Cambo photo set 12

things I've had for free this week.

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

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

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.

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

cambo photo set 10

Snap shot in the dark

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

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.

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.

New Life.

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.

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

Graffiti then

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