Obligatory post for the month of August.

I know I hardly write in this bastard anymore.  I've considered shutting it down.  Truth is, I'm 99.99% recovered from my 20-month thyroid disease and...well, I just don't have the patience to sit still and write about mundanities anymore.  Actually, it's all I can do to get out of my head and take care of life.

Looking back over the blog, I feel a bit disappointed by my lack of Adventures or Bad Choices.  When I started, I assumed I'd be better in a couple of months and then I could start writing about the wacky stuff with more gusto.  Instead, I've just become lazy and accustomed to sitting around doing nothing.  Plus, I'm broke, and since I'm awarding myself with an unearned vacation, there's not a lot of income I can spend doing wacky stuff.

But maybe I'll keep the blog up a little longer.  I've learned a lot of things about myself over the last 20 months--about my own mortality for one thing.

I've learned that I'm really resilient and actually far less able to acknowledge the dark side of life than I would have originally guessed.  I'm a very grim, dark, and negative sort of person (really), so I just assumed something like being sick and alone in a foreign country would have crushed my soul...instead, I hardly remember it.

Another thing I have learned about myself is that I know how to read a crowd.  Really, really well.  After just walking into the room, I generally know what the class is going to be like for the rest of the term.  Yes, I can really feel it when people are collectively lazy, combative, compliant, or happy.  Pretty useful as far as I'm concerned, especially since I'm also learning that I can mould collective behavior into something else.

As much as I hate colonialism, it really did set up infrastructure that relates the country to the rest of the world.  That's why I can buy Betty Crocker in backasswards little Phnom Penh, but couldn't find anything remotely resembling this anywhere in big bad China.  Even the Khmer Rouge couldn't destroy Cambodia's orientation towards the rest of the world.

Also that bananas, ratatouille, and liver and onions all taste good.  And wild rats, mice, and cockroaches aren't too scary after all.

You really do learn something new every day!