January 2010
3 posts
But I am White...
I’ve recently registered for membership at a local gym—a rather swanky, incense scented local gym—so in order to get my card, I hate to have a portrait taken. No problem. I headed down to the local photosweatshop, a store that takes and airbrushes mostly wedding pictures on maybe twnety computers they keep humming in a dark room. The workers can use the magnetic lasso tool like...
“Yeah, Matt Dillon is a nice guy, but he always wants to eat. You’ll be...”
– The wisdom of Snowy, who owns a bar on the far side of the river and helped manage the production for “City of Ghosts,” a Dillon movie I haven’t seen that is almost definitely better than crash.
George Bailey Goes for a Dip
I’ve been remiss in my posting (if remiss is a term applicable to self-centered blogging to an audience of, lets say, 8) and I apologize. The internet at my house went out for a few weeks and I wasn’t going to blog at the office, so I was left in the horrible predicament of being unable to tumbl anything at all. I thought I might disappear if I did’t update my every emotion...
December 2009
10 posts
Holiday in Cambodia
I broke a 22 year streak. Every Christmas morning, before last Friday slipped by, I’d woken up early, tottered into my sister’s room, rousted the parents and waited on the top of the stairs (typically while being bathed in spaniel saliva). Then coffee, stockings, presents, the tree, food and the disappointment of early-darkness, another year gone. This was the biggest holiday of the year; really...
WatchA view from the Cardamom foothills (in about seven pixels).
“Take-out lady: How you pay me?
Me: In money?
TL: How you pay me?!
Me: With...”
The Lap of Luxury Exposed
Today I woke up feeling terribly colonial. I thought to myself: “Self, short of subjugating an entire people, what can you do to revel in this feeling of Western entitledness?”
“Aha,” I responded, “you can go to Raffles.”
Raffles, for those unitiated sorts whose homes aren’t guarded by men in gold-spiked pith helmets, is a gracious old hotel that has...
Kep
Last weekend, on my first non-jet lagged Saturday in Cambodia, I drove with a group of coworkers down to Kep, a sea-side resort along the south coast. We stayed in lovely barebones bungalows with 80s pop-icon posters on the walls and views out over the South China Sea. Most of Saturday was spent on Rabbit Island, a former penal colony of the coast that has the only white sand beach in the area. A...
After Hours
Patches of different decades are quilted across the city. The central market is from the deco days. Office buildings off the main road into the city are icy clean and airconditioned with freshly built machines shipped over from Japan. Four blocks near the water sit in the 1970s. On the far bank, it could be the eighteen hundreds.The overall effect of this chronological pastiche is that the city...
Arrival
My ride didn’t show up at the airport so I entered Phnom Penh proper in a taxi driven a man whose insistence that he knew the location of my office seemed to run contrary to all evidence. We circled blocks of heavy looking french mansions surrounded by high stucco walls and pink flowering trees, getting out occasionally to consult with moto-taxi drivers. The cab driver wanted to discuss life in...
Over the Pacific
Long days, in my experience, start early. School, travel, surgery and work all have one thing in common: an alarm. I got up yesterday around 5, took a shower, grabbed a glass of orange juice and gave my Toby-dog one last hug; I was on the plane by 7:15 and in Chicago by 10. The flight from Chicago to LAX was delayed by broken video screens and toilets. The pain of delay was eased by the presence...
November 2009
4 posts
The Cavity Search
Prior to committing to the job in Cambodia, I had not seen a medical professional in a number of years. That number was three. I would have been content to maintain that streak, but malaria is a recurring disease and, as such, not exactly the greatest notch to carve in one’s adventure belt.
I manned up for the trip to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, strolled into the health clinic and...
