Doobedoobedoo

We ate out at Dukes Grill, in Dukes 92, on the canalside in Castlefield. No bad.

It was a little cold, and the walk along the canal itself to get there made us readt for some warmth whne we arrived. Pity about the broken crokery outside the main entrance. They weren't busy and were certainly keen to serve us, so we repeatedly asked them to give us a little time to actually read the menu... In the end, I plumped for the 6oz ribeye bavette steak, beaten thin and marinaded overnight in garlic and olive oil. Myn opted for the beef & horseradish risotto and we had a side order of honey roasted root vegetables, with a bottle of Berri Estates shiraz.

Myn enjoyed the risotto, which (from my small sample) seemed to be ideally cooked: not chalky and not stodge. However, my steak was incredibly salty. It was also very tender, and the marinade had given it a pleasant taste. But my goodness, was it salty.

"How are you enjoying your meals?"

"Very nice thanks, but this steak is very salty"

"But they've only been marinaded in garlic and olive oil: it shouldn't be salty"

"Maybe it's my taste, but it is definately salty."

Eventually, they agreed that the marinade was too salty and offered us a free dessert. I had a sticky toffee pudding and Myn had a chocolate toffee brownie. Both were good, and neither - I'm glad to say - showed any sign of having been near a cream aerosol can.

The surroundings were pleasant enough. However, the music was a bit loud and one got the feeling that had the bar been full, then the noise would have been quite overpowering. Also, the back door opened directly into the restaurant area, which let in a cold blast every time it was used. So: overall not bad, but with a few provisos. Would possibly go again, but only if I wasn't after anything in particular. There are other placed to go for pizza / pasta / risotto, or for good steak, or for good fish. There are some excellent wine bars around that offer food and there are some great pubs you could visit.

In other words, Dukes 92 does high-end pub food. From that perspective, it does it well enough, but you may want a glass of water if you order a steak.

Fish

I dreamt about celeriac last night. Maybe it is a side effect of taking Imigran.

Still alive

Just in case anyone reading this blog was wondering, I am still alive and capable of typing.

Having been cruelly abandoned by a husband swanning off to the November Ops meeting, I find myself in the unusual position of having some time to blog, having already finished preparing the accounts for Sanctus 1 for last year, done a practice exam, bought some stocking fillers and some booze for me (There's a thought - excuse me for two minutes while I go and pour myself a glass.....................................................................sorry, that took longer than I was expecting, awkward shrink-wrapping over the cork) as well as some proper gifts, banked some cheques, picked up a parcel from the sorting office and earned a quid for participating in a market research survey. (Now then, you're conducting market research about chocolate bars, and you're paying people in money not chocolate. What's the thinking there?)

There's a few things I still haven't achieved today, but then I hadn't planned for Husband to detail me to exploring the European Christmas Markets in Manchester in search of stocking fillers. I have duly trudged through all the god-awfully twee clay cherubs and santas, foodstuffs, contenders for the title of most useless piece of clutter you could give to someone you really hated, and jewellery stalls staffed by the most miserable oriental women. Is it me or are they actually trafficked here in the same container as the merchandise and beaten if they don't sell enough tat?

I do like the Christmas markets for the atmosphere, the mulled wine and the opportunity to restock the larder with raclette cheese and salami, but I do also find they're really crowded, and better for buying Christmas decorations and burgers for yourself than gifts for other people.

Big points to: the guy with the stall between M&S and Burberry who's selling wooden things and scented-candles-in-wineglasses, the hand cream and other luxuriously smelly things merchant on the steps of the Town Hall, and the rather charming Frenchman tirelessly demonstrating the magic of telescopic fruit bowls in the middle of Albert Square.


Less points to: the choir of young people who turned up in St Ann's Square and sang beautiful a cappella arrangements of popular songs. Lovely to listen to, but they had dumped all their bags on the top step of the war memorial, on top of a wreath which had been laid there. There were other steps available.

goo goo g'joob

Dinner was out this evening: we went to Walrus, on Manchester High Street.  Most satisfactory.

Myn started on tempura squid, while I enjoyed thai fishcakes.  Mains were crispy pork and a beef mussaman curry, both served with a sufficiency of sticky rice.

Now, regular readers of this blog will be reminded of some menu descriptions from our time in Cambodia.  Indeed, the full menu included many items that gave me a brief flashback to many an evening spent trying to decide how to feed twelve hungry mouths.

Anyway, the food was lovely; the house wine was a surprisingly pleasant ugni blanc / colombard from Gascony; and the service was faily attentive, well informed and quite attractive.  The decor is a little eclectic / modern Japanesee, but not startlingly so for all that.

Would recommend it, and would definately go again.  A Rob Rave.

black ice

Overnight frost + early morning rain = not fun cycling conditions.

It also does funny things to train running times.

Never a dull moment

Truly, there are few dull moments when you work in a small team, headed by a man who should never be allowed caffeine.



We scaled the heights of surreality today in a web training session on the new accounting system. We had a teleconference call to someone in Georgia who knew all about inventory management (you say inventory, I say stock, let's call the whole thing off). We also, via the magic of the tinterweb, had a view of her computer screen, but of course no actual sight of the disembodied voice who talked us through the new system.



Note to office workers: you may like to switch the preview pane for new MS Outlook messages off before beginning a training session in which colleagues across the world can see your computer.



After a series of high pitched yappy squeaks, we began to wonder if there was a dog in her office. Then she broke off explaining bin and warehouse maintenance to comment that 'she obviously wasn't getting enough attention' and five minutes later 'I'll have to put her outside.' Yep, there really was a dog in the office, which someone who's physically met the woman referred to as a pit bull, but which sounding all yappy and frilly and lapdoggy. Until half an hour later it suddenly, from outside the door, let off a low, blood-curdling wolf howl. It's weird assuming someone is in the office, and then realising they must be working from home. Mustn't they?



One truly cringeworthy pun later*, we got on to the subject of being able to review your planned entries to the system before actually making them. As the nice lady in Georgia explained, she doesn't really have an accounting background, so she regularly runs things past her finance people before posting things, as, in her words, the financial controller will really beat you up if you put things in the wrong accounts. Of course, it was our financial controller she was talking to, although she seemed to be under the impression he was a software engineer. Gleefully, he agreed with her that the financial controller is indeed a grumpy sort who shouts at him all the time. Really, we ought to have explained to her what all the barely suppressed mirth was all about...





*You won't thank me for repeating it.**







**Oh all right, it was on the subject of tracking stock with individual labels printed with Bark Codes. You see? I have to work with this man all the time.....

Views from windows

We've been back a week now. We had a short holiday on the Isles of Scilly, with H & T on the Isle of Tresco. This was the view from our window:

In comparison, the previous week, I was on a work visit to a large industrial site on the Cumbrian coast. I stayed in the quite lovely Sella Park House Hotel, and had a view of the No. 1 Pile from my window.

Still very nice, though.

I am a Husband

1] What's the old fool on about now? I've known that for ages.

2] Huh? He never said: the git.

3] So what? I've heard that one before...

I wonder which of those choices was your reaction to the title of this post.

Actually, there is a fourth option. I am a comedy husband, represented in many an advertisement for air freshener, shampoo, washing up liquid, and numerous other household products.

Myn is away for the weekend, being a highly skilled practitioner of her First Aid craft at the Sugar Hill festival, leaving me to cause all kinds of havoc at home.

Homebrew continues apace. I bottled the "Pacific Quartet": a blend of white grapes from (guess where?) the Pacific coast of the USA, and started off a Chilean Carmenere / Carbernet Sauvignon. So far so good. However, I used a combination of screwtop, cork and sherry bottles. It always seems a waste to bottle and cork some wine, only to uncork it a few days (or hours) later, so some "easy access" bottles seem to make sense. The problem came shortly after I put the bottles in the winerack.

One of the sherry bottles rejected its cork, spilling about 2/3rds of its content on the hall cupboard floor. I discovered this in the evening and spent a fun hour or so trying to extract as much wine from the carpet as possible. I left a fan running overnight, to try and dry it out further, but was woken this morning by the sound of running water. Wine, as it turned out. Two further bottles, in fact, with a third about to go the same way. I have spent more time today drying out the same carpet again.

If that weren't enough, I managed to break the door off the washing machine this evening. While cooking dinner, I bent down to look through the oven door, and somehow managed to sit on the open washing machine door, pulling it off its hinges.

What will I do next?

news

Just to keep everyone updated, I'm now working as a Finance Manager in Trafford Park. It's a smallish company that's part of a bigger one, and it's a very friendly and pleasant place to work, although unfortunately there's no receptionist, so phonecalls come through to Finance and we get to screen out all the useless sales calls, including the occasional very cheeky operator who claims to be something they're not in order to get straight through to the managing director.

It's all slightly manic as it's monthend and me and my boss have only eight weeks or so experience of the company between us. Onwards and upwards!

Greenbelt

Greenbelt happened.

I'm too tired to write much about it, but basically, Myn was working nights in the medical centre, and I was working nights as event safety manager.

Other people have written lots, and even put lots of stuff on U-Tube. Go ahead and search, if you want.

Used and New

I'm quite a fan of the "used and new" feature on amazon: you sometimes get some good bargains, and it's very useful if the book you're after is out of stock.

However, I think this is one case where I wouldn't go for it.

The 'what have I eaten' meme

Yet another meme, this time taken from the Belingman

You know the pack drill:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Strike out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Added by me: italicise the ones you can't identify

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes (I quite likely have, but I'm not specifically aware of it)
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans (I'm assuming the Tex-mex combo here)
25. Brawn or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche in ice cream
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float (eugh! Root beer is horrible.)
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (Except by accident)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (though I never would these days)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini (Dislike peach. Waste of good champagne)
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Gosh: that's quite a lot, isn't it? Now, where's my bowl of epoisses?

An amateur photographer was told she could not take snaps of an empty paddling pool because she might be a paedophile.
Betty Robinson was ordered to put away her camera by a council worker when she began snapping the empty outdoor pool.

A disabled boy's parents claim they were accused of child trafficking and detained under the Terrorism Act as they made a day trip to France.

This story could ave developed in so may ways, but to arrest a family under the Terrorism Act on grounds of possible child trafficing is completely perverse.

As an old friend of mine put, ever so well,

"Suspecting your neighbour, fragments ideas such as "society". It makes a
mockery of any notion of power wielded by the people. Fear the hoodies,
fear the kids, they think differently. Fear the immigrants, they speak
funny. Fear the brown people, they have a different religion. Fear your
neighbour, he is probabloy a paedophile. They're everywhere, didn't you
know?"

Large Hadron Collider goes Torchwood

The BBC news website contains the following story:

Cern lab set for beam milestone

"A vast physics experiment - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - reaches a key
milestone this weekend ahead of an official start-up on 10 September."

It goes on to describe in laymans terms roughly what is going on at CERN with the LHC, what's happening this weekend and what will happen in September. The article ends with this paragraph:

"BBC Radio 4 will broadcast live from Cern on 10 September. The Big Bang Day
starts in the LHC control room at 0830 BST for the official start-up, and then
continues through the day with related programmes, from indepth discussions
about particle physics to a special one-off radio version of the popular TV
drama Torchwood."

Oh dear.

I'm Dave Walker*

Dave Walker writes the imressive Cartoon Church blog and is also currently cartoonist in residence at the Lambeth Conference.

Over the last while, he has been scrupulously (and scrupulously fairly) accounting the goings on at the SPCK / SSG bookshops, since SPCK decided to divest itself of its historic bookshop chain. This has included researched news stories, reports from the ground, and even responses from the more recent operators of the bookshop chain. For some background on the story, have a look here.

Yesterday, Dave posted a blog entry containing the following text:

"This morning I was sent a ‘cease and desist’ demand from Mark Brewer relating
to the posts I have made about the former SPCK bookshops. The demand says
‘Confidential - not to be redistributed or posted’, so I am not posting the
text.

The demand says that if I do not remove all SSG-related material by
noon today, July 22, 2008, an injunction will be sought against me and legal
action taken for damages for libel.

I have therefore removed all of the SPCK/SSG posts on this blog, as, although I believe I have not done anything wrong I do not have the money to face a legal battle. The removal of these posts is in no way an admission of guilt.

To say I am not happy about the decision I have been forced to take here is an understatement. I feel as if I have let many people down who have relied on this site over the last year or more.

I am not allowing comments on this post, though I can be contacted as usual. I
cannot of course stop you writing about this elsewhere."

Today, even that meagre entry has been removed.



Dave used to have a nice little cartoon on his front page saying "Save the S.P.C.K": I think it may be time for a "Save the cartoon church".




*for some of you, a reference to Monty Python. for others, Spartacus.

Dolphins make me cry*

A new story about the Mekong River Dolphins that we went to see in Kratie. They're still endangered and there are still efforts being made to save them.

* A song by Martyn Joseph. It's not bad.

Alright, I take it back

Recruitment consultant just phoned: the NHS are looking for someone to do all the things I'm Really Quite Good At.

fingers crossed......

What to do?

So many jobs being advertised out there, so little belief that any of them will be worth doing*, or even enjoyable.

There is no point even looking for jobs yet, as I couldn't start a new one until after Greenbelt, which is nearly two months away. Plus, my short term contract could well extend beyond the official end date, if I manage to make myself indispensable/work slowly. This is not a thrilling prospect, but actually I could do worse.

I could have a job working for a charity, if I could move to London, but that requires Husband to do the same, and also means leaving Manchester, which a number of people have been kind enough to request me not to do. Besides, it's working for a charity which sends people abroad to do short term missions, and that's environmentally bad. I think. But anti-poverty good. Damn these ethical conundrums.

The trouble is, going to an interview only leaves me with the impression that the new job will probably be uninteresting and require working with people I don't like. The only way to find out is to try it, and I don't want to end up stuck in a job I wish I hadn't taken.

I'm jaded, I'm cynical, and I'm not even 30 yet. Pants.



* ie will somehow indefinably make the world a better place, eg working for the NHS, or a charity, or a company that makes environmentally friendly products. Or organises puppies for sick kiddies. Or something.

Puppykicker

The ginger beer is now in bottles:

1 x 2l bottle

10 x 1l bottles

16 x 500ml bottles

I'd normally use at least litre bottles, or two litre bottles for preference (to get the drink off the sediment) but you use what you can get. It'll take a few weeks for the pressure to build up and for the drink to carbonate: so sadly not ready for this weekend's Greenbelt ops meeting.

I'll take some of the mystery drink with me instead.

Things you find in the cupboard

While looking for Something Else recently, I discovered two demijohns in the cupboard. This is not, in itself unusual (there are usually demijohns in there) but I usually remember what I put in them. Two others are there: one is an experimental ginger beer that I'm afraid of going back to, and the other is a red wine in "long term maturation".

These two, however, were unknown. They contained a liquid that was a deep golden colour, a bit like a Balvenie whisky. The nose was pleasant, and in taste, it was surprisingly similar to a dry sherry.

The odd thing is, I have never made any sherry kits. Still, it goes down very well. Shame I can't get any more.

What's new in homebrew?

I paid a visit to Peter and Mark at the Brewshop in Edgeley on the Bank Holiday weekend to see what was available and blow me if they hadn't been keeping a set of Limited Editions back for me.

"Shall I help you load up the car?" says Mark.

I explain about the whole not-owning-a-car-anymore thing, so he says that he'll deliver them during the week. Four shiny boxes of wine kit.

I've just started the first of them: the Australian Riesling. Now, on the whole, I'm not keen on Riesling. However, that's mostly to do with the acidity-sweetness of the mass-market stuff: I should be able to dry this one out a bit and get more of the innate flavour. It worked OK with last year's gerwurstraminer...

I've also started this year's Puppykicker. It's going to be ginger beer again, since that seems to go down well, with the minimum amount of "becareful of Rob's lethal homebrew" comments.

Routine

Finally, after three weeks of here-there-and-everywhereness, I start a three month contract with a large corporation today. I don't have my log in details and access all sorted out yet, so actual work is proving difficult, but I've read a bit of process documentation and met some nice people, including bumping into my old payroll manager from a previous company. Small world, etc.
I haven't been so excited about a new job for ages. It's because usually changing jobs means going from one nine-to-five to another, but today is the first time since Christmas that I've had to get up, put office clothes on and do the commute. Suddenly it feels like the first time I went to work.
The office is deserted, as only two people from a team of what looks like about 8 are actually here (the rest are working at a different site) Bizarrely, I don't think I've yet heard a phone ring. Must all be done via email (which I don't have yet.)

Money won't arrive until at least the start of June. Plus, there seems to be some debate as to whether I file my hours on a electronic system or an old-fashioned time sheet. Still, once the pump is primed, weekly pay will be fun.

The phone just rang. But not for me or anyone on my team.

R&R in Wales

We spent the bank holiday weekend in North Wales, in a lovely cottage overlooking the Conwy Valley.

Some walking was done, some visiting of local pubs, some cooking and eating, and much resting. The views were superb, and plenty of geograpy was all around.

This is one thing that Cambodia lacks.

We're back!

It only took 28 hours of sitting in airports/on planes. No legroom. No upgrades. No real air.

And my sinuses kind of hurt from the stuff they sprayed the whole plane with in case we upset DEFRA by bringing in any foreign pests or plants. Maybe it's the 36 hours with half an hours sleep.

It is so blissfully nice to be COLD!

Wrapping up

The last team has gone.
The houses are all finished.
The fence is up.
Gifts are bought.
Packing is happening.
Good-byes are being said.

Soon, it will be time to depart.

Gecko

"Brrrrrrrrrrr brrrrrrrrrrrr
Gecko
Gecko
Gecko
geckoo
geckooo"

That's what a gecko sounds like. All night.

Knyom Rob

Nath, our translator (and another all-round good egg) has kindly rendered our names into Khmer for us...

Hot Fizz

You know the pleasant sensation of channel-hopping and suddenly recognising an early scene from a film you love and welcome the unexpected chance to watch again? Imagine our joy at stumbling across Hot Fuzz on an asian channel last night.

Now imagine our joy multiplied when we realised that Hot Fuzz was being made even more hysterically funny by being played in English, but with the addition of subtitles, which were also in English, that is, English as drafted by someone totally unfamiliar with this language of which we are so rightly proud. I don't quibble with odd grammar, or blatant errors, such as I can come back! subtitled as I can't come back!.

No, I'm talking about the large chunks which had apparently been copied down phonetically and then run through Microsoft spell checker, so that "I'll see he gets his just desserts" was subtitled " I gets say just the service"

I therefore issue a challenge to Simon Pegg fans with too much time on their hands. (I mention no names, you know who you are) Prizes will be awarded to those who can work out what the original sparkling dialogue was behind the following spectacular mis translations:

1. He did have a great big pussy beer

2. They're late again and I'll have sex

3. I have to work to pay Sally

4. It's quicksand of the San Francisco

5. And the neighbour of the Law!

6. Call Nasa

7. Mercy!

8. Don't you had to know

9. You've been play was truly

10. Two broke and f*!k off all cop!

First prize or tie breaker will be a copy of the film referred to by Edgar Wright's character as "Dumb on Dude," according to the subtitles. Please note that the first one's easy, and they are all posted in the order they appear in the film.

Have fun....

Naming names.

Nov Sarath is our driver. He is brilliant. If you come to Phnom Penh and need to hire a air-conditioned minibus, then let us know and we can give you his email or phone number. As well as being an excellent driver in a mad city, Sarath has amazingly good English (he is self-taught from guidebooks), is entertaining, and has never failed to put in a full days work on the construction sites on top of driving us around.
He deserves a mention.

Bikes.

I am told that only a very few years ago, the streets of Phnom Penh had but very few cars on them. Most people cycled, and a few might own mopeds: only senior government and military personnel (and NGOs, of course) could afford cars. These days, that has all changed and the city streets are beginning to lock up with congestion. However, there are still many brave souls who cycle. The interesting thing is that about half the bicycles I have seen are of folding variety.

As some of you will know, I use a Brompton folding bike on a more-or-less daily basis. Or rather, I do when back in the UK. It's a neat design, hat folds up quite small, and weighs in at about 11kg. These machines are for the most part a little more weighty. They tend to have one big bolted hinge in the middle of the crossbar, making them not particularly worth folding.

Maybe some well-meaning benefactor or ambitious entrepeneur saw an opening in the market some years ago and sent out a shipload.

What's in a name?

Phnom Penh has a thriving restaurant scene, with a plentiful supply of good Khmer restaurants, and many international restaurants. Among these, are two Korean eateries, calles Seoul and PyongYang.
This has made me wonder how the two of them compare: does the Seoul serve plentiful portions, while the PyongYang offer a meagre plate with a handful of rice? Is there patriotic music and do the waiters insist that the food has never been better? What happens to customers who complain? I do know that the Seoul is a very plush looking and expensive place in comparison to its counterpart.
Oddly enough, Seoul is in the North of the city, and PyongYang is in the south.

Kiva

About a year ago, a blog entry on the cartoon blog alerted me to the existence of Kiva, a sort of broker between micro finance organisations and individuals. I lent some money via their website. A few weeks ago, I saw a man in a restaurant wearing a Kiva T-shirt, so I accosted him and today, Rob and I went to his office here in Cambodia to find out more about how it works. He kindly spent 90 minutes answering our questions, and told us that it was nice to spend 90 minutes talking about how cool your job is, instead of spending 90 minutes actually writing reports.

He is a volunteer and is here in Cambodia for about five months, while Kiva set up working with a new partner, an institution called Angkor Mikroheranhvatho (Kampuchea) Co. Ltd. He works out of their offices, inputting data to Kiva, liaising between them and AMK, and doing some auditing and reporting to ensure that all is as transparent as it should be.

Anyway, I'm satisfied with all his answers, and thoroughly recommend that you go and check out www.kiva.org, and let them borrow a small amount of money off you.

The electric monk

We struck up a conversation with a monk on Tuesday night. He was travelling from the far side of the Mekong to a temple in Phnom Penh, where he would stay for a few months while studying English and Computing. There was a computer monitor lying on the ground nearby, which he claimed as his when we wondered who had left it there.

His English literature class is studying Romeo and Juliet, Cry Freedom, and, currently, Oliver Twist, so we were able to help him out with his new vocabulary of words such as 'cold' 'damp' 'freezing' 'crossly' 'misery' and 'coffin-maker.'
Good old Dickens. Anyway, we've been invited to go round to the temple for a coconut any time.

Calmer

Thanks for the varied kind words of support.

I know I shouldn't rant about an individual on this (or any other) blog, but I'd just hit a limit and was, well, tired.

I won't say that things are better: I don't think that they will be "better" until we are back in the UK. However, I know that people out there are praying for us all and frankly, we just need to get through these last five weeks.

PS, sorry for the typos, Blogger has decided to stop me from editing my posts...

Happy Easter to all!

Great news from Dr Mumbles*

Our resident disaster area has officially not got malaria or dengue fever.

At least, the seventy-odd year old doctor who took his blood tests seem confident of this. He may not really be seventy, but he seems to me to be retirement age at least. His consultations usually involve long anecdotes about other patients, or, on this occasion, reading aloud from the textbook on all the awful tropical diseases one can pick up and die of, which is obviously greatly reassuring to a patient with a virus/fever.

Last month I was waiting outside the consultation room when he briskly shambled past me exclaiming "'I need more of the RED pills!'"
It's the way medical care should be. Possibly in your nightmares.**

*NOT his real name.

** Please note that despite his eccentric approach to patient confidentiality, he has always been there for us, even at 4am, and I am actually truly grateful for the availability of an english speaking doctor.

Tired, tired, tired.

Team four have arrived, and they are a lovely bunch. Ranging in age from 33 to 72, they are definately all very much up to try anything, includinga handful of spiders, cockroaches and assorted other bugs.

Interestingly, the team contains one more person than we were expecting. Myn and I were surprised to find ourselves greeting nine people at the airport, when we had only been sent the details of six volunteers.

But that's not it.

House four is in a different location from the others, and has less space around it for painting windows, preparing walls, constructing frames etc. Materials are also arriving in a different and unexpected order to what previously happened.

But that's not it either.



I'm tired.

I'm tired of second guessing what is expected of me from our country manager. I am tired of being told that what I had arranged was contrary to what she wanted. I am tired of being told that I am not telling her things, when she repeatedly fails to share very fundamental information with me. Us.

I'm tired of the deep condecention she uses to describe the Cambodian people, and the barely reduced levels of condecention that she reserves for our volunteers. I'm tired of the way she claims good ideas are hers, repeats other people's humerous comments, somehow staking ownership of them. I'm tired of the way that she has always has done more, better, had greater success, been under more severe situations that anyone else. I'm tired of her hastling people for being late or holding everyone up, when she sets arbitrary time deadlines.

I'm tired of the way she says "And that's why you should always...." in an accusatory way to somebody who has not done otherwise. I'm tired of being told that 5:00pm is too early for something, and when I rearrange things for 5:30, to be told that it is way too late.

I'm tired of trying to do my job, but can't because she is contradicting me, pre-empting me, or changing things after me.

How the ferry docks work

This is how our daly commute happens...

Taking a break

Team 3 "the small" has gone home (Hi Bex and Dave: hope you're well) and we are taking a short break and have gone away.

Last time we did this, you may remember that we went to Kratie. This was great, but the seven hour coach journey each way was a bit much. This time, we are staying at Boddhi Tree Del Gusto, which is located in an old colonial era house just South of the central part of town.
There are three of these establishments in the city, and we have now dined in all of them. However, this is the first time that we have stayed in one.
It i very nice, the room is very colonial (French) and the service is friendly. It is just a shame that the only white wine that they have is Chilean chardonnay.
Now, we didn't choose this place because they have Argentinian Torrontes on the winelist, but wine that is actually drinkable (and not chardonnay or merlot) is hard to come by out here, and it certainly influenced us.
Still, it is very nice, and I highly recommnd it as a place to stay, should you find yourself in these parts. Although a mention should be made of the delightful and newly opened Coco Tree, a hundred yards North of Tuol Sleng. Excellent food.

Kreung

Kreung is the basis for most Khmer dishes. It is a spice mix made of the following:

• dried chilli
• galangel
• lemongress
• kaffir leaves
• shallots
• garlic
• shrimp paste

This is all pounded into a fine paste, and then mixed with coconut cream (sometimes).
Generally, the food here is not what you might call highly spicy. It has a balance of spice flavours, which comes from the balance of the kreung. And of course the huge lumps of chilli they can add when daft westerners who equate heat with authenticity, ask for it.

Flags

There are an assembly of flags running the length of the riverfront here in Phnom Penh.

Last week, I was being quizzed about the identity of them. Seems that I am accepted as being wize beyond all others. Actually, I was also told that I was wrong a few times (so why ask me, huh?) coz they were obviously all alphabetically arranged. Actually, I pointed out, the Belgium flag was next top the Russia flag, so not that alphabetical, then.

However, there was one flag that I don't think I have ever seen before. Any guesses?

White, yellow and red horizontal stripes. It was between Sweden and Turkey, if that helps.

Heffalump

We've just taken Team 3 to the airport, and waved goodbye to them. Now we're taking a bit of a breather before debriefing tomorrow. We were having a drink and a waffle at a cafe, when Rob got a text message from our country manager ordering him to enjoy time with me, so we're now in separate internet cubicles, checking email and taking care of various online things, just to be contrary.

The e-conversation running about Ivor the Engine on the Sanctus1 list is making us very, very homesick.
Although it should be pointed out that during a round of Famous Elephants last week, Rob and I had the crucial edge of knowing that there's an elephant in Ivor the Engine. She's called Alice.
Famous elephants is the game invented on the spur of the moment by our resident jester, and consists of taking turns to name, well, there's a clue there. Any literary, real or well-known elephant is allowed, although I decided against trying to get away with 'one of the thousand elephants that a Cecil B De Mille film famously contained' and stuck to Elmer's friends instead (there wouldn't be much to the story of Elmer the patchwork elephant if there weren't also lots of grey ones.)

This all came about because it turned out one of our team volunteers was mad about elephants. We have therefore taken a ride on Sambo the Wat Phnom elephant (He is 48 years old, and was discovered in Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1980. What he was doing there, we do not know. Now he takes tourists for fifteen minute rides around a small hill.) Pictures will doubtless follow. It is a very strange experience standing on an elephant's neck (in order to get to the howdah) - one feels very unwilling to hurt the elephant. Once riding, the motion is much like being at sea, while having branches slap you in the face. Afterwards we fed him exorbitantly priced bananananas, and having an elephant's trunk come curling round at you scouting for nanas is a truly strange experience that I thoroughly recommend: I never knew before quite how alien the end of an elephant's trunk looked.

Things to do before I die number 34: ride an elephant. Check!

Sunset at Angkor Wat

And finally - some pictures

So, the moment you've all been waiting for. Pictures of the house-building.

Team 2, in front of the second house, before we started to dismantle it.

Preparing the timber frames.

The best way to move materials around the site. Note the old house in the background: we picked it up and carried it to this location, to clear the site for construction. It finally collapsed last week.

Also visible, is Sarath, our driver and all round hero.

The frames go up. This is heavy work. Heavy. Very heavy.

The roof tiles are on, and the walls are going up. Not shown, is Myn, who has been responsible for getting the wall panels painted in good time to dry and be put up. And then painting them again, once they are up.

The best "before & after" shot around. This is the Second house that we built, alongside the third house, as it was before we took it down. Actually, we more or less nudged it, and it fell down. We are currently half way through building the new house on its site.

That'll do. I've got hundreds of pictures, and not all of them are completely dull. However, this should give you a taste of how we build a house in two weeks.

'Tis the season

I've jst read a post on the Sanctus-1 blog from Fat Roland, about giving up stuf for Lent.

It's Lent? Oh Bugger.

That's the kind of thing that can pass you by out here: there's no seasonal carpet-bombing of advertising to remind you of the things that you should be buying, wearing, investing in, eating or drinking. What advertising there is, is static, so I know (for example) that drinking Guinness will "reveal the true you", drinking Courvoisier will make young women want to stand around me, while I recline in my smoking jacket, and that smoking some brand or other of cigarettes will make me seem effortlessly European.

But chocolate eggs, heart shaped candy and the like, pass me completely by.
I suppose I have given up my job for Lent. Does that count?

Hey, where did the last two weeks go?

hi,
we did actually have a week off in there somewhere, but just catching up on emails about stuff we needed to do seemed to take up all the available time during which we might have blogged.

So, we finished team 2, with only one medical evacuation. We've now finished two houses, and the third is flying up at a rate of knots. We did have a scary moment yesterday, when trying to raise the second of four frames of wooden pillars - the second is the tallest and also the heaviest, and while getting it from nearly horizontal to vertical, a rope slipped and we almost killed everyboody! That's a slight exaggeration, but it is a miracle that the injuries amount to one laceration and one bruised shoulder. (Among the locals, not any of us) Amzing how once you start treating a local guy for a minor laceration, you suddenly have presented to you a cut thumb from four day ago, a kid with a sore throat and a woman with something in her eye.

no time left!

bye,

Help, I've got termites!

My laptop seem to be full of termites. I get rid of them as soon as the emerge onto the screen or keyboard, but as for the others.....





Anyone out there in ITland think that this might be a problem?





In other news, my time's up: Ihave 20 hungry volunteers to get fed, and I'm in a very nice winebar with free wifi. Time Iwent.





Sorry guys, the piccies will have to wait.





Again.

Except this one. We weren't mucking about when we named the blog.

Time off

After our first team of volunteers depart, we have a full week before the next one arrives. We spend Sunday afternoon relaxing by the pool in a leisure club, which serves either cold red wine or warm white wine, besides ice cream and snacks. Then Monday is a full debrief of the whole programme – what worked, what didn’t, what can be arranged better and whose responsibility it is to make that happen. On Tuesday we write reports/balance books etc, and then on Wednesday, Rob and I set off for Kratie, in eastern Cambodia, to see the Mekong dolphins. It takes seven hours on the bus to get there. We stumble off the bus, find a café and order orange juices. The café we have stumbled into is actually a community project – guesthouse, restaurant, tour operator. They make a big effort to source everything locally, where possible, develop picture recipes to teach illiterate rural women how to make shakes and smoothies, and have a push to reduce their environmental footprint. We eat there several times, in order to support their work, although the menu promises cook your own buffalo steak, and does not in fact deliver this (we don’t have…maybe tomorrow…)

The following day, we have a luxurious lie in until at least 8am, and then wander down to the Star in the Community guesthouse for pancakes and coffee. We are too late to hire bikes from there, but they point us to a place two blocks down that rents out bikes for a dollar: proper metal shoppers with Sturmey-Archer gears. We pick up a map of Koh Trong – a large island in the Mekong parallel to Kratie Town, and manhandle our bikes down a steep dirt slope to the ferry, a rickety wooden fishing boat that has a worryingly large amount of Mekong sloshing about in the bottom. At the other side, the dry season has exposed about a quarter of a mile of sand banks around the island, and the slog to push metal bikes through burning hot river sand is the hardest work of the day.

Having eventually reached the island proper, we stop in the shade to drink water and get our bearings. Then we set off on a packed dirt track, passing dozens of children who wave and shout hello! There are butterflies and dragonflies. We pass a pagoda, and ancient stupa (burial monument) and bamboo groves and jackfuit trees (jackfruit grow to very large sizes on tiny little twigs surprisinglly low down the trunk) At lunchtime, we park the bikes at the top of the bank on the west side, using the rope lock we were given to tie the frames together, change into our swimming costumes and scramble down the dirt banks to the Mekong, for a paddle and a packed lunch. Brie sandwiches, hurrah! We watch some of the local boys bringing their cattle to the river to drink, and splashing about in the water with them. There is a village made of houses on boats floating downstream of us. After lunch, we pick up our bags, retrace our steps, and it’s at this point that I ask the important question: Where’s the key?

Well, it was me that locked it…. After ten minutes of desperation, I find the key lying in the ground where we changed our clothes. It’s attached to a yellow cellophane ribbon (which I could easily have attached to something), and the ground here is deep loose dirt strewn with bamboo leaves and twigs, some of which are also yellow, so it takes three false starts and a small miracle to find it at all.

After the hard slog back across the sands and up the river bank, we have exactly enough time to return the bikes, get a cold drink and a shower, and meet our arranged transport to see the dolphins. This is via motorbike taxi: one person on the back of one small motorbike with a local driver. Don’t even ask about crash helmets, which are technically legal, but not enforced. Mission Direct policy states that these are not to be used, but we’re on time off and Rob Safety said I could, m’lud.

(As I’m typing this on Saturday, we get a phonecall to say one of our team is in hospital after taking a fall off a moto, although he’s talking to us, so it can’t be too bad.) We take about half an hour to travel the 15km north to Kampi, weaving in and out of other motos, chickens, and at one point swerving off the tarmac entirely to make room for an oncoming truck. We pass rural houses, some run down thatch, some shiny new wood, most dusty. One has ceramic cobras by the door, possibly something to do with the legend of the Buddha being sheltered from a rainstorm by a huge cobra, so that he could meditate in peace.

As for the dolphins, they are well worth the trip: I’ll let Rob blog about them.

Worrying noises to hear: your moto driver yawning. Still, he took one hand off the handlebars to cover his mouth….umm…

Riel money

The Cambodian unit of currency is the riel. 100 riel will buy an A4 photocopy. This is the smallest denomination bill I have yet seen, there are also 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, 10,000. There may be others I haven't encountered yet. 10,000 – 20,000 riel gets you a main course in most restaurants.

This is obviously an impractical currency for large purchases, so the majority of transactions are done in good ole US greenbacks. The riel-dollar rate is fixed at, for all practical purposes, 4,000 riel to the dollar.

The drawback is that riels are effectively used in place of cents, so for a 6.50 transaction, you hand over a $20and get back a $10, 3 $1's and 2,000 Riel. Or, for a 3,000 riel purchase, you hand over a dollar bill and get 1,000 riel in change.

This all works fabulously if your change required is 25c, 50c, or 75c, but if you need 80c change you'll get either 3,000 or 3,500 riel. I have seen 100 riel notes.

I am still in the process of mastering the quick change mental arithmetic to work out if my change is correct, also the occasional heart attack moment where you ask the price and get a number but not a currency.

Siem Reap

Rob and I travel up to Siem Reap (town serving the Angkor Wat complex) a day before the rest of the team, in order to set up various practical arrangements. We board the Mekong Express Limousine Bus near the waterfront in Phnom Penh. Rob is vaguely disappointed that the promised hostess on the bus is actually a soft spoken young gentleman who points out sights and places of interest in both Cambodian and English along the 314km from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. We get a breakfast box consisting of pasty like item and currant bun, as well as free water. The air conditioning is set to arctic – one of the things I thought I'd never hear myself say in this country is 'How nice to get out of the bus to warm up.' Onboard entertainment is a video DVD playing Mr Bean, Cambodian pop videos (there's an awful lot of melancholy lasses what have been abandoned by some bloke, and are now dying of TB. Or something) and a sort of Cambodian version of the Chuckle Brothers.

On arrival, we are literally mobbed by tuktuk drivers offering to drive us in to town for $1. At one point two or three have physically got hold of me and are dragging me away from Rob, who is likewise bodily moved towards tuktuks. We settle on one, who drives us to the hotel swiftly and then gives us his phone number – you wouldn't normally get a tuktuk for a $1, it's a sweetener to get the lucrative full day driving you about Angkor Wat, which is a few km to the north, and requires transport between different temples.

We settle in to the hotel, which is made of pavilions of two up, two down dotted about a garden full of palm trees and brilliant pink flowers. The effect is of seclusion and calm. Having checked the bookings for the team and ascertained that no free transfers are available, we organise our bus driver (friend of a friend of our Phnom Penh driver) to pick up the team from the boat and drive us about on Sunday. We begin footslogging about the town, checking prices and locations of different restaurants. We stop for a drink in Butterflies – advertised as an oasis of calm full of 1500 tropical butterflies (which are caught thrice weekly by local children, thus enabling them to earn money to go to school) I see two butterflies, possible the same one twice. It's dark brown all over. Also, building work is taking place next door. However, I do try a rice wine, which is about as strong and sweet as sherry, and rather fine.

We continue across the river to the old market area. Here are more restaurants, almost al doing both Khmer food and pizza/pasta. Pub street is lined with, well, pubs all aimed at the tourist market. We skip Molly Malone's authentic Oirish pub and proceed to the Balcony cafe, where we drink wine and sketch out a plan of where to take our team.

We also see some gorgeous silk boutiques, some fair trade, all quite pricy. I see a sign on a market stall offering traditional scarves for $3-$4, whereas I have seen the same in Phnom Penh for $1.25. Such is Siem Reap – the only place many people will see in Cambodia, often as part of a tour through Thailand, for which all money will go to the Thai tour operator. Siem Reap itself (ironically, the name actually means Victory over the Thai) is a dusty town consisting of about three roads. The main temples themselves are located 7km north, on a fairly shiny new road, with a big ticket control area where webcams take a photo of each visitor which is immediately printed onto your $20 one-day ticket. The temples are surrounded by children and women demanding that you buy their bracelets/trinkets/silks. If you tell a child to go away, they will often stop and ask you where you are from. If you say England, they reel off in perfect English facts about the population and capital, and then demand that since they have told you all about your country, you must now buy postcards. Buying anything immediately unleashes a torrent of other voices pointing out that their trinkets are a different colour, and must also be purchased.

Another feature of Angkor Wat are the groups of maimed and disabled men who sit near the main tourist routes, playing beautiful music on traditional instruments. Deprived of their ability to work by landmine injuries, they busk away, begging tips and selling CD’s for $5.

Typical day part 2

After picnic lunch and a quick pitstop at the hotel to freshen up, we head to the afternoon’s activity, which is usually helping out with a project at New Life Fellowship, a lively church in Phnom Penh. One of their main services to the community is providing free English lessons, which we help with by giving students the chance to break into small groups and practice a conversation, which they wouldn’t normally be able to do. They also run a play area for kids from the slums on a Thursday afternoon, where we help wash grubby children, supervise them playing and give out food parcels (this is a standard part of NLF’s programme) We also donate new clothes for the kids. On Fridays, NLF visit the slums, and donate more clothing or flipflops, building relationships with the families and inviting kids to come to Joy Club on the following Thursday. We have been saving empty water bottles – the kids can sell them for a few hundred riel to recycling plants, and by bringing oiur empties, we save them having to dig through rubbish on the streets.

After a few hours, it’s time for an early dinner, in a convenient restaurant. Usually Rob orders a selection of dishes, and everyone shares. Then it’s back to the hotel before 8pm, for tea and coffees and a chat before bed, and up again at 5 the next morning…

Myn

One down, four to go

I am plagued by poor internet cafes. the messages I want to provide, I never quite manage.

Anyway, here are some piccies of the first house (Godwilling).


OK, no. that's not going to work. Maybe another time.

Take my word for it, we've built a house. The second team arrive tomorrow, and there's 15 of em.

Should be interesting.

Also, we've been to Kratie, and seen the ever depleting Mekong River dolphins. Look on Google Images if you want a picture.

A typical day

To give you an idea of what's generally happening:

The alarm clock is set for 5 am. Our first meeting is at 5.30 am, with the other permanent staff in someone's hotel room.. We go over plans for the day, ensure all are singing off the same sheet, work out if anyone needs to take a break/skip something in order to do some behind the scenes arranging. Then all the team members arrive for morning devotions and tea and coffee before eading down to breakfast in the hotel. (Rice, noodle soup, or eggs and baguettes)
At 7am we get on the minibus to go to the village where we are building houses. We head out across the Tonle Sap river via the Japanese Friendship bridge (destroyed in the wars in the 70's, but re-building made possible in 1997 by the kind assistance of the Japanese Government) After the bridge we stop at a stall to buy a big block of ice (25 cents) to put in the esky with the packed lunches. We then drive to the Mekong ferry. Everyone as to get out to allow Sarath, our driver, to reverse down a dirt slope to the ferry itself. We buy bread and fruit here, for lunch. One baguette is about 18 cents. The rickety looking ferry takes 8 minutes to actually cross the river, by E's watch, but loading and unloading take a further 20. Dozens of small mopeds and passengers, and a few vans and trucks park on, in no particular order. Our driver always backs on and drives off, but other trucks drive on and then have to do a many-point turn across the deck of the ferry to get off. Watching the way the ferry dips almost to the waterline as it moves back and forth makes one mildly nervous.
Once over the Mekong we travel slwly for another half hour, along a packed dirt road, avoiding the cows, chickens, dogs, orange-robed monks, and mopeds with three wardrobes balanced on the handlebars that we meet along the way. There are buildings all along this road, monasteries, graveyards, pagodas, but mostly houses, some very nice and new, others just shacks. Most have something for sale on the ground floor, such as drinks, petrol or haircuts. At KleanmouengCheat we park the minibus on a side road near the building site, and work for about three hours, fetching, carryin, chiselling, digging, or whatever. Three hours doesn't sound like much, but in this heat, it's enough. Our translator and van driver pitch in without being asked, so much so that we have to keep reminding the translator that we need his tongue more than his hands.
We also keep some of the local children entertained with football, dancing, and generally behaving like silly foreigners.

More when laptop is recharged !

The first house

Nearly all preparations are complete, the first team of volunteers arrive in a few hours and this pc keeps shutting down every few minutes.

Anyway, here is the first house that we are replacing:

Note the rickety stairs, the holes in the walls and the patchwork repairs.

Here's what it looked like yesterday:


And here's what has happened to the bits that were pulled down:


This is where the family are living until the new house is finished.

Wish I had time to tell you more of the sights, sounds, traffic, heat, the Mekong ferry and about why it's rotten to be suffreing from a bad cold when it's 30C in the shade.

Phnom Penh

The traffic in Phnom Penh is miraculous. Not only do you have people transporting immense loads on tiny motorbikes (so far my favourite is the guy driving the bike, and behind him the friend supporting a five foot high cylinder of gas cross ways across the bike) as well as families of up to four crowded on one bike, kids with no helmets sitting on Dad's shoulders, but you have cars and tuk tuks all weaving in and out, doing u turns across the main road, driving down the wrong side, or getting the passengers out of the tuk tuk because the hill's a bit too steep. We haven't seen a single accident: people all drive relatively slowly so that they can stream around you without stopping.

Our first night here, we walked to the main road from our staff house. It was dark, and fragrant with all manner of appetising smells and an underlying odour of slightly fermented sewage. Children waved and shouted hello. People's houses are often open: there'll be a studio/shop/warehouse on the ground floor, and you can see people working as you walk past. The alley we live on is dirt, but many of the streets are paved with concrete, covered with a layer of rubbish, sand, chickens, etc. At 6.30 pm it was full dark, but very hot.
We got to the main road to find that the restaurant on the corner is in fact slightly dubious. (Girls waiting outside to entertain gentlemen) So we retraced our steps to a place we had walked past, which was basically the front compound of someone's house. The menu was all in Khmer script, but the manager was very patient with us in transalting: Grilled cow, lips of cow, head of cow, bit of cow, um, not sure how you say....
OK, we'll have the duck. And the chicken, fried with a fruit he can't explain exactly, so he fetches one to show us. We share three dishes, and rice, and get some beer and some soft drinks (Lychee juice, Soursop juice, Grass Jelly juice) We discover that in Cambodia, they leave the bones in. None of this taking a fillet and chopping it up, no, take a cleaver to the whole bird. Apparently, they actually eat the bones - for a diet so lacking in dairy, this must be an important source of calcium.When we are stuffed, we call for the bill (Sohm cuk loy!) and discover that we have feasted all five of ourselves for the princely sum of approximately six pounds fifty.

OK, off to New Life Fellowship to sort out details for much of the rest of our time here. They run a drop in for street children, a slum visiting program, english and healthcare classes and many other things which we will hopefully be working on while we're not building houses.

Khnyom mao pro te Kampuchea nam bay san tear!
(I came to Cambodia to build houses. And do other things, but I haven't learnt that much of the language yet.)

Freudian slip

When we visited the village yesterday, our experienced team mate whipped out balloons and blew them up for the children. When Rob was given the chance to blow one up, he once again demonstrated hitherto unsuspected skills as a children's entertainer.

Today, when explaining that you may as well get into the spirit of things, he managed to utter the phrase "Well, if you want to blow up a child then give it to a balloon...."

Give him a break, he's still adjusting to the time zone lag.

Arrived

Once we finally left the UK, our journey was exceptionally smooth. Prior to that... well, think overrunning engineering works near Rugby, signal failures near Hayes, appallng service at the very expensive hotel near Heathrow (thankyou business miles).

It's warm here, but not too hot: a mere 29C today.

Yesterday, we visited the village where we will be doing most of the work here. There is a mixture of housing, ranging from tumbledown-shack to mediterranean villa, though more of the former than the latter.

All is busy, as we have just a few days until the first team arrives in country, and everything needs to be SMOOTHLY in place by then. It isn't that yet. This is being typed during a short gap between meetings, so my carefully planned blog structure has gone out the window already!

Photos will happen at some point.

Keep thinking of us, praying for us, sending positive vibes our way. We need all the backup we can get.