We Apologise for the Inconvenience

I had hoped to have some writing done by now about the events of my trip out to Kampong Chhnam last week. Unfortunately, my relaxed weekend of typing at the computer somehow seems to have passed with a minimum of actual computer time.

A friend recently pointed out that he’d really enjoyed reading the following from some personal correspondence I had sent. It seems to fit in nicely with where the blog is at right now. So I’ve decided to post it here (hope you don’t mind Mac) along with something a little lighter that I wrote yesterday for a laugh.

"This past week it was a trip out to Svay Rieng province. Spent the first day looking at a program to improve fertilizer delivery. Was led by a village chief on a tour through the rice fields to a paddy that had been set aside for the experimental fertilizer. Several local were harvesting the rice from a distance using what looked like small traditional hand scythes. Afterwards I was driven to a small farm where the machine that makes the fertilizer pellets is housed. The engineer in me was happy. I mostly observed but also helped to tinker a little with a big machine until an hour or two after the stars came out. Beautiful night skies here of the variety you can only see up North back home

Thus far, the constant focus on agriculture has kept me from learning much about the mine situation here. If not for the stream of amputee beggars, it would be almost possible to be completely oblivious to it here in Phnom Penh. The resiliency of some of these folks is astonishing. There was a beggar at the top of the 27m high Wat Phnom in the North of the City who I encountered yesterday. He had no legs. The stumps began and ended at the level of his hips. He ambled about smoothly and almost elegantly with his hands in flip-flops. I can only assume he climbed each step to the top of the hill this way."