A wee bit of Christmas shopping

I won't put up a Christmas tree this year, or any year, because it will simply turn into a feline demolition project, but I've been admiring some of the Khmer silk ornaments that I've seen around town and decided I could hang some of those on my window grilles.  We'll see how well that goes. The cats both like to nap on the window ledge behind the grilles, and I suspect they'll find the dangling, sparkling penguins and giraffes irresistible.  I know I do.

My favourite? At the moment, it's the seafoam-green bat.

These came from an NGO-run shop near the riverside, Watthan Artisans; the items are made and profits dispersed to Cambodians with disabilities.  The sales clerk moved about the shop on very twisted legs -- the result, I believe, of polio. I have some acquaintances in Malaysia who are violently opposed to vaccinating their children, and as best I can tell from their rants, they refuse to consider any vaccination whatever, not only the one that is (spuriously, it seems) linked to autism. I mentioned to one of these women that polio is not to be trifled with, and she rolled her eyes. Polio is not totally eradicated -- I just found this report on "Cambodia's Polio Crisis", dated 2013. Confronted with a parent who rejects a polio vaccination for her child, I can only roll my eyes.

Despite her torturous movement, the young lady in the shop wanted to be very sure I found a) enough ornaments, b) in all my preferred colours, and c) of adequate bio-diversity. On that note, I went a bit overboard on the penguins, but you must admit -- they're all pretty phenomenal.

"Take your time, ma'am. Which one did you see at the crime scene?"
"Well, I can't be sure, Officer, but the goose looks a bit dodgy."

My next stop was a funky design shop called Trunkh. Trunkh, you see, is the only place in Phnom Penh to buy the Lucky Iron Fish, and I've been wanting one for some time. I love this thing on so many different levels -- it's an ingenious and simple solution to a huge problem. Its manufacture gives work to Cambodians. Cambodians can buy a fish for $5. Foreigners must pay $25 per fish, but the company then gives three fish to Cambodian villagers who can't afford to buy them.

A young Canadian PhD student noted that nearly half of all Cambodians are anemic. He started by trying to encourage the women to put a block of iron into their cooking water as they prepared meals, but he didn't get far with that -- the women couldn't understand why they would put a chunk of metal into their soup-pots. Gavin, therefore, went to a local metalsmith and asked him to design an iron fish. The Khmer women embraced the lucky iron fish (the word for 'good' is embossed on its side). Here's what the Lucky Iron Fish web site says about the results:  "After just 9 months of using the Lucky Iron Fish every day, we saw a 50% decrease in the incidence of clinical iron deficiency anemia, and an increase in users’ iron levels."

Even the box is well-designed.

The truth is, my desire for a Lucky Iron Fish is not entirely altruistic -- I got turned away from the blood bank again last month for iron deficiency, and the Cambodian phlebotomists aren't the world's choosiest. It's time my own soup-pot had an iron fish in it, I'd say.

With luck, I'll be back on the blood donors' list in a month or two.

It's quite a long walk from my place to the riverside area, but now that we're in the cooler season, I don't mind.  The bamboo bike is much faster, of course, but I can't easily pause to snap photos when I ride it. Today's photos just happened to feature cars. This particularly pious Camry was in one of the prayer halls within Wat Lanka. Is it meditating? Awaiting a blessing? Or had the driver merely given up on finding a spot on the street?

Maybe it's a monk-mobile.

Only one thought flashed through my mind when I saw this car at the Monivong and Mao Tse-Tung Blvd junction.

When Hello Kitty has a mid-life crisis...