The Ultimate Cat Food Serendipity

There is a cat that lives nearby my apartment. I've sort of befriended it, which means it thinks it can follow me around meowing. Like Siamese cats, Cambodian cats have very loud, obnoxious voices and are very vocal towards humans. So, to get it to shut up, I've been feeding it baby cat food left over from that one time when I had the baby sparrow.

I don't have a balcony-proof bowl, so I put the baby cat food into an old piece of tupperware and left it on the balcony for the cat to consume at will.

Now for you to understand why the next part happens, you need to know that the landlady has a maid who cleans up the balconies sometimes. Although this means I have less work to do myself, the maid inevitably comes at 7:45 in the morning, just as I am leaving for work. And there is no fixed schedule--sometimes she doesn't show up for weeks, and sometimes she shows up on two consecutive days. Then I have to either step all over her while she's scrubbing the floor, or else wait inside the apartment till she goes away. It's always very inconvenient.

This morning, I discovered her bent over on my balcony at 7:45 as I was trying to get downstairs. Then, as I rounded the corner at the bottom of the steps, I saw that she had commandeered my tupperware full of catfood. It was sitting with her other belongings. I wasn't sure if she intended to steal it or not, but I, for one, wasn't about to let it happen.

Running late for school already, and unwilling to climb back over her to get inside my house, I took the cat food with me to school.

I probably looked fairly ridiculous carrying a lidless piece of tupperware half-filled with cat food five blocks to school, but that didn't really occur to me at the time. I was saving that food from an untimely disappearance, dammit! My world was back in order, and nothing else mattered.

Of course this meant I was stuck carrying baby cat food around to each of my classes.

I found it made a pretty good conversation piece, and had students write about why a teacher would bring baby cat food to school. Certain that I would use it to illustrate a point, they developed elaborate theories as to why it was sitting on my desk. It was pretty funny when they found out that, like my propensity to walk around barefoot, there wasn't actually any reason for it.

Baby cat food is also pretty good for making people leave me alone. Case in point: I was sitting around during break and a student came up to me demanding "English practice with a foreigner".

Me: OK, but I charge for it.

Him: Are you a student or a teacher here?

Me: I said, You have to pay me if you want English Practice. No free lessons.

Him: I bet you're a teacher!

Me: I charge for English lessons, OK?

Him: So how long have you been in Cambodia?

Me: * ! * Would you like some American food? It's REALLY GOOD.

I also found out that cat food can be used as a disciplinary measure. Like lumps of coal, it was distributed to noisier members of my "special" class, who were then forced to eat it. In all, I'd say it was pretty serendipitously wonderful.

The glorious adventure of the baby cat food came to a somewhat inglorious end when, on my way home, I inexplicably dropped the tupperware and the little pellets spilled all over the parking lot of Sacombank.

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

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?