I just read Cory Doctorow’s newest novel Makers. I read it on my computer – all 340 pages of it. In two days. I wish I had one of these.
(Cory Doctorow releases all his works under a Creative Commons license as a free download in the hope of selling more paper books; so far he’s been very successful doing that.)

I’ve been making a few things myself.
Banana jam – delicious!
Peanut butter – tasty, but too dry – must experiment some more.
Mayo – works every time. Unless you use duck eggs; that won’t work.
Goose – the neighbor-landlord-student’s dog killed one of the neighbor-landlord-student’s geese. I was given a piece. Awesome.
Bookshelves and TV table – fairly decent, considering the wood is hard and uneven (cut with a chainsaw!), and I have no skill nor experience with carpentry.

Spent a few days in Phnom Penh.
Got lots of things done.
Pick up my passport with a new visa.
Bought books for my brand-new school library (152 books for $154!).
Saw friends.
Had Korean and Filipino food.
Got new lenses for my glasses.
Had large photos printed to hang up in my room.
Bought a flash drive for one of my students.
Donated blood.
Busy two days.

I hadn’t been in PP for a few months, and that’s enough to see change. Traffic seems even busier. Tall buildings under construction are getting taller. I saw a few restaurants done up colonial style – both renovation and mock (good!). The place seems to be slowly going upscale.
Phnom Penh is hot!

I found these ads in Southeast Asia Globe magazine, a fairly interesting locally produced mag about regional and international topics. The photography and production of the magazine are excellent, the quality of the ads in it not so much. There has been a lot of improvement in the quality of ads in Cambodia over the last few years, with both local and foreign agencies raising the standards. There are however still a lot of companies and organisations who are not convinced of the value of a good marketing strategy, or who try to do everything in-house on the cheap. The results are often textbook examples of everything that can be wrong with an ad.

This CityLink one is bad on so many levels:
So many colors, so many elements…
That boy looks so like a successful business exec. Is the girl in NYC floating yogi-style?
The English is just ridiculous: “Family Calling Free Everyday”?! “Call to the globe easily”? “The Best SoIP We Can Trust”? Who’s “we”? What’s “SoIP”? Is it the best, or can we trust it?
Over 200 countries? Wikipedia lists only 193 countries – I assume they’re counting Somaliland, Taiwan, Transnistria and other “countries” too.
What’s CityLink’s motto? Is it “Your Obvious Choice”, or “The Best Internet Service Provider”?
Why do they have two different websites: citylink.com.kh vs. citylinktelecom.com.kh?
What’s with the lousy punctuation in the address?
And worst of all: they managed to misspell the product name “cTIyPhone”!
How embarrassing.

The ad on the opposite page looked much more professional … until I took a closer look at the globe. Huh? What planet’s that? Wait a minute… It’s our Earth, mirrored!

A classic photoshop mistake, mirroring items you shouldn’t. People wearing clothes with mirrored logos or text, cars with mirrored license plates, mirrored worlds: it looks unprofessional.

This is my neighbor’s son’s skateboard!

I bought a Scorpions compilation album recently.

I didn’t know they had undergone a reversed Michael Jackson?!

The Scorpions have made great rock music (Rock you like a Hurricane!), but also the most schmaltzy of ballads. Unfortunately the CDs mainly contained ballads…

Up until now getting to Mondulkiri in the rainy season was hell. The road from Snuol, on the main highway north, to Sen Monorom was just a wide dirt road.
But now the Chinese are upgrading the road, making it wider and metalled, and adding bridges where necessary. Work is progressing well.
Work in the center of Sen Monorom has started too.

It has been a habit of Cambodian people of treating sidewalks and sides of the road as private property, using it for everything from displaying merchandise to parking space. Some people actually build on it. For example, Phnom Penh has no sidewalks to speak of. In Sen Monorom, last week, the road construction company tore down all constructions built on public property. I’m told people were paid compensation.

There’s not much of a waste disposal system in Monorom.
In town a truck regularly picks up garbage, but not on our street.

Cans and plastic bottles are collected by the “ay-tshai” guy.
We throw the rest in a pit.

Here’s our garbage pit:

I use kitchen leftovers to fill up holes in the garden.

Most Khmers just throw their rubbish on the road, however.

Here’s the cover of another English-Khmer dictionary.

I threw it in the garbage pit.

I have finally found a good English-Khmer dictionary: English-Khmer Dictionary by Franklin E. Huffman and Im Proum.
Someone please update it – it is in the public domain.

Mark has decided to go back to Phnom Penh early. In fact, he left yesterday. Recurring bouts of – probably – the malaria he picked up in Stung Treng made him decide to go to PP to see a doctor.
Good luck to you, Mark.

This means that it’s just me and the cats in that big house now. And my students, of course. I also hired a cleaner; she’ll come over twice a week for an hour to mop the floors and clean the windows – something I hate to do.

In January my new flatmate Scott should arrive.