill was initially given to the three people below me, who argued the cost. So the landlady gave it to me. And after some hard-hitting questions, I found myself extruding an extra hundred dollar bill from my bank account.

And what difference does it make? Like Gamal Abdel Nasser, I was born to a poor family, and I will live and die a poor [wo]man. The utilities companies will make sure of it. I AM PROUD.

Rant over, thanks for listening.