Complimentary Wine.

Long Time no blog.

2011-07-07T03:49:00.000-07:00

Let me start by just saying hello.

OK

It's been a while since I added anything to here.
Yu see shortly after posting the last blog on here (by shortly I mean like 3 hours), I fell asleep with my balcony door open. When I woke up my Macbook was gone. No coming back.

That was like a year ago now. And I finally managed to save up enough money to get a new one like last month.

So I figured I'd get back on it.

A lot of shits gone down since we last spoke. To be honest it's too much to go into in any great detail at the minute.
You see there's this thing in Cambodia where you can't really say bad things about certain people while you are still in the country.
Added to this I'll be back in England in 9 days time and I'll be on at Latitude later that night.
So I don't want to fuck it up by saying something on the fucking internet that stops me getting clear of the departure lounge.

Know this though, there are some fucked up people in this country. Some domestic and a lot of forign.
You see this place is like a haven for sex-tourists. And their more weathered cousins the Sex-pat (N: ex-pat sex pest).
The streets are riddled with them. Oozing their grimy fingers across potentially underage and unquestionably impoverished girls.

Now some of these perverts are easy to spot. But some are undercover.
I worked at a university when I was here. Won't say the name because the name is also the name of the founder who is an actually megalamaniac who has stocked the shelves of the library with multiple 600 page books about him, by him.

One of them is basically a coffee table book containing photographs of parades in his honer and him shaking hands with what looks like the most inner-circle of the league of evil. (Except the only American is Mel Gibson).

Again more about that when I get back on British soil.

You know at one point the Cambodian government blocked access to blogspot because of a blog that said anti-government things.

So I'm saying nothing,
And am now worried that I already said to much.

Anyway there was this one guy at my work who I hate.
And I really mean HATE.

He's a Wrongun. And as I still have a week in the country I'm considering tracking him down and beating him.

He should not be allowed to be responsible for young people or children.
He was on a field trip that I was on and he borrowed the school camera on the night of the "Pool Party" (4 star hotel, I forgot to say my school was only for the richest kids).
Anyway me and a friend took the camera off him after an hour and a half and he'd taken 54 photos.
(we had 100 students and 2/3rds of these kids were boys)
80% of his pictures were of just girls. (There was also a girl in every other photo but none that were only of boys)
37 of them were of the same group of 4 friends. 15 year old girls.
This guy is like 46 and had been entrusted by these kids parents to make sure no halm would come to them.
He's a Wrongun.

Anyway. There will be more info as time passes.
Photos will come when my internet gets better.

Big yu selves up

Man doesn't need a home.

2010-08-02T02:22:00.000-07:00

All man needs is a shelter,

We can condition him with food at the factory.

So it seems as if the future really is here.

No need for housing any more.

Just boxes.

This is the website incase you are interested.

Unfortunately this video doesn't have sound so I've attached this link so you can listed to Population control by Company Flow as you watch it.

Knife child

2010-07-31T20:13:00.000-07:00

So I just went out side on a bit of a DVD hunt. (I was trying to find a film called Idiocracy).

Any way I was stood in one of my usual DVD shops on the river and as I'm looking some Book selling kid comes in trying to hit me up for some change.
Now I'm not into giving cash to kids in the street because I don't think its going to help anything.
So I tell him no good.
Anyway I thought he left so I carry on looking.
Turns out the kid ain't gone. he's right behind me and lets me know he's still there by shooting me repeatedly in the back of the legs with a pellet gun.

Naturally I ain't into it.
So I spin round and grab the gun from out of his hands.
The kids giving it "give me my gun back"
so I'm like "You need to apologise and until you do you don't get it back"
The kid's like "fuck you I kill you" And walks out the shop.

A few moments later he's back in brandishing a 6 inch kitchen knife "I kill you" goes this kid as he comes at me. I don't reckon he actually meant it, he was probably just giving it the big un but just to be safe twisted his arm up a little took the knife of him and choke slammed him on the floor.

Worst thing is the DVD shop ain't even got Idiocracy. Proper let down.

Lisa S

2010-07-29T07:55:00.002-07:00

When I'm at home I like to do a lot of different things.

Two of these are watching TV and using the Internet.

I like to both at once because sometimes I'm waiting for something to load/stream/buffer and sometimes it's the adverts/commercials/nothing good's on.

So it kind of balances out.

Now out here both can be a bit difficult.

Internet is generally slow due to a lack of decent broadband.

And TV can be difficult because of the small number of TV channels that are in English.

Generally it comes down to a choice of 6

HBO

A version of the popular American Channel. The Wire, Heroes, etc.

Things you probably downloaded or bought the box set of.

Star World

The predominant force behind English language TV in South East Asia. American Idol, How I met your mother, America's next top model, etc. The 1st channel I ever saw that had the same presenter for everyone of its shows/links/adverts/idents.

The incredibly hard working Lisa S.

The DVD Channel

Cambodia's only feature in my regular channel hopping. Basically this channel broadcasts a selection of the latest Pirate DVDs.

DVDs that were most likely purchased in one of the shops on the riverside.

Star Movies

That's right same company as before. This time all movies and movie related shows. Thing is though once again all the shows/adverts/idents hosted by Lisa S.

AXN & MAX

Actually 2 completely different channels. But they are next to each other numerically and I can never remember which shows are on which.

These 2 just fill in the blanks left by Star World and HBO. Total Wipeout, House, So you think you can dance, etc.

Music channel playing alternating videos of the same 3 Korean Girl Bands with the occasional Boy Band to keep it interesting. Never really stay on this channel long. Only included it here because once again all the links/shows/adverts/idents courtesy of Lisa S.

So what you might notice is that 50% of my TV watching potentially involves Lisa S.

Now before I came here I had never heard of her and I wanted to make a blog about her for people back home to read.

and when I started this blog it was originally gunna be about how lackluster she is sometimes and how I don't understand why the use her so much because she's not really that good.

But then I discovered something.

Lisa S isn't on the Internet.

Well at least not like she is on TV.

it is infact surprisingly difficult to find a picture of Lisa S on the Internet.

This freaked me out. I mean I know not everbody's got pictures of them on the Internet. My Nan for example.

But I'm also pretty sure that my Nan doesn't present 68 simultaneous hours of TV 7 days a week.

And that's when I realised the inescapable truth.

Lisa S is obviously a registered trademark of Star World.

Maybe even more than that. Maybe it's much more sinister.

Maybe Lisa S has somehow been put in the position where by she is no longer an employee of Star World's but she is now infact their property.

There are no pictures of her on the Internet because Star World's legal team made them all disappear.

And if they are in fact that powerful, just imagine what they could do to my web-presence.

Due to this inescapable fact I'm not actually going to put the one picture of Lisa S I found. (Actually unable to view the page it came from without "registering" and to be fair I just don't like the word.) Here's a link

I'm genuinely a little bit worried that what I say is the true so if you don't hear from me for a wile then maybe they got to me too.

For now I'm just gunna put Star World on. To see if Lisa S is trying to call for help with her eyes.

Babore Chigai

2010-07-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

Due to the fact that my job and my house are actually in very different places, I am forced to go outside at least twice a day, (more if it is one of the days when I also need to eat food).

Now this in itself doesn't seem like such a problem.

Although the additional factors attributed from living in one of the worlds dustiest sun traps, as well as owning the smallest petrol powered motorbike ever invented by man, do tend to make it slightly more of a struggle.

Now one thing that I will recommend to anyone who is planning to spend any amount of time on the road is decent eye protection.

Partly for the sun, after all squinting can severely lower your ability to see shit and as the majority of the local population seem to have no great attachment to signaling or lane discipline this can be problematic.

But the eye protection is also useful for trying to cut down on the amount of dust that's going directly into your eyes as your driving.

See in the west we are well aware that if you get your eyes full of dust this might be the cause of an eye problem. The same is not necessarily true out here.

See the other day for for whatever reason I had to go outside. In doing so had forgotten to put my sunglasses over my face before starting out on whatever arduous journey I had decided to undertake.

Needless to say upon my return as I was sat at my work desk inspecting my reflection in the permanent sleeping computer screen that occupied about 60% of my desk, I realised I might have a problem. Or at least the tell tail warning signs of a future problem that would probably come to light at some point in the next few days.

Bad news.

Now back home I'd have referred to it as a sty.

Out here it has another name. A name that indicates the cause but not the cure.

Babore Chigai.

That's what the Chemist told me.

The direct translation means Stares at Dogs.

"You watch Chigai boom boom?"

enquired the chemist.

Apparently the reason I had this problem with my eye was because at some point in the recent past I must have watched 2 dogs having sex.

I refuted the Chemists assertion but did have to admit to the fact that several days prior when I'd been enjoying some down time at Wat Phnom I had indeed seen 2 small furry animals making the beast with two backs.

Not dogs though, Monkeys.

And to be fair I imagine that if you'd seen these hairy little bastards going at it hammer and tongue then you also would have cast an inquisitive eye over them.

(I mean their hands look like people hands.)

The Chemist took this as conclusive proof and gave me a small bottle of what I can only assume were her own tears.

Accompanied by instructions to drizzle the viscus liquid into my own eye as and when I see fit.

The most important thing was that under no circumstance should I watch any more animals having sex.

The way I see it is that the Chemist is not the boss of me and what I do in my spare time is none of her business.

On a related note the university I work for has decided to start monitoring Internet downloads as of Monday.

Flash walk cycles.

2010-07-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

Man

Woman

Skype

2010-06-12T01:34:00.000-07:00

Now I Know what you're thinking.

How can I be performing at the Albany when I'm supposed to be in Cambodia?

Two words....

Skype Bee-atch!!

Yeah check it out, Polarbear dune booked me for a gig where by I'm on skype.

I actually appeared as an enormous disembodied head on a big screen at the back of the stage.

this is what I could see.

See the original plan was that I'd be performing live from the screen.

This week (thanks to the paranoia associated with live Internet links) that plan changed. It became me introducing videos of me performing that I had previously emailed to Polar.

Due to the time difference the show started at 2.30am my time and ended for me just after 5.

Apparently my big face was on the screen during all the other acts.

I personally might have found that a bit distracting if it had been the other way around.

(Mainly because I didn't realise that was what was happening so I was just eating biscuits, drinking coffee and smoking through out).

By the end of the gig I was at least partially delusional.

At on point I forgot I was not actually there. At another point I forgot that what I was seeing was actually live. Thousands of miles away.

I really liked the way it blurred the lines of reality for me and I think this might be how I perform from now on.

Even if I'm in the place where I'm supposed to be performing I still want to do it through my computer. Sat in a dressing room eating blueberry dueberrys while my enormous head floats over all on stage.

Big Berko is watching you, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Call of the wild.

2010-06-10T21:46:00.000-07:00

Now have you ever seen that “March of the Penguins” film?

I’ve not seen it, but I think I get the gist of what it's about.

I heard it’s basically a documentary about how every year this group of penguins, (in fact lets say that they’re Emperor Penguins).

How every year these Emperor Penguins march all the way across (Lets say Thousands), thousands of miles of frozen Arctic (possibly Antarctic, never can remember), Tundra to the same place, (possibly some kind of nesting/breading ground).

Now they make the same journey each year and every one of them knows where to go because of some built in inner calling that directs them back to where they were born (/conceived).*

I think Turtles and salmon do it to, and also that frogs might do it as well. But in their case the breading ground is the pond they were born in and the thousand miles of tundra is replaced with a brand-new 3-lane bypass somewhere near Birmingham. But the basic thing is the same.

The point I’m trying to get out is that for some wild creatures part of their yearly routine is a life-threatening journey across treacherous landscapes to return to the place they were born. They don’t actually have any real choice in the mater; it’s just in their nature.

(I may well have gotten a lot of my facts wrong but I’m writing this somewhere sans Internet connection and I very much doubt I’m gunna check my facts in the time between now and when I publish this tomorrow. But for the sake of this blog just take what I’ve said thus far as true regardless of its factual accuracy).

Any way here’s the thing.

At present something in my subconscious keeps telling me that what I should be doing right now is pushing all my most brightly coloured clothes into a rucksack, pulling my tent from the crawl space it’s spent the winter hibernating in, finding myself a van, buying some “supplies” and getting ready to spend at least 12-46 hours a week on the road.

Chasing down and riding on the back of that most magical, transient, shape-shifting beast of a place.

That beautifully malevolent paradise of contradiction. That place where we can all die and be reborn in the same instant; I am of course talking about the festival.

See I personally harbour the idea that all festivals are in fact manifestations of the same powerful creature.

In fact I’d go as far as to say that it would be naive not to realise that the phenomena we know as “Festival” (from the Latin festivus) is very much a sentient being. An all-powerful host upon whose glorious undulating teats we suckle yearly, quenching our thirst for fun and adventure.

A beast that should be both loved and feared, a beast that demands to be respected.

Oh Festivus can turn a beggar to a king in the blink of an eye.

It will reduce normally rational men to the very edge of mindlessness.

Festivus can be your provider or it can be your undoing.

I first met this beast when it took the form of Glastonbury 1998.

Long story short,

0 tickets + £32 + (1 x 2-man tent) % (5 x 18/19 year old guys)
% 4 days of near solid rain.

Needless to say, not the best one.

Although it was the first time I’d heard 2 very familiar phrases

1. “Imagine if everywhere was like this”

2. “Why don’t we just live here?”

I’m pretty sure that anybody who has ever been to any reincarnation of Glastonbury has at some point uttered one if not both of these 2 phrases.

Of course by the Sunday we have all no doubt realised why we don’t live here and imagining a world where everywhere is like this is no longer something we want to realistically consider.

For me Glastonbury is always the start. The Festival big bang, the moment the creature begins its’ existence.

Glastonbury is boot camp for the rest of the summer. It trains you for what’s about to come. It shows you the best and worst sides of festivus, it teaches you to walk.

Oh how it teaches you to walk.

Back in 1998 you had the added adventure of not actually needing a ticket.

Back then it was all about getting in for free be it via a Scouser’s rabbit hole or by a Bristolian’s ladder. All you had to do is get past the fence and the world was your oyster.

I had a short hiatus from festivaling the year they introduced the alleged “super fence” around Glastonbury.

By this time several seasons had passed since my first encounter with festival. It had been responsible for some of the best and worst experiences I’d ever had.

But I just lacked the organisational skills or self-motivation to actually go about purchasing a ticket.

It wasn’t until 2005 that I climbed back onto the horse. Glastonbury again. This time (thanks to the organisational skills and self-motivation of my brother/co-performer,) I was performing.
For me this was very much the start of something. Although I did notice that the “super fence” looked exactly how I remembered the old fence to look.

*Turns out they were Emperor Penguins going thousands of miles to their breading grounds, in Antarctica. Swings and roundabouts really.

Dining with the Devil.

2010-05-30T22:10:00.000-07:00

So it's been a little wile since I tasted this particular poison.

As I was in an actual city over the weekend I thought I might as well push the boat out and shave a few years of my life.

Back on the Crackky-D's. After 6 months of being clean.

To be honest my taste-buds weren't really that into it.

My digestive system was even less impressed.

in and out of KL.

2010-05-30T19:02:00.000-07:00

Now last summer over the course of the festival season I was pretty busy.
What this meant was that quite often I'd arrive at the place I was performing litterally moments before I was due to step out on stage.
I wasn't the only one.

I know Kate Tempest, Ross Sutherland, Inua Ellems, Jamie Woon and Joshua Idehen (to name but a few) were all in the same boat.

Well if you are still in England then you must have realised, Summer is back, and this time it's personal.

The reason I know this because one of my sisters sent me an email telling me how it was so hot she couldn't even go outside.
Apparently it was like 25 degrees C in Leicester.
Seeing as how I set my air-con at around 20 I wasn't really that impressed but it's all relitive eh.

Anyway what with the arrival of summer and with poetry being the new rock-n-roll an all,

I figured I'd do a gig.
not just a gig; but a far away gig.
One where I'd inevitably be cutting it close.

So here it is, performing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Flying out from Phnom Penh 4.45 saturday
coming home 2.55 Sunday Malaysian time, (1 hour in front).
21 hours total.

Having lived in Cambodia for the last 6 months KL felt like I'd arrived in the future.
All be it a strangely malign future who's chief arcatect was a 16 year old Gun-Dam robot enthusiast with an obsesive desire to create a searies of Urbainian-style satalite cities scattered across an intensly confusing network of vast, sprawling, seemingly endless super high-ways.

The gig was the first monthly slam at Map. Anyone living in or going to KL would do well to check it out.
Elaine Foster runs it and it's a very possitive night in an amazing space.

After the gig I went out for a drink with some of those in attendance. We went to a place called Boathouse that felt like it was in Bristol but looked exactly like the room in Warrior King where they eat the endangered animals.
I kept expecting Tony Jar to kick some one through the wall screaming, "Where are my elephants?"
unfortunatly that didn't happen.

pretty pricey an all.
In fact if you're sick of having all that money in your pocket then I recomend going out for a drink in KL.
I think it worked out about 18 Ringit per beer.
If US$1= about 3.23RM you can do the maths eh.

Here's a little video I made so you can see what I did.
Mostley just motorbikes, taxis and airoplanes, oh and one poem.

I'm back in Phnom Penh now that due to it's geography is physically 1 hour behind KL
and due to it's history is Artistically 20 years behind the rest of the world.

Time to get cracking on that renaissance.

Motorbike Tours (001)

2010-05-28T23:57:00.001-07:00

So When you are driving around Phnom Penh you need to know the rules of the road.

Out here there's no insurance.

The rule of thumb is if you crash into someone else then you have to pay.

it means that every body looks out for what's in front of them and we al get on ok.

Same as walking though a large crowd of people.

It just flows.

Here's an example.

This is my drive home from work last wednesday afternoon.

More broken transport

2010-05-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

Cost me $7.

Broke after 10 days.

Fixed again for one Dollaar.

Akun Bong.

Return of the Mo-cap

2010-05-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

I found this on you-tube.
That's me.

This is what it came from.
MO-Cap Mo-Fo

Bag of mixed Cans (Cambo Style)

2010-05-24T00:39:00.000-07:00

Broken Transport

2010-05-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

Fork-tailed Ghecko

2010-05-23T23:33:00.000-07:00

Asian gig number Moi.

2010-05-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

So I final decided to break my vowel of silence and once again this weekend I managed to fulfill my obligated time on stage.

That's right every body had to shut up and listen to me Talking.

I was part of an event that saw the opening of Java Arts brand new exhibition space "J GALLERY."

Also on the bill were,

Sound Artist and Musician
David Gunn

and

Contemporary Cambodian Performance Artist.

Leang Seckon

The whole thing was organised by a lovely woman called Dana. She started the Gallery several years ago and has worked hard to try and bring contemporary Art to Phnom Penh.

And so begins my part in the Renaissance.

Slight stumbling block for me manifested itself in the form of a group of 4 or 5 kids who's combined age barley scratched the 40's.

Once again I was the man responsible for teaching kids "exciting new words."

Although to be fair I did warn the parents and suggested they cover their ears.

I also realised that a lot of the English speaking crowd were in fact Australian/American so a lot of my regional references were lost in translation.

1 page from a screenplay I might write.

2010-05-23T06:08:00.000-07:00

Happy Dan

2010-05-23T05:54:00.001-07:00

Now the thing with all psycotropic drugs is that it can be very much
like standing in a hole. If you look up then you get the opportunity
to see the whole world from a different perception. You can look at
the world from a different/distorted perspective.
But if you look down, into the hole. Then you'll realise you're in a
hole.

See 4 hours ago I'd arrived home. At the time my friend Dan who'd been
staying with us for the last week or so as part of his whistle-stop
tour of S.E.Asia was also starting to feel a little bit hungry.

"I'm gunna go out use the Internet and grab some food to bring back
here. D'yu want anything specific?" Dan's voice.

I'm like all about eating the sale kind of food I eat back home and I
explain this to Dan.

"so like pizzas, burgers, fish and chips etc?"
And off he went.
Into the wild.
Looking for sustanance, food for our hungry bodies and Internet for
his distracted mind.

I stayed at home to try and devote some time to my underapriciated
girlfriend.

It must have been over 2 and a half hours later that Dan returned. He
seemed like he'd really enjoyed his adventure.
"I love how everybody's so friendly. So much better than Thailand.
It's like they're all laughing and asking if I'm ok and what my name
is. I love it."

As I swallowed my 3rd slice of pizza I felt the aching hunger I'd been
suffering all day start to release it's grip on my stomach.
Dan also had not eaten all day and as we raced our way clockwise
through the pizza we were pretty much neck and neck.

As only 2 slices remained we reached a standstill. That much pizza in
such a short space of time can really put you on your ass. Especially
when you haven't eaten cheese in weeks.

It was at this point that my girlfriend became involved. And as she
took her first bite of our leftovers she realised this pizza had weed
on it. Dan didn't believe it but I knew it to be true.

"why would they just put weed on it without asking you? What if you
didn't want it? It doesn't make sense."

See what Dan hadn't realised was that when he'd ordered his pizza and
the guy in the shop had asked him the question "happy?" he hadn't
actually been asking about Dan's temperment.
Now it's too late.

And as Dan stares into his hole no ammount of me telling him to look
back up at the world is gunna help him.

Sent from my iPod

motorbike maintenance

2010-05-06T00:33:00.000-07:00

Now before I moved to Cambodia I'd never actually ridden a motorbike.

Infact the only time I can remember being on the back of a motorbike is when I got a lift down London Road on the back of my friend Shailesh's 250. Scared the shit out of me to be fair.

Now since getting here that's all changed. In the last few months I'm generally on the back of at least 7 motorbikes every 24 hours.

Well anyway I went and got myself a motorbike.

Honda Chaly CF70.

Looks like this.

That's not actually my one I've lost the lead that connects camera to computer. So my photo's are pretty much trapped for now.

Well anyway I paid Booun Roy Dollaar, ($400) for the Bike,

but since then in the last 2 weeks I'va also paid:

$25 on a new back tire and inner-tube.

$14 on an oil change

$2 on a basket

and $20 for a part that nobody I've shown it to could identify.

see the $20 part came at a time of real desperation.

It must have been half 9 on a Sunday night. My phone was at home charging and I only had $21 to last me till I next got paid again later in the week.

As I'm pulling out on to Monivong (one of the main roads that crosses the city from East to West) my bike lost all power.

Literally just died in the road.

It seamed no amount of aggressive kick-starting was going to bring it back to life so I pulled up along side the men who live on the street corner and fix bikes for a living.

Now one of these guys spent about 45 minutes taking my bike to pieces and reassembling it in various ways. None of witch lead to its resurrection.

After an amount of time on of the older guys walked over and pointed into the heart of the machine.

The other guy nodded and beckoned me to come closer.

"m,Umm Paye Dollaar"

He said pointing at the bikes engine.

$20

Over the next 5 minutes we communicated though excited mime as he explained that I'd have to give him the money so as he could go get the new part.

Reluctantly I agreed and handed over what was essentially all my money.

The mime continued.

Now I've played my fair share of charades in my time and understood straight away what he wanted.

But I played dumb for a few moments just to acknowledge the reality of what I was about to do in my own mind.

See he needed to take the bike away and bring it back fixed.

So that's what happened.

I think it must have been only about a minute after he'd pulled off that I started to feel uneasy about giving all my money, my motorbike and also my house keys to a stranger who could not understand me any better than I understood him.

I mean isn't that how westerners end up married to villagers?

and how did I know that this guy even worked/lived on this corner.

Thankfully the older guy who'd diagnosed my bike invited me to sit with him, gesturing up the road and saying the Cambodian word I recognise as meaning Baby.

After 44 minutes I was pacing with worry.

After 45 minutes the man returned. Bike fixed.

I was relieved and told myself that I should try and trust people more.

Bike's been cool since.

Lark a Like

2010-05-06T00:16:00.000-07:00

Dear Sir,
Here's one Larkin and Cameron.
Yours sincerely Luke (age 14) East-Anglia

If you want to vote for/support Steve Larkin in his bid to become a professor of Poetry at Oxford University. Click here

If you want to Vote for Cameron to be leader of the country then your a nob.

press

2010-04-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

I was in the paper.

Look how bored I look.

Small world.

2010-04-14T03:20:00.000-07:00

It's always funny when you're far away from home and you bump into
someone who know's someone you know.

For example I've met a couple of poets out here who know people I know
from the scene. I met a guy who used to be my neighbor in Leicester.
And then yestrday I found out that my new mate Nick actually went to
school with 2 of the guys in my brothers band.

I read that om faceboom when I was stood behind the shutter near the
window I steel my neighbors wifi from.
Litterally as I did this massive insect that was like a cross between
a flying ant and a crab came wizzing in through the other window.

This things circling me waving its gun-finger in the air and pointing
at me mouthing the words, "you, I want you"

Quick as a wippet I slide through his legs and grabbed a can of raid
from under the sink.

And there we stood.
A Mexican stand off.
Him holding his stinger like a flick knife. Me with trigger finger
poised just before the airosols biting point.

Tumble weed.
Close up on eyes.

As he moved I matched him ducking his strikes and lashing the spray
like a bike chain across his face.
He stiffeled his scream and shouted "out, out, out." before flying
back through the window.

My smug chuckeling was only momentary as litterally moments later he
came back in with his whole firm.
Trust me yeah, this kid rolls deep.
Like 50 mans deep.

The swarm collectivly solidified into the shape of a giant hammer and
I raised my coffee table about my head to shield myself from the
impending impact.

Then out of nowhere I heard a voice, "eh mate ain't you Raff's brother?"

Turns out one of the swarm use to work on site with my older brother
back in England. We had a bit of a laugh about the whole thing and the
first geeza ended up buying me a drink before they left.

Small world eh.

Sent from my iPod

Up your Contrast.

2010-04-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

Language barrier

2010-04-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve been learning a lot of Khmer words.

I thought that’d be a good way to learn the language.

Thing is, it don’t actually work like that.

The grammar is completely different. What it means is that I basically sound like a lazy Kung-fu Villain trying to read a ransom note that was translated using bablefish.

See they’ve also got like 27 vowel sounds witch means

it’s really easy to say the wrong thing.

For example the words that mean black, Ghost, Hot, Rat and Cock (as in penis) are all very close to each other.

I was trying to explain to an older Khmer woman, using a combination of those words and an elaborate gestural mime, that I had seen my friend kill a big black rat and he did it in his pants because it was such a hot day

Well you can imagine the rest.

Original replicas

2010-04-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

Check this shit out Only $9.

Bargin

Big Lizard, Small Lizard, Broken Toe.

2010-04-13T05:47:00.000-07:00

Bong Jon The Tuk-Tuk Driver.

2010-04-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

My mate Jon drives a Tuk-Tuk.

This is a story Jon told me the other week when I saw him sat in a guesthouse looking really confused.

See Jon had picked up some people from the bus station that morning.

He thinks they might be Americans but maybe Australians or Irish.
Anyway he's brought these 2 Barang back to the guesthouse and checked them in.

Incidentally this coincided exactly with the 30-minute window when a family member from another city, who had been visiting Phnom Penh for the past few days, was covering the checking in desk. Keys had been given but passport numbers had not been written down.

The Barang left their luggage in their room and rejoined Jon for the usual tour of S21 and the Killing fields.

Jon drove them to the museum and parked his tuk-tuk opposite the old school building for the hour or so they were in there.

As they walked out of the building the Americans or Irish or Australian or who ever they were, recognised Jon straight away and got back in for the drive to the killing fields.

Now Jon admits he was actually quite embarrassed that he hadn't recognised them until they were sat in the back of the tuk-tuk. So he took extra care on the way to the killing fields so as he to put in a bit of staring at them in the rear view mirror.

Yu know, so he could remember their faces.

Anyway they got to the killing fields and he parked up to wait as his barang passengers wandered off chatting amongst them selves about the incredible atrocities they'd just been witness to in comparison to all the other atrocities they'd seen in their 8 weeks of travelling. And about exactly how lucky they were to come from a place like Australia or Island or America or where ever.

So Jon sat in his tuk-tuk and waited.
And he waited, and waited.

And eventually after a couple of hours he figured, these Barang should be back out here by now.

By the time he'd been waiting nearly 4 hours, Jon had reached the point of shooting his hand into the air every time a barang walked past and shouted, "Hey, hey it's me." Hoping that even if he didn't recognise them, maybe his passengers might recognise him.

Gradually he got less enthusiastic and eventually he got just down right bored. It must have been about 10 a clock at night by the time he decided they weren't coming back. When he'd arrived it was barley mid-day. But now the gates were being locked. He was the last Tuk-tuk kicking about. There was also clearly no more barang anywhere around here. So he went back to the guesthouse.

That's where I saw him. The out of town relative had gone back to his city on a bus about an hour before and nobody else knew anything about any Irish or Americans or Australians either for that matter.

There was no luggage in the apparently unused bedroom and the key was in the lock hanging on the open door.

It's obvious to me what had happened but it was funny to see how confused Jon was about the whole thing.

He blames Ghosts.

Back on the horse

2010-04-13T05:14:00.000-07:00

So you may have noticed it’s been a little wile since I sat down and put something up here.

And what with the recent unrest in the area I’m sure a lot of you were wondering if I was in fact dead. (Just check the arrogant subtext of that last sentence, “a lot” like “a lot” of people read this. Classic delusions of grandeur shit.)

Anyway I’ve been busy eh so I was off living my life and doing shit.
I’m still in Phnom Penh Cambodia; please post me music and books and shit.

P.O.Box 1498

Phnom Penh

Cambodia

I am now actually working.
I lecture in Film Language and the History of Multi-Media at Limkokwing University in Phnom Penh. Got my friend Victor to thank for that.
Here is a picture of us in our work clothes.

We don’t ware the dog collars when we’re teaching. Just on the way to work, wearing it in class would be inappropriate.
But that’s not the only outfit’s we’ve been rocking of recent.

Fans of garishly load “Urban” clothes will no doubt appreciate the photo shoot I was part of the other day for my friend Jim (see pics here). It’s part of a fashion thing for the magazine we work for. (I introduced Jim in this story, where I call him Tim.)

Yeah I still work for that magazine. They say someday they might even make me their bottom-bitch but I ain’t been tricking so good since I got all those rejections. And I copy pasted a load of stuff of the old Wikipedia and it ended up getting printed in there under my other name. I rearranged it a little bit but basically 80% lifted.
Funny that it got in.
I think key members of staff were away and whatever but still how else would I come up with a list of 50 celebrities born in the year of the tiger?

Incidentally they printed something under this name.

By John Berkavitch it said. So if you really care what magazine it is you can Google my name plus words like Cambodia, Phnom Penh and Magazine and you’ll probably find out. (Now that is an arrogant sentence. Like people are gunna go trawling around the Internet trying to find out my open secrets. Get a life mate.)

Anyway I’ve got a hot scoop at the minute so I might be able to redeem myself a little bit. And they’ve got me out eating pies for another article so that’s good news.
I live down riverside now and it’s well beggy.

I ended up paying for this kid to go school for a month in exchange for not trying to sell me sunglasses every fucking day. How many pairs does he think I need? Although I did lose my grey ones and my Dr Jackobies. Some motherfucker showed up on facebook wearing them. I lost them weeks ago but I was actually at that same night.

Also anybody who read the thing about me going out in a cyclo on Christmas Eve might remember the break-dancing kids I battled in the street.

Well I tell you what I gave the smaller two lads money for food every day for like, time yeah. Then one day they’re like “hey mister, iiey knoow yoou give me wan dar-la.” (Not actually racist. That's an exact quote of what he said).
I was like “nar sorry lads I haven’t got any money on me.”
So these kids keep on a it for a minute and I’m like “nar look I actually don’t have any money.”
Then this one kid, he’s like “fuck you. You have to give me money or get out my country.”
Straight up this kids giving it the bong un going off at me in the street.
This shit went on for like a week every time I come out of my house him and his mate are telling me to fuck off out of their country.

It reached it’s peak with both the little fuckers came up to me outside the DVD shop and like pressed their heads into my torso and started banging my legs with their book-baskets.
So I did what anyone else would’ve done.
Grabbed them both by the top of the head. One in each fully spanned hand, like I was picking up 2 basketballs or doing some 2-handed melon ripeness testing.

Then I just simply banged their heads together. Admittedly I might have banged them a little hard. I forget they are malnourished little kids after all. Felt a bit bad afterwards. I saw them a day or so later and tried to make friends but when I went to shake the first kids hand he pulled it back and pretended to style his hair then told me to fuck of back to Australia.
I worry about the day when one of them gets fucked up on sniffing glue and comes to stab me in my kidney with a dirty piece of metal.

Anyway.

Racist Cheese.

2010-02-14T00:51:00.000-08:00

Predictions (a poem)

2010-02-09T22:13:00.001-08:00

In a future imagined by the late 1990's
Criminals in neon sock hats and rollerblades
terrorise a world that still uses mini-discs
I sit swatting insects by observing their behavior and predicting
their futures
Crashing the palm of a hand that hasn't really been clean for the last
3 months against the table and ending their existence
In the future on tv the roller boys are all wearing vertual reality
headsets
If I got my predictions that wrong this place would be crawling.

Sent from my iPod

lookilike

2010-02-09T02:28:00.000-08:00

Dear sir,

This one has been overlooked for far too long now.

I hope you have the decency to put things right

Rejected writing.

2010-01-22T02:52:00.000-08:00

Here's some writing I was commissioned to do by the magazine. They ejected it because I've written it in the first person. Well that and the fact that I don't actually know anything about what I'm talking about and sometimes I don't use real sentences.

I was told I had to go to 7 different places in Phnom Penh and write about what whiskies they had for sale.

They're not gunna run with this piece so I figured you might enjoy reading it.

Whisky

Aristocrat Bar in Naga World.

The first stop on my quest to find the best place to drink whisky in Phnom Penh was in fact the biggest building in Cambodia; Naga World. Situated on the first floor is Aristocrat, the lavishly upholstered Air-conditioned home of high end drinking. I positioned myself along side the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the gaming floors.

Not only is there a large selection of rare and imported whisky on offer but cigar enthusiasts might also be interested to know that Aristocrat also houses Phnom Penh’s only walk in humidor.

As far as whisky goes you could go for the reasonably priced 18-year-old Glenfiddich for US$6 a glass. Or alternatively if you’re a real high-roller or maybe if you’ve managed to walk away from the tables smiling following a big win then you could treat yourself to a bottle of 38 year old Chivas Regal Royal Salute for US$1515. The price is reflective of the quality and I’m assured that the sweet buttery flavour and long satisfying finish of this alcoholic masterpiece could only be matched by a couple of other blends worldwide. This may very well be the finest whisky in Cambodia.

Rory’s Pub.

33 Preah Ang Makhak Vann

After one look inside the door of Rory’s pub you can tell exactly what the theme is. To be honest the shamrocks and lepricons give it away. As you might expect from an Irish themed pub the range of whisky on sale is fairly extensive.

I settled on a Bushmills US$3.50 distilled and bottled in Northern Ireland.

A dark and murky looking liquid. The aroma reminded me of being a teenager sneaking shots from a bottle in my dad’s sock draw. I imagine that this drink is usually reserved for Irishmen and sailors or for those made from slightly stronger stuff. The perfect drink for anyone who wants to end his or her night by arm wrestling the barman.

La Residence

22-24 Street 214

Set back from the main road La Residence offers a sublime break from the bustle of the city. The comfortable bar offers beautiful garden views through any of the many French windows. The drinks list is fairly extensive but there was definitely more focus on cocktails than whisky.

However the whisky on offer definitely hit the mark.

Johnny Walker Blue Label US$12. This blend has a slightly lighter colour with a mild welcoming aroma. Soft on the pallet with a kick that leaves you in no doubt as to the quality.

Van’s Restaurant

5 Street 102

The open roof terrace or first floor balcony feels like an upmarket oasis as the darkness of early evening begins to creep along the horizon. A secluded private hideaway located right in the middle of town. The staff here are particularly helpful and attentive and even the menu had a particular touch of class to it.

In terms of alcoholic drinks I think Van’s is also more cocktail orientated than whisky but the classics are all there. Jim Beam or Wild Turkey for US$6.50 or like me you could try the Gold Label for US$16. A smooth refined drinking experience that warms the chest and brings a smile to the lips with an aftertaste that oozes class.

Elephant Bar at Raffles.

92, Daun Penh

Luxurious Elephant bar plays host to many a drinking westerner. Predominantly hotel guests mixed into a few of Phnom Penh’s expat business elite. Offering a very respectable range of premium scotch and a wide variety of single malts.

I went for the 10-year-old Aberlour US$16. The barman explained that ice was available as some people find this particular whisky to have quite a kick. However I’m no barbarian so I took mine straight up. A beautifully rich golden coloured spirit with the kick of something that’s worth the money. The soft fruity aroma gives way to the smooth and creamy taste with a soft finish that warms the insides long after the drink is finished.

Green Vespa.

95 Sisowath Quay

If you don’t think that whisky and motorbikes are natural bedfellows then you’ve obviously never tried to visit over half a dozen restaurants and bars across Phnom Penh on a one-day quest to find the best place to drink whisky in the city.

Which leads me to the Green Vespa. Where both whisky and motorbikes (or more specifically scooters) are both well represented.

An expertly crafted list of Scottish, Irish and American whiskies are available all specifically chosen for their quality. Something else guaranteed to bring a smile to your face is the price. Most blends are only US$2.25 per glass and Johnnie Walker Gold is only US$4.

If you ask the barman for his informed opinion then he’ll tell you what he told me. The Scottish ones are the best. Under his suggestion I went for a 10 year old Laphroaig. The delicate aroma of Scottish heather is soon accompanied by the earthy, nutty taste of 200 years of distilling brilliance.

Back of a Tuk-tuk

Now no Cambodian whisky drinking experience would be complete without a sampling of the domestic product. Mekong Whisky around US$1.75 a bottle. Although offering a lower alcoholic volume than many of the other blends mentioned, Mekong still definitely packs a punch.

Mekong is available in most bars and restaurants across the city but I chose to drink mine in the back of a tuk-tuk going up and down the side of the Mekong River. Occasional stops were made so as my driver could momentarily join me in the back for a quick sniffle.

The first taste felt more like rum than whisky but after 2 or 3 the drink was sliding down my throat like a greased Khmer moto-driver through hot rush hour traffic. My drinking buddy also helped add to what felt like an extremely Cambodian experience.

New business ideas

2010-01-22T02:45:00.000-08:00

So I'm trying to think of a few ways to earn a bit of scratch/save a bit of money. The first advert is for a business idea Victor's been pursuing for about 6 months.

The second advert is for a business I'm planning to start if his idea really takes off.

Race Wars.

2010-01-22T02:36:00.000-08:00

So there's a well-founded rumour flying about at the minute through out the Barang community.

Word on the street is that due to the tightening of Thailand’s employment laws a lot of expats currently living in Thailand are planning on making the move over here to potentially start teaching jobs in Cambodia.

That’s right the Falang are planning on coming over here and taking away jobs from hard working Barang.

Well the Barang ain’t happy with these Falang opportunists.

Coming over here with their superior fake Degree certificates that they got on the Ko Sang Road. (I don’t know how to spell it but you know the road I’m talking about).

Coming over here with their fancy technology and there genuine teaching experience. Taking valuable classroom hours away from our inexperienced Barang builders/teachers.

Coming over here with their Chang beer T-shirts and better quality flip-flops.

Next thing they’ll be after our Khmer women.

Those Falang are sexual deviants. Give them the chance and they’ll be grabbing up our taxi-girls and sleeping with our prostitutes.

Look I’ve got nothing against Falang yeah.

I mean I went to school with one.

I’d even say some of my best friends are Falang.

But I wouldn’t want my sister going out with one, yu know what I mean.

It seems the message on the lips of the majority of Barang is the same.

“Oi Falang this is our country. Fuck off back where you came from!”

Bat Shit Nuts. (Don't Smoke Ice).

2010-01-22T02:14:00.001-08:00

What you're trying to tell me that just because a guy barricades the entrance to his business in order to put on a 36 hour blindfolded air guitar concert on Cambodia's freedom over regime day that he must be nuts?
Or just because this same guy repeatedly pisses himself and aggressively rants at his own psychosis whilst attempting to conduct the sounds of traffic that means he must be smoking ice?
I mean, what is the world coming to?

2HOT2FROTT Phnom Penh

2010-01-16T23:42:00.000-08:00

A and E.

2010-01-15T22:59:00.000-08:00

So when you’ve just had what felt like a really good first interview for a job you definitely want. And you’re just about ready to go and prepare your self for your next interview before popping off to the grand opening of a new shop that you’re contracted to be covering for the magazine.

The last thing you want is to be injured whilst sat on the back of a motorbike whose driver you’re paying to take you home.

That’s what happened to me today.

Bad news eh.

Long short: 6 stitches and no dancing for at least 4 weeks.

Here are the details.

Basically I know the guy. He works part time as local security liaison for the lakeside area. He’s also a moto-driver. Basically his duties as a security liaison involve holding a walkie-talkie and trying to get the bar-owners to give him free beer. If he manages to successfully negotiate the beer deal he uses the walkie-talkie to call other security liaisons and military police to inform them of which bar’s giving it out.
His duties as a moto-driver include wearing a helmet and charging the equivalent of a day’s wages for a 5-minute lift.

Anyway I get on his bike and he pulls off fast.
I shout “No! Ot Lune-Lune” (not fast-fast)
He laughs and tries to weave through the stationary traffic parked up the alleyway that acts as a main-road for the lakeside.
As he does he smashes my leg into a parked tuk-tuk.
I’ve literally been on the bike for about 35 seconds at this point.
So I’m all riving in pain and he’s still laughing.
2 minutes later we stop at the place where I’m staying and I roll up my trousers to see the damage.
He looks worried and tells me to get back on his bike.
He takes me to a chemist.
The chemist looks at my leg and tells him to take me to hospital.
We leave.
40 seconds down the road we turn back around because he left his helmet in the chemist.
We arrive at what looks like an abandoned hospital and some Bong on the gate sends us round the back.
The sign above the door we walk through says optical specialist.
Minutes later I’m lying on a fold out bed in a small dusty cell of a back room. 3 Khmer nurses are examining my wound.
Some talking takes place between them and him and eventually he turns to me with the information that it’ll cost US$15 and as soon as we pay they’ll start.

I tell him he needs to get his money out and he gives it “oooh, me no have money.”
A phonecall or 2 later and I’ve managed (with the help of Nam’s girlfriend Hoi) to get an 8 person lakeside landing party into the hospital to sort this shit out.

Upon the arrival of team lakeside the nurses start stitching. It felt/looked more like they were improvising based on something they'd seen on animal hospital. Oh and only one of them was wearing gloves or as far as I could tell had washed their hands.

In the end his mum fronts the charge (now $10) and then they all leave.

Later I receive a phonecall from Nam who reckons everyone in the area thinks it was my fault because he’s told them I had my legs hanging out the sides like I’ve never been on a moto before.
He’s also telling them I told him to go quickly.

Now the worst thing about this whole situation is that I was actually on my way to another job interview for a positon as a breakdance teacher starting Jan 25th. $160 a week.
Unfortunately I now can’t do that now and even though I think I got the other Job it don’t actually start till March.

So bad news for me eh.
On the up side chicks dig scars and I got a load of cool meds to ingest for the next few days.

So every cloud eh

Girley Bar

2010-01-13T20:20:00.003-08:00

"this is the life" he said.
He was one of them. Men on the far side of middleage who tuck their
black jack daniels t shirts into the extreamly high waist line of
their 3/4 lenth beige combat shorts. Arched sholders blend into
bolding, chinless wrinkeled, rounded, lose skinned faces. A room full
of aging men with skin like sun-dried wallets and wallets like bulging
crotches. All sat almost lifeless as swarms of taxi-girls hover like
scantely clad Mosquitos circling the colapsed barang cadavers hungry
for the dollars they bleed. This place is death. But they see it
as living.

Sent from my iPod

Politics

2010-01-13T20:20:00.001-08:00

Sat in my usual seat at the corner of the bar I get to observe a lot
of social interaction. I get to see a lot of people meeting for the
first time.
I get to see a lot of single people on the pull.
Its funny to watch. The dynamic can change at any minute.

Here's an example. 3 girls enter a bar where 2 lads are drinking. Lets
say so far everyone's English. In the absence of anything better the
girls start to chat to these guys.

Right now imagine these lads are basically the worst examples of human
beings that society's ever miss-managed to produce. And they turn it
on for the girls. Girls who on the whole are generally a bit naieve
and sometimes a bit too confident in their illinformed opinions. But
other that that they seem to be nice girls who maybe deserve a bit
better than the worst men on the planet.

Anyway, if this dynamic stays unchanged for the remanded of the
evening then that means these separate collections of people form one
new group.

Generally people only stay in Phnom Penh for about 3/4 days so usually
these groups will hold for the duration.

But then there's the random factor.
This can shatter the dreams of any territorial English dickhead.
See at any moment as if from nowhere one of the girls starts talking
about some people they met when they went tubing in Lao.
And quicker than you could say ticking a box, boom up rocks these very
people.

9 out of ten times this turns out to be a group of tight-vested
Australian dickheads.

A completely different class of dickhead.

Generally the English get out twatted but put up a good fight.

Still that tubing experience was some tight knit group binding shit. I
mean remember when Johnno cut his leg goes a long way over remember
yesterday when we played pool.

Inevitably the girl ends up going away from the bar with a dickhead.
So whatever happens I supose they're all losers.

Sent from my iPod

hot of the press

2010-01-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

So the magazine that I whore for is out today.
I went and picked up a copy from a bar on't' river.
look there's a picture of me in the vox-pops section at the back of the mag.
They bunged a load of the stuff i wrote in it an all.
nothing to be excited about although a personal victory is that i managed to get a total of 12 adverbs in there. In direct violation of rule one on the style sheet.
ain't i a rebel
Although a bit of a lose for me was that they'd changed my article about eating the steak so it no longer bared it's original tittle; Meat. It also didn't start with the line "If you like meat..."
Shame that, bit of colour eh.
any way I've not done the maths but i did give it a glance and I recon I'm owed at least like $30.
So that's a plus.

NYE 2009/10

2010-01-04T19:42:00.000-08:00

The Game.

2010-01-03T22:21:00.000-08:00

So I'm sat in the bar the other night and someone's talking about the clearly delusional nutcase who's taken over the lease on the bar over the way they'd watched him put a sign outside advertising "the game"

basically it's like who wants to be a millionaire but with yes/no answers to general knowledge questions.

Top prize is a Harley Davidson or the cash equivalent of 50,000,000 Riel (about $13,000)

So I'm up for entering. Even though just a week and a half ago this quiz master geezer told me that I must be mentally handicapped because I believe that AIDS exists.

he's giving it "It's all a conspiracy, why won't you listen to me?"

Anyway he's apparently doing this to promote his bar.

(He was going on about putting up a big thing about it on something called Khmer 444.

Now I googled Khmer 444 and what actually came up was a thing called Khmer 440 Forum. I figured this must be the one but when I tried to visit the website a warning popped up saying that this website may damage my computer so I haven't seen it eh.)

Oh and as special U.S.P for this game he also painted his Nigerian barman white with what was apparently gloss paint.

The sign outside says that the game will go on every night till somebody wins the top prize or until the 6th Jan (last day of Christmas).

The game must be played by exactly 12 people at least on of which must be a Khmer translator.

Oh yeah and while the game is going on everybody else other that the 12 playing must leave the bar because the gamesmaster doesn't like being interrupted.

So by half 8 he had arrived and was ready to begin. Unfortunately 14 people where sat down wanting to play. He had also forgotten one of his bells and after a 25 minute dictatorial rant at all staff and would be participants he stormed off to collect his forgotten bell.

8 out of the 16 people took this opportunity to run away. As fast as they could getting as far from the nightmarish circus that emanated from this maniac as they could.

By the time he'd returned there was only 11 people other than him self in the bar. 3 of these were his staff. 5 of the others where our syndicate. We'd decided to play as a group and share any winnings that came out of it.

So we dragged in 2 of his staff and 2 random Khmer kids from off the street and the game began.

The way it worked was with 2 playing cards, 1 red, 1 black.

red symbolising yes, black no. To help us remember this the game show host told us to all think of black as like evil and the worst thing ever. "That'll help you remember it's negative'

Anyway after each question we had to lay the appropriate card face down on the table then he lays his and we turn ours over.

Same as him you go on to the next question.

Different from him you have to leave the bar.

He also thought the questions up on the spot.

So it was basically about matching up with his interpretation of the truth. Not actually knowing the right answer.

and also all the questions were about some kind of conspiracy.

Apart from this one question 4.

"Yes or No? last year I flew to San Fransisco for a conference called the Real Truth about AIDS? true or false?"

That's not a general knowledge question.

He might as well ask what his favorite colour is.

Any way last man in the syndicate took 500,000 Riel (US$125)

split 5 ways was pretty cool but not worth the rigmarole.

Next day we went back with 12 of us and a plan based on slight of hand averages and manipulating the host/rules. When we arrived he'd put a sign up saying the game was over because someone had won the big prize last night.

Lies we only won 1% of the total prize offered.

Again the sign said it was all explained on that same virus riddled forum.

Bit disappointing.

Cambo photo set 15 (last days of 2009)

2010-01-01T03:17:00.000-08:00

Really sick dog.

This one is Grant's photo.

Barang Foot.

2009-12-29T03:48:00.001-08:00

Now I've spent the whole of my life wearing shoes. With the obvious exceptions of sleeping, swimming and yoga most activities i've ever got myself involved in seemed to have something to do with wearing shoes.

Well those days are gone mate. Cos nowerdays I just wear flip-flops.

Yeah mate flip-flops are where it's at.

Same goes for all the other barang.
You don't really wanna buy yu flip-flops either. Most guesthouses have usually got half a dozen pairs out front so if yu just look about a bit you can usually find something you like.
Mess yu feet right up though.
Gives you proper Barang foot.

Sent from my iPod

Cambo photo set 14

2009-12-29T03:10:00.000-08:00

The egg men.

2009-12-26T00:22:00.000-08:00

Now you get a lot of street sellers kicking about round Phnom Penh. Between them all they sell an enormouse range of things.
The commern factor with all these sellers is that they all cruse around in customised vehicles. Vehicles that have been made not only as transport but also as a portable work station.

I've seen a man with a sowing machine fixed to the handle bars of a bicycle, a mobile key-cutters made from a motorbike, and all manner of other crazy and inginious contraptions.

Not to mention all the street food.
Alot of food sellers have mobile kitchens based in a 2 wheel cart.
Yeah that's what a lot of them do.
But then there's the eggmen.

The eggmen drive motorbikes with a griddel in their sidecars. On the griddle are hard grilled chicken eggs, with an apparently dilicious taste.

The reason I know this is because our friend Conor translated the words that all the eggmen have playing on loop, at full volume, blaring from the megaphones attached to the front of their bikes.

I'm still unsure of the eggmen.
They all wear masks, they drive at about 6 miles an hour and they all like to have a right stare at any Barang they drive past.

I'm under the impression that these eggmen have a sinister political agenda. I think that just maybe the recorded message that echoes down the streets throgh which they roam is actually anti-barang properganda.

"delicious chicken eggs, barang out, out the barang,
Hard grilled barang out chicken eggs,"

Needless to say I've got my eye on them eh.

Sent from my iPod

Cambo photo Cristmas Party set

2009-12-25T22:29:00.000-08:00

Christas Eve in Phnom Penh.

2009-12-24T03:00:00.000-08:00

So what with it being Christmas Eve an all,

I thought I'd do something a bit different.

So I got myself the Oldest Cyclo driver i could find and we went off about town looking for Christmas.

I tried to buy him some beers and I tried to get him to sit in the chair while I peddle but he wouldn't have it.

I had to settle on just paying him a bit more than we'd agreed.

Here's the photos.

Check out all my Christmas mail.

I had a little breakdance battle with these kids on Riverside.

So Basically it was just another day.

Smoking dog

2009-12-21T03:38:00.001-08:00

What you never seen a Ch'guy smoking a Barai before?

48 hours 10 tables.

2009-12-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

Cambo photo Food set

2009-12-18T00:12:00.000-08:00

Cambo photo set 12

2009-12-16T03:17:00.000-08:00

things I've had for free this week.

2009-12-16T02:53:00.000-08:00

You might notice the sudden drop in quality on these photos.

Took em with my phone.

If anyone wants to send me a new digital camera of half a million Reil so I can buy one then get in touch eh.

Real lives

2009-12-16T00:57:00.001-08:00

You know sometimes other peoples lives can make your problems seem so insignificant.
Take this guy Ra

He's 39 years old.
He was 5 or 6 years old when the Khmer Rouge forcefully relocated the intire population of Phnom Penh to the Cambodian countryside.
Through child's eyes he watched countless murders. Including those of his farter, his uncles, his aunts and his neighbors. Witnessing the brutality of a rageim based in fear, suspicion and denial.
By year zero Ra would have been ten. At this time in Cambodia any form of artistic expresion or even the slightest sugestion of an education was deemed dangerous to the young government and therefor eradicated through extermination.
For Ra the very idea of learning to read would have been like contemplating suicide.
For Ra staying alive meant learning to act ignorant.
See Ra is a very intelegent and influential figure around the lakeside.
He's also one of the most inginious men I've ever seen solve a problem. He's like the Cambodian Magiver.
These days Ra's son goes to school daily and Ra sits with him when he gets home until his homework is finished.
He showed me a book about the British army and pointed and the word fieldmarshal. I told him the pronunciation and meaning of the word and he explained that he was trying to learn to read English so he could read this book.
I said I'd try and help him if I could.
He laughed, slapped my shoulder and walked away shaking his head.

Sent from my iPod

Backpackers

2009-12-16T00:01:00.001-08:00

So last night a big group of backpackers checked in to the hostal i
call home. It was a group of 6 English lads who seemed to have joined
up with 3 Aussie girls 2 aussie guys and an American dude. If you
ain't a maths-man that's a 3-1 boy on girl ratio.
Bad numbers.

To put it another way it's like taking 9 clubs to play 3 holes of
golf. And take it from me, these Sidney girls are alot more crazy golf
than they are Rider cup.

It's much more fun to watch than golf though,
much more like curling.

One guy sliding the stone down the ice while his mates brush the path
infront of him.
Only for his advances to be knocked out of contention by the next
country's shot.
To be fair the American's doing well seeing as though he ain't got no
brushmen.
England have got at least 2 teams working a confusing and
contradiction riddeled game across the same target.

She's half Thai but Aussie born and that seems to be just the right
mix for them. One guy's definately in the lead he's had a strong game
running since i first saw them last night.

These guys all wanna go to the shooting range, but they've been told
all the bazookas have been taken away by the army. The bosses want
them all pointed at the Thai boarder.

One Aussie lad joked that they could go up to boarder and shoot at
Thailand then cross the boarder and shoot one back.. "fight a whole
waaar. 's'only gunna cost yu like 400 backs"

Quite an amusing thought that if war came, then the whole thing would
be fought by boardshorted barang backpackers who'd paid hundreds of
dollars for the privaledge.

If it wasn't for the chilling potential reality of the bazookas at the
boarder thing then I might even have laughed about it.

They day before they left the curling score was Englisht lads 1 Aussie
lads 1 and between them all they'd worked up a bill of over US$500.

Sent from my iPod

Paid to eat for free.

2009-12-10T09:07:00.001-08:00

So it seems I might have got myself a job as a prostitute.
Not an actual street-walking 4 dollar hand-shandy sort. Of course not,
nar I mean an artistic prostitute,. Although I prefer the term
creative-whore.
Check me out.

I've started work at a magazine. I'm using my other name and i'm not
telling you what it's called, (don't know about google association
between them and the blog) but its like a free glossy lifestyle and
entertainments magazine with a circulation of about 5,000 hard copies
distributed across Phnom Penh's English speaking bars and Barang hang
outs, (Barang-outs).

Anyway my job at the minute is writing copy for the "openings" page in
the news section of this magazine. I get 7cents/word. Not much eh,

but the bonus is anything I write about I have to do, and they're
paying.
Today was my first gig. I had to eat a $14 steak then write a hundred
words about it.

I've got to go to a "Bond theamed" night tonight and drink some
martinies.
They want a hundred words for that an all.

The writing involved is basically compiling a list of facts. the
stylesheet they gave me starts with the glairing statment.
Don't use adverbs.
Proper crushed me that.
Struggled to get 100 words without adverbs.
I'm gunna try and subtly pervert the form over my next ten articles.
Try and find out where the line is.

Sent from my iPod

cambo photo set 11

2009-12-08T03:27:00.000-08:00

cambo photo set 10

2009-12-08T02:34:00.000-08:00

Snap shot in the dark

2009-12-07T04:39:00.001-08:00

So I've come to this thing called photo Phnom Penh. Basically its an
exhibition of photos taken by a variety of pro/amiture photographers. These images are
then projected in sets across 12 screens on wat botum.
Now the images themselves are a mixed bag. Some real life captured
moments some arranged images some staged psudoe realism.

For me one of the most important things about this public exhibition
is the mixed reaction of its willing/unwilling audience.

See infront of each projector is a matted seating area. On each of
these mats sits a small handful of sparadic Barang onlookers.

Now at the side of the last screen about 500 Khmer people are gathered
the same as they do every night for the regular early evening mass
excercise sesion that is an inherent part of there day to day.

Anyway to look at them it would seam the majority of Khmer folk are at
the most non-pluses about the smorgasboard of imagery on display.
Now I'm a strong believer in judging art based on the reaction of its
audience and this thing here was reminisant of the several dozen
exhibitions/openings I squirmed through in my last year of uni.
See its the people on the matts I wonder about. The Barang. I wonder
what level of artistic importance they place on an event like this.

My personal opinion is that any good work on display here is
unfortunately lost or diluted amoungst a sea of averageness and
technical fault. The whole thing underpinned by a sense of ambivalence
and set to a soundtrack of badly skipping housey-jazz standards.
Still a few good works were prevalent and I did see at least 4
photographers I liked.

I'll try and add links later.

Sent from my iPod

The other end

2009-12-06T02:20:00.001-08:00

Tonight i'm through the looking glass.
On the other side of what I now call reality.

My friend Nam's Djing at a leaving party for someone related to the Swedish embassy. Or something like that anyway.

The house itself is located uptown phnom penh and behind the private gate and rolls of razor wire sits the heated pool and air conditioned house of Cambodia's upper-middle class.

See when it comes to Khmer people you've got yu classic trickle down effect. The rich poor divide is staggering. What this means is that there are no Khmer middle classes. This tax bracket is occupied by the Barang class.

Here yu go, down at Wat Phnom there's an elephant. It has a seat on it' back and if you pay you can ride it.
See poor Khmer people can't afford to pay for it rich Khmer people could ride it for free and Barang are the only class that would pay to ride the elephant.

All though I get the feeling these Barang here think of themselves as being from better stock than those for whole elephant riding sounds like fun.
Anyway we've been here 2 hours and only just got offered a drink.

Sent from my iPod

Free shit.

2009-12-06T01:22:00.001-08:00

So what yeah maybe I'm in a 3rd word country but that don't mean I can't blag a bit of free shit from an industry function.

Also out here I'm rocking about with Victor, A.K.A Blagger Number 1.

Anyway,

Magazine launch,

Free shit,

Booze,

Food,

Cambo photo: Hairdressers daughter set.

2009-12-06T01:22:00.000-08:00

New Life.

2009-12-06T01:04:00.001-08:00

So yesterday I was amongst a group of people who all waited in
frantic silence outside the delivery room of a birthing clinic in
Phnom Penh.
We waited for my Friend Nam's baby to be born.

Now Nam's been my best mate since I was 5 years old and since he'd
chosen to have his first born baby in a third world country I thought
the least I could do was come along and support him.
Baby Nino was born at 21.58 local time and weighed in at a mighty
3.045 kilos,(I'll check that cos it might be wrong).

Now since I've been out here one of my other best-friend's Steve has
also had a baby.
Baby Dylan' came into the world at some point last week, (sorry Steve
I don't know times and weights, it's all a bit confusing since I
stepped through the stargate).

Anyway what that means is that I'm witness to 2 of my best friends
going through the same process on opposite sides of the world.

And believe me, as close as these two's birthdays are, their
childhood's are to be a long way from similar. In fact I think Lakeside
Phnom Penh's about as far from North London as you'll ever find. Both
geographically and socially.
The two will no doubt grow up to have different views of the world.
Hopefully both will have the same view of there hirsute comedy pseudo-
uncle.

Nino,
Dylan,
Good luck to both of you
anytime I can help just let me know.
OneLove
Uncle Berko (the godfather).

Sent from my iPod

An official invitation to the eighteenth birthday celebrations of the hair dresser's daughter.

2009-11-29T05:25:00.001-08:00

So it was big news down the lakeside. The party was tonight. Slightly
bigger news for me is that I'd be informed during the previous few
days that I was to be officially invited.

My first Cambodian social function.
To be fair the party was planned to take place out in the street
in front of Nam's bar so attendance would probably have been
involuntary.
But this time I was handed a personal invitation with my actual Barang
name on it. Spelled correctly, (take note promoters all it takes is a
decent researcher).

Anyway the small highly patterned envelope I'd been given signified 2
things. Acceptance and obligation.

Obligation is maybe too stronger word, but I'd seen these envelopes
before and I knew that not everybody got them.
I also knew that those that did, had to repay the respect shown by our
neighbors in the form of a cash sum that must be placed in the
returned envelope.

So basically being invited could be expensive but food and drinks all
free so get yu moneys worth.

And so the community set up for the party. A sequence of events that
featured a really beautiful moment.

Picture the scene.
A small child stands in the middle of the main drag of lakeside
ghetto. The child's left hand grips his mothers skirt the right grasps
handfull of air in a failed attempt at plucking a balloon from the
festive grape-vine hanging across the street.

Having spotted the child's near distress, Rosso (a man who only one
week ago had stubbed another man in the face with the bottom of a
whisky bottle), leaped into action. In one movement Rosso pulled
himself up the side of the bar's front shutters. Pulled a flick-knife
from his pocket, opened the blade, grabbed a balloon and with an
upwards stabbing motion freed it from the vine. By the time his feet
touched ground the knife had vanished. As he handed the balloon to the
child a smile of genuine kindness cracked across his hardened face.
The child's mother gently bowed, Rosso returned it and swaggered away
back towards his speakers.
The very picture of masculinity.

Anyway I spent a wile asking and deliberating about how much money to
put in the envelope and settled on $5. Ano who works in my guest
house said I was a stingy bastard and it's her 18th so I ended up
putting in ten.

Also having taken a lot of photos I gave my camera to a young Khmer
boy and to Phnom Penh's only female Motodot, to get a bit of guest
blogger snaps action.

Sent from my iPod

cambo photo set 9

2009-11-25T23:23:00.000-08:00

Graffiti then

2009-11-25T23:12:00.000-08:00

So what with me getting back on the horse, (metaphorically, I'm not on smack or a cowboy).

We figured it was time the old FYS started reppin in Phnom Penh.

So we painted inside Nam's bar.

Big V started the ball rolling, I missed the claim on space below that involved negotiating an ill placed fan.

So I went for an awkward corner space with the idea that I'd paint across 2 walls and a bit of ceiling.

The others said it was a bit ambitious, but then what's life without ambition.

Any way, via an undisclosed contact V pulled in a right rickety looking A-frame ladder with bent up cross bars.

First test was shakey but once I'd secured the cross sections with a few bits of ripped up plastic bag it was a lot more stable.

By the time we were one and a half hours in and had just started brushing on my outline, the top of the ladder was my home.

Venks refused to compromise his integrity and outlined in with this crazy, fast, runny, old-fashioned motorbike paint.

Respect due to him he pulled it off about a thousand times better than I think I'd have been able to.

We're talking about one big power-line around the edge and that might happen today but you get the basic gist of what's going on eh.

Berk

Venks

Yobs

0116/FYS Crew

Free for a price.

2009-11-25T23:10:00.001-08:00

I thought I'd take a little holiday down by the seaside so I've come
to sihunoukville. I've been advised to watch my back because there's a
lot of ghouls around here.

Now one of the things about me is I've only actually been more than
knee deep in the sea like 3 times in my life. Like maybe once or twice
when I was a nipper and one time in Cornwall where it was so cold I
couldn't breath and had to get straight out.

So I'm on the southcoast of Cambodia and the sea here is like at least
twice as hot as the shower in my shithole of a room.

So I'm getting right into the sea.
I've had a few goes at it now in a couple of different places and to
be honest just being up to my neck in the water like that was one of
the greatist feelings of freedom I've ever expirenced.

I even did a bit of breast-stroke and learned to float.

The third time I was in the sea was the most memorable. I asked a
motodot to take me to "the best beach" and he dropped me off by a
stretch of long White sandy coast with out another person in sight. He
said he'd come back for me in 2 hours and that I can swim here.
I stripped down to my pants, (having not planed well enough to bring
swimming kit). Partically buried my clothes benith a bench and pulled
my now raw and sunburnt body into the warm and welcoming embrace of
the ocean.
There in I floated.
Starfished across the waters surface looking up into the endless
unfolding sky.
Pure unrestricted beauty.
I lay floating on my back within that powerful sea.
It's gentle currents determined my direction.
My eyes became closed.
My mind became quite.

In that one beautiful moment nothing mattered,

As I lay there alone I understood. I saw how everything was conected.
I visualised all the people I've left behind, all the people I've
lost, all the people I love and all the people I have yet to meet.
We were all together there in that moment. We were all part of the
same thing. We were one.
We were together.

Overwhelmed by the beauty of existance I cried. My salty tears running
from my face into the salty water around me.

I felt truly privaledged to be alive and greatful for all the other
lives that mine had touched.

Floating on an ocean of tears, alone but surounded by visions of
everyone I've ever loved. Insignificant and thankful.

And for maybe the first time in my life, i was truley at peace.

Although being in that happy-sad moment of sublime tranquillity left
me slighty off gard for what happend next.

"HEY YOU MISTA, YOU NO PAY ME!"

As I crashed back into the physical rehlm my eyes opened to the sight
of a uniformed Khmer man shouting, "Police, Police" into a walkie-
talkie.
Badnews.

Turns out the Moto who'd dropped me had neglected to tell me it was a
private beach no doubt owned by someone not to be fucked with.

So basicly there was about 5 minutes of his sandpaper like hands
unsucsessfully trying to grip my raw, squirming sholders as I
scrambled around nigh on naked benieth various benches trying to find
where I'd buried my belongings.
We then got involved in a bit of running slap grabbing as I attempted
to dress and escape at the same time.
Sheding skin like lizard tails everytime his gravelly fingers almost
got a purchase on my torso.
It ended with me pushing a $10 bill and a handfull of Rhl into his
face and then legging it through the back entrance of a resturant and
out onto the street.

Wet, raw and sand infested I sat for twenty minutes on an
uncomfortable bench waiting for my driver to return.

Close call.

Sent from my iPod

Cambo photo set 8

2009-11-21T00:36:00.000-08:00

Lady Boy

Find Your Self.

2009-11-21T00:10:00.000-08:00

For all of you who thought I'd forgotten where I'm from let me tell you a little something.
I'm still Repping FYS Leggy's most hard core Graffiti gang.
Trust me yeah I'm nearly 17 years deep in the game.
Fair play maybe for the last 5 years I havn't been active.
in fact I maybe touched a can twice in 3 years.

Check it out I'm sat in this place called Nap House and all the walls are painted with hiphopish type images.
Ghetto blaster B.I.G etc.
anyway back wall has the worst thing I've ever seen try to palm it's self off as a piece.

So anyway I ask the owner who did it, he said he didn't know but he hated it.
I told him I'd come fix it for him the next day.

Long Short here's the snaps.

Paint was awful thought like carplan, but then again it is pretty much 1996 out here.
Had to paint the outline using Black Gloss and a brush.
Met a few other writers too.

A real cool guy from Sweden

and OXR
french guys I said I'd try and hook em up some connections for when they come England. They wanna paint trains.

I got free drinks for the rest of the night as well. ended up being a little bit sick.

Berko FYS.

Cambo photo set 7 (Angkor Wat etc)

2009-11-18T20:51:00.000-08:00

Night bus

2009-11-17T23:06:00.001-08:00

So it seems like it might be a really worthwile, interesting experience.
Yu know you've had a few days kicking about down the old tomb raider
temples and fancy maybe a little trip to the beach.

So someone's like, " yeah mate get the night bus just sleep through it."
The sign says free blanket, free water, air-con, big seat.
All sounds good.
10 hours sleep'd be a bonus an all.

Yu know pop a couple valleys and get yu head down. Saves a nights rent
an all.
The geezer who booked my ticket for me said that this bus even had a tv.
Lucky duck.

Seemed like a really good idea.
Or as the say out here, seemed like cumnut l'or. (yes Cumnut means
idea. no extra points for suggesting it's cos we think with our dicks,
milked that joke for all it's worth).

Yeah anyway the theory's sound.

But when it comes to the reality of it 4 hours deep into what is now a
12 hours journey, and the 4 music videos that are constantly repeating
across 5 tv screens have repeated beyond the point of novelty value.

And the geeza in the uniform who seems to be doing lenghts of the top
deck refuses to acknowledge you, let alone sort you out that free
water you were promised. Forcing you to try gathering enough saliver
in your mouth to try and dry swallow the vallium you've snapped into
what might hopefully be managable pieces,

And as the freezing blasts of unrelenting air-con whistles through
your paper thin blanket and against the skin which up to now has been
saturated with persperation as it struggles to become accustom to the
agressive heat and violent humidity, causing you to feel what must be
the start of a cold,

And as the bus bounces it's way across a series of pot-hole infested
dirt tracks causing your neck to spontainiusly whiplash your head into
the numerouse metal objects pertruding from all the areas within
smacking distance,

And as the group of vivatious Europeans at the front of the bus
continue to shout about boxes ticked in a language I really can't be
fucking bothered to try and identify,

And the unreasonably tall german man in the seat infront refuses to
acknowledge that he can't put his seat back without crushing yu legs,

And everytime you almost manage to drop off the ignorant uniform guy
suddenly wants to be your friend and starts trying to comunicate with
you using Khm-English and facial expressions,

And as the 2 and a bit vallium you've managed to get inside you don't
bring the sleep they promised but instead just seem to slow the
passing of time making every moment seem excrusiatingly uncomfortable,

Yu just gotta say to yourself,

Ah god,

This is awful!

Sent from my iPod

Way after Wat. And Wat

2009-11-17T04:14:00.001-08:00

Right I've done the temples. Emptied my mind and emptied my wallet.

It was so fucking hot, the whole place was like one big wet t shirt contest and I wasn't even in the lead.
One fella in a brown t shirt was actually leaving a trail like a sweaty Barang slug.
Quite good for me to not be the sweatyest person in any given place at any given time.

I also helped set up website for the hostle chain I've been staying at.
Reggae Jon'll hopefully have it on line this week.

Http://noproblemvilla.com

If yu ever in Cambo stay there and I get free rent.

Right about now I'm just about to get on another night bus.
Gunna go beach for a few days befor I go back to Phnom Penh.
I'll try and get some temple photos up an all.
Wireless here is shit today, took an hour and a half to upload 1 image.

Anyway I'll see you in 3 Valiums time
Berko out

Sent from my iPod

One my own mission

2009-11-14T04:25:00.001-08:00

So what i've done is gone and got my self a night bus like 6 hours to the north to go visit the ankor wott temple.

It's shaped like a massive turtle and is the biggest temple in Asia. It's also probably the first thing thailand'll be looking to occupy if they ever went to war with Cambodia, (something about that being a real possibility on the news yesterday, all the ex-pats were trying to work out how long it'd talk them to run to the embasy from the bar. We reckon 10 mins flat, then in theory it's a free flight home).

Anyway tomorrow morning I plan to try and get to the temple for sun rise and spend the day meditating, sketching, stretching and trying to empty my mind of all thought.

On a much harsher note
I also had quite a distressing phonecall earlier from victor.

Aparently last night Sam and a few others were taking a late night stroll around wott phnom, (a notourious lady-boy hotspot), and through some unclear series of events ended up getting robbed at knife point for his phone and wallet. Worse still is that a girl who was with him got pinned down and robbed by 4 other guys.
Harrowing I'm sure you'll agree.

I'm back in phnom penh on Tuesday so I'll know more then.
Or though I am tempted to maybe give it a bit of space and perhaps head towards a beach for a few days.

Sent from my iPod

cambo photo set 6

2009-11-14T00:45:00.000-08:00

Cambo photo set 5

2009-11-13T23:15:00.000-08:00

Khmer Chess a.k.a CHECK

2009-11-13T22:58:00.001-08:00

Right same game different rules.

Pawns are called fish.

They move the same as usual but start one square further forward.

When they reach 3 squares from the edge of the board they become queens.

Rooks are called boats, Knights are just horses but both work as normal.

The King is still a King and moves the same with the exception of it's first move where it can move like a horse.

Queens can only move one space on a diagonal with one exception. Provided the fish in front of it moves first it can jump 2 squares forwards on it's first go. But it is defiantly one of the weakest pieces on the board.

Bishops I've only heard referred to as "this one" again only has a one square range but can go any diagonal and straight forward. Like a combination of Queen and Fish.

Eating a Spider

2009-11-13T19:49:00.000-08:00

Send me things.

2009-11-13T19:37:00.003-08:00

My address is
Mr Craven-Griffiths
P.O. Box 1498
Phnom Penh
Cambodia

If you send me a memory stick and a self adressed envelope then I'll
fill it with. Photos, videos and stories so as you can be a guest
blogger right here at Complimentory Wine.

Added to that all the Barang out here are looking for new music, and
the latest episodes of heroes, flash forward and lost (February)
Also if you have any old duel/tri-band mobiles you don't want then
they'd go down a treat.
As would a couple packs of primark xl thin White vests.

Or obviously an envelope full off cash would be alright. US Dollars
seem to cut the mustard here.

Thanks.

Sent from my iPod

Friendly locals.

2009-11-13T19:37:00.001-08:00

Now the vast majority of local people I've met since I've been here
have been warm welcoming and friendly.
Today I just met my first local dickhead.

Check it out.
So Grant and I are walking down to our usual Internet cafe when Grant
points out that there are several others on the way and that maybe we
should try one of them.

As chance would have it the first one we look inside has two spare
computers and one of the other people from our hostle sitting in it.

Seems like the obvious choice.
The young lad behind the counter looks up from his phonecall and
points at the 2 spare pcs.
We sit at them and begin to get involved.
Grant's seems to be doing fine and as I glance across at his screen
facebook is happierly pushing it's so called news feed down his
throat. A glance back at my own reveals only a frozen home page. A
quick shake of the mouse confirms lack of computer response.

I called out to the guy and try to get him to help me remedy the
situation. He looked up at me through the shadow cast by the peek of
his cap, moved his phone from his ear shouted "I can not fix" and
returned to his call.

Grant had finished what he needed to do and offered me his computer.
As I moved seats the lad behind the counter started shouting "hey you
no cheat me, pay for computer, pay me 300 rhl now or you have problem
with me!"

Now 300 rhl is not a lot of money infant it's about 6p or something
stupid like that.

I said "this computer not work, I share this one, we pay together."
Kid was having none of it, thinking I'm trying to cheat him. He
started saying that I'd done this before earlier today. I tried
explaining that I had never been there before and he calls in some guy
from the back.

By this point i can see several potential outcomes of this situation.
Most of them bad.

I got Grant to go get Nam from up the road to help us translate and
maybe defuse the situation.
Several other Barang sat at various computers around the room also
tried to help but both the lad and the slightly older guy who'd
emmerged from the backroom still didn't seem to understand what I was
saying.

As Nam and Grant walked in I was attempting to sort it out by giving
the older guy 10,000 rhl. He looked at Nam then at the computer thus
realizing for the first time that this was all over 300 rhl.
He said something to the lad in Khmer then gave my money to Nam and
said "ok forget it but you never come here again."

As we left the other Barang all followed suite. I walked away feeling
a lot less safe than I've been feeling for the rest of the last week.
This was reinforced about 5 minutes later as the lad from the Internet
shop walked up the street dead-eyeing me the whole way. I get the
impression his boss sent him home for scaring all the barang away.

See the thing with that is, in Asia apparently the worst thing that
someone can do to you is make you lose face. So I basicly just did the
Asian equivalent of shitting on his pillow.

Also it turns out his boss is somwhow connected to the police so
that's a bonus.

And did I mention the shop is the first thing you come to after the 2
extreamly dark, ghetto-rape alleys that make up the only way in or
out of my guest house.

On another note I've also been told that if I want any kind of job
then I have to cut my hair.
I think I might do that tomorrow.
Might just make me look different enough to get employed or at least not
to be recognised/murdered.

Sent from my iPod

cambo photo set 4

2009-11-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

This is where I live.

Body language

2009-11-08T00:22:00.001-08:00

A smile creeps at the corner of my mouth as I watch my friend sat on a stool across the bar. There are 3 reasonably attractive Cambodian girls sat on stools around him. He casually rolls his conversation across all three of them. Occasionally adjusting his seat. Gently pushing there legs apart with his persusive knees. Legs interlocking like sexual jigsaw pieces. They comunicate in a langage that never needed words. Everybody understands what's going on. Everybody understands what's going to happen, but no one will say it out load.

Sent from my iPod

cambo photo set 3

2009-11-08T00:14:00.000-08:00

Cambo photo Power set

2009-11-07T23:42:00.000-08:00

Tuk Tuk (a poem)

2009-11-07T23:23:00.000-08:00

Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk? mate Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk? you wanna Tuk Tuk? mate Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk?Tuk Tuk?Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk? mate Tuk Tuk? Nice hair mate, you wanna Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk? you wanna shoot the big guns? Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk? smoke? Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk?Tuk Tuk?Tuk Tuk?Tuk Tuk?

Hello, you want Tuk Tuk?

Tuk Tuk?Tuk Tuk?

NO I DON'T WANT TUK TUK!

Moto?

Cambo photo set 2

2009-11-07T23:02:00.000-08:00

Dave

2009-11-07T22:45:00.001-08:00

Anyway I'm sat at the bar chatting to this welsh guy whose mosquito
bitten swollen pigs body of a foot had eventually started to reduce
it's swelling. He'd got to the point he could once again put weight on
it.

So he's examining my foot. His annalasis is that mine looks like it
may be at the begining of the same process his is coming back from.
Bad news.
"It all comes down to the climate," he explains. But the lack of sleep
don't help does it."
As I half verbalised my obligitory response to his retorical statement
my eyes met the gaze of a stranger.

A man stood alone at the end of the decking. Close to the edge of the
water at least 10 meters from the 9 other people in the room. Possibly
an American surfer type dude i thought. Based on his sholder lenght
straw like hair and the happiely suprised laid back Wooooooh expresion
on his face as he registered me reflecting his gaze.

Arrryh.
"oh yeah it don't half sting a bit don't it like." retorted my welsh
mate.
The Betterdeen that filled the dirty little cut on my foot didn't so
much sting as burn and ran through my toes and between the wooden
floor boards benieth me down into the once mighty lake upon which we
rested.

As I looked up the surfer man had gone but as I turned round he was
now stood besides me holding out the standard icebreaker peace
offering of marjiauna.
"hi, I'm Dave."
I said my own name and Dave nodded like he already knew it.
Dave went through the usually where have youn been/things done/boxes
ticked spheal and moved into talking about his own practice;
anthropology.
Not as it turns out the study of flowers or nature as my first 2
missed swings had suggested. Saving me the shame of a vocabulary
strike out Dave clarified it as the study of people. He's mainly into
individual case studies.

Lightbulb.
Right then I think to my self, Dave wants to study me.
As I smiled along to my own internal monolouge I hit Dave up with my
question of the day,
"do you know where I can get some anti-bac hand sanitiser gel?"
Dave seemed to think he might have some in his bag a dissapeared down
a corridor to find it. I turned back to the bar and my welsh mate.
"that guy's gone to get me some hand gel." I said.
"oh were you talking to someone? I wasn't paying attention like."
I'm like "yeah the American guy"
He's like "no I didn't see him"

About 45 minutes later Dave still hasn't come back so I ask our Khmer
host if he'd seen the Barang I'd been chatting to . He pointed at the
welsh guy. So I'm like "no the other Barang"
He's like "no only one"

Then it hit me. A guy that only I can see, who implies that he'd like
to study me and find out what makes me tick.
See I'm no psychiatrist but that sounds like the rantings of a
schizophrenic with delusions of grandure.
Humm I thought. Maybe I shouldn't mention Dave to anyone.

Next time I saw Dave it was 6 o'clock in the morning and me and my 2
room-mates had been awake talking loudly in our room for the last 5 hours.

Dave came to borrow a rizla. We let him in and he stayed for just long
enough to offer us Valium without it seeming like it was the reason he
came. We took him up on his offer and he left as we swallowed the blue
flowers.

Turns out Dave's not imaginary at all or at least if he is
then other people can imagine him too.

Sent from my iPod

They call us Barang!

2009-11-07T03:31:00.003-08:00

"Forget that other world.
that's what I was told when we landed here.
"you're in there world now."
the word of the Khmer.

I've only recently landed on the khmer home world, as alien a place as
I've ever been.
A place full of confusing customs, bizarre symbles, limited resorces,
disturbing food and jaw-breaking language.

They call us Barang.
It litterally translates to mean Frenchman.
But they use it to mean forign.
The word didn't change, they use it to reference everything about us.
It could mean a person or people, (the plural of Barang is Barang).
But it also applies to our music, our food, our technology and our
languages.
Every think Barang is Barang.
Doesn't matter what country you are from here there is only Khmer or
Barang.

Out here the Barang are nieve, easerly tricked by the Khmer women's
high skirts and low standards. Eager to follow the smell of replica
perfume hungry for taste of psudo-guilt-free exploitation.
The Khmer let the Barang exploit them became they in turn exploit the
Barang.
Be it by simply increasing the price of any unmarked items or by more
extream measures involving seemingly free sex, family introductions,
unexpected domestic financial issues and extortion.

Out here they use a combinstion of both their own currency and
American dollars but they prefer the Barang money.
€1 is worth roughly 4,000 of their currency but most meals only cost
€2.
All though this is significantly different to my pre-launch
speculations it is still drastically cheaper than on our world.

When the Barang first arrive here they are weak. Both in mind and
body. Confused by the behavior of the Khmer, suspicious of their food,
inchanted by their woman, burnt by their atmosphere and punished by
their terrain.
The Khmer are strong, born out of great tragedy into desperate
poverty. Their bodies hardened by their environent. Charged by their
red sun.

They laugh at us Barang for our ignorance, and we bow politly and
appoligize with large hand guestiors.

They laugh at us when we try to speak their langage. Our Barang mouths
unable to comfortably reproduce their extended voul sounds.

But most of all they laugh at us for just being so Barang.
When we do something they don't understand like; ask for toilet paper
when you are going to the toilet or try to order a chip cob.

The khmer are a friendly and giving people who need to exploit the
Barang in order to survive on a world that's forgotten them.
The Barang exploit the Khmer purly in the persuit of pleasure and
devience.
Some Barang exploit more than others and some barang are less
exploited than others.
Still one thing is constantly true.
This new home of the Barang is completly fueled on exploitation.

Sent from my iPod

Eating a Betel

2009-11-05T07:16:00.001-08:00

cambo photo set 1

2009-11-05T06:59:00.000-08:00

Time difference

2009-11-04T22:11:00.001-08:00

So here it is. Tonight was Saturday night its 2 o clock in the morning
right now I'm sat in a flat in London watching rocky iii. 5 hours in
the past I'm stood on stage at the Albany theatre in deptford
performing dogman and 8 hours in the future I'm checking in at
terminal 3 and getting ready for my one-way flight to Cambodia.
65 hours ago, rocky was about to fight buba clay for the first time..
Right now its 2 o'clock am in what I think is technically Wednesday. 41
hours ago I had to take my coat off as I walked out of phnom penh
international airport into the hottest morning air my lungs had ever
felt. I had 2 friends with me; grant and Sam. It was 9 am. 57 seven
hours before we meet outside terminal 3 heathrow it was also 9 am but
this time it was raining. 4 hours later it was my term to ask the
woman who hides behind the curtain half way down the plain for another
3 free whiskys. 15 minutes later it was Sam's turn. 30 minutes later
we sat eating airline food watching the cabin host explaining to an
irate man in front of us that there was no beef left. 30 seconds later
the host left the man having rejected all other options and settling
on no dinner at all. He spent the next 8 minutes sulking which
worsened at the point he looked back to see us giggling as grant and
Sam finished off there beef. 53 hours later I briefly pause from
righting this startled by a strangely beautiful sound I smile as i count
9 repetitions. 3 and a half hours ago my friend victor is telling me
about these geckos as we sit on the mezzanine in my oldest friend's
bar, in lakeside phnom penh. Sat upstairs victor and I watch the gecko
on the wall of nam's bar. victor is explaining about how the Khmer
people believe that if the gecko makes this strange noise more than 5
or 6 times then it's really lucky for all the people in the house. 3
and 3/4 hours later I've stopped thinking about the lizard as I angle
the fan towards me and away from Sam and grant's empty beds. 24 hours
ago they both slept in this room as I lay here unable to find away to
stop having a headache and start having a sleep. 17 and a half hours
before that the 3 of us are climbing into the back of a tuk tuk with
victor and nam who both live here now. 12 and a half years ago me and
victor meet for the first time on town hall square in leicester 12 and
a half years before that I meet nam for the first time. intake day for
first year infants at knighton fields primary school Leicester. 25
years later I'm again interrupted this time by grant who's come back
to the room for something he's forgotten. Someone is with him. 1
minute later I'm locking the door as he leaves. 26 and a half hours
ago grant and I bid nam and victor goodnight and walked back to see if
Sam was still asleep inside the room we'd padlocked him in. 36 hours
after that I'm playing pool with a guy called josh at the hostel grant
watches from the bar Sam didn't come home last night. 10 hours ago Sam
and grant part company at nam's bar. 38 hours before that me grant and
Sam are meeting josh for the first time. 30 minutes before that we
meet his mate dickhead. 8 hours later nam and I laugh as nam points at
the name dickhead in his slate book and points at josh's mate. 11
hours before we all laughed as we ride in the back of a tuk tuk to
the guesthouse nam and victor have arranged for us. 36 hours later we
eat pork and rice sat amongst Khmer people. 16 and a half hours
later I'm trying to buy my second 5 dollar ounce of weed in 3 days. 17
and a half years before me and nam smoke our first spliff. 15 years
later nam and victor leave for Cambodia. 30 months later I finish
writhing this and leave to find somewhere in phnom penh that has
wireless Internet. An hour earlier Sam returns with his new khmer
girlfriend. 23 hours after that I found my wireless connection.

Sent from my iPod

Multiple versions of the same thing

2009-10-31T05:34:00.001-07:00

Smoking Blues

2009-10-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

Now I'm sure that just like me you all are keen followers of weed related news stories,

and you may recently have read about the banning of "legal-highs" following a young girl dying after mixing "Legal-GhB" with copious amounts of alcohol, (the only drug you are allowed to kill yu self with).

Now obviously that girls death was tragic but according to what I've read it was the presence of alcohol in her system that pushed her over the edge and I don't see them banning that.

Anyway, we've all got opinions eh,

Still yesterday I got given this. (thanks Sam)

Fake/Legal weed.

Look at it.

You're probably thinking "Now I don't know much about weed but I'm pretty sure it's not meant tot have bits of blue in it."

And yu'd be right.

Not even Blue-Cheese has any blue in it so why's it in my Fake stuff eh?

So if you smoke a lot of weed, in fact lets not mollycoddle it; if you've got a cannabis dependency then I'm sure that at some point you've found yu self in the position of having to make a stalk-spliff, where you collect all yu stalks up and chop them into little bits and just hope that the final remnants of TCH on these stalks might act like a boiled chicken cadaver and create some kind of metaphorical weed-gravy placebo-high.

Hopefully tricking your subconscious mind into thinking you might be stoned.

Well this was less satisfying that that.

I think that the blue bits were possibly ink-stained wood. because it tasted a bit like those rainbow Rizla that one of yu mates order off the Internet when yu 14.

All in all I'm pretty sure smoking it did me more harm than good

Right, I'm Off.

2009-10-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

So here it is in a nutshell,
Brasstacks.
On the 1st November 2009 I fly to Cambodia,
I have a one way ticket.
I plan to be gone for a wile.

Basically I turn 30 in February and I'm planning to have become a man by then.
To do this I'm planning on completing a list of "rights of passage'

This list includes things like,
learn to ride a motorbike,
get a tatoo
wrestle a midget
be publicly naked,
eat something I've killed,
Saved someone's life,
smuggle drugs across an international border,
convince a stranger that I have tourrettes
etc.

If you have any suggestions for things I can add to my list then feel free to suggest them,

Anyway The Story begins Cambodia 2nd November.
It lasts as long as the money does but apparently it only costs a few pounds a day to live out there.

So here's what I'm putting out there.
Donations.

The Buttons in the side heading of this blog

If you donate just 30pence every time you read this blog then I can buy one more meal in Cambodia.
Essentially what I'm saying is if you're my friend help me out and if you don't consider yourself my friend or more specifically if you don't like me, (I know you're out there), then look how cheep it is to keep me away.

I mean a 30p donation is a meal yeah

£1.50 is a bed for the night

but £60 (probably about what you'd pay an up-and-coming act for a 10 min spot) would keep me out of England for a month

thus gaurenteing that all you shit-brained promoters and psudo-high-brow wannabe industry fuck puppets can carry on yu mindless little watered-down championing of the average whilst continuing to suck on the swaggering balls of any new thing that rolls along just cos somebody who works for a magazine that only exists on the internet said that they were the next Lily Allen.

Might even be worth certain people getting together and putting in an Arts Council application see if yu can't get funding to keep me away from the scene on a semi-perminant basis eh.

Anyway feel free to donate as much as you like, If you don't donate fair enough that just means your indifferent to me and I'm surprised you read this far.
Idiot.

Look at this guy

2009-10-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

Remember a wile ago I posted a video of a freerunner from Derby called Livewire
well this is his mate.

These lot are rudeboys.

The difference between cats and dogs.

2009-10-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

So I'm talking to this guy about like crowd mentality, the dynamics of audience response and social conditioning and that,

and he's like,

"yeah it's like Pavlov's cat."

(I think he got it off Hugh Dennis on Mock the Week)

I'm like

"what yonna bout mate?

Pavlov didn't have a fucking cat that was Schrödinger,

and that's a theory and not an experiment,

and it ain't got fuck all to do with this anyway,

that's about putting a fucking hypothetical cat in a hypothetical box with a load of food laced with poison.

Then following that it's obviously about the inherent speculative possibilities for the cats health.

Where as "Pavlov's Dogs" is about getting some actual dogs in an actual room.."

anyway as I was saying this his iphone rang,

He answered it so I kicked him in the shins.

I think I'm gunna follow him about and kick him in the shins every time his phone rings.

Should only take something like a week and a half till I bring him physical pain with a one-ringer.

Roll Models

2009-10-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

This is my older brother Raff

Because he's my older brother it means I was always supposed to look up to him.

That's pretty easy to do though

because He's tall

Like 6 foot 10 or Something.

once when I was about 13 and he was 17 I stamped on his groin wearing football boots, He had to have like 15 stitches in his nob.

Since then he's fathered 2 children

So there yu go.

He recently got a new motor bike.

It's the most powerful one available.

He also got the leather suit that goes with it.

Makes him look like a Marvel Super Hero,

If he was I'd like his name to simply be, BIG-MAN.

He didn't say where he was going when he left but he did say people were waiting and he needed to be there right now,

no time to waste.

I wouldn't be surprised if he was off to fight some crime with his friends

MY-MAN, NEX-MAN, UDDUR-MAN and The League of Extraordinary Genitals.

S.O.Bs

2009-10-16T03:07:00.000-07:00

"Son of a bitch!"

Yeah you all know the expression.

Born of the American idiom this little beauty seems like it's part of your everyday life.

But let me ask you something,

have you ever actually said it?

and meant it?

Of course you haven't and that's simply because life isn't an American film rated PG13.

I mean if I was ever forced to invoke an Americanism to express my frustration with another human being then I'd chose "MotherFucker" any day of the week.

Still there's a certain power to the old S.O.B

and yu can't really say Motherfucker to people in shops when they don't have the right rizla.

So here's what I'm putting out there,

I'm switching,

give it ago yu self.

Next time yur in Gregsy's and the woman's giving it "we ain't got no stake bakes left, m'duck."

instead of getting caught up in the usual conversation about double negatives,

just drop it raw

"Son of a Bitch!"

check out how powerful it makes you feel, like Gary Busey

The first of many

2009-10-14T09:53:00.001-07:00

Right,
this is the first of a line of new-style blogs.
Email posts.
Just set my device up to post directly to the blog.
Thus far I can't do anything about formatting so however this comes on screen is what its gunna be I'm afraid.
The reason I've done this isn't anything to do with lazyness its actually a matter of neccesetty.
All will become clear in the next few weeks.

Just seeing that it works

Sent from my iPod

back to scratch

2009-10-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

So anyone who's a proper die hard follower of the old CompWeezy will remember the days of signing on.

Been a wile eh,

almost a real person for a bit there.

Although recently I've mainly been fulfilling my obligated time on stage/in school today I had to fulfill my obligated time in the Job centre.

once again they actually let me chose my own areas of potential work and once again I declined to change Dancer for Warehouse.

That day still hasn't quite come yet

Anyone that wants to come see me doing this for them selves is welcome to do so Dates are right there and it all kicks off bout 3.45ish depending on queues.

You might even get to see some other acts an all, when I went for my interview the other week I saw this guy in the foyer.

I think his claim had been denied cos he was saying that his legs wouldn't work until he got his money.

Security Guards had to physically carry him out and leave him in the street.

Cold eh