Phnom Penh at Night

Yesterday after work, I went with some friends to play tennis at the Olympic Stadium. One friend (Andrea) plays piano with me at the Art Café, and the others are her friends (Elijah and Sina). Andrea is from Ohio and teaches at a Bible school here. I’m not exactly sure what Elijah and Sina do, but I think they may work at the same school. Anyway, we met at to play tennis at 6, and it gets dark around 6:30. The lights didn’t come on, and we didn’t know how to turn them on, so we ended up playing in the dark most of the time, which wasn’t too much worse than playing in the daylight. After “tennis” we went to get something to eat.

We ended up at a Chinese dumpling place that Andrea and Elijah had been to once before. Only this time, they were out of dumplings. You would think that in the heart of Phnom Penh, a Khmer (Sina) and two people who speak Khmer fluently (both Andrea and Elijah have been here for almost three years) could get by anywhere. You would be wrong. This restaurant was completely Chinese, and only the ice girl spoke any Khmer. We managed to order by asking whether they had [insert generic food, like “fried vegetables”] and then waiting for someone to run to the kitchen and check. Lather, rinse, repeat five or six times until we got three dishes (two of which were good).

We had a nice night. I was on the back of Andrea’s motorcycle (which always gets me funny looks – an apparently Cambodian guy behind a white girl is unheard of). I love riding on a motorcycle through the streets of Phnom Penh around 8pm. The traffic is a little thinner, but the city feels like an aspiring Hong Kong. Exhaust bites every sense – it burns your eyes and drowns your nostrils. You can’t really talk over the din of old cars and motorcycles, but at the same time, I always feel so peaceful. Dodging motorcycles, we ride through the cool air that is only available at night during this time of year, under a canopy of neon lights. I know I should feel anxious, especially since my life is in the hands of whoever is driving the motorcycle I’m on, as well as those of everyone around me who may or may not decide not to hit us. But anxiety is the last thing on my mind. I love it.

A Moral Spirit

Today one of my Khmer coworkers called me and asked for some translation help. She asked if it made sense to say “moral spirit.” I doubted that she was writing anything deeply philosophical, so I went to her office to try to figure out what she was trying to say. Three people tried to explain it to me, and with the description of “where people go who are sick (pointing to head) every day,” I figured it out: a psychiatric ward. A “moral spirit” hospital sounds like a nicer place than a psychiatric ward. If I’m ever “sick every day,” then I’d definitely want to go there.

Later, when I was helping Mony with her English, we came across the following multiple choice fill-in-the-blank: “I’m sorry, but I ___________ in traffic.” The choices were (a) got carried away, (b) got stuck, (c) let my imagination run away with me. I laughed out loud when I read those (Mony had incorrectly chosen c). I tried to explain why it was so funny, but I couldn’t find the words. How do you explain the humor in “I’m sorry, but I got carried away in traffic,” much less “I’m sorry, but I let my imagination run away with me in traffic?”

Language is a beautiful thing. I was trying to explain what “should” means, and the best I could do was that it implies that one thing is better than its alternative. Even for someone who prides himself in being adept at manipulating words, I frequently find myself inadequately equipped to explain some of the things that I take for granted among my English-speaking friends in the US.

A New Wind

I have stumbled upon a sense of intellectual curiosity and stimulation that I have not felt since I first arrived in Cambodia. I spent a good part of the day scouring the internet for stimulating reads – fiction, news articles, editorials, book reviews, and journal articles, and I am working my way through those with a passion I haven’t felt in a long time. It feels really good.

I can’t pinpoint what started this. Perhaps it was a discovery of Google’s “Reader,” which allows you to “subscribe” to sites that offer the feature, and with that subscription you receive headlines every time the site updates. But maybe it was something else. Maybe it was the story I wrote last weekend, with which I am fairly displeased. Perhaps it was talking with a writer I admire and gaining some inspiration and encouragement. It could be simply that I got bored.

I’m looking to improve my writing, and what better way than by reading (and consequently, writing) more. New ideas to write about and new ways to write about them. I’m not promising any Pulitzer writing anytime soon, but the path of writing suddenly looks much clearer. Who knows, it might even mean more frequent blog updates…

In Memoriam

Today marks five years after Eric and Jamie died, and it’s the first year that I am not paying a visit to the site where Eric’s ashes are buried. It’s funny how much he lives on in my life, though. Of the hundreds of karaoke songs that Mony’s family has, I know about three: Desperado, Unchained Melody, and Morning Has Broken. The last of these three was Eric’s favorite hymn, and Mony has committed the song to memory since I like it so much. She doesn’t know the story behind it, but I think that’s ok.

Yesterday I sang “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” because it was Easter (despite my abandonment of pretty much all religious ties). I spent most of the day either at my house writing or at Mony’s house eating and just hanging out with her family. I’ve been interacting with her aunt (who is about a year older than I) a lot more than I did at first. Her English is limited to “yes,” “no,” “sleep,” “hello,” “goodbye,” and “Oh my God,” and my Khmer isn’t a whole lot better. But we seem to communicate really well. I’ve found that a common language is only a small part of communicating with someone. So often I’ve found people with whom I have a connection despite difficulties in expressing ourselves in language.

Mony’s aunt (whose name I recently found out is Ta) is one of those people. Not only is she beautiful, but she has a beautiful personality. I watch her laugh frequently and with sincerity. She can stop a young child’s crying and takes care of Mony’s grandparents. She works tremendously hard, but she never seems too busy to pause and smile at me or to play for a minute with Mony or her younger sister. And in the evenings she spends quite a bit of time with Mony, Sophea (Mony’s sister), and me, as Mony’s parents watch. We have a lot of fun together. I can only imagine what it would be like if we spoke a common language. I’m trying. I really am, but language has fallen behind writing and making friends in my priority list.