| Wednesday, April 30, 2008 |
| Gingerbread houses |
 Gingerbread! Actually, someone probably stuck Brite-Lites into the shape of a palace, but it does look romantic.
 Sayonara MisterV... at the best Japanese restaurant in town, with the worst service. This night, the city was having power cuts, so the whole place went pitch-dark every 7 minutes. It was bloody hot, because of the weather outside and the burning (yakiniku!) coal pits inside, and then the lack of fans/aircon. Cold beer, hot nights--ah the joys of endless summer. All the girls keep asking me if she's really gone, and if she will pleeease have a baby soon and bring it back to CCF.
My newest roommie is Lauren from Boston, and she will hopefully be inspiring/forcing me into half-marathon shape, especially if I'm still here to run at Angkor Wat in December. With my sublet expiring, and having several options for apartments swept away out of our reach in matter of hours, we jumped on an offer for a beautiful apartment and moved within 2 days. Out of the ant-n-gecko-n-spider oasis, and into the shiny new flat! (No, it's not the royal gingerbread palace pictured above...) It's a few blocks from Tuol Sleng--the high school turned torture chamber turned Genocide Museum-- which at first made me not want to even see it. Lauren's observation is that when living in a death-torn country that is so different from what your reality is, you inevitably end up weaving nightmares into your daily life... and making them better.
So, now my house is 2 blocks from where 17000 people were interrogated under a brutal regime, and my happiest days are working near the garbage dump, which is one of the most apocolyptically bad places you can imagine. I am not saying I don't miss my clean green other lives... I do. A lot! But maybe acknowledging the nightmares keeps you grounded, keeps you humble, keeps you thinking about life, keeps you aware of the proximity to death, keeps you remembering how important it is to have a safe home and a good family. I always thought it odd in Japan that their cemetaries (for ashes?) were snuggled up right next to houses and combinis and schools. But perhaps no more strange than placing death into beautiful, lacquered coffins and burying it far, far away. No matter where you are here, you can't escape the poverty and disease and crime and desperation, but it's easy enough to find the great things -- happy kids, helpful grandmas, and icy sugarcane juice make the world go round. |
posted by Raychaa @ 8:23 PM  |
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| 1 comments: |
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Some good words of wisdom to remember. Hope that the pest-infestations in the new apartment are minimal (we have cockroaches and mice sharing our house, so I sympathize...)
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Name: Raychaa
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About Me: “No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this - 'devoted and obedient'. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.” (Florence Nightingale)
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Some good words of wisdom to remember. Hope that the pest-infestations in the new apartment are minimal (we have cockroaches and mice sharing our house, so I sympathize...)