Bling Bling

Not long after arriving in the Phenomenal Penguin, I discovered a newly-opened café a few streets away called Bling Bling Coffee & Wine.  I am fond of a good glass of wine, and I'm a confessed, unrecoverable caffeine addict, but seriously... Bling Bling? Are they serving their espresso and sauvignon blanc in Waterford crystal?

I stopped in for a cuppa and met the owner. His name is Nareth; he is Cambodian, but he fled to the US during the Pol Pot era. His English is fluent, and like me, he spent years working in the I/T industry -- in his case, in database management. Nareth lived in Boston for many years, then followed his partner, a PhD in Linguistics, to Storrs, Connecticut, home to the University of Connecticut.  Nareth and I have a startling amount in common, between our professions and our geography.

We're both mad about cats, for example. The restaurant, he told me, was named after one of his beloved felines, Bling Bling, who is still living with Nareth's ex in the States.  A couple of months ago, he picked up a pair of tiny kittens on the street.  They surely wouldn't have lasted much longer where they were, and now they're leading the lives of Reilly.

This is Bling Bling II.  Her brother, PePe, is almost identical.

I'm not coddled! Am I?

Like many of the restaurant owners in Phnom Penh, Nareth has hired young staff who would otherwise have fairly dismal prospects. He sends them to English classes, and he teaches them the skills they need to run the café. He helps his cooks prepare some western dishes, and they send him shopping for the ingredients to make the Khmer ones. Then Nareth takes out his camera, and I see posts like this on Facebook.  Within a day or two, I'm invariably  pedalling down Street 456 to Bling Bling.

Add a $3 glass of Argentine chardonnay,  and I'm ecstatic.

Now that he has cats again, Nareth has been even more interested in my BARF-making adventures. I've come to realise that making and selling raw cat food as a cottage industry is simply not economically viable, and I'm not interested in doing it on an industrial scale. Last week, though, I brought a zip-lock bag of frozen BARF cubes as a gift for Bling Bling and PePe.  Nareth sent me the photo below at just past midnight, as Bling Bling was diving into her first serving.  PePe was a bit more cautious, but he's now another certified BARF-hound, so Nareth is asking if he can buy it from me. Sure! Why not? We can just pass the same money round and round as I deliver raw cat food and then eat more meals in his restaurant.

Fine dining, feline style

One of my biggest concerns about moving to the Phenomenal Penguin was the fear of living in an expat bubble -- socialising only with English-speaking foreigners like myself. That's one of the reasons I'm so driven to learn Khmer.  I have a long way to go before my language skills move beyond the merely functional level; I'm quite some way from building friendships in Khmer.  In the meantime, though, people like Nareth are a godsend.  He's re-learning his mother tongue after returning from so many years in America. His spoken Khmer is coming back very quickly (he was a teen-ager when he left and is in his early 50s now), but he and I are at about the same level with the written language. Most of his staff speak English at the same level as my Khmer. Whenever I come to Bling Bling, it's not long before Nareth pours himself a glass of wine and sits down at my table.

We talk about the US and the technology sector, but we also talk about life in Cambodia, and his perspective is fascinating. If the restaurant's not too busy, one or more of the staff may join us, and then we start the real language exchange... "How do you say 'avocado' in Khmer?" "How do you say 'tro-sak-sraw' in English?"

As I sat with my pad thai the other night, Nareth intoduced me to a middle-aged Khmer man who was sitting at the next table.  He was Nareth's brother, Nara, who never left Cambodia. He survived Pol Pot's madness and is now running a farm in Kampot.  "He's had a hard life," Nareth told me, quite unnecessarily. Nara speaks no English (although he does speak Thai and Vietnamese, which impresses me to no end. Vietnamese is a related language to Khmer, but Thai is not.)  When Nareth went out onto the veranda to smooth the ruffled feathers of a vegan who found egg in his dish (oops!), I was left to shoot the Khmer breeze with Nara. I learned that he grows a wide range of fruits and vegetables on his farm, but no durian, for which Kampot is well-known. He doesn't like the smell of durian, and he was surprised that I do. Nareth is teaching him about organic farming. He has an apartment here in Phnom Penh, and he stays in it when he drives here in his car, so I gather his farm is doing rather well. He's 53 years old, and he was pleased to point out that his hair is much thicker than his brother's.  ("I heard that!" called Nareth from the kitchen.) I pointed out that my hair is white, while theirs is still black. Nara shook his head and said that my hair is not white, it's bpra-peh.  "Grey," Nareth translated, "and we both colour ours."  They guffawed.

I know, this is conversation at the level of a toddler -- it's not at all interesting, certainly not profound, but it provides practice that I desperately need. It was exhilarating for me to listen to someone from one of the more distant provinces and understand nearly all of what he said. I do wish Nara would grow durian, though.

One of these days, I'll take a photo of Nareth and update this post.  Meanwhile, I just give thanks every day for Bling Bling.