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.