Day Two

On Wednesday night, I sat down on the sofa and felt a wave of despair.  I had not yet managed to establish a diverse circle of friends, my Khmer was scarcely any better,  the raw cat food business was still no more than an idea, I hadn't got the bamboo bike or opened a bank account or joined up to volunteer at The Flicks.

Then it dawned on me that I'd been in Phnom Penh (as a resident) for all of 28 hours.  I put the scourge down on the coffee table and tossed the hair shirt aside.

Thursday, 27 March, was my second full day, and now, as the sun sets, I will toast the day with a glass of Soju instead of beating myself up.

The lady at Acleda Bank told me yesterday that she needs to see a rental contract "with a stamp from the authority".  What authority, what sort of stamp?  I rang up Realtor Benny yesterday afternoon to ask about this, and he suggested that he'd like to come over to see me this morning.  He arrived on his little motorbike with his two colleagues, Jacky and Hari, on the back.  (Had I mentioned that this is not a high-end Realty?) They came up to the balcony with Yee, my landlady, in tow and explained to her where the contracts must go for this official stamp.  Her son will see to it in the next day or two, and then I can open the bank account. Not an insuperable obstacle after all, and the Dragon Realtors went home with a big bag of green mangoes, which Yee picked for them with her long-handled bamboo mango-picking tool.  I'll get a photo of that soon. It's ingenious!

I have the whole upper storey of the house -- 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, enormous balcony and the rooftop terrace.  I realised only today that the ground floor is split in half.  Yee occupies one half, which she shares with her elderly and ailing husband, her adult son Sopheak, and her adult daughter Serai, who has very profound Down's syndrome.  My heart aches for Yee, and I'm really pleased that Sopheak takes such good care of his parents.  She told the realtors that she wished he would marry, but I don't know how she could manage without him.  Yes, yes -- I'll get photos of them all, sooner or later.

The other half of the ground floor is rented out to a couple in their 30s (?), Paul and Amanda.  I met Amanda this morning. CLICK! We got on famously.  I nearly swooned when she said, "Please, you must tell me if my music disturbs you -- I'm a classical pianist." She composes sort of new age music, she said, but I told her that I'd be overjoyed to hear her banging out Shostakovich or Stravinsky.  Anything, anything at all.

Now I do feel decadent about being one person occupying so much space, given that there are 6 in the same amount of space below (actually less, because my balcony protrudes from the front of the house).  I told Amanda and the realtors, all of whom remarked that it does seem like a large space for one woman, that I expect to be deluged with guests.  Don't make a liar out of me, people.

After meeting Amanda, I went down to the Russian Market.  One day when I don't have a long shopping list, I will go down there with a camera.  I've seen covered markets all over Asia, but this one is something else again.  Today I picked up my odds and ends -- some lightweight cotton shifts to wear around the house, cleaning supplies, fruit, bread.  Then I found the "housewares department".  I found what looked like a very well-stocked stall and began.  In a broken mixture of English and Khmer and sign language, I did my best to describe a manual meat grinder. The saleslady produced a blender.  Ok, it's a start.  I mimed working the handle of the meat grinder, and she offered me a stool. She returned with another woman who spoke some English. They gestured to me that I should remain on the stool and vanished into the bowels of the market.

Mind you, it's a thoroughly Cambodian market -- the name refers to the fact that there used to be a lot of Russians living in this area in years past, and it was their favourite place to shop and trade.  My saleslady returned with two models of precisely what I'd been looking for:  heavy steel manual grinders that attach to the edge of the counter.  Her friend said, "This one made in Vietnam.  Quality not good. This one is Soviet! Very, very good."

I took both of them completely apart, examining the screw, the blades, the extruder, and I had to agree -- the Russian grinder was much superior to the Vietnamese one.

So my raw cat food business doesn't yet have a name, but we do have our first grinder.  I bargained her down to $43 plus a half dozen packets of Cambodian spice mixes thrown in (for me, not the cats.)  Reasonable, or not?  She was asking $25 for the Vietnamese grinder, if you're curious.  Same size, same style, but blades and extruder looked shoddy.

My final accomplishment du jour:  Doing a load of laundry in my washing machine, whose buttons are all labelled in Japanese.  I must have pressed the right ones, because cleanliness ensued.

Things are not perfect here in Phenomenal Penguin; challenges and frustrations abound, and my disorientation is extreme. I keep reminding myself that I was in KL just a few months short of a decade. It had become very familiar and comfortable.  Still, I feel unspeakably blessed and lucky that things here are going as well as they have so far.