The TC Moto Shop Experience

The Last Post

2010-04-26T04:29:00.000-07:00

Hi.

This is my last written post. It's also the last day I am in Cambodia. I've said goodbye to a lot of great people over the last two days. When I was in SLP for the last day, it felt like a dream.

I don't really know what to say.

Maybe filling everyone in on the last 4 or 5 weeks would be good. So that meeting on the 20th was the last thing I mentioned as being important I think. It went fairly well. Leb Ke and Yousos had some good ideas about how to help the shop get better, and I think Leb Ke will be able to help the guys from TC improve their accounting methods, among other things.

I've been away from the shop for a few weeks though, and things went well while I was gone, in terms of the business. They repaired the Chaly, which you may remember spent months torn down in the shop. They've been able to use it to get back and forth to Tramoung Chrum, which is great. Here is a picture of it, I think it looks cool as hell because all the lights and electronics are stripped so it looks sort of like a miniature chopper. The 'key' is a piece of wire that shorts the ignition, which is cool.

There has been death and birth among the Cham people. Leb Krem, who was the leader of the Tramoung Chrum community, died in a motorbike accident while I was away. He apparently swerved to avoid a dog and crashed. Despite having worn a helmet, he is no longer with us. It is a tremendous loss for TC. He was an incredible man, and brightened my day whenever he came by the shop, despite our relative difficulty in communication. There is a picture of him with a bunch of people in the shop from an earlier post. I may put it up in a new post.

Yousos's wife had a daughter, which is great. She is their first child. He showed me a picture and she looked wonderful and healthy. So that in some small way offset the sadness of Leb Krem's death.

This dog joined the family I was staying with in SLP, although the black one pictured earlier in the blog has vanished. It is hilarious, and very playful. I'm glad to be going back to my dog soon, I miss the companionship animals can provide when they aren't terrified of people.

I went to a formula one race in Malaysia, which was great. There were a lot of people there, despite this hillside looking empty.

Here are some pictures from the shop. It was sad to say goodbye to the TC bros, and especially Sai Ha. He is really an awesome guy, and very smart. He asked me several times how he could get to the United States, and it was hard to tell him that I didn't really know how to help him. I plan on keeping in touch with him over e-mail though. Anyway, here is a picture of the TC bros with a customer who came in to get his oil changed this morning, followed by a picture of all of us outside the shop. We thought the guy taking the picture was struggling, so Sai Ha started walking out to help him. So this isn't the normal 'everyone in a line' picture, but I thought it was the best of the ones taken. We are all smiling.

It is so indescribably bizarre to be leaving Cambodia. I am very excited to be heading back, but this has been a life changing experience, in ways I'm sure I won't fully understand how for a long time.

I'd like to say thank you to a lot of people.

First, to Alan Lightman for coming up with the idea, having faith in my ability to accomplish some semblance of his concept, and providing help and good ideas along the way. To Tom McEvoy and Hal Fried, for putting the Minerva Fellowship together and giving me the opportunity to take part in it. To the Schenectady Rotary Club, without whose generous donation and business advice the shop would have been even more difficult to set up. To my family, who were supportive no matter what, as always. To Leb Ke, Yousos, and Sai Ha, without whom I would have accomplished very little and probably gone out of my mind. They are the champions of Cambodia as far as I'm concerned. To Tony Priestnall, who provided sage wisdom in the area of running a bike shop, as well as a great deal of help with my dirt bike. To Ahti Westphal and Steve Finch, for putting me up and putting up with me on weekends over the course of roughly 6 months in Phnom Penh. To Veasna Chea and Peter Leth, for providing a home away from Home, and for letting me/helping me bake lots of pies in their kitchen. To the Clinton Foundation people for introducing me to Jersey Shore, and for the best Thanksgiving party ever.

I'm missing people. Thank you to those I have forgotten.

P.S. If this post seems ridiculous I'm sort of out of it because I can't believe I'm leaving. So, sorry If it seems discombobulated.

Update^3 and Thoughts on Life Vol. 2

2010-03-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

Hi,

So I've been thinking. I tried to break up each section according to topic, but they are sort of interrelated. Also, this ended up being quite long, and has no pictures. Anyway, let's begin.

Section 0: The Current Situation.

As covered in the recent posts, the shop is rough. Morale is low, I'm not really providing a ton of guidance for a variety of reasons, and I'm leaving soon. However, I would like to point out that the shop has a reasonable chance to succeed. I think my previous posts painted an overly dire picture of the situation, and my belief in the shop's potential after I leave has been strengthened. There is enough money left to cover the rent and costs for many more months, probably through the end of the year, which gives the TC guys a fair amount of time to get things in order. One of the TC guys is being trained at a good shop, and will learn an invaluable amount from it about both how to fix motos and how to run a shop. An MIT student is probably coming in the summer, and hopefully she will bring a lot of energy and problem solving ability to the project. In the meantime, to try and deal with the problems the shop is facing, Yousos, Leb Ke, Lee Him, Sai Ha and I are going to meet on the 20th and have a conference of sorts. Hopefully we will collectively come up with some good ways to move the shop forward.

Also, in my previous post I said fairly negative stuff about not caring about the shop, not wanting to deal with it, etc. This is an expression of an emotion, and not an accurate representation of how I am approaching the project. I don't know if this was clear to people, and would like to say that I do care. I have spent 8-ish months trying to make this work, and really do want it to be successful.

The reason I wrote that is that I am stressed out of my damn mind. Trying to sell my dirt bike has been something of a nightmare, and I can't get it out of my head. It's sort of a subtly overwhelming thing. I plan to never be in the position of rushing to sell a vehicle again in my life. I'm also really concerned about having no money when I get back, and the related issue of finding a good job. Also, I'm nervous to have to talk about this experience in front of lots of people, and trying to do something approaching a good job before I leave. And really, Cambodia has worn me down. Living here is not easy.

Section 1: The Blog, Employers, and Conclusions About Me.

There are a few big things I have come to conclusions on. One is that two character traits I consider extremely important, and that I hope to exemplify, are honesty and perseverance. I am confused about my track record on the latter, and am concerned about it. This blog is really honest, maybe even to my detriment, because I have been honest about my failings and frustrations. I'm concerned that potential employers will read my accounts of being really tired of Cambodia, and 'not caring', etc. and think I would be an unworthy employee because I am lacking perseverance or they would just have a generally negative impression of me due to my not-always-positive language.

While thinking about that problem, what I should do about it, and why it has even come about, this is what I realized: generally, when I write on this blog, I have very strong feelings about the situation I am in, and my writing expresses that. So way back when I wrote about my crisis of confidence, I was at a peak of freaking-out-ness, and that blog post is practically frantic. Similarly, when I wrote the recent 'update' post, I was pretty depressed about what was going on, and disappointed in myself for not making this shop totally successful, etc. I think that post may have come across fairly negatively. Really, this blog is a bizarre cross section of me at my most confused and frustrated. It makes me feel better to write about it, but man .... I'm afraid what people who don't know me and haven't wrestled with similar issues must think when they read it. Especially if they are considering whether or not to pay me.

I don't want to edit anything though, because I think it's important to accurately represent my thoughts, however fleeting the exact ones I write may be. And despite being in a somewhat better mood now, the underlying issues are true. The shop is in a tricky spot. Since that post, I have found reasons for the shop being in a weak position that are not my fault, which has made me feel less terrible. For example, the TC guys haven't exactly been taking initiative in the running of the shop. They don't seem to be working their butts off, as I had hoped they would, to make the shop successful.

The human mind is extremely good at rationalizing though, and I can't decide If I am just finding ways to make myself feel better, or if I this is a legitimate point. A counter to the above point is that they are acting the way I am, and being somewhat detached. So I don't know what the truth is.

Summary of this section:
I consider honesty and perseverance important. I know I am honest, but cannot decided how I score on perseverance. This problem is oddly magnified in my blog because I write in it when I am at an emotional peak. I'm concerned that people reading this blog, especially potential employers, will have a negative impression, but I don't want to edit things to put myself in a more positive light.

Section 2: What's Important in Life?

I have been trying to read "Irrational Man" again, which is a summary of existentialism by William Barrett. There are some incredible ideas in there that I would like to quote in the blog. But basically, the point I have gotten out of this second attempt is that man is lost, and we look all over the place for things to make us feel fulfilled. From what I have read, Barrett seems to be making the point that this is because our view of the world has shifted, starting with protestantism. When religion was denuded of its rituals and more 'mythical' attributes, which I think also coincided with science and 'rationality' becoming a more powerful force, Man began walking the road to today's sense of isolation.

This is because rationality is limited, and it cannot explain the world. Barrett uses examples such as Godel's incompleteness theorem's, which use logic to prove that an arithmetic system cannot prove itself to be true. Barrett makes this a broader explanation of logic/rationality being unable to explain itself, let alone everything else.

*Warning - this next paragraph could be totally wrong. I don't have the book with me, and am sort of winging this*

So Barrett says man turned to rationality to explain life, the world, etc, and it hasn't really worked out. Despite our impressive knowledge of math and science, and out ability to make incredible things with it, we have removed ourselves from the realities of life by making life an abstract, rationalized process. This process failed us, and we are lost. We don't really have mystical guiding forces as we did before rationality, and rationality turned out to defeat itself. Barrett uses modern art as an example. His view is that Art represents how people think, basically. So when people viewed the world from a mystical standpoint, and rationality seemed to be working out well, artists portrayed the world as sensible in the form of realism and 'classical' art. That started breaking down though, and people began deconstructing everything. I don't know the whole progression, but we have classical stuff, then weird stuff like cubism that distorts "reality" and makes it 2D, and finally we get to sharks in tanks of formaldehyde, canvases painted one color or seemingly randomly decorated with splashes of color, etc.

We cannot turn back the clock though, and return to a more 'mystical' world view, and he doesn't advocate trying to do that. I haven't gotten to the point where he advocates anything, really, It's still information presentation stage.

What this makes me think about though, Is how to find meaning in life. It basically seems like people find meaning from whatever they spend their time on. This is most commonly a job and a family. I have normally rejected finding meaning from these sources, because they seem like external validation. It would be nice if life meant something innately, and people didn't have to run around searching for things that make them happy, or occupy their time enough.

This is my thought - maybe it's not really very original, but here we go. People have moved beyond the need to survive, and that is, in the end, the meaning of life. Surviving is our most important job, with creating offspring and doing our best to ensure their survival being the next step.

I don't really know how I feel about this though. Survival (from my perspective i.e. lucky enough to be born where I was and into the family I was, obviously there are plenty of people for whom this is not the case) is not really the issue anymore. It is unlikely that I will starve to death or be speared in a war with a neighboring clan/tribe/etc. The issue becomes finding a way to occupy our lives. In the past, the jobs I have had haven't occupied my life enough to fulfill this need. I think I just found the satisfaction gained from doing a good job at something rather empty in the end. I enjoy working, and doing a good job at things, but then I think about what I have done, and it never seems 'important'.

Like back in the day, you and your family were starving. You kill a deer, and feed your family. You survive to maybe kill some more deer. Life makes sense. For the things that don't make sense, you have a bunch of gods.

Designing machine parts, repairing a fence, pumping gas, etc? Pretty abstract in comparison. You do this sort of random stuff, and you earn money, which is a fabricated means to store the ability to buy or own things. God is Dead, and has been dis-proven. Mysteries of Life? Don't think about them, just go buy some Duct Tape. Or watch one of 80000000 TV channels. Or read the news, which I can personally guarantee you will occupy your mind.

Who thinks about this crap anymore? I do, but I'm being broken. I want a job now. I want to design random mechanical doo-dads and earn money so I can spend it on other mechanical doo-dads and some land that really doesn't belong to anyone. I'm not sure I have the willpower to accept a life of survival. This is kind of depressing. I am being absorbed by modern life, into the womb-like embrace of a life of distraction.

Maybe that's the problem, Humans have lost their will to survive, and exist to be placated and fed soft drinks. Wall-E wasn't the future, it's now. Modern Art doesn't make any G damn sense because life doesn't. And nobody seems to care, or they have somehow, mysteriously, found meaning in their life despite it's essential emptiness, and the fact that it is built on fabrications of man, which efficiently distract us from reality. But it's okay, because reality doesn't really make sense any more, and the earth has been deconstructed and abstracted into a parody of life.

Sigh.....

Section 3: Um, I'm going back to the shop now.

I don't know what I'm going to do there, but I'll try and encourage the TC bros to know what they are doing.

Stunningly, I have run out of things to say at the moment.

Take Care.

Ned.

Brief update on the update

2010-03-09T20:37:00.000-08:00

So today at the shop has been pretty frustrating. A kid came in to get his oil changed, which was good I guess, but when that was done Lee Him left,and I didn't know where he had gone. Also, Mr. Jiht kept going and coming, while Mr. Sovann is apprenticing at another shop. So for a while there were no TC guys in the shop.

Sai Ha told me that the guys are talking about moving the shop again, which I don't think is the right thing to do, as I have mentioned in the blog before. I think we just need to do a better job at the current location. This was reinforced by several occurences today. One was that a customer came to the shop while Mr. Jiht and Mr. Lee Him were gone. They left before Sai Ha was able to find Mr. Jiht. Sai Ha kept saying 'this is very bad'. I agree with him. The shop has a lot of problems right now.

Yesterday I spoke to Yousos, who works for the Harpswell Foundation, and he got pretty intense. He has seen the shop and is frustrated with what's going on. So he proposed that He, Leb Ke, and I all meet at the shop and talk to the TC guys and try to have a problem solving session. I think this is a very good idea, and told Yousos it would very good if we could make it happen before April.

That's what's up.

Ned.

Update

2010-03-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

Hi,

I didn't realize how long it had been since I updated the blog. Some interesting stuff has happened, and I also have a bunch of pictures to illustrate some of what has been going on. This first picture is a delicious cake thing that Sai Ha's mom made for me, which was very nice of her. These cake things were made in abundance because of some Cham celebration, sort of like a new years thing. People made towers of these things, hung money from them almost like Christmas ornaments, and brought them to the local mosques as offerings. I went to a mosque to get some lunch, and had to wear a pink and white scarf on my head, which was kind of ridiculous. Please refer to the horrendous picture of me.

They killed a cow or two for this party, and I actually sort of wanted to see that, weirdly. I have never seen an animal be killed for food and feel like it's something I should do. This idea is probably from reading Michael Pollan and other food-authors. Accountability for what you eat and all that.

The killing also interested me because it's basically a religious sacrifice, and I just read a book called American Gods by Neal Gaiman. It's a novel about how when immigrants came to the U.S. they brought their gods with them, but forgot them over time, so now the gods are weak and pissed off. Anyway, it was a good book, and was interesting because the concept of religion being so important that we would sacrifice animals (and even people, I guess) is so out there to me, but these cows were being sacrificed, and there were these cake-tree things with money in them, and it really registered that religion exists in Cambodia beyond the American sense of religion, which seems to mostly have become about God giving everybody money.

Also, a note on butchering. I'm fairly sure that people just hit dead animals with knives in arbitrary places. Chickens get chopped up with all their bones in place, and when you eat beef you get larger chunks of chopped up bone. That's what the picture of food is supposed to show. It's odd. Eating meat that is on whole bones in much easier, although I have eaten bone here which I never have before. Like in soup, chicken bones get fairly soft and can be chewed up. I ate a chicken neck a month or two ago, which was pretty tasty. Cartilage and other weird joint stuff that used to freak me out is pretty normal now, also.

In life news, it appears to be puppy season and the puppy population around my house has exploded. This little dude assaulted me at the bottom of my stairs one morning, and was chasing my feet around, generally being impossibly cute. One of his siblings also has been around, It makes me happy to pet dogs that enjoy it. Adult dogs here are, for the most part, extremely suspicious of people, and not down with affection. It isn't really surprising, given the way they are treated though. Even the puppies are messed with. I watched a really nice Khmer guy I know grab two by the scruff and hold them face to face with each other to make them fight, and an old woman picked one up by the front legs, looked at it briefly, then lowered it from one front leg until it was about 2 feet off the ground, then dropped it. This is like a two month old puppy! They get cuffed about, and the jaws clamped shut by hands until they cry, etc. etc. It sucks to watch. Anyway, until they don't like people I am enjoying being nice to them.

It's also puffy seed pod harvesting season apparently. The family I live with has a storage area that is full of these seed pods, and they take the fluffy stuff out and pack pillows and mattresses with it for extra income. It's fairly comfortable to sleep on, and is extremely soft. I don't know what it is, but it would be neat if you could make cloth from it. I included this picture so that hopefully some one can identify the plant.

Moving on to the shop.... I came back from my week off to see this giant pile of dirt by the entrance to the shop, and two cistern things installed inside the shop. I was pretty angry, because A) they are actually sewage tanks, and I don't understand why you would put that in the space you are living in, and B) they left the tops of the tanks sticking out like 6 inches! I (through Sai Ha) asked why they hadn't been dug in deeper so the tops where flush with the floor, and the guy who did the work said they are harder to pump out if you do. Considering the one at my house is completely buried, I was ready to tell him he was full of it, and go the whole flip out route. But I didn't want to deal with the repercussions, and to be honest, I'm just tired of dealing with the shop.

To expand on that last sentence, I am really ready to leave. I am tired of stressing about so much stuff, and being responsible for the success (or lack thereof) of this business, and all kinds of other stuff. I just want to go. Fortunately, I don't really have a ton of time left, so my wish will soon be granted.

Being perfectly honest, the shop will almost definitely not be making enough to support itself when I leave, and I don't know if it will in the near future. I'm going to pay the rent for 6 months after I leave, and leave the TC bros money to buy parts and cover other expenses, but I have a somewhat dim outlook on how the shop will fair after I go. I'm fairly certain that a student from MIT is going to come here and do some work over the summer, and hopefully she will be able to take the skeletal timbers I have put in place and build a better functioning business.

The two main problems are that I have essentially lost my motivation to make the shop better, and I also am having trouble of thinking of ways to add to the business. It's sort of a chicken vs. egg thing, like did I lose motivation first, or did I lose motivation because I don't know how to improve the situation. I haven't come to a conclusion other than not really worrying about it. I'm too focused on leaving, trying to sell my dirt bike, thinking about how to get a job when I get back, etc.

The trip to Malaysia for the F1 race in April looks like it may pan out though, which is a bright spot. There are no F1 races in North America anymore, so I really want to make it to this one. Should I be taking time off when the shop is kind of in a fragile place? Probably not. But I'm stubborn and feeling selfish, so I'm going. I still haven't left SLP or Phnom Penh, and am bitter enough that If I don't see Angkor Wat or anything else in Cambodia, It's unlikely that I will regret it.

Hope everyone is well. In case you couldn't tell, I'm looking forward to coming back and seeing people, but in the meantime I very much appreciate the support of the people who have been reading the blog and those who have been commenting. Thank you.

Ned.

Good News, and tentative travel plans

2010-02-19T22:05:00.000-08:00

Hi,

So I have some good news, which is that the shop actually seems to be sort of running. It's not making a lot of money, but they have a trickle of customers who apparently have not been scared off by mistakes that have been made. It seems somewhat consistent. So I guess I really over-estimated the impact our previous gaffs made.

Here is the long awaited photo of the sign, which is looking pretty snazzy. You may note the drawn in shock on the right hand side of the sign. This is to indicate that they can take suspensions apart and repair them. I don't know why we didn't include that when the sign was designed, because I asked a couple times what we wanted on it. At least it's being advertised now. Also of note in this picture is Route 5, the major road that goes to Phnom Penh, in the background. As you can see, we are fairly close, and therefore have a reasonable amount of traffic that goes by us when people turn off route 5 and go to the market.

Here is another picture of the sign, and on the left side of the picture you can see a customer's vehicle. This guy was in getting a new piston. In the next picture, you can see the parts taken off this vehicle on a mat by the feet of the guy without a shirt on, whose name is Mr. Sovann. On the right, behind the water barrel, is Mr. Lee Him. Standing on the left is Mr. Jiht. I surprised them while they were eating lunch to take the pictures, so in the first one they are looking a little confused, and in the second one Mr. Sovann is laughing out of embarrassment I think. Mr. Jiht actually looks sort of annoyed.

So yeah, the shop is kind of working out. I am taking this coming week off, and I left them some money to pay for any parts and stuff they need. Sai Ha and I came up with a very basic accounting system that I will check out when I get back, to try and figure out how well they are keeping track of money. I don't know when they will be earning enough money to pay the rent, buy parts, and have enough left over to get food, but at least we seem to be gaining momentum.

I think I will pay 6 or so months of rent up front before I leave to give them breathing room on starting to earn enough. Another big development was that they seemed to realize they needed more experience, and agreed that one of them (Mr. Sovann or Mr. Jiht) should apprentice at another shop in SLP. So we came to an agreement with a very successful shop nearby that will allow one of the guys to work there (for a fee) and therefore give that person a lot of good, guided experience. The other guy will work at the shop, doing whatever jobs they can, and then learn from the apprenticing guy when he is done, or after hours.

Let's see..... I guess the only other thing is that they briefly talked about moving the shop to a different, smaller town, because there was only one mechanic there and they thought they could get more customers. But I think the opportunity for the business to grow in SLP is quite good, and hopefully now that one of them will be apprenticing in town they will want to stick it out. This is another reason I will pay rent for several months after I leave, to keep them in SLP.

That's all the shop news. I think I'm sort of running out of things that I feel capable of doing at the shop. I don't want to put myself in the position one of my friends is in. She started a store that employs khmer women to design and make clothes and bags and stuff. It is incredible, and she is making enough money to support the shop and her staff, which is just fantastic. However, she is basically the head decision maker, and It could be difficult for the business to continue if she leaves, which puts her in a difficult position. I'm hoping to stay independent enough of the shop that when I leave it will basically be totally seamless. This can leave me feeling kind of awkward in the shop though, because I'm pretty ready to move on and they seem capable of taking care of stuff when I do.

So. My time in Cambodia is drawing to a close. I am starting to plan trips outside of PP and SLP, which is fantastic. During this week off I may go to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat and Nate and Lyndsay (the fellows at global child). I may go to Bangkok for the weekend sometime soon. I'm trying to figure out if It's feasible to go the Malaysian Grand Prix (a formula one race) in early April, and I'm planning a trip to Vietnam and China in mid-late April. So things are looking up in terms of travel. In conclusion, I wanted to add these photos I took of the sunset. These were taken on the way into Phnom Penh. I rode my bike, which is a three speed beach/city bike and was totally inappropriate for the adventure. I'll try to post a picture of it, and its hilarious stickers. The trip was 54 km and took me about 4.25 hours. Slow, painful, and I really only did it out of foolish stubbornness, but it will be a good memory. And I quite like these pictures. Here they are.

So that's the scoop. Hope everyone's been well. Take Care.

Ned.

I don't know what to call this one. Just an update, I guess.

2010-02-09T21:38:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone.

I'm in Phnom Penh with Sai Ha, picking up more parts and tools.

I broached the idea of having the mechanics go get more training from another shop, it didn't really go over that well. There was approximately zero enthusiasm for it. I'm not sure they totally understand what I am proposing, because they thought it would be just like the school they went to, which isn't what I am aiming for.

So I'll bring it up again in a few days, maybe go to another shop and try to explain it to the owners, in the hopes that they would understand and take my guys on. Basically I want to pay to have them employed at another shop, where they can learn from someone who knows more than I do.

Anyway, despite the troubles getting that idea across, and my fear about the shop not getting customers because of the piston debacle, all is not lost. Apparently the shop's reputation is not as damaged as I feared in my semi-panicked state. Today another person is coming to get their piston replaced, so we'll see how that goes. There were other customers coming in over the weekend as well, one to get an oil change and one wanted to get his suspension fixed.

I'll update soon, and try to get a picture of the sign up as well.

Take Care.

Ned.

Semi-Bad News Bears, but with some Light at the end of the Tunnel

2010-02-07T20:13:00.000-08:00

So last week, when the shop opened, was probably the most stressful time of my life.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the kind of stressful that is good because so much good stuff is happening, more like stressful because I'm concerned that the fledgling reputation of the shop has been severely damaged.

I'll try to explain the situation.

First, I was under the impression that the guys who went to school had learned enough to be able to fix moto's on their own, well. This was sort of foolish, becuase no one who gets out of any school is going to immediately know what they are doing in a job. It takes a fair amount of practical experience to really know what you are doing.

Secondly, I thought that if we got customers, everything would work out. I was so focused on that it prevented me from thinking about the fact that we weren't totally ready for customers. This may just be my extreme lack of experience in running a business coming to the fore. I don't really know how to do this, I just do what feels correct. Sometimes it's wrong, and having some promotions to bring in customers was probably overzealous.

So this is what happened. I said we were going to give the first 10 customers five dollars of free work. Once word got out about this, too many people wanted in. We didn't work slowly enough, taking time to really focus on doing a good job. We just tried to get through customers, which I guess is a natural enough reaction to having many people want work done very suddenly.

Once we went through those 10 people, I said anyone who got over 4 dollars of work done would get a free oil change. At this point I was still trying to get customers in so we could get some experience, and didn't realize that we were probably doing damage to ourselves by not doing a good enough job. I've really only come to that conclusion after having 3 or so days to think about it.

Things came to a head when one old customer who I recognized from my trips to TC came in, wanting a new piston put in. I had been working from 8 AM until that point, which was about 1:00PM, and needed to go to lunch. The customer wanted his bike done by 4 PM, which I didn't think was going to happen. Before I left for lunch, I told the guys that we should wait until the next day, because 2 hours was not enough. They said it was fine, It would take half an hour. I did not push it.

Unsurprisingly, this turned into a huge debacle. I will spare everyone the technical details, but the bike would not run well when we finished putting it back together at about 6 PM, and the old man was pissed. He had to keep leaving and coming back because the engine would die, and eventually decided to leave the moto at the shop over night and get it fixed at a different shop the next day.

I was totally crushed. I couldn't really handle what was happening, because I felt like I had predicted it, but had been unable to head it off. The feeling was akin to being locked in a car that was driving itself off a cliff, with no way to stop it. Just utter, stark, dread. I have since resolved to be more forceful in my avoidance of disasters I see coming. Actually I learned the lesson pretty quickly. Like while we were trying to fix the piston, another customer came up to us wanting some broken bolts removed from his forks. We didn't have the tools, and I said we couldn't do it. One of the guys called his teacher for advice, but it didn't lead anywhere, and I pretty much sent the customer on his way with my apologies. So hopefully as I learn things like this will be avoided more easily.

Anyway, back to the story. The next day, I got to the shop, and the customer had already taken his bike to a different shop. He called Lee Him, our shop manager, to tell him to have our mechanics go to this other shop to see what they did wrong. The other mechanic was willing to teach them how to avoid the mistakes they had made.

They wouldn't go, which was extremely upsetting. There is definitely an ego thing at play here, where they were sure that the problem was X, and not their fault. They were wrong, but I don't think they wanted to admit it. In Asia, losing 'face' is a big deal. Anyway, that afternoon no customers were coming in so I left and did all my laundry for about 3 hours.

The next day, I told Sai Ha he and I were at least going to go to the other shop to find out what went wrong. At this point, the TC guys decided it would be okay to go, and the other mechanic told them what was wrong, which I didn't totally understand because the explanation was in Khmer, and Sai Ha doesn't really know how to translate technical stuff very well. So I'm not totally sure how helpful it was to go after the fact, but hopefully the TC guys learned something.

All in all, It was an extremely difficult week. When 3 hours of doing laundry by hand seems like a vacation, the rest of life is no party.

After thinking about it for the weekend, I have come up with a few ways to try and salvage the situation.

The principle factor in being unable to run the shop now is the lack of experience all of us have. I know what to do to some extent, and would be comfortable doing some repairs on my own bike, but at a MUCH slower pace, too slow to be practical for business. Also, I don't know how to teach through the language barrier effectively, and how I do things is different from what is done here. Doing things differently, while sometimes a very good thing in the U.S., is not practical here, or at least is not within my time frame.

So our biggest problem is lack of experience.

Our greatest assets are availability of funds and about 11 weeks.

I think to solve the problem I am going to try and pay to apprentice the guys at a shop in TC, so that they get hands on experience that includes good oversight and teaching from someone who speaks Khmer and knows how to run a business. If this sounds like throwing money at a situation that I don't otherwise know how to solve, it isn't that far removed. But it's the best idea I have come up with, and it has a chance to work.

I may alternate the guys every day or couple of days so that one of them is in the shop in case we get the odd customer looking for an easy repair, while the other one can learn the harder stuff at an established shop.

So that's the status of things. The shop opened, which was exciting, but we were totally under prepared and now I'm trying to salvage things and move the project onward.

I would like to express how nutso this project has been. I can't decide If it should make me laugh or cry. It feels like warfare, long periods of not much going on punctuated by short bouts of overwhelming intensity. Without a doubt, it has been the greatest challenge of my relatively short life. I have heard so many stories of people being here for a long, long time, and failing to make business or NGO type things work out that I don't really feel so badly about what I've gotten done. As I said to one friend, I have exceeded my own expectations, and really whatever happens from here on out is bonus points.

That being said, I really want to leave a functioning shop when I depart.

I'll keep everyone updated. Thanks for your comments and good wishes, they mean a great deal.

Take Care.

Ned.

Second Post of the Day.

2010-02-01T22:28:00.000-08:00

2 posts in a day! This is a record.

Here are some pictures of the shop. This first one is the two guys who went to vocational school. This probably seems like an impressive picture, but this was one of the more frustrating repair sessions.

This second picture shows the new workbench, the shelves, and some of the parts we have. Also of note is that large blue barrel on the left. It's many gallons, and has kept the water turning off from being a crisis, which is good.

Quick Update

2010-02-01T17:49:00.000-08:00

Hello!

So things are moving along. I have some pictures I want to post but they remain on my camera, and will have to wait until another time.

Some cool stuff is happening though, so I thought I should write about it.

A. We've had customers at the shop. This is really both a blessing and a curse. The former because technically, it means I have fulfilled my goal of starting a shop. This is a great, semi-magical/astonishing feeling. The latter because for some of the customers, we have been less than ideal mechanics.

Several of the repairs have gone quite smoothly, which is fantastic, but a couple have been semi-disastrous. They took a long time, we left out a part on one guys moto, etc.

The guys from school aren't as well prepared as I had hoped, so it's going to be an interesting 3 months until I depart, trying to get them squared away for the future.

Fortunately, they seem to work pretty hard, which is critical. Hopefully as we all get more experience, they will work more smoothly and consistently, and we won't destroy our fledgling reputation.

Also under this group of "A" should be that we bought some more shelves and have a very minimal and basic inventory of parts, which is cool. These will be some of the pictures I throw on a later post.

B. We finally named the shop and a sign is being made. We are "The International Moto Shop."

Leb Ke suggested the friendship moto shop, but this seemed like we should all be wearing tie die t-shirts and flowy cotton yoga pants, and being really groovy. I decided against that because yoga pants aggravate me.

Sai Ha suggested the forever moto shop, which I was hesitant to approve, it sounded like a sequel to Highlander or something else involving immortal people.

I couldn't think of anything besides the Tramoung Chrum moto shop, but the guys from TC shot that down because they were afraid if they did a bad job it would reflect poorly on the whole village. So that was out. This was sort of unfortunate because i had always assumed we would name it that, and It was annoying that this reasoning was so pessimistic. I tried fairly persistently to use that name to encourage doing a good job, so as to ensure the name of TC would not be slighted, but they weren't having it.

Finally, the sign maker suggested international, and we all agreed it seemed excellent. So we went with it.

C. My bicycle got stolen about 30 minutes ago. Broad daylight. Pretty lame. Generously and somewhat oddly, the thief declined to take the rubber bungee cord in the bikes basket, and placed it on the ground before riding off. I was sort of baffled by this. It would be like stealing a car, but leaving all the contents inside the car on the ground where you stole it. Anyway, my naive optimism about the impossibility of my bike being stolen is gone.

D. I have three months left! I am alternately very pleased about this, and confused about what to do before I go. I'll be traveling with my sister for a few weeks in April, which makes me feel like I shouldn't travel now. But I don't want to be annoyed with myself for missing opportunities. Also, returning to the US is going to be bizarre.

Traffic laws, what? Hot Water? etc.

Also connected to this is the search for a job. So I'll go ahead and capitalize on my audience. If you know anyone who works at an engineering firm, please ask them if they need an entry level engineer with lots of odd skills. I would be most appreciative! Thank you kindly.

OK.

That's the story. Hope everyone's well.

Ned.

26 days is a long time

2010-01-16T20:34:00.000-08:00

Why Helllllooooo There.

It's been quite a while.

Forgive me this transgression, I wasn't feeling very inspired. I was concerned that my grumpiness would transfer to the blog, which wouldn't really do anyone any favors. So I decided to bide my time.

So - Alakazam! Scheherazade! Other semi-magical sounding words! - the blog is re-born! Not that I have incredibly exciting things to share, but I'll try to fill in the rather large gap since my last post with some tales of derring-do and general information.

Let's go back in time to December 21st. I think at this time I was preparing for Christmas, which involved a few parties. I had decided to take off between Christmas and New Years as a vacation. One of the parties was at a friends house, and there was a lot of good food, but I was the only person who did not speak fluent Khmer. There was a synthetic Christmas tree though, and presents for the little kids, making it feel fairly Christmas-y.

Then, on Christmas day, a bunch of people went on a boat ride on the Mekong River. We also had a post boat ride party at a friends apartment that was a real highlight. We made some Dark & Stormys which were quite delicious.

Unfortunately the day after Christmas I got really sick, and not because of too many Dark and Stormys. More like mildly delusional, super out-of-it sick. So I went to the hospital. Turns out I had a fever of 101.something measured in my armpit, and was quite dehydrated from uh, expelling water in an impolite fashion generally associated with bad food and developing countries. Nevertheless, this was a better experience than I expected (I hate hospitals, and especially emergency rooms) because the wait time for the ER was about as long as it took for me to write my name down, and the room I ended up spending the night in had a flat screen TV with cable, and a private bathroom with hot water. Taking a hot water shower was absolutely glorious.

One thing that really irritated me was doctors asking me If I wanted various tests done, while I had an intense fever and at about 1 AM. It wasn't really my best decision making mindset. Plus I was under the impression that I was going to be taken care of at the Hospital, and was irritated that I had to think about whether a Salmonella test was cost-effective, and If I wanted some kind of intestinal pain killer/spasm reducer that I didn't really understand. For the record I said yes to the former and no to the latter.

Anyway, A night of IV saline and antibiotics later, I was feeling well enough to vacate the hospital. I think the antibiotics crushed my immune system though, because I have been sick off and on since then.

Sadly though, this reduced my vacation to seemingly endless days of feeling terrible, watching movies, and reading the NY Times. More importantly/unfortunately, it prevented me from going to the coast for a new years party with some of my friends who work for the Phnom Penh Post. Considering that in six months I haven't been anywhere except Phnom Penh, Sala Lekh Prahm, and Tramoung Chrum, I was tremendously excited to go to this party.

Alas, it was not to be, but such is life.

So let's see. In the two weeks or so following new years, I've uh, done.... um.... yeah. Not a lot. I went back to the shop on the 4th to try and get things somewhat in order, but there was no water, and the guys from TC said they wanted to go home because it's expensive for them to live there, and that's exacerbated by not having water. (more on water later) Also, I haven't been sure how to proceed with teaching for a while, so it's not like I was revealing fantastic secrets that would overwhelm the expense of living in SLP.

The two guys who were going to vocational school in PP have finished it, and went back to TC on the 10th to spend a week with their families. Actually, some cool news on that front - This past Friday I went to TC and hung out with them and their families. It was really cool. They are great guys, and they get along with Sai Ha (translator), Lee Him (shop manager) and I quite well, so I have high hopes for our working well together. This Tuesday, we will all meet at the shop and hopefully start a new phase of progress.

Progress would be good, because in case you couldn't tell, the shop has been sort of a mess for quite a while. This has been really frustrating. I don't feel guilty about it anymore, I just want to start making things happen again. I think having the team together finally will help.

Other things that in hindsight were very difficult to deal with included the rice harvest, which made me not transition into life in SLP very well because I spent so much time in PP, me getting sick several times (including the hospital trip and other less severe bouts of illness) and the *&@#^*(#@&#&(* water not working in the shop for a month.

Not having water in the shop is so frustrating. None of the neighboring shops have water either, but they don't need it as much. When several people are living in the shop, they need a lot of water to cook, wash stuff, and bathe. It's also very difficult to work on motos because you get pretty filthy and then can't wash up, and washing parts also becomes more difficult. The guys don't want to live there because it gets really expensive to buy water, etc.

I'll just leave it at that. It's been frustrating. I actually didn't realize just how long the water has been off until I was walking around TC with the guys, and Sai Ha pointed it out to me. It's back on, and will hopefully remain so. To hedge against future lack though, I think I'm going to buy some massive barrels which are sort of pricey at $17 each (Sai Ha discouraged me from buying them once already, because he thought it was too much money) but in reality are way worth the ability to store large quantities of water. In any event, everybody please cross your fingers and say a prayer/wish that the water stays on.

Other, not necessarily important, things in Life -

1. I haven't read any really good books, but i did approach my longest book read record with Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth, which was 983 pages of predictable plot movement and carboard-y characters. But it did keep my interest, and I want to read the sequel. This may be because the books are so good at keeping my mind occupied for great lengths of time.

2. Ironically, I'm way better informed about the US now that I am in Cambodia. I think I need to stop reading the NY Times though, because it's such a time suck.

3. This is a long time to be away from one's family. I'm mostly worried that my grandfather will die before I get back, and I won't see him before he passes. I wanted to write him a living eulogy thing, but only got this sentence done - " As the shadow of your mind's degeneration eclipses your knowledge of who I am, the fundamental way you influence my life becomes more readily apparent to me." He really is a champion, and sadly I don't think he would really understand just how much he means to me any more. He's basically my hero/role model in many ways, and I feel especially connected to him because physically we are weirdly similar. Like I fit into his suit coats as if they had been made for me.

Well that's pretty much the scene. I feel like there are other things I want to write about but don't really remember what they are.

Hopefully I won't let the blog languish for so long in the coming weeks.

Oh - I applied for a couple of interesting engineering jobs. One of them is particularly cool, and involves electric motorcycles. So I'm hoping that goes well.

Also, I come home in about 3.5 months. That is 14 weeks. Not so long. I can't decide how to feel about this.

Take Care everyone, and Happy 2010.

Ned.

Fairly dull update

2009-12-21T18:53:00.000-08:00

Hi,

So I feel like I should make it clear that my crisis is, for the most part, resolved. I have calmed down, and looking back think that I wrote my last blog post at the peak of my anxiety. It was interesting to get people's responses. I very much appreciated the support I received, and was glad that people were able to connect to the emotions I was enduring.

Not much has happened since that post. I came into Phnom Penh with my translator Sai Ha, and we bought an air compressor, which is a fairly serious investment. Part of me hoped that spending a significant chunk of change (about $200) would motivate me towards doing more. As of yet, it hasn't succeeded to the degree I hoped for.

The most important recent news is that the two guys from Tramoung Chrum who are going to moto repair school in Phnom Penh will be finished in two more weeks. I'm quite excited for them to get back to SLP, because we will then absolutely have to open as a business.

My goals for the next two weeks are to build up some parts inventory, get more shelving (for storage and work surfaces) built and installed in the shop, and finally, to enjoy the holiday season with friends in Phnom Penh.

I hope everyone is well, and enjoys/enjoyed Christmas/Hanukkah/New Years, etc.

Ned.

P.S. I don't have any pictures of pies, forgive me. We made a couple of apple pies but used super fine (it was for dim sum steamed buns and stuff) flour, which made the crust powdery instead of flaky, which was odd. So the quest for the perfect apple pie/pie crust is ongoing.

Minor Crisis of Confidence and Other Topics.

2009-12-13T19:02:00.000-08:00

PART I

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I wrote, and things have been sort of weird. I've been trying to teach the 5 guys from Tramoung Chrum but am not really sure how to do so, and am concerned that trying to train them is removing my focus from setting the shop up as a business.

Plus I'm having low-grade Cambodia fatigue.

Things really came to a head when I made some foolish decisions. First, I bought some tools and parts in Phnom Penh that were the wrong ones. This was irritating because they were for very specific functions, and would have enabled moving forward on taking the Chaly apart/putting it back together. The correct ones are not available in SLP, so to not have the right tool can delay action on a certain part of the Chaly for several days. When there isn't something specific to do on the Chaly, there can be a lot of awkward standing around in the shop as I try to come up with something to do/teach.

Then I took the cylinder to another shop to get honed so we could put in a new piston and rings. They did so and I thought they had made it too tight, because the piston seemed to be scratching the cylinder walls. So I had them loosen it up, and I turned out to be wrong. Not a huge deal financially, the work cost six dollars. But since I'm theoretically supposed to know what I'm doing, being wrong was a blow.

Going to this other shop was also really disconcerting because they have so many parts and tools, and everybody seemed to be on top of their game. In other words, they are established and well run. It was very intimidating to think that we need to compete with them, at least on some level. It also raised an issue. If we need to get a customer's cylinder honed, we would have to take it to this shop. So why wouldn't the customer just go there in the first place? We could buy a machine, but teaching myself and others how to use it well is a daunting concept. That may well be the road we end up having to go down though.

Also, It's irritating to go to the shop and be responsible for six people (including my translator). They look at me for what they should be doing, and I don't necessarily know. So I have decided that this coming week I won't teach them, and will try to come up with a plan for how to proceed. I may decide to not teach for two weeks. This is apparently the end of rice harvesting season, so hopefully they can keep busy in TC. I still feel like I am doing them wrong somehow: there is definitely a sense of guilt.

While this decision has made me feel like I am negating my duties and my responsibility to others, It feels right in other ways. When I was growing very uneasy about the shop and the direction we were heading, realizing that I could take some time to develop a course of action without being responsible for the everyday activities of six people immediately calmed me down. So that's why I chose to do this. We'll see how it works out.

Also, Despite this feeling of being wrong, taking action like this ties into something I have had to learn the hard way, which is to become more active in situations I am not happy with. I think a few years ago I would have plodded on in teaching, making myself more desperate to find an immediate solution to the problem, instead of stepping back and working on it from a different perspective. So in that way it's a good thing.

Another part of the reason things have been weird is that I expected it to take a lot longer to make everyone understand the 4 cycles of an engine, how transmissions work, etc. For whatever reason, this turned out to be anticlimactic. I explained it, they got it, and that was that. I don't know how to teach people about fixing things, because It's mostly accumulated knowledge that sort of adds up over time. So if there is an unusual clacking sound in an engine, you can't really say "well if an engine makes this noise, it's this" because people hear differently, the same problem could make slightly different noises in different bikes, etc.

I guess the guys from Car Talk should be exempted from that statement, since they regularly identify problems from the most ridiculous re-enactments of car noises. But they have quite a bit more experience than I do.

Anyway, my method for fixing things is to isolate where the noise/issue is coming from and make an educated guess about what's going on. Then, If a customer approved, take that area apart, and look for the worn and/or broken parts. Then repair or replace them.

It's basic and complicated at the same time, and to really make these guys understand it, they need to do it. That was the goal with the Chaly, but with seven people (including me) in the shop, and one small moto, there isn't really that much to do. This is exacerbated by not having any parts, a small collection of tools, etc.

PART II

So I'm feeling a bit lost and guilty right now. I can't decide if spending weekends in Phnom Penh is helping or hurting that. Being in Phnom Penh a fair amount makes me feel like I'm not doing a good enough job on the shop, but having a social life is kind of a sanity saver.

Also, I recently received some praise about how well things were going. This generally makes me uncomfortable, because I become scared of disappointing people who have been pleased by my past actions. Somewhat absurdly, this makes it more difficult for me to do work. It's like a holding pattern, or mild mental paralysis.

It goes like this:

1. praise leads to fear of disappointing the praiser(s)
2. fear of disappointing leads to reduced ability to do work
3. Reduction in work output leads to guilt
4. Guilt increases fear of disappointing others
5. return to step 2

It's bizarre to understand this about myself but not know how to defeat it. I have gotten better over time, and I guess that's all I can ask for. Strangely, writing about it knowing that other people will read it makes it easier to deal with.

I don't know if people are interested in my self-analysis, but I imagine other people wrestle with this stuff as well. Sometimes it's nice to know that you are not alone. It seems fairly pertinent to this blog, because I think the function of my blog is to tell people what it's like to be out here. Sort of like a public journal.

I also see the blog as my anti-resume. Applying to educational institutions, jobs, and other things that are even vaguely 'corporate-y' is such an outrageous process it infuriates me. Trying to condense why I would do a good job or am an interesting person onto a few pages of paper is just ... I don't even know. It's like trying to explain why the universe exists by drawing a small picture. The complexity of the issue is so far beyond the medium you are conveying it on as to reduce it to a total caricature that does zero credit to it's source. So on the blog, I can describe myself more fully, for better or for worse, and feel that I am at least doing my existence justice.

Plus, because there is so much competition, everyone tries to present themselves as being miraculously perfect. This potentially makes me more angry than the resume issue. Life is messy, people are messy (myself included, as you may have guessed from my random self-analysis) and it seems very disingenuous to portray yourself as actually knowing what you are doing.

Although it's probably necessary for things like engineering. I mean, if your going to design a bridge, you should know how to. And I guess you need a resume that objectively reflects that.

Maybe my anger is just me being bitter because my resume is underwhelming. I just really don't like pretending to know what I'm doing or what life is about, and feel like at this point, my resume should basically say "I am trying to learn. When I care about things I do a pretty good job at them. I am applying here because I care about this. So please help me learn more, and let me do some good work for you." The fact that so many people would not take that statement seriously is upsetting. But the great hope is that people exist who do understand how something like that more accurately represents life, and is therefore more valuable than a bunch of bullet points starting with verbs and a list of "achievements". The second part of that hope is that I find those people.

Or more precisely, some more of those people, because I think this fellowship was started by people who understand that feeling, and I am grateful for them giving me the chance to come here, and make mistakes, and learn about life. Even if my resume and GPA are not stunners.

Well.

This wasn't quite where I intended for this post to go, but I feel a hell of a lot better. Hopefully I didn't just freak everybody out.I'm listening to A-Punk by Vampire Weekend and smiling uncontrollably right now. I guess this is catharsis by writing. I'll end the whine fest now, try to stop worrying so much, and see what happens.

Take care everyone. Hopefully I'll have good updates soon. There is a Christmas party this coming weekend that I'll probably be baking for, so expect more pie pictures.

Ned

Shade House

2009-12-06T21:31:00.000-08:00

So on weekends when I come back to Phnom Penh, I stay with a friend of mine named Ahti. He's an architect and has been working on a Shade House project for the people of Tramoung Chrum. It's a very interesting project, and I wanted to help do some work on it. So this past weekend, Ahti, Leb Ke, Alan, and I went to TC to start building the shade house. The point of this structure is to reduce the brutal sun of the dry season and the battering rains of the rainy season to allow more fragile plants like tomatoes and green peppers to grow.

It's basically a 45m long structure comprised of bamboo arches that support shade cloth, which is perforated plastic sheeting. We got a lot of work done in one day, as evidenced by the series of pictures below. It was a very good time, and It was interesting to build something, because it is so easy to see the change you have wrought. This is in contrast to the shop, which is a more complicated and nuanced process, which makes it harder to immediately see the progress made.

Here is the field where we started. This is basically where the shade house will start, and It ends at the small tree near where the people are grouped. At this time we were laying out surveying lines to keep all the ribs in line with one another.

Then we had to dig all the holes for the bamboo ribs. The TC guys could do this outrageously fast.

Around this time (post hole digging, pre-lashing joist and vertical posts) we had lunch. This picture was taken just before that. We woke up at 6:00 to get out there, and my breakfast consisted of a coffee and single piece of biscotti. By the early afternoon, I was pretty ready for some food. That's why I'm looking so sullen in this picture.

We then planted all the ribs and began lashing the vertical posts and the horizontal joisty-thing (I dont know what to properly call it.)

This guy was a master of lashing pieces of bamboo together. I surmised that he was a fisherman. Also, as a side note, nothing makes one feel weak like working with people who survive on hard labor. This guy's forearms looked like bionic steel cords or something. Ridiculous.

Barn Raising! At least thats sort of what it felt like. Also, the arched structure reminded me of a cathedral, so I named it the "Tramoung Chrum Cathedral of Organic Agriculture."

Then some TC guys lashed the ribs to the horizontal joist. Thats leb ke on the left.

This was the end result. Pretty cool. Once we demonstrated the basic operation, The TC guys ran with it. They are going to complete the shade house in the next few weeks. I'll probably go out there sometime soon to see whats going on.

Thats the story. Hope everyone's well.

Take Care,

Ned.

p.s. this picture just makes me laugh. And that's Ahti, by the way.

Lesson Learned

2009-11-30T07:24:00.001-08:00

So I bought some more tools today, and found out the people who I had been buying from were charging me elevated prices. Not massively, but at least 50 cents per tool, which was enough to upset me. Considering the prices of the tools I bought ranged from $2.50 to $4.50, 50 cents per tool is a noticeable percentage of the cost.

I made a bit of a fuss and they refunded me $1.50. I felt like an idiot, arguing over the price of a coffee. I guess it's the principle of the thing. They don't seem to be hurting for cash, and I was mostly annoyed because If I'm going to be a repeat customer, as I have been, I would hope for some recognition of that by giving me good prices. I felt taken advantage of, as silly as that may seem. Also, I was somewhat suspicious that they were charging elevated prices last time, but didn't think it was too big a deal. For some reason actually confirming it right after buying tools from them was infuriating.

Also, I explored the vast maze of parts in the Russian Market (there are pictures in some of the earliest posts of this area) and bought a throttle cable for the Chaly, which cost $1.25. It was fun to go into that part of the market, because people really do not expect westerners there, and many fewer vendors speak english. I feel like an explorer there, and really wish things like this existed in the US. Pick and Pull junkyards are the closest thing we have, but those are dwindling due to litigation, the scourge of so many fun and interesting things.

Also, the reason I wasn't able to load that darn video is that It was too big a file. So i need to find some program to trim it down a bit.

Ned.

Thanksgiving and Working in The Shop

2009-11-29T17:55:00.000-08:00

Hi.

So First, I want to share some pictures from the very fun thanksgiving party that I attended and made some pies for. As you can see, there were quite a few people (I believe the official count was 29) and there was a lot of wonderful food.

People made legitimate stuffing, 2 large and delicous turkeys were roasted, mashed potatoes of many varieties, real gravy, etc. My contribution was pies, I made 3 apple and 2 pumpkin, but gave one of the apples to the owner of the oven I used, who also helped me bake for about 4 hours. This picture was taken en route to the party, the pies were still cooling as we rode.

Finding pie plates and some of the ingredients was a trial, but quite successful in the end. Everything was from scratch, from Cook's illustrated recipes. There were some goofs, like I forgot to add half the necessary butter into the apple pie crust dough, so had to add it after mixing it together. It ended up being pretty tough and not flaky, but was still not too bad. The pumpkin had a bunch of complicated steps that we skipped, and was still really good. So overall the pies were a great success, as was the party in general.

So moving onto the shop progress, here is a picture of me with a bunch of TC guys, and my translator who is cut off at the left side of the frame. Also, one of the TC guys was to Sai Ha (translator's) right, and is not in the photo. All the way to the right is Leb Krem, who randomly stopped in to say hi. He is kind of the leader of TC. Hopefully he enjoyed seeing the shop. The other important person in this picture is Lee Him, who is the farthest person to the left who can completely be seen. He will become the general manager of the shop, and is really into it. He pays very close attention, which is more than can be said for some of these younger guys. They are generally only really interested when we start using our hands. I think the launguage barrier makes it hard for them to focus.

Here we are tearing the Chaly down. We stripped it completely, except for the wiring harness, and took the head off the engine. This made it much easier to explain the valve train, and do my best to explain timing. We then put the engine back together and it started, which was exciting.

Here is a picture of the white board. The drawings on the right are trying to explain what the valve train does/how it works. The bottom left is how a carb works, I said it was like a straw pulling gas into the air. It worked as an analogy, which was cool. On the top, I was trying to explain valve clearances, which was somewhat less successful.

So I have a video of the guys drawing the 4 strokes of an engine on the whiteboard, and spent 2 hours trying to load it onto the blog. It was like waiting for water to boil, except it never actually happened, and I couldn't be sure it would, when at least water boiling is almost certain to happen. Frustrating. I'll try to get it on next weekend.

As a final note, I found out that the two guys I'm sending to school will be done in four to six weeks, which is good. When they come to the shop we'll start taking in clients moto's I think, which will be terrifying/exciting/etc.

Hope everyone's well, and that you had good thanksgivings.

Ned.

Something to Work On.

2009-11-18T22:05:00.000-08:00

So the TC moto shop is now the proprietor of a motorbike. Hooray!

Our fine purchase, got at the high price of $70, is a Honda Chaly of approximately 1997 vintage in fairly miserable, though mysteriously running, condition. This is how we found her, at Leb Ke's families house. Upon firing her up (I was totally astonished that it ran. These honda's are ridiculously dependable) and driving around a bit, a mouse that had previously made its home in the Chaly sprinted away, to find a new place of rest.

This next picture is of the throttle cable, where it meets the carburetor. As you can sort of see, it is shredding into bits. I think there were about 3 wires left intact upon riding back to the shop. The reason it has taken such a beating is that the throttle assembly on the handlebar no longer functions correctly, so the only way to control the speed of the bike is to reach down (the carburetor is located between the drivers legs, by the knees) and pull the cable directly.

To put it mildly, this makes it difficult to ride. Turning is highly dangerous.

However, we made it to the shop, and it is now resting for the coming teardown. I'm not really sure what the goal is yet. Ideally we would restore/hot rod it, but I'm not sure If we can get it registered. So we'll explore our ability to legally drive it while stripping and cleaning it, and try to deduce the financial investment required to return it to somewhat safe status.

If actually driving it is not in the cards, it will just be a lesson in what not to do. For example, the rear sprocket is pictured below, in all it's shocking glory. Normally sprockets have teeth similar to dog canines, i.e. large and pointy. This one looks more like dull shark teeth, all curved backwards. Because the teeth dont stick into the chain, when you are driving and let off the gas, the chain 'coasts' over the teeth and makes a terible racket. I think the only reason it works at all is because the chain has zero slack. It's pretty nutty.

So thats the moto story. Also, we now have a whiteboard, to facilitate teaching.

On monday, people from Tramoung Chrum are coming to the shop. I will attempt to teach them how engines work, and if that fails we'll just take the moto apart.

So that's whats up!

Ned.

2009-11-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone.

I haven't posted in a while because I haven't been up to much. Buying the tools led to a stall, since i had nothing to use them on and didn't know what direction to go in, other than needing to buy an old motorbike to use them on.

So tomorrow (hopefully, I still need to confirm with Leb Ke) I'm going to meet Leb Ke's brother, who has a beat up moto i can buy. Next week people from TC will actually be involved in the project, which will be a big step. A guy named Lee Him is going to move into the shop, and becomes it's general manager. I will then be responsible for the training of 4 young guys from TC. How that's going to work out is anybody's guess.

So I will try and teach these young guys basics, like how engines work and stuff, while also trying to work on the old moto, kind of like a balancing theory and practical work approach. I have no idea when we will open for business, but i would say it's months off still.

Anyway, Here are some pictures of two cool events. The first was a well getting drilled at the house Im staying in by a seriously jalopy-type vehicle. It was homemade, with a 22 HP single cylinder diesel engine with an enormous flywheel. It looked like an old steam engine. The drill was also a fabulous concoction of cobbled together parts.

The next cool thing was checking out TC's organic agrictulture project, which is moving along nicely. They have a bunch of watermelon plants, morning glory, and other stuff. A friend of mine is working with them to build a shade house, which will allow for growing of tomatoes and green peppers, which don't do well in direct cambodian sun apparently, and are mostly imported from Vietnam or Thailand.

I included some pictures that are more 'arty' than useful, but i thought they looked cool and included them anyway.

hope everyone's well, expect an update when the moto is bought and/or people from TC come.

Ned.

Ta-Da

2009-11-04T21:53:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone,

So I finally persuaded myself that buying tools will not immediately precede the end of the world, wandered down to the russian market, and began the process. You can see pictures of the russian market in one of my earlier posts. Also, for those who have interest, I wrote a list of what I bought, most of which you can see in the picture below, hanging from a sheet of plywood attached to the masonry wall of the shop.

I decided to use 51 screws to attach that plywood. Drilling that many holes in a brick/masonry wall is miserable and tough on the ears. Despite that annoyance, we could probably attach a moto to this sheet of plywood without it coming off the wall. So that's good. Also, you can see the workbench we commissioned, which is quite sturdy, although the top is kind of thin. I may add another sheet of plywood, so it bounces less if you hammer things on it.

Right - here's the list:

1. short #2 screwdriver - $1
2. Screwdriver set, #0 - #3, long - $5
3. combination wrenches 8mm -24mm (2 sets) - $28
4. Mechanical Impact Driver - $10
5. Diagonal Pliers (cutters) - $1.50
6. Rubber Mallet - $3
7. Allen Wrench set, .5mm - 10mm - $6
8. 1/4" socket wrench set w/ 4 -12mm sockets and some other bits and bobs - $17
9. 1/2"socket wrench set w/ 12-24mm sockets - $16.50
10. Circlip pliers - $2.50

So this is a reasonable start to the collection, and was about 90 dollars. These are the prices they quoted me. I don't really like bargaining, And found it hard to believe that they were charging inflated prices. A rubber mallet for three dollars is pretty cheap. Maybe I paid 50 cents to a dollar too much. Say overall I could have argued ten or so dollars off the price. I just found it hard to justify arguing with them about it. I made a half hearted attempt by saying "these are barang prices, give me Khmer prices." They assured me they were Khmer prices, and that was pretty much that. Hopefully they will provide me good prices in the future, and be willing to change out a tool if we break one of the ones that says it has a guarantee.

Still though, mabye I'll get a Khmer guy to price check for me this coming weekend, to dispell my admittedly fairly small fears of being ripped off.

So now I'm not sure what to do with/in the shop. I'm meeting with Leb Ke this coming monday or tuesday, and may see what he thinks. His brother has a super beat up moto sitting around that I may purchase to try and re-hab, or at least have something tangible to teach with. Hopefully that will happen soon.

Anyway, take care.

Ned.

What I've been up to

2009-11-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

I came into Phnom Penh to buy tools, but haven't. I'm afraid to, because then i have to learn where/how to buy parts, start fixing things, etc. It's also a big financial step.

Also, There's a national holiday called the water fesitval where 1-2 million people descend on Phnom Penh, so it's crazy here.

Also Also, my birthday and thoughts on life writing has preoccupied me.

So Now the shop is all ready for tools, and the next step, and I haven't done it yet. I'm doing my best to recognize that I will be able to do it soon, like next weekend. But this coming week might be a very slow one for project developments.

I forgot to take pictures i have been promising, of the guys who are going to moto-repair school, and the most recent shop scene. They'll be up sometime soon.

Hope everyone's well.

Ned.

Thoughts on Life

2009-11-01T20:21:00.000-08:00

Cliffnotes to this whole thing:

A. Trying to write these thoughts is kind of embarrassing. I think it come from a fear of people thinking I’m being dumb and/or silly.

B. Life is confusing. I don’t really have any answers.

C. It’s easy to over think things, but acting without thinking seems like a poor solution.

D. I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but when I get back I plan to travel the US for a while.

E. I could probably add lots of letters to this cliff notes list. Five seems appropriate though, so I’ll stop.

While in the midst of writing this, I read a piece called “Against Meat” by Jonathan Safran Foer, in which he wrote about being a sophomore in college and starting to study philosophy. He described that as the beginning of his “seriously pretentious thinking”. I constantly feel like that’s what my writing is, because it seems like I’m indulging my own thoughts without getting anywhere. I ask lots of rhetorical questions without really answering anything, and tend towards the melodramatic. Still, there may be a grain of worthwhile-ness in these ruminations. I hope they at least inspire thought. So here we go.

I am now 23, which makes me feel old. I know this is preposterous. My grandfather is 60 years older than I am which is beyond my scope of understanding, mostly because I cannot imagine what the world was like to him when he grew up, and therefore cannot imagine the world of my twilight years. This is a concept that kind of stops me in my tracks. Where is the world going? How am I going to participate in this brave new world? The art of divining the future would be a welcome addition to my skill set, but I don’t see it deciding to join me any time soon. So I will just have to live life.

This living of life brings the question of how best to do so. Is deep, gritty, hands-on participation required for the fulfillment of my potential? Or are the observation of life and the gaining of broad knowledge the keys?

I’m not sure of the answer to these questions, unsurprisingly, but I kind of live them out in my daily life. On the side of the former, I do work on the shop when I could pay others to do so, and on the latter I consume vast quantities of information that have nothing to do with the actual purpose of me being here. I don’t know which is better, or if either is ‘good’.

This highlights another question; what is the purpose for me being here? (in Cambodia, although certainly the larger question of existence is also interesting) Ostensibly it’s to start a motorbike repair shop, live the social entrepreneurship dream, etc. I just don’t know if that’s really what it’s all about, and I feel like I’m not devoted enough to the project because of my confusion. I’m constantly searching, trying to answer these questions.

My search for answers leads me to read a lot, and I’ve begun to move away from novels. While I dearly love them, and they can contain the essence of human experience, the answers are a little too unclear. I want some straight shooting.

This has led me to books like Irrational Man, which is William Barrett’s explanation of existentialism. While I haven’t finished it, parts of it really strike me, as when the author speaks about the problem of "the divorce of mind from life." This expresses something I have felt, because it seems like so much of modern life is not really deeply thought about, just done. There is certainly something to be said for living in the present, but I think what makes the present 'good' or 'bad' is whether it is mindful. Unfortunately, this path leads to the problem evidenced in the above paragraphs. I’ve started asking too many questions, which rapidly can become a detriment to actually doing things.

But they are important questions, and to try and come up with answers, even if imperfect, seems at least as significant as tangible productions.

So here are some thoughts.

About mindfulness in life, what I mean is that something drives people through the present, generally speaking. They have memories, and hopes for the future, which affect their behavior at every moment. What I have trouble understanding is what drives people (including myself) to do things, and if they think about what drives them.

It’s easy to say people are driven by ‘a desire to help people’, or the pursuit of other stuff, but how does this make them capable of such astonishing feats? I’m thinking of Greg Mortenson and Paul Farmer, who built schools in Afghanistan and Health Clinics all over the world, respectively. Drive doesn’t always lead to good things though. Like Bernie Madoff was probably a pretty driven guy, but he didn’t really help people out very much.

Also, life seems quite fleeting and truth is illusive. I think one reason I read so much random stuff is that I feel like I have a very short time to learn everything I want to. But maybe my quest to learn a lot is a waste of time, because living life in the pursuit of something, whether it is money or knowledge, is a dangerous path. I don’t think people who pursue something specific will ever be totally satisfied. This may be an influence from what I’ve learned of Buddhism, which says that the cause of all human suffering is desire.

To that end, I think the vast amount of time I spend taking in information distracts me from my life. To phrase it more impressively, my personal divorce of mind from life actually comes through the almost continual intake of external information. Ironically, I am using my mind to avoid my life. I’ve begun questioning why and what better use I could put my limited amount of time to.

But what would be a life without desire? Is my want for answers really foolish? Why do I feel like I have to use my time for a specific goal when just being alive is a pretty great thing? I think the Buddhist answer is that the purpose of life is to try and enlighten oneself, where enlightenment does not come from read knowledge but from direct experience of life in its immediate form.

Bleh. I don’t know what to think. The purpose of life, both all of it and mine specifically, evades me. Apparently some people think searching for that purpose is what leads one astray. Others would adamantly state that life is about achieving, and shooting for the stars, etc. Generally though, it seems to me that when people have answers, they are based in dogma, and their specific view of the world. Who is to say what view of the world is correct? Does our personal sense of morality really allow us to tell other people what is good and what is bad? Is collective thought of moral principal (which I guess manifests itself in laws, written and not) the real guiding force in life?

I think when I get back I’m going to road trip around the country for an indeterminate time, visiting people, looking at places I’m interested in working, and experiencing parts of the US that I haven’t. I don’t really want to do anything traditionally considered ‘productive’. Just travel, and learn, in my home country. Re-connect with friends, and see if a cool job that won’t stifle me exists.

Thanks for reading.

Ned.

Shop Progress, Blacksmithing awesomeness, and Reading

2009-10-24T20:10:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-17T01:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-06T22:17:00.000-07:00

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.

Shop, Getting Lost, and Making Lists.

2009-09-19T03:45:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday I went up to SLP and TC, and some great things happened. First and foremost, Leb Ke and I signed a contract for renting a shop space! It is the one pictured in a previous post, near the SLP market. While it is fairly small, I think we will be able to make the most of the space. It is 3.8 meters by 8 meters, and the rent is $50 a month through 2009, and then it will be $60. We signed a contract to rent for one year, and will begin utilizing the space in October.

I was planning on getting to SLP at about 8:30, but ended up not getting there until 10:00 because I had to get the rear tire of my dirt bike replaced. The one that was on the bike had plenty of tread left, but one of the lugs had somehow been sliced down to the tire carcass, and was threatening to peel off the tire. This could easily have caused a blowout, which I was determined to prevent. So I got a new tire, which was only $35, and headed out. I had to go more slowly than expected, traffic was insane because everyone is celebrating Pchoom Benh. I don't know how to properly spell that, but it's a holiday where everyone in the city goes to their families villages, so leaving the city was kind of a nightmare.

Yousos had been expecting me to be there an hour and a half before I actually made it, and left SLP before I got there. This was very unfortunate, but I actually made it worse, as you will see. After Leb Ke and I finished the negotiations for the shop space, Leb Ke was going to stay in SLP and asked me If I would be okay driving to TC by myself. I said yes, even though i had only been once. Leb Ke hand drew me a map (see picture below) and I was on my way.

I thought that i should turn left at the first fork, and right at the second fork, and all would be well. That first fork wasn't actually a fork though, so i went straight past it. After travelling for about 45 minutes, down roads like the one pictured below the map, I realized that my 20 minute old suspicion that i was going the wrong way should be ignored no longer. Miraculously, my phone had service so I called Leb Ke. I explained that i was lost, and found someone who could explain to him where i was. After a fairly lengthy conversation between Leb Ke and a random person, I got back on the phone, and Leb Ke laughed.

"Oh, Ned, you are very far away. Turn around, and when you see a Wat on your left, turn right."

These instructions were fairly simple, and So I turned right at the first Wat on my left, onto this road:

In the back of my mind, I realized that this road looked sort of rough, and may not be the one Leb Ke was talking about. But I went down it anyway. It quickly degenerated into a swampy mess which appeared to mostly be used to herd cows. I had never ridden a dirt bike in mud, or through water, and had a brand new, road biased tire on the back, inflated to 30 psi, which is way too much for riding in soft conditions. So the bike was extremely skittish, and I felt very lucky to not drop it. This picture illustrates the general condition of this road. Keep in mind i had no idea how deep these ponds were when i approached them, or how goopy the mud was. I don't really know how the bike never got stuck. If you click on the picture to make it bigger, you can see the cows I also had to navigate around.

My voyage on this road came to an end when I got to a place where the road was water as far as I could see, between two bamboo fences outlining rice paddies. I didn't take a picture here, but it was clear that I was not going to make it much further. So I turned around and started going back down the main road, when I re-approached the train tracks. After consulting my map, I decided they were the same as the ones Leb Ke had drawn, and that if i followed them, I would get to TC. So I went for it.

This was a good time, until I came to a bridge over a small river that was obviously not made for foot traffic, and would have been extremely difficult to cross on my bike. I considered it, but decided that if i fell off, the dirt bike would probably pin me in the water, and I would drown. So I turned around again. On my way back, I called Leb Ke and he consulted with a cow herder. Having concluded that I was out of my mind, he told me to go back to the main road, and just wait where the railroad tracks crossed the main road.

I was concerned about running out of gas, and decided he was correct. While waiting for him to arrive, this rolled up. It was a gas powered platform that followed the tracks, which I had assumed were defunct. Good thing I was not on the tracks when it was running, though. Anyway some people thought it was hilarious I was there, and said Hi. One old man was super pumped, he grabbed my hand and was smiling fit to burst. It was pretty cool.

So Leb Ke came and rescued me from my own foolishness, and we proceeded to TC. I arrived so late that almost all the men who were interested in working in the shop had left. I felt really awful about this. It was such an incredible experience to have been voyaging around the middle of nowhere in Cambodia, but I was brought back to earth by the feeling of having failed at my responsibility to the people of TC.

Fortunately, we made good progress despite my errors. Leb Ke, Yousos, and the leaders of TC were able to come up with a list of who wanted to be in the program, and we came up with two people who were responsible and mature enough to go to moto-repair school in Phnom Penh.

Leb Ke, Yousos and I also came up with a more concrete plan on how the shop operation will run. Basically, while the two people are going to school, I will set-up the shop. From the beginning, there will be a designated shop keeper who will live in the building to prevent theft, and I will try and train that person to run the business, like the administrative side of things. This will include managing the flow of money into and out of the business. Hopefully the other people will therefore be able to better focus on repair and teaching when they return from PP.

Also, I'll try and teach some people as much as I can while the two guys are in PP.

So thanks to Leb Ke, Yousos, and the villager leaders of TC, the day was a success. I think I'm more of a catalyst than anything else. I see my job as primarily being the means to an end, and recognize that I wouldn't really be able to do much without Leb Ke and Yousos. They also assuaged my guilt, and assured me that it was okay that i had been so late.

That's the story, hope you enjoyed it. On another note, my dirt bike started making noise again. We'll see what happens with that. In the meantime, I bought a bicycle to get around the city. It has some hilarious stickers that you can see below, which include the words 'Lover Boy' in blue writing, and a stern portrait of a wolf. It also has a basket on the front, which is infinitely useful.

Okie Doke. Hope everyone's well. Take Care.

Ned.

Tool Party, Mousse, Boots, and Some Exciting News. Not in that order.

2009-09-16T02:21:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Today I decided to go find some of the more obscure tools we need for the Shop. Normal wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers, etc are all over the place, but other tools took some finding. These included torque wrenches, which allow you to accurately set the tightness of the fastener you are working with, and feeler gauges which are small metal sheets of particular thicknesses which allow you to set or check the distance between surfaces. Luckily I didn't bring any money, because I found everything I was interested in. I have pictures in one of the earlier posts of the area of the Russian Market I was in, and I feel like a kid in a candy shop when I'm there. This feeling of glee was tempered by feeling badly for asking so many stall owners how much various tools cost and then seeing the disappointment in their faces when I don't actually buy what I am asking about.

Finding the tools was pretty interesting, and required describing the tools in slow English and with my hands. So for the feeler gauges I mime something flat going between two surfaces, and try to make it clear that there are several thicknesses. I have no idea what people thought I was miming, but they mostly just looked confused. I ended up seeing a set on a rack. Miming worked for the torque wrench though.

I was worried about getting worked with prices, but they seem reasonable and/or very low. The feeler gauges were four dollars, a massive torque wrench was thirty five. I think the latter is probably too low, indicating a poor quality tool. So I'll try and find a Japanese or American one, which will be much more expensive, but proportionally more accurate and less likely to break.

I am so incredibly excited to set up the shop. I have always wanted a legit garage, with a full set of tools. Even though these tools are for the shop and are not 'mine', It's still weirdly awesome because I am deciding which ones to get and purchasing them. The thought of setting up the benches and racks of parts is also really cool. I think part of my eagerness comes from the fact that I feel ready to move on from my repair school, and this is one of the first steps in that chain of events.

Seriously though. It's kind of silly how amped I am. I have even decided on a paint scheme (white and black checkered flag, of course) for the walls of the shop, which I will hopefully be able to paint. I'll try and get guys from TC involved, so they are in it from the beginning.

That's the exciting news bit from the title. Tomorrow I'm meeting Leb Ke and Yousos in SLP, and Leb Ke told me to bring money to start renting the shop space! Hooray!

I'm hoping to not be waylayed by a decision I made earlier today. There was some old chicken in my fridge, and it seemed on the edge of going bad, so I cooked it really well and then ate it. I'm hoping I don't wake up regretting it.

Changing topics, I wanted to illustrate a fantastic thing about Cambodia, which is the ability to get stuff made very cheaply. In the below pictures, you will see two pairs of boots I had made here. Both were $35. Theoretically they were made to measure, but despite carefully measuring my feet the boots were approximately 1.5 sizes too small in terms of width. Luckily, they were able to stretch the boots out and they are now super comfortable.

The first are my everyday boots, the second are my dressier pair. The dress boots have leather soles, which I love because they remind me of my cowboy boots from Thacher, which i miss very much. If you click on the pictures they will get bigger.

Finally, and randomly, I wanted to mention that I found an air-conditioned cafe with wireless internet that is very fancy, but has desserts like a brownie with ice cream and chocolate mousse for $1.25, which is pretty cheap. So it's been nice to hang out in. Also, I've been going to another cafe almost every morning for a week or two, and they started giving me a 20% discount, which is awesome.

Okay, sorry this is ramble-y and has 1,000 I's. The next update should come at the end of the weekend, hopefully with more info about the shop.

Hope everyone's well, and take care.

Ned.

P.S. My bike's noise has remained at bay, please knock on wood.

A tentative good news post

2009-09-14T03:55:00.000-07:00

The dirt bike appears to be appeased. This entry is full of techno-babble.

This morning I adjusted the valves, was extremely careful to not rotate the magneto past the TDC mark, and went for it. When done, i rode it around and it sounded okay. So far today things have remained good.

After doing some internet research, and listening/watching to youtube video's of dirtbikes with cam chain slap, i have come to a conclusion.

When Tony and I adjusted the valves before, we both went past the TDC mark, and rotated the magneto clockwise to line it up. This put tension on the wrong side of the cam chain, and made it slack on the tension-ed side. Somehow this slack bit stayed in the wrong place, and made the chain flop around while the bike was running at low RPM's. It's gone away, and hopefully it stays that way. This would be good, because it means my oil pump is working, and my engine is less likely to munch itself to bits.

I also performed an extremely intricate prayer ceremony to the machine gods, who imbue all things mechanical with their animating spirits. There was much incense and chanting in Latin, and voodoo. And, uh..... alright so I didnt actually do this. But if the noise comes back, I may. This is serious business.

Ned

Endlessly Frustrating Dirt Bike, Olympic Stadium, and a Good Article.

2009-09-13T06:40:00.000-07:00

So i have a dirt bike. I've actually had it for a while, but for various reasons have not been able to use it. First i couldn't get it registered and plated, then the shock started leaking so i had to get that rebuilt, which is a good story, and now its been making unfortunate noises.

Here is a picture of me with it, though.

I'll try and describe the dilemma about the noises. This is going to be technical, so those who aren't into this stuff should probably move on haha. Tony has been telling me all kinds of theories, none of which have worked so far, which is monumentally frustrating. The first was that something was wrong in the sub-rockers, which go between the rocker arms and the valves. This was sort of true, because one of them looked like it had been attacked with an ice-pick. Miraculously Tony found some new sub-rockers, and we threw those in. In the process though, a couple of the valve cover bolt holes had their threads partially stripped, which was nerve racking. The valve cover hasn't been leaking, which is fortunate.

We started the bike back up after replacing the sub rockers, and the noise continued. Then it was surmised that because the cam lobes are worn, the intake valves slap shut after the opening 'event'. So we closed up the intake valve clearances, and it did nothing. Tony mentioned one other idea, which is that my oil pump is worn enough that at low revs, the oil pressure is insufficient.

I think the final idea is correct, which is pretty terrible news. If the top-end is starved of oil, the engine will basically crunch itself up. I'll see what its like to get a new oil pump here, but i imagine its difficult. There is another option, which is that I could order one in the US for about $100, and then get it shipped here.

Also, many moons ago i promised a picture of the Olympic Stadium where i run. This is it, when (obviously) empty. I'll try and get a picture of people jazzercising and add that to this post.

So that's some of what's been going on. School is currently on hold until the 21st, because of a Khmer Holiday, so I'll try and make good use of the time.

Hope everyone's well.

Ned.

P.S. The gist of the shock story is that a shock repair shop took out my old shock shaft, hack-sawed a car shock apart to get the shaft from it, and then machined the car shock shaft in a lathe to pretty closely approximate my original one. I was mildly panicking when i realized what was going on, as i had made sure to ask if they were using new parts before the shock was rebuilt. It hasn't leaked though. So i guess that was a wake-up call. This is how Cambodia works.

P.P.S This is the article i mentioned in the title of the post. People may find it interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/magazine/13contagion-t.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Massive Post - Notes on Living Here

2009-09-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

Accommodations

#1 Previous apartment

The greatest parts about this apartment are pictured below. They are a dugout canoe and a fern that the owner of the apartment rescued, plus all the other plants, which went all the way around the balcony. The canoe is actually full of water and floating plants, and has hundreds of tiny fish in it, who presumably eat all the mosquito larvae that I was initially worried about. This apartment was pretty mosquito free though. It’s location was also fantastic, close enough to the hotel I was staying in previously that I sort of knew the area, but far enough that it was exciting to learn more about the city. Plus I was starting to commute to school, so there were great things going on while I lived here. It also had the internet, which was great. The balcony area was great to hang out on, and drying clothes was super easy.

#2 Current Apartment

This apartment certainly has its upsides (safety, a channel on TV that shows formula one and motogp live, etc.) but it has taken a ton of adjusting, and I’m not sure I’m totally settled yet.

On the left you can see my balcony, which also houses my kitchen. The balcony, including kitchen, is about 10 feet long by 4 feet deep, so it’s not massive. I get a good breeze though, which cools the room off nicely at night. At the right of the frame you can see the second door you have to open to get into the room, more on that later. I am standing in my bathroom to take the picture, I didn’t take of picture of it but do want to describe my clothes drying system, which is a grid of floss tied to screws in the bathroom door frame and the tub curtain rod. It’s kind of hilarious to see all my clothes hanging in it after doing laundry, but it works. I have to do this because I’m not supposed to dry clothes on my balcony. Floss is also incredibly strong, in case you didn’t know. Initially my clothes had a slight minty smell from it, but that’s gone away.

The area around this apartment is very different from where I lived before. I almost never see foreigners, which is kind of cool but can be extremely isolating. As I have learned the area I have become happier, but I think it was harder for me to adjust to moving here than it was for me to adjust to the country when I first got here. Plus I kind of ran out of easy things to do after moving here, so it seemed like the move made me lose my momentum and sense of progress. It was pretty disruptive, over all. But one of the most important things to me about this fellowship is trying to learn how to adapt to difficult situations, and overcome things I’m not necessarily comfortable with. I’m making progress, but it’s a hard lesson.

On the plus side, I’m much closer to school, and the Olympic Stadium, which is fun to run at. Pictures of that should be coming soon, as I have promised before…..
Moving on, the long awaited food entry!

Food

#1 Home Made

My last term at Union, I worked at Hale House, Union’s on campus catering service, to pay for my meal plan. It was usually a very good time, unless I was washing dishes alone which got old quickly. The people there are great and I learned a fair amount from the experience. I fondly recall plating famous people’s dinners when they came to speak (most memorably Howard Dean’s) amid generous ribbing and story-telling. Anyway, I think about Hale while making food, and wanted to give them a shout out. I hope everyone is doing well.

While staying in the first apartment post-hotel, I cooked lunch and dinner for myself frequently. Generally the meals were quite simple, and some variation of a stir fry. Ingredients always included rice noodles, chicken or eggs, tomatoes, garlic, bean sprouts, and onions. A green vegetable would usually be thrown in, string beans or spinach being the most common. There was a disastrous meal using mustard greens, which I had no idea tasted so strongly of mustard. The combination of mustard and everything else was pretty unpalatable. Seasonings include fresh lime juice, soy sauce, chili sauce, and the like. The picture below illustrates an early version of a stir-fry, in the previous apartment.

Breakfast was easy and theoretically nutritious: Whole wheat bread with tofu and sliced tomatoes, with some soy sauce for the saltiness. Easy to prepare, and I think it tastes good.

In my current apartment I have cooked much less often. I don’t really know why. For the past several to-do lists I have made, grocery shopping featured quite prominently yet gets left behind. I have bought kitchen implements, and their purchase was probably my greatest bargaining success. I think it helped that I wore an 8 year old tee shirt that’s ready to fall of my shoulders. Hopefully I will use my utensils more in the future. Having read most of Michael Pollan’s books and articles, it’s hard to not feel obligated to cook my own food.

#2 Restaurants/Café’s

The dividing line here can be fairly thin. The most important distinction is wireless internet access, which is found in the more café-ish setting. Iced coffee is an important part of my diet thanks to these cafés, because it seems to quench thirst and wake me up in the morning or in the heat of the day. I have found a favorite one, which offers fast internet, tasteful décor (this is a joke, although it’s kind of true), bowls of tasty soup for around 2 dollars, and nice staff. Plus I’m usually one of few western people, which I find endearing for some reason.
As for restaurants, there are some very nice ones here. I wandered into this Dim Sum restaurant looking for chow su bow, which are steamed pork buns whose name I don’t know how to spell correctly. They are extremely tasty, and this place had them. Unfortunately, it was shockingly expensive. The CSB were 2.50 for 3 little baby sized buns, and in the menu I saw a large bowl of shark fin soup for 70 dollars. I think it was supposed to feed several people, but that is an astronomical sum of money for a meal, let alone a single bowl of soup.

Another terrific discovery has been that one of my favorite foods can be found here, well made and reasonably priced. This would be – chocolate croissants, or pain au chocolate as they are generally referred to here. I don’t know why they are called bread, but they are deliciously flaky and croissant-y. The danger encountered when purchasing these is that the places that make them well often have other delicious baked goods for sale, at less affordable prices. Case in Point below.

This is actually kind of empty, normally there are cake loaf things and actual cake slices in addition to the little tart/custard dealies. Plus they sell homemade ice cream. After I first found this place, I bought a few desserts that are about what I normally spend on an entire meal. This means roughly $3-$4, which while not the end of the world, definitely adds up. I quickly learned to avoid it at night, when I was most likely to think about dessert as a viable food option.

#3 Street Food

Ah, street food, that most varied of food groups. Below is a picture of one type of vendor that illustrates the carts this food is made on. This person has a sugar cane squeezing device. I haven’t tried this, but basically the Cane juice gets squeezed out and placed into a plastic bag with some ice and I believe some seltzer. The bag thing throws me off, I find it very odd. I guess they are cheaper and more compact than cups.

People use these carts in their various forms to make an incredible variety of foods. Stir Fried noodles are probably my favorite, but there are Fruit Salad carts, Bannana and Dough Fryers, Soup people, Waffle sellers, etc. Last night I found someone selling steamed buns, and was super pumped because I thought they were the chow su bow I have been questing for. Alas, though the bun part was excellent, the inside smelled vaguely of ammonia, and was emphatically not barbequed pork. It tasted better than the smell would have led me to believe, but I was still disappointed. The search continues.

Mostly Amusing Asides

#1 - Soccer
For a while, students from my school were playing soccer together. Three teams formed, and everyone who played would go over to the Olympic stadium after the last session of school. It was great, and while there was a healthy spirit of competition, people enjoyed themselves. The field had some natural obstacles, including a massive light pole and some concrete blocks to prevent people from driving onto the grass. I’ll try and take a picture of it when I document the Olympic Stadium.

Unfortunately, the goal was poorly defined, and unless the ball was on the ground as it passed through the coffee cans filled with dirt, people got argumentative. So to prevent ill will between students, soccer is over. While it lasted though, I had a great time hanging out with the guys from school.

#2 – Locked out of apartment

Coming back from School one day, I got to my door and realized I had locked my keys behind the two doors that need to be opened to get into my room. I nonchalantly went down to the front desk and explained. They realized I needed a spare key and handed a ring of them over. Unfortunately though, there were only keys for the first door. There was a moment of this information being digested, and concern growing among those behind the desk. They sent me up with a maintenance guy I normally see in the parking area, who had a screwdriver and a hammer. He hammered the ring around the handle loose, and spun it out. I don’t know what he was planning to do next, and apparently he ran out of ideas after that.

He went back downstairs and I got a call from my landlord, telling me they had called a locksmith. I did not want to pay for that, and thought about how to get the door open without cost and without damage.

I remembered back to my freshman year at Union, when after several beers and inspiration provided by a spy movie, a friend and I decided to learn how to pick door locks with credit cards. It took me a very long time with my friend watching and encouraging me (I think more than an hour) but I got a door open. I ended up using a borders rewards card I think, and the key was bending the card so that it fit flush between the door and frame when you were pushing against the angled part of the lock. Also, if the lock has a flat part before the angled part its much more difficult and potentially impossible. Finally, the further the door moves away from the jamb while being locked, the easier it is to open.

Calling on that experience, I searched through my bag for something that would work. I ended up using the plastic front cover of the notebook I bring to school, and it took maybe two minutes. I grabbed the keys from my room, and brought them down to the front desk. I explained what I had done, and the landlord laughed but was also sort of suspicious of me, I think. I don’t know if she didn’t believe me or questioned why I knew how to do that.

To better illustrate what I had done, I brought my notebook down. Another woman, who had been talking to my landlord during this 10 minute ordeal, voiced her surprise when I showed them the tool.

“This worked? It’s thin. I use my ID Card.”

I was surprised by her sudden jump into the conversation and more surprised when she pulled a thickly laminated card out of her purse with a telltale bend at 2/3 of its length.

Fortunately, my building has security cameras in every hallway, and as far as I know you can’t enter the building without going past the front desk. Also, I’m not sure it would be so easy to pick the first door. So I feel safe, but enjoyed the experience of having to break into my own apartment.

It reminded me of my senior project, when the motorcycle we bought was hotwired and joy-ridden, and then returned. Because the ignition wires had been cut, we had to hotwire it to move it anywhere.

I wonder if I was given this fellowship because of all these practical skills I have learned along the way?

#3 – Nissan GT-R and Bentley Flying Spur.

I wish I had had my camera with me when this happened. Down the street from my building is a multi-story restaurant that is pretty serious business. They employ 5 or so parking people, who wear fluorescent vests and aggressively wave glowing orange wands and LED flashlights around. They have limousine style golf carts, which I think shuttle people to and from the restaurant, like a designated driver service.

One night coming home from a café at about 10:30 (I stayed out extra late trying to call my grandmother to wish her a happy birthday, but I was unfortunately unable to reach her) I turned the corner this restaurant sits at, onto my street. There in front of me was an approximately brand new Bentley Flying Spur, and across the street was a similarly fresh Nissan GT-R. The Bentley is a four door flagship that costs $175,000 in the US, the Nissan a supercar with some of the most advanced electronic control systems in a car. Both are very difficult to acquire, due to limited supply and great demand.

They were both brilliant white, with aftermarket wheels, also white. So I’m presuming the same person owned both of them. It was wild.

#4 – Thinking I ate intestine

This actually happened the last time I went to SLP with Leb Ke. We got lunch, and i selected a beef dish and a pork dish, basically at random. When the Pork dish (on the right) came to the table, I was immediately suspicious of it. It consisted of a knobbly green tube filled with unidentifiable bits of stuff. I thought it was a funky vegetable at first, and tried it. It was super bitter, which is apparently a very acquired taste. I decided that I had eaten intestine, because it looked gross and tasted worse, which is what I imagined eating intestine would be like. I then took another big bite, to demonstrate to myself that I could overcome things such as revulsion for eating digestive tract organs with willpower.

Satisfied that I had not withdrawn from this challenging dish, I smugly explained to Leb Ke that I was going to stop eating the concoction, because it was so bitter. It being intestine had nothing to do with it, I was totally fine with intestine.

His response – “Yes, this vegetable has a strong taste.”

Queue embarrassment.

#5 – The not Amusing Aside

I saw a dead kitten today. It was on the sidewalk, and was not ‘damaged’, i.e. I couldn’t see how it had died. It made me sad, although if it had been a puppy I probably would have been more upset. Still though, seeing a small creature dead like that, for an indiscernible reason, was distressing. If it had been a rat I wouldn’t have cared, and at first I thought it was a rat. But it was yellow-ish, which rats generally are not. It looked…. not asleep, but as though it had given up on life and died mid-stride. One of its front legs was sticking out, which is what gave me the mid-walking death impression. That one leg being forward had an oddly large impact on me. Maybe I just see dead animals normally considered pets so rarely that I am very sensitive to them. If it was a deer or a squirrel I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

#6 – Laundry

Doing laundry by hand at the first apartment and the hotel was incredibly difficult. I actually gave myself blood blisters wringing out clothes the first two times I did laundry, from the fabric pinching my skin where my thumb met my palm. I quickly learned it was a game of diminishing returns, and that getting that last ounce of water out wasn’t really going to make the clothes dry that much faster. Plus it was speedily making any holes my shirts had bigger. I now have a tub, which makes doing laundry much easier, due to the larger quantity of water you can use, and it’s easier to do a large amount of laundry at once, reducing the total time spent. It still takes a darn long time though, like a couple hours if I need to do several ‘loads’. This is because it takes a few tub cycles to get all the dirt out, and a couple more to get as much soap out as possible. I only put in 3 or so inches in the tub, which is fairly short, but still, water efficient the process is not.

I have a new respect for laundry though, and how much effort it takes to do by hand. Washing machines are pretty great, really. Drying clothes on lines should come back in style though. It really isn’t that bad to dry clothes here, even though it’s fairly humid, and using no energy is nice. So maybe I’ll set up a clothes drying line for my parents when I get home. Winters could be a problem though.

This was a massive write-up, I hope people make it through the whole thing, and find some of it interesting. Let me know what you think.

Stay Well.
Ned.

SLP/TC and a rant against hybrids

2009-08-24T21:46:00.001-07:00

Saturday the 22nd I rode up to SLP by myself, and met Leb Ke there. We checked out another option for setting up the shop, and then went to Tramung Chrum.

Let me start the description of the trip with a picture I took on the way to TC. There is a new Wat being built here, and it added something to an otherwise generic picture of the landscape. As is true of many beautiful aspects of nature, the countryside here is difficult to capture through a lens. I thought that in addition to taking footage of the traffic in Phnom Penh by mounting a camera to my helmet, I could try and capture the grandeur of the Cambodian countryside by documenting a trip to TC in the same manner. Then I realized that this would produce about 90 minutes of footage dominated by me looking at a road. So I’ll work on coming up with a better solution. Maybe mounting the camera on the side of my helmet would be more interesting. But it’s still a lot of footage that would not necessarily illuminate the beauty here.

Maybe part of the beauty I perceive while on the road comes from staring at a road for the majority of the trip, and then looking to the side and thinking “holy skaflnasflnsdvnlodwn this place is amazing.” These trips to SLP and TC are the first time I have travelled for a fairly long time in something not enclosed (car,bus,plane,train) and the experience is, in fact, extremely different. It’s partly due to the fact that things are more tactile. You smell things, bugs hit you and not a windshield, your sense of frailty is heightened by about 1000000 percent as massive trucks speed by you, etc. Nothing made me feel like a piece of the scenery more than almost getting blown over by a bus passing me. The pressure created by the front of the bus pushed me away, but once I got behind that arc of high pressure, I got sucked towards the bus. It was pretty enlivening.

For a more robust and eloquent description of why riding a motorcycle is wholly different from being in a ‘cage’, I would recommend reading some of the excellent books written with motorcycles in mind, namely Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence by Robert Pirsig and Jupiter's Travels¸by Ted Simon. As a disclaimer, I have not read the second recommendation. Many people have pondered the attraction of motorcycles, though. It’s something that occupies my mind as well I guess.

Let me get back to the point. After arriving at SLP and finding Leb Ke (this is pronounced ky, like sky) he showed me a new place that could potentially be used as the shop. It has already been built, and has accessible water and electricity lines. The rent is not much higher than just renting land, it’s closer to Route 5 than any of the other potential sites, and finally, it’s across the street from the SLP market.

Here you can see the front door of the shop, along the right edge of the picture. At the left edge is the market, where I bought some fruit to give to Leb Krem, the head of TC. Food is cheaper here than in PP, which I guess is to be expected, and my monthly rent would drop by a factor of approximately 5, which is also something I’m looking forward to.

This location seems to be the most accessible of the available locations; it already has a building with available water and electricity access and is only about $20 more per month than a site without a building. Assuming a building would cost $2000, which is a fairly low estimate, it would take 100 months, or 8.3 years, for the building cost to be recouped by the lower price of renting the land.

NON SEQUITER SECTION, aka a totally biased rant against hybrids.

This is basically like the argument against hybrid cars. Yes, they get roughly 1.5 times the mileage of a normal small car in a city (the bonus is very small on the highway, and almost entirely due to lower drag coefficient, not drive train efficiency), but you pay a several thousand dollar premium for that mileage, reducing the economical sense it makes to buy a hybrid.

Also, the environmental impact of constructing a building is obviously higher than renting a pre-existing one, and in this age of everything being as green as possible, this would be the TC shop doing its job to be environmentally responsible.
In the vein of enviro-responsibilty, Hybrids are not as good as people think they are. While they use less gasoline and therefore produce slightly smaller amounts of greenhouse gases, in order to produce the car’s batteries and other assorted electronics all kinds of gnarly heavy metals need to be mined, refined, and crafted into their respective parts. So they loose their ‘green-ness’ there as well.

So please buy a manual Honda Fit, or something similar. Or pretty much any used car, which is better for everyone than buying a new one. Except Detroit. But they are basically toast anyway.

END OF NON SEQUITER SECTION

So I was excited about this new shop option, although the inside is pretty grim. It’s big enough for a small operation, but I’m not sure it will be capable of encompassing living quarters as well, which would be important for preventing theft. Here is the inside of it, with a double or queen size bed to provide a sense of scale. The bed is not quite to the front edge of the room, so it’s a little bigger than this picture makes it look, but still could be accurately described as ‘cozy’.

Leb Ke and I then were off to TC, which was an adventure in and of itself. I had never driven with a passenger, and the road surface was extremely dicey at points. There was one section that was sandy. Sand + inexperienced driver + Two People + Street Tires = Danger. Fortunately we never fell, but it was tense. The dirt bike will be much safer, if it ever gets successfully registered. Still, we made it to TC, and hung out on the porch-y area of the mosque. Meeting Leb Krem and everyone else from TC was good, but we didn’t actually spend that much time talking about the moto project. Leb Ke mostly talked to everyone about how things were going, including the agricultural initiative he has been working on.

It was nice for me to find out how many people were interested in working with me, there were about 6 or 7 people who raised there hands when Leb Ke asked who was interested, and there were others busy working in the fields, so more may end up going through whatever program we set up. They were of more widely varying ages than I expected, from teenagers to guys in approximately their mid-late 30’s.

I tried to show some books I brought, but it didn’t amount to much, which was sort of disappointing. The books were my notebook from school, which has pictures of parts and their phonetic translations, a book of the same type except everything is in Khmer, and the trophy of my collection, Small Gas Engines by Alfred C. Roth. It gives an overview of how all the systems of engines work and how to fix them. It is a textbook that my mom bought me when I was a lawnmower mechanic. I don’t think I realized what an incredibly brilliant gift it was until now. (thanks Mom!) I brought it to school with me, and the teacher from the next stage up came in, and was super amped about it. It turns out one of the engines in the book that they have a lot of pictures of is the engine he uses as a demonstration tool. So that was a cool coincidence.

The trip back from SLP was uneventful, and that about does it for this entry. I’ll wrap things up with a picture of me in front of the mosque, taken by Leb Ke.

I hope everyone’s well.
Ned.

School.

2009-08-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

This is different from college. My last term at Union i had class two days a week, and it never started before.... i dont even remember. Maybe nine o'clock, which i believe students at Union find a struggle to get to. I now have it 6 days a week, and have to be there at 7:30. So i try and get up at about 6:00, which i haven't done since i worked construction. It takes some getting used to. I'm afraid I've missed some morning sessions.

Let me tell you about my school. I wish that sentence could be supplemented by a terrific visual cutaway of my school and the activities taking place within it, a la The Life Aquatic. Unfortunately i only have 4 pictures to try and explain this place, although i may add some more as things move along. It's weird to take pictures of my school though, as no one understands why i am doing it.

Here is a blurry picture of my classroom, with my teacher sitting on a bench in the back right of the room, and some of my classmates sitting and standing on the left. This room is on the fourth floor of the building, and behind the point i am taking this picture from is a balcony with a pretty nice view. Across a few streets, you can see a building in the middle of construction, with a massive sign roped to it that says "Coming Soon! Rooms for Rend!" I find it hilarious, and enjoy looking at it every bleary-eyed morning.

The school was founded in 1978 according to one of the students who speaks some English, and I am probably the only barang (foreigner) to ever go here. I get a lot of incredulous looks from people in other departments of the school. They teach several levels of automobile repair in addition to moto-repair.

I did succeed in explaining to one kid that I attend the school so I can later teach people how to fix bikes who otherwise could not afford it. Interestingly, people from many different provinces of Cambodia go to my school, some of whom live in a room next to the classroom. This is good, because if I decide it would be good to send some students from T.C. here, they would have a place to stay and integrating with everyone probably wouldn't be that bad, as people are from everywhere, reducing the likelihood of intensely clique-ish social interaction.

There are 3 parts to the moto-repair course. I am in the first, which is where you take apart beat up old engines and learn the names of all the parts in Khmer, with a significant dose of French. For example, the clutch pressure plate is knows as the ‘Plateau de pression.’ Or at least that is how I phonetically wrote the pronunciation. Brief interlude about french - I went running at the olympic stadium tonight, and while resting at the top of the stairs (I'll take some pictures, it's pretty cool) an old man came up to me and asked where i was from. I said the US, and he said "ah, parlez vous francais?" I missed the connection, but said "oui, J'ai etudie en ecole, mais je" and made a motion of things coming out of my head, because i can't remember how to say forgot everything. He laughed and said "oui, J'etudie en ecole quand je tres juen". I think. Basically, he said yeah, i studied it when i was very young. It was so random, but really cool. People are super curious and nice here, which is very refreshing.

Once more aside about running. While i was running, i heard someone following me in flip-flops. I started speeding up and running about as fast as i was comfortable with on the sketchy concrete, and the person kept-up! as i turned around to start walking and cool down, i saw a pretty tired looking kid, who gave me a high five and said something like "i win you". I think he meant he beat me, because i stopped before he did. I laughed and started wandering around the stadium, which is when i encountered the old man who spoke french. Later i went back down the stairs and ran into the kid. We had a hilarious conversation involving questions like "why you run so fast?" and "is my pronunciation good?" (it was very good) He was learning english at "jesus christ", also known as church, because it was free, or at least cheap.

Sorry for that random set of stories, getting back to the school. We draw all the parts in a notebook, and it is broken up into sections of the engine. So the first is the cylinder head and cylinder, the second is the clutch (there are actually two, a normal one and a centrifugal one, which is cool and a clever way to make the clutching automatic whilst having different gears) etc. We take the engines out of a cabinet full of them, seen below, and then take them fully apart, as seen below that.

So we learn the part names, which for two of the engines are written on boards like the one in the picture below, and do it for several different engines.
The first is a Honda cub engine. They are tremendously prolific and have been produced in subtly different forms for decades. The next one i learned about was a Honda Chaly engine, which is like the cub engine but is kick start only, and is fully automatic, only having a centrifugal clutch. I've more recently been working on Suzuki engines, one of which is from Japan and one of which is from Korea. I believe the final step in this process is learning how to work on two stroke engines.

Once you have everything memorized, you move to the next section, which is in a different room. I think once I get to this stage I will need a translator, because this is the part where you learn how things actually work. In the first part, they don’t explain how the clutch works, or the generator makes electricity and translates that into a spark. I know how the former works and mostly know how the latter works, but learning more complex ideas like that in Khmer would be a distinct
challenge. I'm not sure people will be excited about a translator telling me everything the teacher says in English, but i'll cross that bridge when i get to it.

After you get through the second stage you arrive at the final one, which is where you work on bikes that are whole, and actually work. I occasionally hear them start up in the next room. That part i will almost certainly need a translator for, although I have a feeling there is less teaching going on here, and more like testing. I would guess the teachers set up a machine with a problem, i.e. a carb setting purposefully off or a manufactured short in the wiring, and then give people a chance to try and fix it.

This would be a reasonably good way to try and teach the least tangible yet most important aspect of being a mechanic, which is the ability to diagnose what’s wrong
with the machine. I'm not sure how well this can be taught though, even with manufactured problems in a machine. I think it just takes experience earned from time spent working on broken things.

I have a teeny-tiny bit of this, but it's like being in first grade and you become a mechanic when you get your PhD. For example, when we were working on my dirt bike (pictures of which i will try and get up soon), the carburetor settings were messed up and it took several days to figure out exactly what was wrong. Several of the jets had been drilled, and tuning a not-stock carb is next to impossible, because everything affects everything else.

The engine would run well at idle and then struggle as revs raised. I had experienced this problem with my motorcycle in the US right after I bought it, and while riding mine around realized it wasn’t getting enough fuel because the airbox was off, increasing the amount of air going through the carbs. So I would close the choke partially to richen the fuel/air ratio while riding. I tried this on the dirt bike, and it worked.

Most of that carb was eventually tossed anyway, and a new one was built out of several other ones. So my realization didn’t really have that big of an impact of the end result, but it was something that I only knew about because I had previously experienced it, which is basically the rule of repairing machines.

So I don’t know if that kind of thing is taught, and how I would be able to pass it on to my students. Being a good mechanic is almost entirely about having the right mind set. You need to be objective, inquisitive, analytical, and patient. I’m sure you can teach that, but through a significant language and culture barrier it is a serious challenge.

As things develop with the school i will try and keep everyone updated. It's an interesting place, and i feel lucky to be going there. If people have questions about it that will better illuminate what it's like, please ask them in the comments section.

Thanks for reading/commenting!

Ned.

SLP adventures and moto stuff

2009-08-08T22:18:00.000-07:00

Hello!

So it has been quite a while since I last updated the blog, and I’ve got several posts that should be up soon. This post is about my trip to Sala Lehk Prahm, where the shop is supposed to be built. I went with two guys who work with The Harspwell Foundation who have been tremendously helpful to me. They are in one of the pictures, and their names are Leb Ke and Yousos. I went with Yousos to where they grew up, which is about 10 minutes outside of SLP. Yousos showed me his home and I got to meet his parents, who were very nice. I should have taken a picture to give people an idea of what the Cambodian countryside is like, but that will have to be next time.

The main point of the trip, though, was to check out the building sites where we may rent land to build a shop, and to try and get an idea of what the competition is up to. And since I am probably going to live in SLP for quite a few months, I was eager to see what it was like.

I’ll start with a description of the trip out there, which was quite lengthy. SLP is about 53km outside of Phnom Penh, and I was riding this wild steed the whole way. (the one with the purple seat)

It’s a moto I have been renting while the dirt bike I am buying is getting worked on (more on that in a later post). It’s 100 or 110cc’s and tops out at about 80 kph (kilometers per hour, about 50mph) which is actually really fast on what is basically a large bicycle with a horrifically bad front brake. The back brake slows the scooter down well, but it’s less efficient than a good front brake and locks up more easily, so you have to be very sensitive and not brake too hard. I have seen several people here get really squirrely when it has been wet out because they lock their back brake and start to slide.

Brief interlude - Because of weight transfer, having a strong front brake makes much more sense. When you use the front brake, the vehicle (cars included, not just those with two wheels) wants to rotate around the front wheel, pushing it into the ground. Using the front brake gives the front tire more traction and allows you to apply more force to the brake without locking the wheel up, which will slow the bike down much faster than primarily using the back brake. When you use the rear brake alone the moto doesn’t want to rotate, so you don’t get the amplified traction on that tire. This is the major reason sporting cars and motorcycles have larger and more powerful brakes on their front ends, and why if you watch motorcycle racing, the back ends of the bikes wiggle around when the riders are braking. They are just on the threshold (and sometimes cross it) of having the rear tire lift off the ground, making it very unstable. Depending on the corner, this can happen when decelerating from 180-ish miles an hour. It’s pretty awe-inspiring to watch.

Anyway, while I was following Yousos up there, we went 50 kph or less the entire way. The way back is when I found the top speed of the scoot, I promise I was careful and was only travelling at that speed for 10 seconds or less at a time. Going out there took about an hour and a half, coming back took….. less….. Here is a picture of the road on the way up there, with a neat almost-canopy of trees.

So we arrived in SLP and got some noodles. My first impression was that there was not a lot of stuff in SLP, but it does get a fair amount of moto traffic, which is promising. The nature of the moto traffic is important as well. I have been going to a moto repair school for a week and the course I am taking is for the oldest and most basic moto’s, because it seemed logical that outside of Phnom Penh the older, cheaper moto’s would be most prevalent. As it turns out, that assumption is not entirely correct. At our competitors repair shops, we saw some nearly brand new machines, or at least new enough to be different from what I’m learning.

Above is a picture of the largest and, according to Leb Ke, the most prestigious shop in SLP. On the left is the owner, who is just finishing rebuilding a wheel. He has already finished lacing new spokes to a rim, and appears to be truing the rim, which means making it round and straight. In the center of the photo is what I think is a Suzuki Viva, which is a 100cc bike similar to the one I rent. Its engine is basically the same as the super old moto’s, just a little bigger and with some updates, like a CDI ignition system instead of a points based one. However, outside the frame of this picture is a newer type of moto, with what I think is a shaft drive system that also makes up a single sided swingarm, and the new moto’s are more compact than the old types. I’ll try and take some pictures that better explain the differences I’m talking about, although people are probably are more interested in food, the Cambodian people, and lots of other things. So if anyone wants to see more pictures of the bikes, let me know and I’ll throw them up. Otherwise I guess I’ll try and focus on stuff with a broader appeal. But I’ll probably end up having more descriptive posts about the bikes, because they are a (perhaps the) major part of my experience here.

Getting back to the sites we were looking at, the first picture below this paragraph is a view down SLP’s main street (which is Route 5, the road to Phnom Penh). In the second picture you can see Route 5 crossing a dirt road which I think is one of the bigger intersections. The first potential shop site was actually immediately to my right when I took the picture. So it only requires one turn and is probably 150 or 200 feet off Route 5. The other two lots are on the road you can just see in the bottom right corner of the second photo. The third photo is a picture of one of these other lots. This is actually a bad picture of the lot, which is on the right side of the frame, and only half of it is shown, but it has Leb Ke on the left and Yousos on the right, which I thought was important. Plus the building behind them shows the size of the lot, about 4 meters by 20 meters. Also, all the lots basically looked the same, and I’ll describe their positions and best I can, but I can’t put up pictures of all of them because it takes way too long to load pictures on the internet here.

So the lot in the third picture faces Route 5 but is one ‘block’ away from it and another lot is across the street so it’s physically closer to Route 5, but faces away from it. These two lots are actually behind an established repair shop (the last picture in this post shows it’s machining capabilities). I’m looking for advice on what site would be best, and am concerned about the fact that none of them are actually on Route 5, which would obviously be ideal. Apparently that is much more expensive though. I’m curious as to whether people think that it’s good to be behind another shop, keeping in mind that businesses in Cambodia tend to be grouped together by their purpose, or if the proximity would have a negative impact. I also asked Leb Ke to try and get an idea of how much it would cost to build some sort of building.

One last note is that the established shops were surprisingly well equipped. It appeared that each shop did its own machining of parts, because they both had fairly large drill presses, and impressive lathes. Here is a picture of the second best shop in town, you can see the substantial set-up. The more prestigious shop had a larger lathe, but my picture did not include as much of the other stuff.

That’s about it for the trip up to SLP, I have more pictures but can’t put them up here. I think I’m going to start a photo album somewhere, and when I get that up I’ll post a link so everyone can check out all my pictures. I hope everyone’s well, and I’ll post more stuff up as soon as I can.

7-22-09 8:00 PM

2009-07-22T00:33:00.000-07:00

Hello and Welcome to the second installment of my blog! I really appreciate the comments and e-mails I've been getting from people because they’re very encouraging, so thank you. Also, I’m actually posting this the day after all the stuff I talk about happened, because I was pretty tired last night.

Today was quite a big day, and I took more pictures to try and demonstrate what I did, as per my father’s recommendation. Thanks for the good journalistic advice dad. Unfortunately my pictures tend to be of dark hallways or motorcycles, which I didn't think about until I was back in my hotel. So next time I'm preparing for a blog entry I'll try and take some pictures of a larger scope.

To begin though, this picture sort of shows the scene. I took it for the Kawasaki Ninja, which I thought was a pretty crazy bike to have here. There are actually a fair number of serious machines here though. For example, I have seen a Ducati and other liter class (1000cc) sport bikes that are capable of at least 150-180 miles per hour. I’ve talked to several people about how having these bikes here is insanity, and one person told me that they get taken to an abandoned airstrip and “exercised”, which makes sense but frightens me, given the safety equipment (or lack thereof) I have seen. More on this later...

So, this picture is taken outside of a place called the Russian Market. It’s one of several markets in the city where they sell an enormous variety of goods. The first time I came here, I came with a friend’s friend to buy food. She asked me if I wanted to try bugs, and then pointed to what looked like cockroaches simmering in motor oil. I declined, then realized that the bugs were actually crickets, and considered it. The oil was the real roadblock though, because it was pretty gnarly. We ended up buying some fish instead. I was kind of concerned about getting sick from it, but it was so fresh that it’s fins were still moving despite the head having been chopped off, and we cooked it very well.

Anyway, it seems like a place where one could buy basically anything they wanted. I had been told that this was a good place to buy tools and parts for motos, as well as a book to learn some more Khmer. Turns out my information was pretty good. There was a vast section of book and map sellers, and given the right budget I’m fairly certain you could buy all the pieces to build an entire moto starting from scratch within a 30 foot circle of the market. There are also many tools for sale, although most of what I saw was power tools. It’s a good thing I brought a pretty complete set of metric Craftsman combination wrenches with me; it looks like they may be very helpful.

This first picture is looking down one of the very narrow hallways of parts, which are on the ground, on benches, and hanging from the rafters. Many of them are used, but there are people who sell new parts in and around the market. In the second picture, you can see new tires, oil, tail lights, etc. I was considering putting up a picture of the power tools, but replace the moto parts with drills, grinders, etc. and you’ve got it.

So that is a basic idea of the market. I have more pictures, and I’ll try and post them to some kind of photo account which I will have a link to once I do it.
Moving on to the rest of my adventures, I found out about a western run shop nearby, so I decided to go and meet the proprietor. On the way I took pictures of interesting vehicles to demonstrate the breadth of what people ride and drive here. I also tried to take pictures of shops and people working on bikes. I got some weird looks from people, and some people didn’t seem pleased. So I’ll try and be more careful in the future.

The first picture here is cool, it’s of three young guys working on what is the most common type of moto here, A Honda Super Cub or Korean replica of one made by Daelim. They are 50cc-90cc and basically like lawnmower engines on bicycles. I think I’ll primarily be fixing these out on Route 5.

These next few pictures are illustrative of the range of bikes here. The first picture shows a bunch of dirt bikes, one of which has been converted to a supermoto style, meaning it has street tires and firmer suspension to make it handle pavement better than a regular dirt bike. The ones behind it are more normal dirt bikes, which are fairly prolific here. I’m hoping to get an XR 250, which will transport me between the shop and Phnom Penh quite efficiently, and I’ve heard people give you more space in traffic when you are on a dirt bike, which could be critical. Also, there is apparently a dirt bike track outside the city. Maybe I could start a racing team from TC….. hmmmmm.

There are also awesome dirt bike variations, like the Suzuki grasstracker and Honda FTR 223. This next picture is the latter (it came from ze information super highway, it’s not mine). They are supposed to look like dirt trackers, which are motorcycles stripped down and raced on dirt ovals. I really wish they were imported to the states but I don’t think they are.

The last two pictures in this series could be called “surprising vehicles.” In the first picture we have a brand new Honda CBR, I’m not sure of its displacement, and a Buell, which is a somewhat uncommon American sport bike company that uses Harley Davidson engines. There was also a BMW sport bike at this shop. The guys in the shop looked sort of angry at me for taking these pictures, which may have had something to do with the fact that I’ve heard the people with the sport bikes are generally, uh, connected, as we would say in my glorious home state of New Jersey. I don’t know if it’s true though. The last vehicle picture is of a Hummer H2. I have now seen almost every Hummer variation sold, including the H1, H2 H3, and H3T.

Alright, so getting back to the point of this whole thing, I walked over to this shop owned and operated by an English expat. Unfortunately I have no pictures of this or any other developments after this, but his shop is kind of in a little nook without any signage out front. The owner was actually outside the shop, waiting for someone, when I walked up. I had not called him or written an e-mail, so I was quite fortunate he was around. We ended up getting lunch and he gave me a lot of good advice.

Turns out he just started fixing his own bikes about two and half years ago, and people heard he could do a good job and started asking him to work on theirs as well. So the business built through word of mouth, and the fact that he does not repair things ‘inventively’ and use bad parts to the detriment of the vehicles certainly helped him. Also, for the record, I forgot to tell him about the Blog, so I don’t want to use his name or the name of his shop without asking him. Sorry for all the He’s and Him’s.

He said there are many challenges to starting a shop here, and that I should be prepared for many setbacks. I kind of already new this, so I wasn’t upset by the comment, but was pleased when he told me about some places he knows to get legit Japanese and Thai parts, which are the best, and where to get tools. Unfortunately though, it sounds like some of the biggest problems with working on bikes here are improvised fixes, and the lack of preventative maintenance.

The former includes things like welding parts together, thereby preventing dis assembly of important systems of the bike. An example he gave was people welding the kickstarter to its shaft, so if you need to get the clutch case off you have to cut the kickstarter off and then find a new shaft, even though the starter ‘worked’ fine. The latter is pretty obvious in advertisements for bikes that I have been looking at. I saw one advertisement which claimed the bike was in good shape, and had never needed fixing. It had an original chain and sprockets, as well as tires. It was made in 1991. I declined to call that seller. So anyway, our lunch was very instructive, and I hope he can help me over the course of my time here.

The next thing I did was meet up with Leb Ke, one of my main Khmer contacts, and we went to a moto-repairing school to check it out and see if it would be good for me to work there. It was fairly rustic, and apparently I would need to pay a ‘special price’ to get one on one instruction with someone who speaks English. I am doing a test run this coming Monday, and then I’ll have a few days to decide if I want to follow through and take the course. We are looking into some other schools, just in case.

So that about does it for the day, this entry ended up being somewhat longer than I intended, but I hope you enjoyed it.

STOP THE PRESSES – Ok not really but I found an article about the sport bike scene in Phnom Penh, which is enlightening.

Here’s the link -

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:jDWdVQ7LhGsJ:www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2009042025381/Life-Style/powered-by-adrenaline.html%3FItemid%3D0+moto+repair+school+phnom+penh&cd=14&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a

It’s actually a cached file from Google, because I can’t see it otherwise without a subscription. So I hope it works. If it doesn’t, search “powered by adrenaline” and then click the little blue “cached” button below the link for the Phnom Penh Post. I don’t know how that lets you see it, but it does.

7-18-09 11:05 AM

2009-07-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

So I am in Cambodia. It’s more than a little surreal, especially because I have mostly been e-mailing people and trying to comprehend the fact that I am actually here. I went to sleep at about 6 PM last night, and woke up at 6 AM. So far my achievements for the day have been reading several NY times and The Atlantic articles, and eating breakfast. This was my favorite article, I thought it was fascinating - http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness.

Yesterday was a pretty big day, since I bought some food, bottled water, and looked into buying a cell phone. I also tried to call a friend’s friend, and briefly talked to an angry Cambodian man. Who knows if I can keep that up for 9 months! Today I hope to continue my furious pace and actually buy a phone, and contact people who are in this country. Oh, I also would like to learn where to do laundry, buy clean water in bulk, get a motorcycle/scooter, use the internet outside my hotel (preferably for free), rent an apartment, source a translator, and find a pharmacy to buy shampoo and soap. This actually does sound like quite a bit. We’ll see how it goes.

Currently, though, I look out the window of my hotel and see what I believe is some sort of palace. It’s rather odd, after being home and across the street from a high school. Overall though, things are much more comfortable than I anticipated. I have not yet seen the poverty that I was expecting, and in fact people in cars seem to be driving Toyota Camry’s and Lexus SUV’s, the former being the same car that drove me to the airport. I’m sure this will change once I see more of the city, and be even less true outside of the city, but for now the initial transition has been easier than I expected (famous last words, especially considering the breadth of my Cambodian experience). I think the most annoying thing is that when I leave my hotel room, I am about as far from anonymous as possible. I’m used to being in cities like New York, where you have to be pretty direct when you want someone’s attention, and otherwise you are just another person. Here I walk down the street, or are just in line of sight, and guys are asking if I want a Tuk-Tuk, moto ride, etc. Hopefully I will become less self-conscious of my “noticability” as time goes on.

The whole car scene was actually the first thing I noticed, unsurprisingly. In a state of delirium brought on by 19 hours of flying (this does not include layovers, strictly time spent in planes) and about 4 hours of sleep, I was blown away by the cars, motorbikes, and their interactions that could only loosely be described as a “traffic pattern”. People fortunately drive quite slowly, but there is pretty total disregard for anything resembling a rule of the road. I don’t think the situation can be adequately illuminated in writing. I’ll try and take some video. It’s a good thing I brought a helmet and jacket from the states.

Getting back to the cars - yes, lots of people ride motorbikes of various makes and models that I’m sure I will get to know quite well, but there are a surprising number of cars. They also all appear to be made by Toyota, except for the odd Mercedes and a Range Rover Sport that I saw. Maybe Toyota built the “Japanese-Cambodian Friendship Bridge” that is labeled on my map (another accomplishment I forgot to mention, finding a map), and therefore secured a near monopoly on cars sold here.

A final word that actually has something to do with my project – I have walked (and been driven) past several repair shops, for both cars and motorbikes, and was comfortable with what I saw. Some were in buildings, some were on street corners. Many of them had people swinging large blunt objects into motorbike parts. I saw one shop that had half a dozen shiny new dirt bikes and a superbike outside! I was pretty shocked by this. I think it was a GSX-R, also known as suicide by extremely fast vehicle, especially with such lax traffic laws. I hope to navigate my way back to it at some point to see what the hot-rodders of Cambodia are up to. Anyway, there is a wide range of shops and skill levels, so whatever this projects leads to will probably not be massively weird to people. I found that encouraging.

Ok, I need to stop dilly dallying and go do some “work”.

First though, I really need to thank the people who have made it possible for me to be here. Some of them are, in no particular order, Mom, Dad, Biz, N+P, Q+K, M+P, Betsy and Neale, Michael and Jo-Ann Rapaport, Tom McEvoy, Hal Fried, The Lightman Family and the Harpswell Foundation, The Rotary Club of Schenectady and Mark Sheehan, Prof’s Bruno, Madancy, Anderson, and Brison, The Thacher School and my classmates from it, Quentin Keynes, and many others to whom I apologize for not including. I am in your debt.