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.