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...

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....

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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.