Worst day of work

Last Tuesday was probably the worst day of work for me, through no fault of my own. I entered work relatively cool-headed. I figured that the only disappointment that I would have to face would be jibes from my co-workers about losing the staff party. Instead, I received news that one of my students had been caught stealing an employee’s phone.

As the School Director, I got to sit in on the meeting where my general manager interrogated the student for an hour before dismissing her. As an added terrible bonus, I got to watch her cry streams of tears as she tried in the end to apologize and plead to stay.

When I looked up into her face, I felt as helpless as she did. I didn’t want this to happen in the first place, and I didn’t want this to be the outcome. I don’t think my GM wanted this either, but her hands were tied. She had dismissed a staff the previous month for the same offence.

As my HR director tried to gently coax the student out of the office, I could help but wonder if the situation would suck less if the student were one of the lower-performing ones instead of one of the best. I felt the sort heartache of betrayal, not that the now-ex-student had betrayed me, but the sort of cosmic betrayal that allows unnecessarily stupid and hurtful things to happen.

In spite of that feeling, and also feeling like I needed to cry and like I had been slapped in the face, I still had the responsibility to explain to the remaining students why this girl was dismissed. I tried to press on them the importance of respect; to respect others and their property, but more importantly to respect yourself and to make decisions like an adult.

Months or years later, I may look back on this as an important managerial experience or a good story to tell for an interview. Right now, my only feeling on the situation is that it sucks. I just had to kick out a student whose mother died in childbirth and whose father dumped her with his mother-in-law; a student who hadn’t made a mistake at school prior to this one; a student that I would describe as quiet but exceptionally friendly and helpful.

In spite of knowing that none of this is my fault, I can’t shake the feeling that I contributed to the overall suckiness of the situation. I also feel a great desire to set everything back in time and reverse what has been done, but I know that can’t happen. And knowing that I can’t change it sucks most of all.

I am going to take a long weekend and see a new city. Some friends said there was a circus there. I plan on returning on Monday and remembering that I love my job, even if not everything about it is lovely.

One day

I have just had one of the most interesting days, but it does not conform well to a single story or journal entry. I am bound to forget it all if I do not write it down. Here is a chronological listing without detailed explanation.

-Woke up and tried to figure how many minutes it would be before the alarm went off.
-Showered.
-Took out the garbage.
-Bicycled to work.
-Watched my students suffer through an English exam, while they tried and failed to discreetly cheat off each other.
-Wrote two e-mails to some Italians.
-Listened to the department heads of the hotel talk about Cambodian food and karaoke for 10 minutes.
-Ate some scrambled eggs and a croissant with brie. Drank a glass of fresh orange juice.
-Gave some weak platitudes to comfort my general manager, who found out, via phone text, that her dog just died.
-Met an attractive Khmer woman from an organization that specializes in reducing dangers to children, specifically for street children and victims of trafficking. Set up a time for the organization to provide training to the staff to make sure that the hotel is aware of how to act in the face of child abuse.
-Drank a glass of water.
-Walked to the nearby children’s hospital.
-Saw dozens of sick children, mostly waiting in the lobbies and hallways.
-Sat on a bench.
-Filled out a form that says I do not share needles or engage in risky sex.



-A doctor poked me with a needle attached to a bag.
-Donated some blood.
-Received a free hospital t-shirt, some crackers, and a coke.
-Met a young German medical student on a month of practical learning.
-Posed for some photographs.
-Resumed work.
-Stopped working to meet a young Dutch woman who found me on the Couchsurfing website, but neglected to e-mail me to tell me she might stop by.
-Carried out a nice conversation and exchanged contact information to meet again at a later time.
-Met some Canadians who were donating a house to our village projects.
-Ate lunch, which included my favorite Khmer soup – the one with pickled lime and chicken.
-Wrote some e-mails to set-up a meeting on Monday.
-Ordered two bags of rice for a village visit.
-Ordered five bicycles for a different village visit.
-Organized my team to practice games for a staff party.
-Watched my teammates try to dance in traditional Khmer-style.
-Tried on some second-hand women’s clothing in preparation for a drag contest.
-Had two very attractive women from the spa apply make-up, something which had not happened since I was in a musical performance of Annie in the fourth grade.
-Was amazed to see the effects that foundation has on hiding the roughness of skin.
-Was taken aback by seen myself with mascara for the first time.
-Was bored.
-Was reaffirmed in the belief that women waste far too much time making themselves up every day, and yet more appreciative of the fact that they do
-Tried on high heels for the first time since I was dressed up like a girl at my grandmother’s house by my sisters and cousin.
-Was told by four guys that “girls walk like this”, where “this” was their demonstration.
-Washed off the make-up.
-Accidentally put soap in my eyes trying to get off the eyeliner.
-Looked in the mirror a fifth time to confirm that my face had indeed reverted from the drag-queen appearance.
-Met with my low-performing students.
-Told a young woman that if she didn’t improve her effort and performance that I would drop her from the program.
-Met with a rural teacher.
-Talked about buying student uniform and ways to keep track of supplies in a school that has no doors and palm leaves for walls.
-Met with some Americans who live in London and were joining the village visit the following day.
-Ordered some school supplies.
-Started writing this post.
-Looked around facebook and livejournal.
-Met a young man from Malaysia whom I had been in contact through Couchsurfing and treated him to dinner.
-Ate some fried ice cream.

Now I am ready to go to bed, but I am the manager-on-duty for the evening, so I will be here until 10 o’clock, waiting and hoping that nothing goes wrong. Tomorrow, a new day approaches. I can only anticipate it will also be interesting and exciting, but I do not anticipate that I will write another entry exactly like this one.


- Finished this post.

Throwing Down/Up

Prior to this recent stint in SE Asia, I have had the opportunity to experience food poisoning once. Since July of last year, I have repeated the experience three times, most recently on Sunday. In spite of eating a wide variety of foods – water beetles, cow hooves, and fermented fish to name a few– each time I have been poisoned the culprit came from a Western restaurant (I also became mildly sick on my own preparation of macaroni and cheese).

I am not sure if this because my stomach has become accustomed to very spicy foods cooked in lime juice and has forgotten how to digest foods like salads, or maybe this is some sort of cosmic retribution for preferring Asian foods to Western foods. Regardless of the etiology, I wanted to share something that has never happened to me before with an illness: This food poisoning had a gender.

I am not sure how an illness can have a gender. In this case, it was female. Perhaps, I was simply associating the severe stomach cramps with the waitress that I was hitting on earlier in the evening. Conversation was actually going quite well up until the point when this anthropomorphized queasiness set in. I was still able to get the waitress’ name, address, whether she was single, and the next time she was working before I needed to head back to my home and spend some time with my porcelain loveseat.

I tried to sleep the pain off, but that wasn’t much of a solution. Around 1 o’clock in the night, I remember distinctly thinking that there was a small woman kicking from the inside of my stomach. Around 1:30, I recall that the mental imagine of a female kick-boxer also included screaming. I finally verbalized the gender persona around 2:30, while I was clutching the toilet seat, saying to no one in particular, “Get the f**k out, you f**king bitch!” a few seconds before gagging myself with my index and middle fingers.

Sure enough, the bitch left. Granted, it took about four or five times, but sometime things like this take time to break off.

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In happier news, I will be returning to the United States on May 29th. I think I will stop in the Bay Area for a few days in transit, before heading to Seattle, but I need to figure a few things out first, like who will actually be there when I am. In January, both my sisters were living there. By May, I doubt either will be.

Then it will be onto Seattle, where I intended to live it up like a kid on summer vacation for four weeks. Except unlike a kid on summer vacation, I can drink legally, I am not going to camp, and I will probably do my summer reading. However, like a kid on summer vacation, I will be staying at my parents’ house and complaining about how the summer weather isn’t ideal enough.

Keeping house

Prices in developing countries can be cheap, shockingly cheap sometimes. Meals in Cambodia can cost a dollar, my 70 channels of cable costs 5 dollars a month, and photo-copied books cost 4 dollars. The child hawkers tell me I can buy postcards and bracelets for a dollar too.

However, Cambodia is not a powerful manufacturing country, so imported goods cost the same as back home, possibly more. That covers things like a washing machine, a good computer, or a cell phone. I was thinking about a new computer, but I figure that it is better to wait until I get back to the States and get the purchase with a warrantee.

Where Cambodian prices are sure to impress is in labor. Anything involving a high degree of man-power will be fairly cheap here. A haircut cost from 50 cents to 3 dollars, a private driver and car cost about $30 per day, and a foot massage will cost you five. The reason I mention all this is because it was recently suggested to me to hire a cleaner.

I have never been a fan of cleaning. I believe I am like most people in that I wait until the mess becomes intolerable and then I break out into cleaning mode. I am not a pro-active, maintenance cleaner.

On average, I clean about three rooms every month, alternating between my bedroom, bathroom, foyer/living room, kitchen, and upstairs. Lately, I have been ignoring the unoccupied upstairs to the point where it has accumulated an astonishing amount of dust. There is enough dust on the floor to make the dust equivalent of snow angels.

After my trip to Singapore, I have thought it would be fun to open this unoccupied third floor to passing travelers and backpackers. This is providing, of course, that I clean up the dust. The problem that arises is that I don't want to spend the time cleaning up.

Nonetheless, I don't really like the idea of someone else cleaning up after me. It all seems like a slippery slope to complacency, laziness, and elitism. It is common for wealth expatriates to hire cleaners, and I am fearful that hiring a housekeeper will cement me into that role.

As time passes, the economic justifications will shrink. The value of my time already seems quite high, and I anticipate it will rise. The monetary cost to hire someone to clean once or twice a month would probably be about $20, so it is already quite nominal.

The bigger hurdle to overcome is the ethical debate. When is it justified to have someone else clean up after you, when you are capable yourself (I am not talking about the already unpaid and unthanked work of mothers and significant others)? Are you doing someone a good-turn by providing them with a job or lowering their self-worth? Does hiring a housekeeper perpetuate the belief that Westerns are lazy and frivolously wealthy? Will my Khmer friends and co-workers think less of me? Will I think less of myself?

I would be interested to know what people think on the idea. I know only a few people who have cleaners/housekeepers. My initial idea was just to move to a smaller house with fewer rooms to clean (I don’t pay rent, so a less expensive place isn’t my concern). The problem with that idea is that moving is even less enjoyable than cleaning.

Vacation: Part 2

I made a quick decision and purchased a ticket to Singapore. My intention was to meet up with my sister, who stated that she would be passing through for a few days as part of her world tour. Unfortunately, prior travel plans delayed my departure date and I ended up missing her by a day and a half. (I also missed the arrival of a friend I really wanted to see by a day.)

This left me with two day of pure tourism to explore the city of Singapore. With a few hours before my departure, I can say that this city mesmerizes and infuriates me simultaneous.

The city is quite stunning in all aspects. In my two days, I experienced cultured theater, diverse ethnic foods, breathtaking architecture and city planning, and stunning wildlife. Of all the cities I have been to in SE Asia, I can say without doubt that Singapore is the most developed, cultured, and diverse.

Nonetheless, Singapore gives me a feeling of covetousness and jealousy. This feeling does not come from a desire to live here. Although, I think it would be a very easy city to live in. What infuriates me is that Singapore has it made in every way.

Singapore has made it, while the rest of the world is sitting in second gear. The city is proof that good governance, investment in education, and fostering good economics works in the long-run. By no means is Singapore perfect. By many measures, I am sure that it ranks lower than it should, but in the ways that count the most they have succeeded. Primarily, they have succeeded in giving each of its citizens the opportunity to grow as an individual and achieve their personal dreams.

The rest of SE Asia has achieved this only to a partial degree. In the case of Cambodia, the country has barely begun. In Cambodia, only the luckiest are able to rise by their merit and hard-work. The majority of adults must be satisfied by the hope that their children will have a better life and opportunity than they did.

However, on reflection, it is not Singapore's success that infuriates me, but the rest of the region's inability to achieve it as well. Singapore caught up with "Western world" in about 50 years, which means that Cambodia has at least 50 more years to go. Half a century seems like a long time, and I question whether I can maintain a positive outlook on development if the path is so long.

What I will take from my brief time is Singapore is not despair but renewed hope. Singapore is an oasis of development and achieved dreams in a world full of slow change. For a few days, I had the opportunity to eat in nice restaurants and enjoy museums without second thought. I reunited with a past friend and met a new one. I walked along pristine sidewalks and alongside buildings that reached into the sky. I passed luxury sports cars and never had to wonder how much the owner of the car had stolen from public coffers. For 60 hours, I did not see a single beggar, a single child out of school, nor even a stray, sickly dog.

What I am left with is a thought, "If Singapore can achieve it, why not Cambodia?"

Sihanoukville is a city on the verge of claiming an identity. I do not believe that I have ever been to a place so much in flux. The city lies on the south coast of Cambodia on the Gulf of Thailand. It was a seaside resort prior to the Khmer Rouge, when every place became topsy-turvy.

Now, Sihanoukville is undergoing a massive transformation being driven by tourism and commerce. The city is the only major seaport in the country and the turquoise waters are suffering from this. The city is also swelling with new citizens seeking job opportunities and tourists seeking the sun. This leads to more garbage and a further degrade in the quality of the beaches.

Meanwhile, the investors are trying to determine what kind of beach town to make of the place. Some are taking the casinos and prostitutes angle, others want it to be a hippy paradise with cheap beer, fire dancing, and mushroom shakes. Still others are planning mega-resorts. It is a bit difficult to say who will win out in the end, but I would be willing to put money on "not the environment" and "not the average citizen."

In the midst of all these forces, I had the opportunity to stay in an oasis of calm. With the exception of regular tantrums from my good friend's infant son, the vacation was idyllic. We spent the majority of our time either relaxing in hammocks, eating and drinking, or sitting in the surf.

As per Asian culture, meals were performed with many dishes and orchestrated by young and old women making sure that plates were never empty. I cannot recall a time when I have eaten so much seafood nor a time when the seafood tasted so good. I have never been a huge fan of crab meat or shellfish, but that mindset melted away on this vacation. The majority of the seafood was cooked over a ceramic pot heated with charcoal. Shrimp and cockles came off the grill with alarming heat. Nonetheless, we snapped off their shells, dipped their sweet carcasses in various sauces, and washed them down with lager.

For all the fun that I had, I can’t say that I was unhappy to leave the seaside city. My legs were becoming polka-dotted with mosquito bites, my clothes were all beginning to smell of seawater dampness, and my nights were being shared with three friends on a wooden floor with a plastic mat as cushioning (two of whom snored and rolled in their sleep).

The great thing about a beach bungalow vacation is that it invites you to do nothing at all except relax, and then it encourages you to return to your climate-controlled home, take a shower, and put on some clean clothes.

Reunion

Back together in the same place after almost three years.