Friday 6/4/07
An average day in the life...
Reading over my last few instalments it has become apparent that I sound like I am doing a lot. The truth is, is that there is a lot of sitting around between doing really cool things. So to break this image people may be forming of me saving entire communities single handed, pushing back the scourge of corruption and bring democracy to the people, I have decided to detail an average day of my life in Kampong Thom:
Wake up at about 5.30am when the sun rises and shafts of light bore through the wooden windows. Lie in bed for two hours trying to ignore my stomach cramps and cursing the fact that it is already hot and I am sweating, despite having the fan pointed directly at me. (Over the last week I have had the added joy of waking to the neighbour’s music – it has been the festival of the dead, I think they are actually trying to wake the dead. They like to kick things off between 4am and 5am – now I get a bit antsy where here an alarm go off at a low level, so music blaring at levels I have only heard in night clubs or at concerts standing next to the speaker does not entirely impress me, but mostly starts around 7ish, by which time I am wide awake anyhow).
After I get up I often grunt at Shin before getting ready for work. I have to dress fairly conservatively for work – long sleeve shirts and long pants (with sandals of course – I bought some faux Birkenstocks in Phnom Penh for $7 - bargain!). I also lather myself in repellent and sun cream – there has been a bit of a dengue epidemic around Kampong Thom over the last few years and my office is opposite a swampy area.
Sometimes I make breakfast, but usually I get some noodles from a road side dinner (by which I mean a couple of chairs on the footpath next to someone cooking) on the way to work. The cycle ride to work is about 1 km. Not very far – but I do have to avoid the dogs, chickens, cows, ducks, children, buffalo and other human traffic (including tour buses steaming through town and crazy moto drivers). There is one particular dog (which I suspect is rabid mostly because it doesn’t like me) that likes to chase me and bark loudly. To put it plainly – I hate it. I plan on eating it before I leave town (actually, the Khmer don’t like eating dog – they only did so during the Khmer Rouge period when there was no other food. Now it is frowned upon).
I arrive at work around 8ish, sit around and say hello to everyone (they don’t say hello to each other – they just smile and nod at each other – so they indulge me). If I have work to do usually I do it first thing in the morning before it gets too hot. But most days I do some Khmer practice from a book, chat to the other staff, write emails on my laptop or try to break my top score on pinball. Now I know a few people out there will think I have merely transported my old ways in Sydney to Cambodia (I never realise how much work I put into work avoidance before). But, seriously it can be quite dull and frustrating. Even when I push for work it hardly ever comes. We warned about this though. It is simply not the Khmer way to make people work hard for the first few months – not until they get to know you. So I have put it down to a ‘learning’ experience and make sure I take something to do to work.
By about 12 noon it is scorching hot and time to go home for my two hour lunch break. I usually swing by the markets to buy something fresh to make lunch with (the town isn’t that big and it is kinda on the way home) and a cold drink.
It is so hot by this stage, I usually have to take some clothes off (sexy I know – but it helps it the sweat dry – not so sexy now, hey) while I have lunch. After lunch I sleep for an hour or so on the hammock with the fan at maximum setting and angle. Most days I wish I could just stay there in the hammock, relaxing with my thoughts, but somehow I manage to get up and ride through the thick thick heat to get back to work.
No one does much in the afternoon. We usually sit around eating fresh fruit and chatting (read ‘relationship building’), waiting for five o’clock to come. No one dares to leave early, unless they have a good reason.
After work I swing by the market again and/or the internet café. Generally, Shin and I take turns doing the cooking, even though our options are quite limited. I like to eat dinner on the veranda over looking the river with a few drinks (I bought some gin and vodka in Siem Reap). Sometimes we watch TV. There is an Aussie channel that shows Aerobics Oz style! But aside from the ABC Asia news it has little else of interested. We also get BBC, NBC, CNN, a movie channel (which changes every few days to another movie channel) and a heap of Khmer and Hindi channels. There is this guy that is always on TV – I think he is like the Khmer Daryl Sommers (circa 1984 – during the Hey, Hey it’s Saturday period). He wears a big mop like wig, a fat fake moustache and a tight tight tight yellow t-shirt. Apparently he is very funny, but just like Mr Sommers, I can’t understand why. Most evening though I read or listen to music or call our other friends from the program and see what they have been up to. Sometimes we catch up with the other expats in town for a game of badminton and some drinks.
At night we have to negotiate having the fan on high and trying to get the mosquito net to stay in place. Any romantic notions I may have had about mosquito nets have been quashed by the practical realities. Once tucked in, it is a pain the arse to get out again, but inevitably I have to go to the toilet five minutes after I get settled. Usually I am in bed by 10 pm – mostly because there isn’t much else happening and I try to go to sleep.
But, because of the afore mentioned ‘festival of the dead’ sleeping hasn’t been so easy this week. The music and mega phones have been blaring well into the night – at one point I could hear it clearly over my ipod at top notch – it was soooooo LOUD! Now, I have thrown some loud parties in my time, but nothing compared to this. For such a quite people they sure love an amplifier and speakers. Shin and I decided to check out the action and road past on our way away from the noise early this morning. There were only about 30 people there! They were just sitting round drinking tea under colourful awnings. I always say though – if you got more than 5 people coming to a celebration you an amplifier is a must.
While I am writing this some guys are working outside my window. They are putting up an awning on a second floor building. I feel ill looking at them. They are standing on this flimsy scaffolding thing (which buckles under their weight) with a ladder lying across it, in thongs, welding (with no glasses or protective clothes on). A while ago some of the structure fell down, but no one was hurt. I am just waiting for one of them to die. I expressed my concern to my colleagues, but they just shrugged it off. That is how they do things here.
Till next time
Erin
An average day in the life...
Reading over my last few instalments it has become apparent that I sound like I am doing a lot. The truth is, is that there is a lot of sitting around between doing really cool things. So to break this image people may be forming of me saving entire communities single handed, pushing back the scourge of corruption and bring democracy to the people, I have decided to detail an average day of my life in Kampong Thom:
Wake up at about 5.30am when the sun rises and shafts of light bore through the wooden windows. Lie in bed for two hours trying to ignore my stomach cramps and cursing the fact that it is already hot and I am sweating, despite having the fan pointed directly at me. (Over the last week I have had the added joy of waking to the neighbour’s music – it has been the festival of the dead, I think they are actually trying to wake the dead. They like to kick things off between 4am and 5am – now I get a bit antsy where here an alarm go off at a low level, so music blaring at levels I have only heard in night clubs or at concerts standing next to the speaker does not entirely impress me, but mostly starts around 7ish, by which time I am wide awake anyhow).
After I get up I often grunt at Shin before getting ready for work. I have to dress fairly conservatively for work – long sleeve shirts and long pants (with sandals of course – I bought some faux Birkenstocks in Phnom Penh for $7 - bargain!). I also lather myself in repellent and sun cream – there has been a bit of a dengue epidemic around Kampong Thom over the last few years and my office is opposite a swampy area.
Sometimes I make breakfast, but usually I get some noodles from a road side dinner (by which I mean a couple of chairs on the footpath next to someone cooking) on the way to work. The cycle ride to work is about 1 km. Not very far – but I do have to avoid the dogs, chickens, cows, ducks, children, buffalo and other human traffic (including tour buses steaming through town and crazy moto drivers). There is one particular dog (which I suspect is rabid mostly because it doesn’t like me) that likes to chase me and bark loudly. To put it plainly – I hate it. I plan on eating it before I leave town (actually, the Khmer don’t like eating dog – they only did so during the Khmer Rouge period when there was no other food. Now it is frowned upon).
I arrive at work around 8ish, sit around and say hello to everyone (they don’t say hello to each other – they just smile and nod at each other – so they indulge me). If I have work to do usually I do it first thing in the morning before it gets too hot. But most days I do some Khmer practice from a book, chat to the other staff, write emails on my laptop or try to break my top score on pinball. Now I know a few people out there will think I have merely transported my old ways in Sydney to Cambodia (I never realise how much work I put into work avoidance before). But, seriously it can be quite dull and frustrating. Even when I push for work it hardly ever comes. We warned about this though. It is simply not the Khmer way to make people work hard for the first few months – not until they get to know you. So I have put it down to a ‘learning’ experience and make sure I take something to do to work.
By about 12 noon it is scorching hot and time to go home for my two hour lunch break. I usually swing by the markets to buy something fresh to make lunch with (the town isn’t that big and it is kinda on the way home) and a cold drink.
It is so hot by this stage, I usually have to take some clothes off (sexy I know – but it helps it the sweat dry – not so sexy now, hey) while I have lunch. After lunch I sleep for an hour or so on the hammock with the fan at maximum setting and angle. Most days I wish I could just stay there in the hammock, relaxing with my thoughts, but somehow I manage to get up and ride through the thick thick heat to get back to work.
No one does much in the afternoon. We usually sit around eating fresh fruit and chatting (read ‘relationship building’), waiting for five o’clock to come. No one dares to leave early, unless they have a good reason.
After work I swing by the market again and/or the internet café. Generally, Shin and I take turns doing the cooking, even though our options are quite limited. I like to eat dinner on the veranda over looking the river with a few drinks (I bought some gin and vodka in Siem Reap). Sometimes we watch TV. There is an Aussie channel that shows Aerobics Oz style! But aside from the ABC Asia news it has little else of interested. We also get BBC, NBC, CNN, a movie channel (which changes every few days to another movie channel) and a heap of Khmer and Hindi channels. There is this guy that is always on TV – I think he is like the Khmer Daryl Sommers (circa 1984 – during the Hey, Hey it’s Saturday period). He wears a big mop like wig, a fat fake moustache and a tight tight tight yellow t-shirt. Apparently he is very funny, but just like Mr Sommers, I can’t understand why. Most evening though I read or listen to music or call our other friends from the program and see what they have been up to. Sometimes we catch up with the other expats in town for a game of badminton and some drinks.
At night we have to negotiate having the fan on high and trying to get the mosquito net to stay in place. Any romantic notions I may have had about mosquito nets have been quashed by the practical realities. Once tucked in, it is a pain the arse to get out again, but inevitably I have to go to the toilet five minutes after I get settled. Usually I am in bed by 10 pm – mostly because there isn’t much else happening and I try to go to sleep.
But, because of the afore mentioned ‘festival of the dead’ sleeping hasn’t been so easy this week. The music and mega phones have been blaring well into the night – at one point I could hear it clearly over my ipod at top notch – it was soooooo LOUD! Now, I have thrown some loud parties in my time, but nothing compared to this. For such a quite people they sure love an amplifier and speakers. Shin and I decided to check out the action and road past on our way away from the noise early this morning. There were only about 30 people there! They were just sitting round drinking tea under colourful awnings. I always say though – if you got more than 5 people coming to a celebration you an amplifier is a must.
While I am writing this some guys are working outside my window. They are putting up an awning on a second floor building. I feel ill looking at them. They are standing on this flimsy scaffolding thing (which buckles under their weight) with a ladder lying across it, in thongs, welding (with no glasses or protective clothes on). A while ago some of the structure fell down, but no one was hurt. I am just waiting for one of them to die. I expressed my concern to my colleagues, but they just shrugged it off. That is how they do things here.
Till next time
Erin
1 comment:
hey erin..really enjoying your publications..sounds like you're truly making a difference..in case u can't remember who i am..liz's sister-outlaw..paul's big sis..ok u take care of u and all those little people...
Post a Comment