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...

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Are you ready?

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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??

Roaches Are Gross to Eat

I have never eaten a cockroach, but I almost did today. The worst part about this is that I thought I was ordering a pork chop.

There's a small, half-formed grocery store down the road from me. It has pretensions of being a much bigger, more important store than it actually is, and I like their selection of produce. Plus, it's refrigerated and air-conditioned.

So, I was at this supermarket today, and outside the supermarket is a restaurant called Black Canyon Coffee, which apparently serves Thai-Western fusion food despite its Wild West logo (even though this is Cambodia and all.) Because I was in the middle of an intense sugar crash at the time (this was like 11 am because my digestion is so pathetic these days) I sat down and ordered food. Most of it is ridiculously cheap, and I guess what you pay for is what you get.

It was so nice: a large pork chop and fries, a small salad, and four little squares of toast--all for $3.95. I took one bite of the pork and discovered a young cockroach, broken up and flattened, lying just under the slab of meat.

As someone who habitually eats the ants that get into her sugar, I was less troubled about the fact that there was a roach under my pork chop, than I was troubled by the question, Why there was a roach under my pork chop.

If it were a fly, that would be understandable. Flies get into things. The same with ants--I haven't met a person in this city who doesn't have a problem with the ants. Moreover, having worked in a bakery, I know that insects can get into flour and grains sometimes.

But a cockroach? On a pork chop? That's a pretty serious health violation there!

I stared at it so long that finally the wait staff came over (like literally the entire wait staff).

I pointed to the roach and simply said, "This is not good."

Waiter (after sheepishly taking the plate of rejected food): "We are SO SORRY. Would you like to try something else?"

Me: "No. I really don't. In fact, I don't ever want to eat anything from here again."

And so saying, I backed slowly towards the door, then walked out the door, down the road, and directly to the bottle of antibiotics sitting on my dresser. Because lord knows what else that poor pork chop, plate, fries, or salad had on it.*

The moral of this story is, Don't eat at Black Canyon Coffee.

*This is actually the first egregious violation of health standards I have encountered in my 7+ months here.

Good People are Born in May

So what do you do for your birthday?

Picnic in a park? Dinner out with friends? Par-TAY??

Do you get a national holiday, five days off work, and fireworks the night before your big day? Well, DO YA?

I do! I used to hate my birthday, because, apart from Mike Oldfield and the guy who wrote The Wizard of Oz, no famous people have been born on May Fifteenth. No AWESOME famous people anyway.

And guess what? Still no one is! But the king of this country was born on the 14th, and so, as long as I live in Cambodia, my birthday will always within the "birthday sandwich" of time off.

There is pretty much no other equally cool ruler on the planet today (except Sheikh Mohammed). King Sihamoni is the awesome sort of king who has studied film-making in North Korea, taught ballet in Paris, and *ahem* thinks of women as his sisters. He formerly served as Cambodia's ambassador to UNESCO (I AM JEALOUS). A shy and sensitive soul, he was somewhat uncomfortable being named king/demi-god--which ought to be the first qualification for the job! He is mostly apolitical. He radiates goodness.

Most charming picture of a sovereign ruler ever! -->>>

Like I say, Good people are born in May!

AND I got a perfect view of the fireworks from my balcony!

And that is the reason I am now happy with my birthday, May the Fifteenth. Happy Birthday to all, and to all a good night!

This Is What Hypothyroidism Is

Some symptoms of hypothyroidism:

• Depression
• Cold intolerance
• Menstrual irregularities
• Sleep disturbances
• Cognitive impairment
• FATIGUE**

"Fatigue". Hypothyroidism has redefined what "fatigue" means to me. I used to think I felt "fatigue" after pulling an all-nighter. I thought that running a mile was the most physically exhausting thing I had ever done. I now long for those innocent days.

If, for some inexplicable reason, you want to know how I was feeling, go out one evening and do heavy physical labor. Till dawn. Come home and relax for half an hour or so, just until it's time to get up for work.

Can you feel the creaky, aching exhaustion pervading every last fiber in your body? You just want to lie down again, but you can't, because you have the whole day ahead of you, and you must spend it being energetic, patient, and very, very happy.

Throughout your pathetically short four-hour day, you find yourself failing miserably. You are unnaturally sleepy. People are asking you things--important things!--and you can't muster the energy to give much more than an apathetic, half-assed answer based on your flawed understanding of their semi-coherent words. You could be falling from the sky in a burning jet plane, but dammit, who cares? The only thing you want from life is to close your eyes! And thus the day carries on.

When it's all over, you can't actually remember what you talked about, who you talked to, or if any of this actually happened or if it was another one of those vivid dreams that keep you flailing around all night.

You're vaguely aware as you walk home, that some other beings are moving around you, but your swollen, blackened eyes are too overwhelmed by the sun and the non-existent fog for you to properly acknowledge their existence. You're also vaguely aware that the air is much, much too hot and that your body is wracked with nauseating shooting pains.

But it doesn't matter that your body is self-destructing, as long as you can lie down. Your sole purpose in life has become lying down in bed for the remaining 20 hours of your day, eyes closed.

You're ok as long as you do that. But you're not ok if you try to do housework, answer the phone, wash the dishes, grade papers, surf the internet, or even keep your eyes open. You've got to ration your energy to one task per day, and usually that task is finding food to temporarily diminish your abnormal appetite.

Eventually, you fall into a disturbed, shallow sleep from which you awaken every two hours to go to the bathroom, hungry and haunted by your dreams, which are somehow more real than your waking hours.

You wake up in the morning--face puffy, lips puffy, hands puffy, feet and ankles puffy, knees hardly able to bend, your belly distended from fat and water retention--and as conscious thought begins to piece itself together, you slowly realize that today--you get to do it all over again.

Laptop Fixed. Thyroid Down!

I have a lot of stuff to say about pretty much everything, and yet I've posted...what, two times within the last month?

I wanted to do it more often, but first my laptop broke, and I couldn't afford to get it fixed. This is especially true when the technician charges you more than the computer itself is worth because ALL white people have Croesus-like wealth capabilities and generate great piles of cash simply as part of their biological processes.

I speak in bitterness because I finally got a second opinion on the computer this weekend. As a consequence, estimated costs of repair were down-graded from $350+ for a new motherboard to $40 for a thorough check-up and CPU power block repair. My affordably-repaired computer now sits on my lap, its keyboard eager to channel my thoughts and emotions onto the internet.

So for the last five weeks, my laptop's been lying uselessly in a bag in the corner of my room for the ants to explore, unbeloved by friend and foe alike. But that was OK, I could use an internet cafe to write all the posts I wanted, right?

Wrong.

For the last month, starting at about the same time my computer ceased to function, I became completely and utterly hypothyroid. Damaged from months of viral infection and unable to function, my thyroid was finally down for the count. I became tired--debilitatingly tired. Tired like I've never felt before. I had the energy and mental capabilities of a malaria victim.

What this means is that, for several weeks, just getting out of bed was a major effort. Walking down the road to school was a major expedition of gargantuan proportions. Staying awake while teaching class? Forget it. And getting to an internet cafe was simply out of the question.

So that's how I've been this month.

Will, Kate, and Osama bin Laden! Cambodia, China, and the USA! THIS POST HAS IT ALL.

In a covert pseudo-military operation that defies description, Osama bin Laden killed nearly three thousand individuals, instigated massive retaliatory wars that now threaten destroy the US financially, and inspired a violent global jihadist movement. Reviled by most of the world, he yet managed to hide in plain sight for the better part of decade. He was fanatic, a jihadist, and probably a genius. He was also the person who first sparked my interest in the Middle East, the Arab world, terrorism, and Islam.

Al-Qaeda's actions have probably altered the course of my life. If not for the network's regrettable actions, would likely have never majored in Middle Eastern history, Arabic, and International Affairs. I would never have met the people I did or witnessed the events that I did. Nor would I have traveled to Dubai, which has completely altered my world view. I might not even be in Cambodia right now, having never discovered the world outside America.

It was not always easy--Middle Eastern studies brought me a lot of pain. There are elements in my family that believe Middle East=Arabs=Muslims=EVIL, and therefore, my interest in the region was driving my family straight to Hell. Despite the obvious stupidity of this reasoning, I was attacked and virtually kicked out of the house on the grounds of "terrorism" (if reading about the Ottoman Empire and representing Libya in the Model Arab League can be said to constitute "terrorism").

In still other ways, I'm not sure whether or not Middle Eastern studies have brought me ANY benefit--there's no telling where I'd be now if I had chosen another field of study. Would I have majored in Classics, like all of my parents and parental figures? Would I have gone into law? Graphic design? Would I have a lucrative career now, instead of being a struggling adventurer with a semi-defunct thyroid? Or, without a passion to sustain me, would I have become disillusioned with college and still be working in the food industry in small-town Ohio?

For better or for worse, Osama bin Laden and his work decided the course of my young adult life, and it's been hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that he's really gone.

That said, maybe my degree doesn't matter. I've certainly never done anything with it, and I am now living in Cambodia, which is not a Middle Eastern or Arab country by any standard. The dire warnings worldwide that Americans should be super-vigilant upon bin Laden's death is somewhat irrelevant here. Apart from the obligatory front page on all the newspapers, no one seems to care that America's arch-villain is dead. The most I got was a sentence from one (out of maybe 100) of my students, informing me that "Osama bin Laden was a very cruel man" (vocab word, cruel). The life I once built is now literally a world away, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

I can tell you what is a bad thing, though, at least in my mind. I don't like the American response to it's own victory. I don't complain that they killed bin Laden in a tactically brilliant operation--he was fair game as far as I'm concerned. I don't even much care that they dumped his dead body in the sea like so much refuse. No, what bothers me is what I have seen on the news.

Thousands of college students, most of whom I dare say were too young to really remember or understand the significance of the attacks, and most of whose lives were NOT altered by the attacks, gathered dressed in red-white-and-blue, celebrating the fact that some people were killed. Good job, my younger brothers and sisters--you look just like the folks who cheered when the twin towers fell.

It annoys me, but it's understandable.

What's worse is the way the US government refuses to release key information, e.g. photos. I was especially not fond of the excuses, "They're too gruesome" and "we don't parade dead bodies around like trophies". These statements are ironic in light of the gruesome photos (*trophies*) published of Osama bin Laden's son and two of his couriers--and for that matter, the photos of Uday and Qusay Hussein back during the invasion of Iraq. I find the pretense repulsive.

Then Barack Obama tried to invoke "security" reasons. I maintain that 1) the US should have been far MORE worried about security when they invaded and destabilized Iraq, Afghanistan, and their neighbors, and that 2) this line of rationale sounds disturbingly close to one of my Least Favored Nations, China, which habitually censors everything under the pretense of "stability".

The recent release of muted and heavily edited al-Qaeda videos only confirms this. I would ask my country to stop taking its cues from China.

And last--I have only fate to blame for this one--I ask why, why, WHY this couldn't have happened several days earlier so I wouldn't have to watch Will and Kate's wedding ALL WEEKEND LONG? I had hoped and prayed for something of this magnitude to happen--and it did--48 hours TOO LATE. Damn.

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.

Earth Hour, 2011: Not a Moment Too Late

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am rabidly involved in the anti-climate change movement. This is largely because climate change threatens Planet Earth, the existence of which and upon which my future lies directly contingent.

Because I don't want to die, like Jesus, under painful circumstances at the age of thirty-three, I would like you to take a moment to consider the consequences of our actions on this earth.

Start small. Saving the planet is not easy! Speaking as one who has tried, I would say it's well-nigh impossible--impossible, that is, without YOUR help.

So here is an easy way to help: Earth Hour, celebrated this 26 March 2011 (i.e., TODAY) from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

It's really easy! Just switch off your lights and every other electric thing for one hour.

Don't forget your fridge and heating/cooling! Be sure to unplug your laptop as well (I almost forgot; luckily my battery has insane power and I can still blog while I sit here electricitiless). Your home should now look approximatively like the image to your right.

Now we can sit around and stare at the blackness for an ENTIRE EARTH-SAVING HOUR!!!

Bad Thyroid! Heal!

If I have learned one thing during my time here, it is: Don't ever get a thyroid infection.

I think I am recovering from one right now, and it sucks. SUCKS.

Sometime in early- to mid-January, my body suddenly started destroying itself. You can read the very long version of what happened to me right here (and it still doesn't really explain everything I went through), but I don't want to repeat it all here. It's grim.

The illness was really, really acute for about the first 4-6 weeks (it's the "near-death" crisis that led me to create this blog). After that, it slowly started getting better, but suffice to say, it's still causing me some grief.

This is your thyroid:

When it's attacked by antibodies or a virus, it starts freaking out, shedding all of it's special "T4" thyroid hormones, which looks approximately like this:

Too much T4 shed into your bloodstream will intoxicate you. It puts you into a hypermetabolic state, turning you into an insane maniac that will eat everything in his/her path. You are also constantly freaked out and convinced that you are going to die.

Recovery has been a long, slow battle to be fought day-to-day, hour-to-hour, breath-to-breath. Hope and pray that you never have to know what hyperthyroidism feels like!

This week, I have been feeling okay (sort of. Except for the bone-weariness, sensitivity to temperatures, and the need to eat entire pizzas four times a day). Next week, who knows? I may feel 100%...or I may descend back to the depths of hell...it's carrying on waaaay longer than the internet says it's supposed to.

I shouldn't rely on the internet to solve my problems, but...the medical establishment denies that I even have a problem. They tell me it's "just stress" or a "bid for attention", or worse, that I am a drug addict. That would be funny if it weren't such an insulting falsehood.

So this is where the start of this blog finds me: trying to get better, and hoping I have nothing worse than a temporary inflammation of the thyroid (although if this is the case, I get to go HYPOthyroid next!).

No, it has nothing to do with Phnom Penh, but if I randomly die, this is probably the reason!

Why Cambodia Is More Awesome Than China

About a year ago, for reasons now lost to the pages of history, I decided I really, really, really wanted to teach English in China. So I bought a visa and a ticket for the next flight to Cambodia, where there was a TESOL training program.

I thought Cambodia was great starting from the time I wheeled my luggage off the carousel and crossed customs. Not great--fabulous. In a bubble of bliss, I came to and from teacher training each day. I joyfully shopped and ate at market each day. I learned a hundred words of Khmer and some numbers and spouted them off to everyone I met.

Then the month of training came to an end, and I grudgingly, tearfully, flew to Jining, China.

As far as grungy industrial Chinese cities go, I suppose Jining was up to snuff. But I'd look up at the perpetually grey skies and the Soviet-style warehouses that Chinese people call apartments...and I'd miss the vibrancy of Cambodia.

I'd look at the shit and vomit lining the streets of Jining; I'd spend hours locked in the bathroom because of E.coli-laced Chinese food...and I'd miss the personal cleanliness standards of Cambodians.

I'd parade around like a freak for the Chinese to point and laugh at...and I'd miss the subtle cosmopolitanism of Phnom Penh.

I became a scratching post for Chinese moms (who are literally the most savage people I've come across in my time, and this includes several Middle Eastern dictators), and hell, I missed the laid-back tolerance of the Khmer people.

So I came back. My situation deteriorated rather markedly in Jining, so I booked the first flight out of Jinan and came back to Phnom Penh. Like a refugee, I carried all I owned on my back and found myself living in makeshift accommodations.

And despite workplace drama, illness, thyroid inflammations, hunger, and ignorant people thinking I'm rich, I have not regretted my return to Cambodia. Not for one moment.

I am supposed to be here.

I say this not out of infatuation. It is core knowledge. For reasons that aren't immediately clear to me, I am somehow fated to be in this country. That's as close as I can come to explaining it.

I don't know how this will play out, or what my future holds. All I ask is that you stay with me, my readers. We will discover the answer together.

Before We Begin...

This blog is actually a continuation of my old one on travelblog.org. I started off with plans to travel, but seeing that I've lived in Phnom Penh for the last five months and haven't traveled at all, I figure the least I can do is set up a proper blog. Hopefully, one that's more user friendly and has better control over the visual aids.

Here is a link to my old one, if you'd like to know my back-story. It's in reverse chronological order: The adventures of a global drifter begin...

After a recent brush with my own mortality (which, as it turns out, wasn't actually all that dangerous, even though I was convinced that death was closing in all around me), I have decided that it would behoove me to leave a legacy.

Since I'm one of those odd American girls with no reservations about moving to developing countries for the heck of it, and since I haven't found a lot of other girls like me, I have come to the conclusion that the best thing I can do is leave a record of my experiences here.

Maybe I can inspire someone else to follow her dreams. Who knows?