Shop Progress, Blacksmithing awesomeness, and Reading

Hi everyone.

The first thing I would like to cover is what progress has been made in the shop. First, Electricity has been installed, which is great. You can see in the pictures, we have two long fluorescent lights on opposite walls and a box with three sockets. This allows for the playing of music in the shop, which has been nice. Also, we can use power tools, although I haven't bought any yet. By the way, the kid on the right is Sai Ha, my translator.


Also, I purchased a stainless steel sink in Phnom Penh and brought it back to SLP, and got a stand built for it. Thanks to this, I can now wash my hands without having to crouch outside using rainwater. Life feels more civilized. Plumbing the sink in was kind of a debacle, because I had never run PVC plumbing before. It's really easy, but I didn't use enough glue the first time around so we had to cut out some sections that were leaking and re-do them, but it's now watertight. Also, the sink drains to the sewer, so I don't have to wash stuff into the road anymore. I have included this picture of the sink because I rode back to SLP with this on my back. It was ridiculous, and the sink acted as a sail. As Tony said, "you actually have everything including the kitchen sink on your back."

The most recent progress in the shop was the commisioning of a work bench, which will be made out of steel and have a plywood top. It should be done already, I just need to get back, pay for it, and bring it to the shop. On the wall behind the shelf I'm going to install a sheet of plywood to hang hand tools from. And I may have another bench made for the opposite side of the room. Now I need to start doing harder stuff, like coming up with a list of tools to buy and getting that done. And, much more frighteningly, buying parts and actually fixing things. I don't really know how I'm going to accomplsh that. Baby steps.



Okay, so moving on from the Shop, I wanted to include some pictures from an awesome discovery. After commisioning the workbenches, Sai Ha and I rode our bikes past a place with a bunch of scrap metal and about 10 massive acetylene bottles. I was curious, and stopped to check out what was going on. Turns out they were forging axe heads here, which I was really excited about. I think Sai Ha was confused by my exuberance. So here is a picture of the most important part of the operation. That woman is standing near the forge, which is half a 50 gallon drum with an air blower keeping charcoal very hot. She is currently heat treating some axe heads. The massive machine on the left, which is cast iron and taller than me, is a hydraulic hammer or press. I was so blown away by this being here. It's a pretty serious piece of equipment. In the final picture you can see the result of her work, a large collection of axe heads, but if you look carefully in the back left corner of the picture, you will see what looks like a massive bullet standing up straight. I'm farily certain this is the business end of a massive shell, like what would be fired out of a large cannon-y type thing, and it's being used as an anvil. So cool.


So thats whats been going on, and I wanted to write something about books I've been reading and what they've made me think about. So since I've been here, I've finished these books.

This House of Sky, by Ivan Doig
When Broken Glass Floats, by Chanrithy Him
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, by Alan Sillitoe
Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry
The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham
Freddy and Frederika, by Mark Helprin
Plainsong, by Kent Haruf

Books I have started but not finished are:

On Aggression, by Konrad Lorenz
Irrational Man, by William Barret
The Illusion of Technique, by William Barret
The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen
After London, by Richard Jeffries

So the books i have finished have tended to be novels, and the ones I'm still working on are more philosophically biased. It's been interesting to learn about this stuff, and I'm kind of frustrated by not finishing these books, but I need to re-learn how to read difficult stuff. When i read novels, I read them very quickly and don't have to think about it. But reading some of this other stuff I find myself reading the words but thinking about something else, because I have to read a couple sentences, and stop and think about what they mean. It's a pretty different ball game.

So this train of thought led to a lot of writing. It will be in another post, entitled "thoughts on life."


UPDATE - since i first wrote this, we have recieved our first workbench, and put up a sheet of plywood to hang tools from above the bench. Also, we bought our first power tool, an impact drill. More on this, and hopefully pictures, in the next post. Last but not least, I bought a radio which allows us to listen to BBC worldwide, which is great.

The adventure gets real

Hello dear readers.

So, I have moved to the boonies, relative to the cosmopolitan Phnom Penh. This is the house I am staying in. I live with/above a family who are super nice, although none of the people who permanently live there speak English, which makes for somewhat awkward interaction. Someone who I believe is the owners daughter in law is staying for a while, and she speaks English which helped ease the initial transition. Still, I haven't lived with total strangers for a long time, and it takes some re-getting used to. Things that I find awkward include not knowing if I'm supposed to eat dinner with them or not, sharing one bathroom that is not sound insulated in any way, and perpetually feeling rude for no legitimate reason. Also, there are several teenage girls who want me to speak with them in English, to improve their pronunciation. So far we have had one lesson which involved lots of giggling on their part, but towards the end it got more productive. They can read quite well, but have difficulty understanding my accent. So we'll see how that goes.



This is my room, which is pretty nice actually. I have electricity, which is a fantastic thing. Most importantly, this allows me to use a fan, which is crucial to sleeping. Also, having the ability to listen to music is wonderful. It's simple, but it definitely supports the theory that it's the little things that count. I enjoy it. The most frustrating thing about living here is the bathroom situation. The only one in the house is downstairs, and I always feel like an intruder when going down there, especially at night. Bathing is accomplished by dipping a ladle-ish thing into a very large (big trash can sized) bucket of water and dousing oneself, then lathering and repeating the dousing. It is sort of entertaining and refreshing, but upon returning to Phnom Penh and taking a shower, the SLP style of bathing quickly seemed less novel an idea.



I have only lived in SLP for about 5 days. I decided to venture back to Phnom Penh for the weekend, mostly to remind myself that I am not stuck in SLP, but also because I want to do some work for the shop. Below is a picture of the shop in a fairly current state. Frustratingly my camera cannot capture the entirety of the room (similar to the picture of my bedroom). The reason the wall is painted like this is to echo the wall opposite, which is concrete covered brick, like stucco, and varies in height. I'll take another picture at some point to hopefully further illustrate why the paint scheme is so odd. Other factors contributing to the odd looks are that the boards are junky and termite eaten, and we are painting oil paint with 2.5" wide brushes. I was originally planning on painting the walls in a checkered flag scheme, like white with black squares, but think it's a bit much, and it would be a nuisance.

Anyway, after we finish painting we are going to hook up water pipes to the bathroom, and I am going to install a sink, which is fairly rare in SLP, but extremely useful for washing hands, moto-parts, etc. I'm not sure how to deal with environmental aspects of the shop though. For example, when cleaning up the brushes we use, we've washed them with solvent (gasoline) and then washed that into the road, which my translator has assured me is common practice in Cambodia, but he also recognized that is was bad for the environment. (Having re-read this post, I realized that I have not introduced my translator. His name is Sai Ha, he is 18, and pretty hilarious. I'll try and get a picture of him and I on the blog) When we have a sink, we will probably wash some nasty stuff into it, which is not ideal. I don't really know what else to do, but I'm thinking of asking other shops what they do with old oil and solvents. So that will probably help. Also, in thinking about it further, I have washed many brushes into sinks at home. I guess it's just harder when you see the paint and gas wash into a puddle in the road, and stay there for hours, mocking your desire to be "environmentally conscious".

After the water pipes are installed, the next step will be shelving/work benches, then electrical stuff. Tony, the guy I bought my dirt bike from, has some great work benches in his shop that were made here, so I am going to measure them, take pictures, and draw up a design I can give to a shop to weld them up. I'll probably also draw up his bike stands and lift for posterity.

Once the shelves and electricity are in, I'll start buying tools in earnest, and someone will move into the shop full time. Then the transition to working on stuff will somehow take place. I'm thinking of buying some decrepit bikes, and trying to get them in working order while people from TC help. Hopefully this will help us learn where to buy parts, I can teach some useful things, and other unforeseeable good things will happen.

I have two more pictures in the post. The first is the view along the market from the front of the shop, while it's raining. The second is me trying to illustrate how intense the rain gets. That is water running from our gutter, and it filled all those buckets in maybe two minutes.




So that's my life as of late. Also, I've been reading quite a bit, as not much happens in SLP after dark. I would like to write a post about what I'm reading and thinking about, although it seems rather presumptuous to publicly write what one is privately thinking about with the idea that it is interesting. But i guess that's what this blogging thing is all about, and in the end it is unlikely to do harm or cause offense.

As a final note, I am listening to Mendelssohn's Octet in E something or other, which is a fabulous piece of music. I first heard it at one of Union's classical concerts in Memorial Chapel. When the shop is set up I am hoping to get some speakers and blast music like this, and play videos such as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVkY8oA3RlE to get people interested in the shop, and because it will be awesome.

Hope everyone is well.

Ned.

Long Time No Post

Hello.

So it's been quite a while since I posted last. Some exciting stuff has happened. I'll list it, going approximately from most important to least.

1. Two guys from Tramung Chrum are now going to the moto-repair school that I was going to in Phnom Penh. I'm going to try and post a picture of me with them sometime soon.

2. I stopped going to school. The second stage was irritating and felt like a waste of time. I brought a translator who did a good job, but the stuff covered was fairly basic. So I moved on.

3. Water and Electricity have been hooked up to the shop, although not distributed, i.e. there is no plumbing or wiring per se.

4. I am moving out of Phnom Penh this Sunday, and moving in with Leb Ke's aunt for an indeterminate amount of time until I find a place to rent in Sala Lekh Prahm.

5. My dirt bike now functions without sounding like it's in its death throes. Hopefully this will continue to be true for some time. Also, I got my registration card, meaning it will be less reasonable for police to harass me.

6. I shaved with a straight razor, which in the US probably would have earned me nicknames such as "patches" and "slicey". I reccommend everyone who feels impatient and/or lacking a good attention-span should try shaving with a straight razor. You will very quickly develop laser-like focus, because otherwise you too will earn silly nicknames thanks to your sliced up and oddly patched face. I was pretty cavalier about it at first, and gave myself a reasonable flapper, like a cut that produced a flap of skin.

No good pictures to accompany this post, and while I could describe some of these happenings in more detail, I'm not feeling particularly verbose right now. Perhaps in the future.

Okie Dokie.

My next post will be post Phnom Penh. Get excited hahaha.....

Ned.