Day 17: Something I Have Trouble Dealing With

Sorry to bombard you with yet another post expressing anger and annoyance towards the status quo. You must think I walk around in a constant state of rage or something. Well, I do. But I am in fact much happier here than I'm probably coming across--happy enough that I just bought a visa for another whole year!

That said, each day seems to be punctuated by at least one retarded thing, and (other than fighting with people all the time) I basically have no other channel to vent than this blog.

Sometimes my belongings get misplaced. I have to shift the stuff in my bag from morning class material to afternoon class material every day, and occasionally, something gets left out of my bag. Today it was my marker--can't teach sentences and vocab without a marker. Upon realizing this, I went to the supply room.

I don't know what it is about women in authority, but whenever they are there, they inevitably result in an unreasonable, unmovable, close-minded, authoritarian jackass who believes that Rules are God. I'm a woman myself, and I feel this way! I try super-hard not to ever, ever behave in such a manner (although I'm sure I fail).

To make a long story short, the supply lady refused to let me borrow a new marker, stubbornly repeating some bullshit about her only being able to give them out at the start of the term.

Me: "But I can't teach without a marker."
Lady: "You can only get two markers, only at the start of every term."
Me: "I said, I can't teach without a marker. I can't do my job."
Lady: "You can only get two markers, only at the start of every term."
Me: "So what am I supposed to do about my students?"
Lady: "You can only get two markers, only at the start of every term."

By this time, I was starting to become rather angry and disgusted, as well as uncomfortable with the fact that I was, once again, starting to get angry and disgusted at the very people I work for. In my mind, I had two options:

1. Explode
   
2. Take a leaf out of my manager's book and frog march the little bitch to class so she could explain why the school was failing to educate them adequately.

I sincerely wish I had done one of the two. Instead I went to the English Department to see if they could lend me one. Of course, being who and what they are, they tried to direct me to the Supply Lady.

Me: "I was already there. They won't give me a new marker."
Them: "Go to Supplies and Logistics."
Me: "THEY WON'T GIVE ME ONE."
Them: "Go to Supplies and Logistics."
Me: "THEY WON'T GIVE ME ONE."

In the end, a visiting official had to give me his dry erase marker. It was very embarrassing--for all parties involved I hope, and not just me.

But this is honestly the way things are run here. You're supposed to kow-tow to your boss, or whoever is an "authority" simply because they're an authority. Their competence doesn't matter; you exist to serve them. Maybe this is just because I'm an American, but I CAN'T ACCEPT IT. I especially can't kow-tow to incompetent Supply and Logistics people who don't have any authority over me whatsoever.

Let me put it like this: There's a reason this is a Least Developed Country despite the enormous amounts of money that the international community and South Korea pour in. To be fair, the Khmer Rouge did a fair number on this country too--which also happened for a reason. Probably didn't have anything to do with unreasonable, arrogant authority figures, though.

Day 16: Tough Crowd!

I have two morning classes. They're not my favorite classes--one is super-good and quiet, but also rather passive and non-responsive. The second class is junior high school revisited.

Given that most of the students are in their 20s, it's kind of sad that they behave like bratty 7th graders. I will confess my love for them--they're hilarious, responsive, and full of energy. They also love talking--talking when I'm talking, talking when other students are speaking English, talking when writing, talking on the phone, talking during exams...the list goes on.

I can't get them to shut up for more than 20 seconds! I've tried threatening them, sending them home, shouting them down, making them write essays, and separating them. The problems with these strategies are 1) they usually make me laugh, 2) writing just gives them more ideas to talk about, and 3) everyone enjoys everyone else's company, so moving them around only excites them further.

For weeks, I've been threatening to walk out, and today I finally had to. There is just no repressing them! It's so frustrating! If they don't want to behave like students, I have no business behaving like their teacher.

It's also kind of sad, when there are so many kids in this country who would die to get an education here--but can't afford to. Meanwhile, I'm busting my butt trying to silence self-indulgent brats whose Daddy paid their way in, and who would rather play on their iPhone and gab away about clothes than listen to me. Why? Because they never had to work for a damn thing in their life!

All I can say about it is, look around you ladies and gentlemen--Asia is rising, and kids like this are the future rulers of our world. And that is going to be a tough crowd to live with.

Day 15: Some People Are A-holes and I Have the Proof

I was sitting at school today, waiting for class to begin. It was my evening class, and I was beginning to feel the hypothryoid fatigue and spaciness coming on.

From somewhere behind me, and older British gentleman suddenly materialized.

"Hello. How are you?" he said to no one in particular. Given that he just came out of what I assume was a classroom or teachers' lounge and was looking at a young female student when he said it, I was rather confused as to who he was talking to, exactly.

Before I could work it out, he said, "That's alright. Don't bother to respond," eyes still fixed on the student...and I still wasn't sure if he was talking to me. And I didn't particularly care. If someone doesn't have the social skills to look at a Western female when addressing her...well...no skin off mine.

After returning from his cubby hole, my friend returned to me, smiling. "So how're you doing today?" he asked very sweetly.

Certain that he was addressing me this time around, I said, "Oh I'm good. How're you?"

With that, the douche turned and stormed out of the room, rather viciously knocking several students out of the way and slamming the door as he went.

(If you're Cambodian and reading this blog--no, that's not normal "Western" behavior. It's snarky, unhealthy British behavior, which is why, as an American, I sometimes resent being told about "Western culture" as if it were a uniform entity.)

I guess he thought he was putting me in my place--but rather than feeling shocked, or stung, or offended, I mostly didn't give a rat's ass. If anything, I was kind of amused by his British-style self-righteousness. I am also amused that I have the power to ruin someone's evening without even opening my mouth.

You run into a lot of folks like that around these parts. While the vast majority of my experiences with my co-teachers are positive and simply excellent (I mean this from the bottom of my heart), there's always that element of the pompous, embittered white male living in Cambodia for all the wrong reasons. My friend this evening may have been one of those.

Day 14: Oh, The People You Meet!

A funny thing happened on the way to work.

An older New Zealand woman stopped me by asking if I spoke English. (This is what I mean about people not thinking I can speak English. They don't even listen to me and the way my voice is. They just judge me on sight--people with black and white hair obviously don't speak English. Except with funny accents.) Anyway, I told her I spoke English.

She then requested a photograph based on the following rationale:

1. I'm GORGEOUS.

2. I'm DIFFERENT.

3. She just took a photograph of a laughing policeman.

I don't understand that rationale, but, despite the fact that I was already super-late for class because I had fallen asleep this afternoon, I accepted her request.

After taking an inordinate amount of time to adjust the aperture, distance, and focus, she took my picture. Then she had me pose again and again. Then she stopped photographing me, but launched into a long-winded, and very animated, story about New Zealand nuns. I am largely mystified as to why she told me the story, but I did learn the following.

• She's backpacking across South East Asia
• Her husband is alcoholic
• She bought three books at a rummage sale that somehow led her to nuns
• Nuns drive just like everyone else.

Sure, I came a half an hour late to class, but aren't people awesome?

Day 13: The Instant Karma Award

Yesterday, I said something about, "I refuse to accept any karma for the cat getting hit by the motorbike". Apparently, God/The Fates/The Universe don't see it the same way, because as soon as I left the internet cafe last night, I was promptly run down my a cyclo driving on the wrong side of the road.

It didn't hurt that much, but it did make all the surrounding simpletons burst into waves and waves of derisive laughter. Karma is a very real thing, you see.

Today, I got treated for H. Pylori, which is a bacterial infection responsible for the ulcers I have been experiencing for the last 3 or so years. It was sort of a ridiculous experience.

Me: I have H. Pylori and need treatment.

Pharmacist: *looks up H. Pylori on the internet*

In the end, though, she found exactly what I needed, so I walked away with a bag full of accurately-prescribed antibiotics and antacids. I appreciated her diligent research skills, even if she probably should have already known what it was.

There is one more thing I should mention, and that is that I don't know when I get to move back into my apartment. I spoke to her yesterday, and apparently, my landlady has no intention of putting me back upstairs before I leave. That wouldn't be much of a problem if she also wasn't trying to whore out the bottom apartment while I'm still living there. She's already shown two other people around. And I have reason to think my apartment was entered three other times for similar reasons.

I'm not quite sure where they want me; perhaps I'm not supposed to be here at all.

Day 12, Part 2: Always Look Before Crossing

Today I saw a cat get run over by a motorbike.

I was walking home from dinner. Apparently, my presence disturbed a yellow street cat, which, convinced that I was about to tear it to shreds, ran out into the street and directly under an oncoming motorbike. Now THAT'S falling out of the frying pan.

The moto driver slammed on his breaks, but still ran over it. Twice. The cat just kept running. Never have I experienced such a strange combination of horror, humor, and sadism. I probably shouldn't laugh, but it looked fairly ridiculous.

And that, children, is why you don't run into the street in a panic, and why you look both ways if you do.

*I refuse to accept any karmic responsibility for that cat's life or death.

Friendship: Making A Bully Out of Me

This is my friend Thearea. I know, that looks like it says, "The Area". But you say it TEER-ee-uh.

He's a tuk-tuk driver. He's the first person I met when I walked out of Okay Guesthouse on 18 October 2010 to get to an interview at ELT Institute before 10 am. He asked if I needed a ride, and I said yes.

I found it strategic to rely on the same driver for my multiple trips to and from school each day--so for the first two weeks, I went to school and back four times each day with Thearea. I had saved his phone number, so after I moved into my apartment, I just called him up whenever I needed tuk-tukage--for example, if I had guests who wanted to visit the Killing Fields and such.

I can tell you one thing--if you want to live in Phnom Penh, it would do you well to befriend tuk-tuk driver. The guy almost literally saved me multiple times during my long illness; he's got the exact layout of the city memorized; his English surpasses that of most of my students as well. He also taught me all the bad words in Khmer, so no one can say anything bad to me without my knowing about it.

Tuk-tuk drivers, while annoying, can also be your source of information about virtually anything. They are your ear to the ground. Your key to success. Make sure you get to know one.

Personally, Thearea is kind of a laid back guy--he always talks about how awesome his future will be, but I suspect he'll be a tuk-tuk driver for life. It suits his personality. He started out as a peasant who somehow survived the Khmer Rouge as a small child. He came to the city and worked as a policeman, but policemen only get paid $30 per month--you have to make all your money through corruption, and he's not corrupt. Then he became a motodriver. Then he became a tuk-tuk driver.

My only problem with Thearea is that he seems to have fallen in love with me--a feeling I do not reciprocate in the slightest. Not only am I not attracted to the guy, not only is he twice my age, but I am also essentially immune to romance and falling in love. The guy is a good friend of mine, but it's not like THAT. And I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it.

Luckily, he's very conflict-averse, so a gruff "You lookin' at me, little man?" is enough to make him back off for several weeks.

Ah, friendship: making a bully out of me.

Day 11: Grading Papers and Killing Geckos

Because I want to save money for this year's visa and a motorbike, I decided yet again to hang around the house and do nothing. As a consequence, halfway through the day, I suddenly became painfully, unfathomably bored. So bored that it hurt.

I decided to solve this problem by doing what I should have done a week ago--grade exams. Now, I really don't like grading exams. It's just hours and hours of reading page after page of bad English and assigning it an arbitrary number based partly on the student's skill in English, and partly upon my own whim. It's just a boring, laborious process, and honestly it's the sort of thing that makes me realize I don't want to be a teacher forever.

There are some things that make grading worthwhile, however. One of the sections on the exam was "dictation", which means I read a sentence while the students try to accurately copy what I say. One of the sentences was "You can't hitchhike". We definitely discussed the word "hitchhike"--they thought it was such a cool word to say; they kept repeating it and giggling. Yet for some reason, a week later when the exam came around, they seemed incapable of remembering it.

So I read 27 sentences that said the following:

• You can't hicharge/kitchen/ketchack/pigcheak
• You can't hit chuck.

You can kind of understand how they might write down what they hear. But not all of them make as much sense phonetically:

• You can't eat cheese.
• You can keep change.

And my personal favorite:

• You can't hit shit.

Like trying to spell "Qaddafi", it lightens the mood.

On a less light note, however, I would like to take this time to apologize to the small gecko which I inadvertently killed this morning. I was on my way downstairs--I told you how my temporary apartment is dark and sunless--and I didn't see him there. He apparently didn't see my descending foot, either. And thus his little life was snuffed out.

I found him smushed against one of the steps after I turned on the light. I feel kinda bad for the little guy.

Days 9 and 10: More Nothing!

Sorry, I didn't post last night even though I said I would. Something funny happened that stopped me from writing:

Around 4 pm last night, I was suddenly overcome by an uncontrollable urge to go to sleep. So I did. And I slept and slept and didn't go to the internet. That was about my entire day yesterday: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Today was more of the same. I didn't actually take a trip anywhere, because I will have to renew my visa once the holiday is over. And I can't afford to pay to stay here AND pay to have fun. So I just played video games all day--I can now officially say that I HATE FINAL FANTASY X.

Well, I'll try to think of some better material to discuss next time--I have lots to talk about, I'm just too scattered right now to remember what it all is.

Day 8: SOS

I can't believe I've actually kept this thing updated for a week now.

Anyway, not much more to report just now. Same old shit.

I haven't been going to school this week, because it's a holiday. That's right, this week is the famed "Water Festival" although it appears to have been cancelled this year. I don't know anything about it; I've been doing nothing but playing video games all day, and I don't care.

I can tell you the way it was last year; it was a hassle. I couldn't even leave the house without getting stuck in crowds--I hope this will not be the case again.

Also, they've totally repaired the Evil Danger Steps leading to my apartment, but now they've decided to fix the Perfect Safe Steps below them...for no real reason, other than the fact that they're on the other side of my temporary apartment, so they can give me another few weeks of jackhammering.

It may be the right time to take a vacation.

Day 7: Grocery Shopping, or I Now Hate Colgate

I went to the grocery today. Actually, I go to the grocery every day because it's an excuse to buy things and not sit around the house. But today I specifically needed soap.

When I moved down to my current apartment, they told me it would be for two weeks. So I brought two weeks' worth of soap. On Wednesday, it will have officially been three weeks, and I am out of soap. So I headed over to the grocery.

I went to a new one today. I am forever looking for new supermarkets so that I can find ever-cheaper prices on things. I went to Pencil Mart this time, which is about as close to me as my regular grocery. (I must now remark that inside Pencil Mart, I was disappointed to see that Colgate has officially obtained a monopoly in Cambodia. I like a very specific brand of toothpaste, and it's not Colgate. Yet within the time that I've come here, Colgate has displaced all other brands, and I can't get ahold of my special toothpaste. RAWR. SCREW MACHIAVELLIAN CORPORATE PIRACY.)

Moving on--although I came for soap, I bought some other random things (although not toothpaste). If you look at the photo below, it will tell you what sorts of things white people living in Cambodia like:

Just kidding. I abhor stereotypes of white people. This is just the over-priced Western junk that I felt like buying on impulse today. Normally I like to eat much healthier stuff, and my food-stuffs are generally "culturally neutral".

I also bought this:

I don't have an oven to make cookies, but I promised myself that when I was grown up, I would do nothing but eat cookie dough and play video games. As an adult, I am hereby going to fulfill my childhood dream. Betty Crocker, here I come!!

Day 6: The American Economy Is Not Fine

Nothing of importance happened to me today, so I thought I would share with you the following example of my monetary angst:

I was coming back from class the other evening, when I decided to go for some ice cream. Stopping into the Blue Pumpkin and devouring an "America Cup" sundae, I discovered upon leaving that they now cost $3.75. The week prior, it cost $3.00. That's kind of a huge increase! I'm not going to be buying them anymore. I can't afford it.

The same thing with medicines. Albendazole goes up by about 30 cents each time I buy it (which is every couple of months).

I have lived in Cambodia for only one short year, and already there are things I can no longer afford to buy. If wages were going up 30 cents every two months, this might be ok. But wages haven't risen since 1997. Just like life in America.

Well folks, that's the American economy. Don't tell me it's fine when the dollar is hyperinflating. Don't tell me it's recovering when I get poorer day by day. It's getting to the point where I'm not going to be able to stay here too much longer; I don't even know what's going to happen to the local folks who have even less money than me.

Day 5: Does This Strike You As Being The Height of Rudeness?

I found out this morning that I have a doorbell. I know because I ripped from my slumberous state by my landlady pressing it four times in a row.

This was around 9 am. It was the first day in three weeks I wasn't brutally awakened by jack-hammering underneath my bedroom at 7am, and all I wanted to do was rest my hypothyroid-wracked body for as long as possible.

But this was not to be. The landlady continued to ring the doorbell at 10-second intervals, while I struggled to pull myself out of bed. Scarcely conscious and my face ridiculously puffy, I fumbled for a long time trying to put on clothes, the whole time being unnecessarily goaded by the incessant ringing of the doorbell.

Finally, I managed to stagger downstairs. Now my apartment is as dark as a crypt--there are no windows, except for the front door, which is both tinted and covered in curtains. So when I opened the door, my look of evil was completely lost when the sunlight came streaming in and I had to shield my face like a dying vampire.

Landlady then barges in, showing Prospective Tenant what the place looks like. Now, I don't like to be intruded on under the best of circumstances, let alone after being forcibly denied sleep, then blinded. But I especially resent it when all my underclothes are lying around and garbage and bloody tampons are sitting there in varying states of decomposition.

Prospective Tenant was about as horrified I was offended. "I'm sooo sorry!" he told me. "It's so early! We'll go now, I don't really need to see this apartment right now."

Me: "I AM ALREADY AWAKE."

As he checked the layout (i.e., polked around my bedroom, where I keep all my money), the landlady kept repeatedly saying "Sorry" to me as well. It was far, far too early (and I was too far, far too pissed off) to respond with a symbolic "that's OK". Prospective Tenant left very quickly, apologizing profusely for making me go through all of it.

Given that they're the ones who put me in the bottom apartment to begin with--given that they're the ones for whom refurbishing a room takes 3 weeks of jack-hammering with no progress whatsoever--given that they tried to whore out the apartment while I was still living there--I think I ought to get at least 10% off next month's rent. Don't you?

I wasn't very happy about it, that's for sure.

Day 4: Exams

We're taking exams this week in all General English classes.

You'd think exams would be easy--you don't have to prepare anything, you don't need to think of a lesson plan, you don't have to talk and demonstrate. You just sit there for an hour and a half and chill.

Truth be told, I find exams more annoying than not--you have to show up early in order to control the positions of the desks and which ones different students sit in; you have to make everyone respect the fact that silence means silence; and you're stuck with nothing to do for 1.5 hours but carefully watching them and stopping them from cheating.

I like to slip off my shoes and sit on the teacher's desk, resting my excruciating hawkish gaze on each and every one of them. No one cheats in my classes--and gets away with it. I've failed students for it before.

On the other hand, some students aren't incorrigible cheaters. Many do their own work because they are incredibly perfectionistic and terrified of making a mistake. It's almost funny to watch them work. They finish incredibly quickly because they have over-studied all their lives; they then spend the next hour frantically re-reading and re-re-reading their answers, rooting out any mistakes, actual or perceived, and becoming increasingly stressed as time goes on.

I find it almost funny in light of the fact that for all their perfectionism, they still make mistakes such as forgetting to capitalize the pronoun "I", forgetting how to use English punctuation, forgetting the -s on 3rd person singular verbs, or just writing trite expressions like "he will be go" or "In Cambodia have many problems." They spend an hour whiting-out and re-writing a paragraph that I'm going to spend 10 seconds reading. There is no forest, only trees.

I shouldn't laugh at them...but my attitude towards academia and test-taking has always been flippant at best. I can assure you I'm not going to grade them on how perfect their letter "d" looks.

And then you get the students who ask bizarre questions. This evening, one of my students asked me, "Teacher, do I have to capitalize a word at the beginning of a sentence?"

Me: "Yes, the first letter is always capitalized."

Student: "But teacher, I don't want to capitalize."

Me: "Then you'll be wrong."

Student: "But do I have to capitalize??"

Me: "If it needs capitalization, do it." (By this time other students are taking advantage of the situation and beginning to exchange whispers).

Student: "But teacher..."

Me: "If it needs capitalization, then capitalize." (Sits stoically and refuses to respond to any further inquiries).

I'm still shaking my head over that one. And I get to go through this every two to four weeks.

Day 3: The Rage Post

It's Day 3 on my November challenge, and within the last hour, the following annoying things have happened to me, in this order:

1. Had an altercation with a student who wouldn't stop talking during the exam. I strictly enforce the No Talking rule, and he just wouldn't obey. Push came to shove, and he wound up storming out of the classroom and crying to the front office about what I tyrant I am.

2. Became massively, unbearably hungry due to a thyroid problem; rage is not far behind.

3. Went to the Garden Center (an overpriced yet low-quality "Western" restaurant) which conveniently ran out of smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, then sold me "chocolate chip cookies" instead...if you want to call those hardened, burnt, bland biscuits with three chocolate chips set superficially in the surface "chocolate chip cookies". I wouldn't charge $1.50 for them even in the US. Because that would be outrageous.

4. Came to Sarpino's Pizzeria. A pair of obnoxious 4-year-old brats are running around attacking each other and random customers with over-sized, noodle-shaped balloons. I guess I'm the only person who's annoyed by that.

5. Had my right earphone go dead on me as I tried to listen to YouTube to block out the obnoxious 4-year-old brats above. What annoys me about this is that I bought them brand new just this Monday from a very legit store, for not a cheap price. Now I have to buy another pair.

6. Discovered that they made the pizzas smaller while simultaneously raising prices. So now I'm still hungry. Nothing can quite take the edge off thyroid hunger, but this is just annoying.

Sorry for the rage. My evenings aren't generally this annoying. You caught me at a bad time, I'm afraid. I'm going to try to head home now without any more shenanigans.

Day 2: Teeching is Fun!

I have now gone to the internet cafe no less than three times today, for all the same reasons as yesterday.

When I wasn't running away from the sounds of construction, I was teaching. Teaching has taught me first-hand what comedians mean when they say, "tough crowd." Some groups of people are just hard to handle, for whatever reason. But I'll save the cross section of my five classes for a future date--believe me, you're gonna hear all about my Gang of Monks, as well as my frustrations with the 20-year-old junior high schoolers in my morning class. But another day.

Today, I had a classroom observation. Usually this means you are under scrutiny for doing something wrong; in my case, I was showing a new teacher how to teach. I wish I'd been afforded that luxury when I began teaching--instead, I was rather brutally placed in front of Chinese kindergarteners and their vicious mothers, along with an assistant looking on at all times and judging my every move. And I had no idea what I was doing. AWKWARD.

So I'm always glad to help out a newbie. I enjoy mentorship. I'm probably more flattered that they chose me than I should be. (I have a paranoid friend who tried to insist the new teacher in question was a mole designed to judge me; the thought that that might be true hasn't been able to break through the wall of flattery yet.)

I teach for six hours a day, every day; I earn more than a lot of Khmer teachers who work harder than I do under far more deplorable conditions. Yet despite my relative luxury, my salary is low enough, and my skin white enough, that I will never be able to afford to go back to America. That's the thing about EFL--once you begin, you're essentially stuck in it for life. There's really no escape.

Damn, I just depressed myself.

Remember, Remember the Month of November

Hello my readers,

A lot of you have made public and private requests to me that you'd like to hear about my observations on people and my day-to-day life as an EFL teacher and expatriate in Cambodia.

So I thought I'd give a brief update of my life every day for the month of November. Some of it might be trite, dull, or routine. Most of it will not consist of well-illustrated adventure or anecdote. But that's the thing about life: most of it is boring.

So here begins what should be a typical month for me. Keep in mind my thyroid is still rather problematic (i.e., I don't always feel like sitting in front of a computer after a long day's work and I'm still angry at stuff all the time) but I'll do my best to faithfully keep this inglorious basterd updated till November 30.

Right now I'm sitting in an internet cafe. This has been the fourth time inside today--the apartment building I live in is being refurbished, and the sounds of multiple men hammering and drilling and destroying things in the room next to me is sometimes so deafeningly loud I literally have to run out of the house with my hands over my ears and take refuge somewhere else. Given the fact that this generally happens at 7 am on weekends and during lunch hour on weekdays, I don't have a lot of sympathy for this whole operation. The fact that the same thing has been going for the last 3 weeks without much change? All the more so.

The internet cafe will be closing soon, so I must check out till tomorrow.

Girls with Funny Accents

Well-known factoid about me: I'm not a native speaker of English.

That is, I'm not a native speaker of English if you ask the general public. Despite the fact that I was born and raised in Ohio, USA, among a family that migrated to this hemisphere over 400 years ago (from England!), I apparently speak English with a funny accent.

In my work as a cashier, I was daily asked "where I was born" because I "have an accent". It got to the point where I would just start making up stories. "I was born in Palestine." Lol. "My mother is a Romanian refugee and my father is the Saudi Ambassador to New Guinea. I moved around a lot as a kid." Lol.

Okay, English is actually my first and only language, but just no one seems to realize that. Since I have come to Cambodia, this has already happened to me twice (which is a lot considering I've spent the last 9 out of 12 months in virtual isolation).

The first guy was utterly convinced that I am English or Australian (you have no idea how many people think I'm Australian) because I "talk like it." This guy wasn't even a native speaker of English himself! Come on!! Is my voice that obvious?

Some other guy told me I have a distinct French accent when I try to speak Khmer. Me: WTF? I can't even speak French! How is that even possible??

So there you have it. I talk funny, no matter which language I speak.

He...Died?

The news that greeted me this morning was that a certain Libyan with an unspellable last name was executed by his own people after a long uprising. As a History and Middle Eastern Studies major, I have lots of questions about the whole affair, like

1. "Who will take power now? Will it really usher in a democratic era for the Libyan people?"
2. "How come NATO made it a priority to invade Libya but not Syria, where the leadership has been doing comparable (and maybe worse) things for decades?"
3. "How come no one ever reported from Qaddafi's side? We know all about the rebels war effort, but surely the people who supported him were not nameless, faceless video-game enemies? Surely they had their reasons?"
4. "Are we all aware that much of the fighting was divided among pre-existing tribal lines? This won't create any old resentments, will it?"
5. And most importantly, "NOW who am I gonna represent at the Model Arab League?"

Also, I left my shoes outside last night, and someone stole them. That meant I had to go to school barefoot today...dammit.

A Moving Adventure

Sometimes, in the construction of a house, people build staircases badly. My apartment building, for instance, happens to have these Evil Danger Steps which are steep, narrow, and uneven. You basically have to grip the metal railings on both sides if you don't want to die going up and down that particular flight of steps. Unfortunately, I (and other upper residents) must walk up and down them many times each day to get to our apartments.

Sometime over the last year, my landlady and her people realized that we were nearly killing ourselves each and every day. Consequently, the family decided to refurbish them.

I'm the only resident left in the apartment (literally, the only one). I feel the need to stay till January for reasons no one has yet told me, but which I am quite sure exist. So, in order to fix the flight of stairs and still let me remain sheltered, they moved me to the bottom floor apartment.

It's sort of basement-like (moldy; no windows) but it's quite posh in its own way. It's big. And it's cool in every sense of the word.

This is the entry way. It's the only window in the apartment.

It has stuff!

It has an upstairs!

It has stairs to get there!

I get to stay here for two weeks before resuming my old life on the top floor.

I think it's kind of cool.

What Is This?

I have found a tiny beetle-type thing in my water.

I have no idea how it got there. For reasons of my own, I boiled some cooler water the other night. I let it cool on the stove-top overnight and poured it into my metal cup the next day so that I could take my ranitidine. When I came back from school several hours later, I noticed something strange swimming around the bottom of my cup as I drank. It looked like this, but extraordinarily tiny -->.

I am at a loss to explain how it got there, or even what it is. I've seen them swimming around in pond water sometimes.

The problem is, there's no way it could have gotten into my cup:

1. The cup was dry from many weeks of disuse; I scrubbed it clean shortly before I used it, then dried it again.
2. The water was already drinkable, and boiled
3. The tap water is treated; I've certainly never seen small beetles in it before
4. Even if there were something in the tap water, the cup was sitting many meters away from other bodies of water, like the sink and toilet
5. My apartment was locked and the windows closed. Nothing and no one got in or out.
6. I live on the 4th floor of an apartment that is nowhere near a pond

I guess it's possible that it got in the pot of boiled water overnight and I just didn't notice till later...but how? And from where? And what do I do with the little guy now?

This is one of those days that makes you go WTF.

You can see this too, right?
I'm not imagining this thing, right?

This is it up close.

My Anniversary!!

Today is the one-year anniversary of the day I first came to Cambodia: 17 October 2010.

I'm not quite sure how to take the news.

I've been sick for three-quarters of the year; I've had two jobs; I've lost my internet; and now I have even less money than I came with. AND I'M STILL GLAD I CAME TO CAMBODIA. I could shout it from the rooftops all night!

I remember how it felt, flying in after my ordeal with Aston Jining. The relief that hit me with a gust of tropical air as I stepped off the plane at 10 pm, Dara waiting at the entrance. Coming to Okay Guesthouse, glowing golden in the evening air, and having someone to help me up the stairs with my suitcase.

Help, for God Sake! Help, support and kindness from strangers--something completely unheard of in China! I wept with relief and joy in the muggy night; I inhaled the muggy, warm air; and I curled gratefully up in my clean, white 6x8 cell.

Despite the hardships I have undergone, I don't regret my decision to dump China for this. Not for one minute. And I never will.

I don't know what the next year is going to look like--I still suffer from hypothyroid symptoms; my lease expires soon, and I've got no money. But I, Holyrockthrower, shall adventure forth into an uncertain future, unrestrained by fact or fear.

No regrets.

Antacid Trip

Apparently my gastro-intestinal problems in the last entry were an ulcer.

Shortly after writing, all hell broke loose on my stomach. It woke me up that night, contracting as though it were trying to give birth to a small whale. The pressure was such that I was about to throw up, and it kept me awake for several hours. Seeing that this was the 3rd or 4th attack, I called off my morning classes and went to the doctor first thing.

He said there was literally nothing else it could possibly be than a stomach acid problem.

I've had this before, but it was about ten times worse this time around. I didn't realize ulcers could make you that sick. The antacids and acid-blockers are helping me recover now.

Anyway, I'm feeling somewhat better now and probably won't die. See you later! It's time to go drop some antacid!

Criminy! Not again!

Sorry, it's been awhile since I posted. Again.

When I started this blog, I was like, "It's gonna be the BEST BLOG EVER!! I'm gonna post twice a day, all about my life, and IT WILL BE AWESOME!!"

That was before I got slammed with hypothyroidism and lost the ability to care.

Now that's mostly gone, but instead, my internet has been severed. I was using the people's downstairs, and they've all moved out. My landlady offered to share hers, but I know if I get the internet back, I'll never get off it.

I value my freedom as much as I value my right to blog. I'm a recovering internet-addict, and I'm going to keep it that way.

Unfortunately, this means I can only blog at restricted times of the day. In uncomfortable internet cafes. For a price. So that's annoying, and conducive to nonblogging.

Plus, I've been sick again. I'm not sure what it is, but I can tell you where I got it. Ever since last school term, I've been eating at the Happy Guesthouse. My tuk-tuk driver and friend works there, so I patronise the place for lunch. And I really like their fresh fruit and vegetables. And I pick up parasites from them.

Anyway, today as I was going to school, I suddenly got a massive attack of something that felt like I was about to puke. I ran home in horror and fear, so it's cost me $30 of class time, in addition to the ever-inflating price I must spend on albendazole tablets.

Dammit all.

The Day of the Dead, and a Day in the Life

Hello all,

My two weeks of (mandatory, unpaid, uneventful) vacation are over and I have begun yet another term of school.

In some ways, I'm glad. Sitting around the house with nothing to do was starting to seriously fray my nerves by the end of vacation (like I was walking around in circles and biting my fingers).

For some reason, though, all my classes are seriously under-populated. This may be the reason--we're starting the term in the middle of a holiday which culminates this week with Pchum Ben. That's basically the Day of the Dead, Cambodian-style, and we get 3 days off for it (which for me means 3 days of sitting around with nothing to do while everyone abandons the city and closes all the stores). So we have 4 days of school sandwiched between 3 weeks total of time off. Wouldn't blame anyone for not showing up for the first week.

In other news, my internet has been severed since the people moved downstairs moved out. This way I don't have to drown my existence in a cyber stream anymore; I'm also not going to have anything to do when I don't feel well enough to go out, but am not totally bedridden. Like these upcoming 3 days.

My thyroid (or lack thereof) is still crushing my existence--how is it that I can sleep for eight hours, take a morning nap for an hour and a half, and then still feel so unbearably sleepy during the break between my evening classes? And the dark black degenerate rings under my eyes make me look like what I am--an EFL teacher in Southeast Asia. There are some days when I don't even want to look at myself in the mirror, because I know my appearance just confirms the stereotype that all of us are drug-addicts and alcoholics, even though I'm not.

I'm starting to think my hypothyroidism is in fact permanent, just like my EFL career. D:

Hopefully, though, my students will at least be awesome this term--I'm already having trouble with a monk who's older than me and isn't afraid to talk about me, loudly, to the rest of the class, in Khmer. I can never tell if students like that like me a lot, or if they're just bullies disrespecting and dehumanizing me. Given the intense, abusive bullying I suffered as a child, I tend to viscerally assume the latter, and I don't have much of a sense of humor about it, either.

Oh well, at least I'm getting paid. And it's full-time, too.

Here's hoping your Day of the Dead is good, no matter which culture you are a part of.

Big Government

Okay, everyone.  It's official.

Cambodia has shut down access to Facebook, at least via Google Chrome and several service providers.  I therefore cannot check my Facebook account, ever again.

And the rumor is that Blogspot will be the next thing to be shut down...oh, HEY!  MY BLOG'S ON BLOGSPOT!

Therefore, I am trying to set it up so I can post from my email account.  I don't know how technology works, so I don't know if this will actually work when the time comes.  But it's a try.

This is a test; this entry was sent via email.

LOL, and you thought "Big Government" was somehow a reference to September 11th.  LOL.

Homesickness

I have a confession to make: I haven't posted in awhile because...well...I've been homesick.

I don't get it...I've now been travelling the world for a year and a half, gone through three jobs in that time, done battle with corporate China, and overcome a long and debilitating bout of thyroid disease. I have managed to do all this totally alone. And not once during these struggles have I ever thought about going home. Not once. Nor have I ever longed for my home country, it's bleak employment scene, or the broken family I left behind.

At first I thought I was experiencing some sort of delayed culture shock: ten months in, everything about Cambodia is annoying me. Motodops, workplace hierarchies, students, bosses, groceries, rich people, poor people, security guards, corruption, cars parked in stupid places, even that stinky rat that's been decaying on the sidewalk down the road from me for the last nine days. Everything and everyone has been rubbing me the wrong way.

In short, the magical paint with which my mind gilded Cambodia has been knocked off. But does culture shock happen after you've lived in a country for nearly a year? Someone recommended "expatriate burnout", and maybe that's my problem. Or maybe it's just my imperfectly-healed thyroid again, who knows?

The bottom line is, it's made me long for my home in the Ohio River valley, half a world away. I miss wide open spaces and egalitarianism. I miss people actually being able to conceive of the fact that I'm not rich. I miss the feeling of not being a hulking giant. I miss being involved in anti-climate change action, and I miss talking to other native speakers of English, in English.

While Phnom Penh can offer a great quality of life for a relatively low cost, it is not my home, and will never be my home. I'm really feeling that reality right now. And for some reason, that has rendered me unable to write blog entries.

Maybe I need to get out of town for a few days...

Ink

Do you see this?

It's the color of anger.

Do you see this?

It's the color of dry-erase ink.

The two are inextricably linked in my current profession. For ones whose trade depends on ink, the amount of angst we undergo to obtain it sometimes boggles my mind. Better let me explain.

Before the start of each term, we're given a dry-erase marker and two refill bottles of ink. The problem with this system is that the dry-erase marker is largely hollow and only holds enough ink for a week (charitably). Each bottle can refill the marker two and a half times. So you tell me--how long does this last? If a term lasts 12 weeks, is the allotment sufficient?

Without being good at math, I can tell you--no, it's not.

Ever since I began working here in December--no matter which campus I am on--dry erase ink is a battle each day. When I first started, I went into the Supply and Logistics room to get my marker refilled, every day. And every day, the guy behind the desk would say "No ink." Then I'd go to class, "Sorry guys, no lesson today: the logistics guy says there's no ink." Students weren't getting what they paid for.

My foreign manager actually lost his temper one day, grabbed the guy, and frog-marched him to class so the logistics guy could explain why my manager couldn't teach. Apparently, it didn't change anything.

All the guy had to do was take a field trip to the supply store and buy some more ink at company expense. Is it so much to ask? (And no, I'm not buying my own and paying the uncompensated "foreigner price", so don't try to argue that one with me.)

This term, I'm teaching on other campuses. The supervisor at one said that "two bottles" were "all he was allowed to give me". And he won't give me any more. So, when I run out of ink in the middle of class, I simply interrupt the lesson to step downstairs and brandish the marker in his face till he refills it with his own ink. We've lost a lot of class time this way.

On the other campus, Supply and Logistics simply refuses to give me any bottles of ink at all (that is, if they even bother to show up for work that morning).

Usually, I break in and plunder whatever inks I can find--if I have to interrupt class and they're not at work...well...

But yesterday takes the cake. After realizing that my marker wasn't going to hold out, I set my students onto an assignment and headed downstairs.

Supply and Logistics was locked. I went to the English Department, who responsibly directed me to Supply and Logistics.

Me: "I'm not leaving this room till you put ink in my marker." (I explained my situation and was very polite, but this is what it boiled down to.)

So, after great rummaging, the admin staff found a refill bottle and a pair of scissors to cut off the plastic tip. The guy then proceeded to frantically refill my marker for the next 90 seconds. He then handed it back to me, and I headed back to class.

About halfway up the stairs, I noticed my marker still felt empty. And there, as I peered at the internal level of ink between the labels on the marker, I discovered that the admin staff had put in approximately .5 cm (three drops) of ink. A mistake? A joke? An attempt to humiliate me?

I don't know what it was, but I can tell tell you that that morning was more red than blue.

If this were China, I'd think all this stuff was their arrogant, passive-aggressive way of telling me that foreigners are too demanding and too wasteful.

But this isn't China, right?

I'm Better

I am not sick now.

I was going to just put up with whatever was bothering me, since it seemed to eliminate all the hunger my thyroid gives me. But after going to work for several days with a fever, I realized that being hungry all the time is slightly less debilitating.

So I ate the albendazole tablets I found in my fridge from that one time when I had the Baby Bird. And that seemed to knock out whatever parasites were eating my intestines.

So I'm ok now.

*But I'm still hungry*

It Just Keeps Getting Better!

Well, haven't posted anything for awhile, my peeps. That's because I've been sick.

But wait, you say. You've been sick since December. NO STATUS CHANGE.

Over the last seven or eight months, I've largely had thyroid problems. But this time something attacked my intestines.

I dunno what it is. Parasite? Giardia? But it's been eating away at my innards for the last week or so, complete with nausea, headache, indigestion, and a fever that forced me to skip out of school on Friday. Not to mention the incessant crapping (lol, just in case you wanted to know that!). And for the record, this is the first incidence of foodborne illness I have experienced since I arrived here.

I haven't bothered to get it fixed, largely because 1. I no longer trust doctors--any doctors--with my health, and, more importantly 2. because this is the first escape from biting hunger I have experienced since December.

So although it's annoying, I think I'll probably let it flourish in my intestines for some time. I'll blog about more stuff whenever I get better, which, at this point, I'm starting to think might be never.

Why It's Time to Leave the Neighborhood, Part II

You may think that because the criminally-intentioned guy has left the neighborhood, my life here is hunky-dory. Well, I am here tonight to put those rumors to rest: Life is not hunky-dory.

In fact, over the course of the last several weeks, it's become downright inhospitable.

First, a pair of American NGO-lesbians (really) has moved into the criminal guy's former apartment. Now, I have nothing against lesbians, even if I do largely disdain the policies and practices of the non-governmental organizations I suspect they serve. But they tend to throw obnoxious parties on their over-sized balcony, with lots of giggling girls in attendance.

This might be less of a problem if the neighbors to the right of them hadn't bought a series of small yapping dogs. At night, they leave these dogs out on the roof. The dogs then start yapping in response to the retards yapping on the balcony next to them.

And if perchance no one is sitting on the balcony gabbing away unnecessarily, the dogs attack each other. From the sound of it, there is one giant "bully" dog that likes to pick on a smaller, more cowardly dog. I hear its shrieks pierce the dark night air; they degenerate into minutes-long screaming, then whimpering, as though dying a multitude of deaths, night after night. What sort of person does this to their dogs?

Don't get me started on the guy on the other side of the lesbians. I simply do not know how one human being can be so inconsiderate of everyone else in the community. He likes to play the guitar at night. Loudly. In addition, he thinks he can sing--except that he really can't. His gravelly, strained voice slides around and slips out of register on every single note! And loudly! So loudly that after slamming my windows shut and shoving earplugs in, it still keeps me awake. This never seems to bother me during the day, but it sure does at, oh, say 3:44 am.

Then there's the unspecified female somewhere on the block that has been noisily having sex just after dark, wailing and moaning like a cheap whore. So loudly that it's embarrassing to have guests over at my house.

This has all started at once; none of this human misery was here a month ago. None of what I am saying is an exaggeration, either. This is literal fact that I am reporting, which is what makes it so annoying.

Right now, the lesbians are hosting a massive Friday-night party. All of them (there are maybe 5 or more) seem to be talking at the same time about literally nothing...gibbering away like birds. They take turns enthusiastically shouting nonsense syllables over all the others (to whom, exactly, it remains uncertain). There are a couple of loud-mouthed British and Australian males. Every so often, they all erupt in obnoxiously loud, sycophantic laughter. This has been going on for 4 hours, and is not likely to let up any time before sunrise.

I'm hypothyroid, and consequently, exhausted and grumpy. I don't want to hear about it. There are presumably social venues for this sort of thing on Friday nights, ladies. Now stop acting like the obnoxious white American female trash that gets me stereotyped on all the message boards. Go away.

What happened to the mini-nuclear cannons I wanted to invent? The one that shoots mini-neutron bombs, thereby disintegrating its targets upon impact? They were supposed to be attached to the car to eliminate self-centered drivers on I-71, but they would be so very useful right now.

My position and plan of attack

Larry and Steve! No Photographs, Please!

The other day, I had a guest over at my apartment. I showed him to the new supermarket near where I live; he in turn pored over the wide selection of goods within.

The diminishing-quality water named "Steve" sent him into hysterics.

So did "Lerry's Cornflakes".

In fact, the store's entire selection of poorly-named, pseudo-Western goods was a source of hours-long merriment for him.

The next day, he came back with a camera and began photographing every product in sight. Finally, a guard, disconcerted by his ridiculous behavior, came over and told him to stop--an order which he did not obey, and which resulted in ongoing scrutiny as we shopped.

Today, I was in the supermarket again, when I discovered a new poster erected in his honor. It said:

LOL.

I Too Can Blame George W. Bush for Everything

I regret to inform the world that Baby has died.

You might think that I fed him improperly, causing him to choke and develop pneumonia. Or you might think that I simply fed him the wrong sorts of food. Or maybe it had nothing to do with me, but the parents simply rejected him because he was diseased in the first place.

You might think that. But actually it was George W. Bush's fault.

Because George W. Bush blew up my house.

Despite the fact that Bush has been out of office for the last two and a half years...despite the fact that now that Obama holds office and we're supposed to blame him for everything...and despite the fact that I am virtually unknown among the US citizenry, let alone to the US government...despite all this, George W. Bush launched a major airstrike on my place of residence last evening, demolishing the building and killing Baby.

Spokesmen say the attacks are retaliation for my representing Libya in the Model Arab League in 2006 and for time spent in Yemen speaking Arabic in 2007. Spokesmen further cite my involvement in Cambodian expatriate life, as the local Western expat community is composed solely of fugitives, convicts, and pedophiles.

The missiles struck as I sat grading my papers last evening. They tore through my roof and demolished all four floors of the apartment complex in a fiery torrent of doom, leaving a nothing but a pile of smoldering rubble in their wake.

Somehow uninjured, I crawled out from the rubble, crying my horror and despair to whatever gods may be.

I called out to Baby, who had been asleep in his nesting box. But his terrified peeping did not return my frantic cries. For my baby bird, who brought me so much light and joy, lay crushed beneath the rocks.

He was laid to rest in a pot with a dead rose bush morning next.

Spokesmen say no other civilians were injured the attacks, presumably because they were out dealing drugs or in brothels. The landlady could not be reached for comment.

***

*Although this story is fiction, in no way shape or form should that detract from the underlying truth of this narrative.

The Save a Sparrow Campaign

I have very good news today.

News so awesome you will pass out with joy and happiness when I tell you...

....

....

....

....

....

Are you ready?

....

....

....

....

....

....

....

Today I am ... A MOMMA!

When I came home from work one afternoon, I found a little pink baby bird lying on my balcony. It looked so sad and dead...I prodded it with a knife, and it began rolling around and peeping.

I have no idea where the nest is, but I suspect it's in the space between the top of the balcony and my corrugated tin roof. No way was I climbing around trying to find out.

I week or two ago, I found an broken sparrow egg lying in the same place. The ants eventually ate it, and they were starting to gather around the baby when I found him lying there. I dusted him off and put him in a toilet-paper nest on the adjacent roof...but no one came for him. Soon the wind came and blew my makeshift nest into the gutter, and he lay there piteously on the blue tin roof with no one to love or care for him.

So I took him inside.

Clearly, Momma and Daddy are unfit to be parents. They built their nest in a bad place (prone to windy conditions that knock out eggs and babies) and don't know how to look after their young. They don't notice when their babies fall to the ground crying for help.

If they're not going to look after him, then I will.

Although I suspect I can't keep Baby alive for very long, I'll set up a page about baby sparrow care if he lives.

I've got a picture of him. You'd think his candid shots were too featherless and ugly if I tried to show you, so I made a sanitized one out of digital paint.

He's the cutest little baby I have ever laid eyes upon, and I love him forever.

Behold! The Dog

I was super-bored this weekend, so I made some pictures on my computer and thought I would share them.

You can look at them under the page "Behold! The Dog". I intend to update the page after I've gotten bored on future days.

Why It's Time to Leave the Neighborhood

To understand this story, you need to know that I live at the dead end of a very long, dark, and winding alleyway. The alleyway connects to a major road, along which lie the neighborhood garbage cans.

You also need to know that I live in a small foreign "ghetto" (read: overpriced island of non-Khmer speakers), and that I have many neighbors, including the British guy who lives on the opposite side of the courtyard from me.

I was coming home one night and was just opening the gate to my stairwell, when I was approached by my neighbor from the opposite side of the courtyard.

It was completely dark, mind you; he appeared out of the shadows and caught me by the shoulder. I turned to face him.

"If anyone asks you," he said, eyes darting, "you didn't see me putting any plastic bags in the garbage." He leaned forward intently, as if daring me to challenge his posture of menace. "Are you cool with that?"

I didn't bother to tell him that it was so dark I didn't even see him by the garbage cans, let alone make any note of it. If you're gonna commit a crime, don't give yourself away by being paranoid about it. Better yet, don't commit a crime in the first place, especially one that your neighbors have to cover up despite their knowing nothing about it.

Eventually, the guy disappeared from the neighborhood, and some new tenants moved into the apartment on the opposite side of the courtyard.

Although I still don't know what to make of this incident, I probably should have demanded a quantity of hush money from him.

The Sexist Airline Rant

When my computer died in April and I was too sick to get it fixed, I spent a lot of time watching CNN, which my TV seems to intercept for some reason. Annoyingly enough, the station runs commercials every ten minutes, and they are all the SAME commercials, too.

Besides CNN's own self-referential advertising, the commercials tend to be either Gulf Arab Oil Money promotions of the Gulf State portrayed, or else they are airline ads. Having listened to these ads in a comatose state (and consequently unable to change the channel) for many weeks in a row, my patience with them has worn thin. This is especially true for the airline ads. There are three airlines that advertise on CNN, and I hate each one.

THEIR ADS ARE SO OBNOXIOUS. For one thing, you are stuck listening to the same 3 airlines each advertise at least five times an hour. For another, they are blatantly sexist. THERE IS ONE AIRLINE IN PARTICULAR I AM THINKING OF. To find out which one, please view the embedded clip below (sorry it's so big. The producers want their airline to be noticed):

Imagine listening to this ad five times an hour for weeks on end. The theme song itself is enough to induce ire at this frequency (it starts off ALL Cathay-Pacific's ads, so I know when they're coming on). Don't even get me started on the psychopathic-looking businessman. And the GIRL: [unnatural pause] "How. Did. You. Know. ?." At least pick an actress who knows basic English and isn't just reciting memorized sounds.

Also annoying is Asiana Airlines' portrayal of "a beautiful journey":

And the word "beautiful" is emphasized by the image of a pretty, giggling Asian flight attendant.

Maybe I'm being overly irascible, but this is the sort of the thing you notice after hearing an ad so many times. I might add that such repetition of obnoxious music is really similar to a technique that's used on Guantanamo Bay detainees in order to extract information.

It also reveals CNN Asia's target audience. As near as I can tell, I'm supposed to be a wanna-be-successful international businessman with Yellow Fever who is in bad need of an ego massage by "subservient" Asian girls, AND whose hobbies include playing with pseudo-James-Bond-style electronics and pretty Asian twenty-something-or-younger call-girls. Am I right?

Like so many things here in South East Asia, it begs the question: Am I welcome on the airlines (or anywhere else) in this region as a highly unsuccessful white female?

Close Encounters of the Cambodian Kind

I have two favorite restaurants in Phnom Penh. By strange coincidence, both of them are blue: The Blue Pumpkin and The Blue Dolphin.

The Blue Dolphin is a family/bar-girl run restaurant with cheap delicious food. It's not air-conditioned, but they have comfy wicker chairs, chocolate shakes, free water, and the girls who work there are really nice. It's really close to my house, too.

The Blue Pumpkin is farther away, but is really chic. You can go in with your laptop and work for hours and hours in the air-conditioned, free-WiFi, comfy-white-couched environment. The problem is that you get charged Western prices for all the food (some of which, like the Pumelo-pork salad, is worth it).

The people at Blue Pumpkin, by the way, hate me. Every time I go in, I always wind up doing something douchey: I break a glass, I leave dirty footprints on the couch, I buy a glass of water and then sit there for seven hours without buying anything else, I start fights over the cost of their food, my friend falls asleep and snores loudly, etc. Sometimes, I annoy them simply because they think they've got me figured out.

Them: "I know! You want cinnamon ice-cream, right? Like how you've ordered for the last 27 days in a row!"

Me: "LOL!!! Today I want PASSION FRUIT ice cream!" And that's annoying of me. I am truly the Blue Pumpkin's problem child.

So, I decided to give them a break from my demanding, contrarian ways and hit up the Blue Dolphin instead. In doing so, I got a lesson on the Cambodian concept of personal space. Or lack thereof.

I came in with a mass of final exams. For some time, I contentedly sat and graded them in the cool, fan-generated breeze.

Suddenly, I became aware of a green-shirted presence.

Looking up, I saw that one of the girls had, like an angel of death, materialized over my left shoulder. She was intently watching me work.

There was nothing left to do but acknowledge her presence.

This made it impossible to work, but. . .okaaay. . .

Then, for reasons still unfathomable to me, she bent down, hugged me, and proceeded to rest her hands more or less permanently on my shoulders. Her eyes were fixed on my exams, and I was trapped like a rat.

Eventually, after I crammed the exams back in their envelope and began pointedly drinking my glass of water, she wandered away. But I didn't dare take the exams back out. Not a chance.

Because grading English exams is the most fascinating thing anyone could possibly do--except when you're the teacher that has to grade them!*

*In front of an adoring audience to boot...

Kind of Bean with A Pod!

Really??