Quite Random

Workplace stress

Words and phrases I traditionally associate with workplace stress include Underground, Office Politics, Reply To All, Meeting, Presentation, Room Booking, Season Ticket, What’s For Lunch, Deadline and… did I mention Meeting?

Here in Cambodia, the picture is somewhat different. Earlier today I was trying to write a report on my students despite a small child being sat next to me pressing random buttons on my laptop. Delete. Return. Switch off. What started as ‘ha ha, yes that’s how the mouse works’ ended with ‘no, don’t touch that, oh bugger, you had to go and touch that’.

Then there are the bank holidays. Now a holiday is always nice, but in Cambodia they tend to warn you about these things anything between two days and one hour in advance, and not so much warn you as utter something cryptic about how there’s something happening and it’s up to you if you want to come in and teach lessons, but the kids will either be watching karaoke on TV or fishing in a puddle somewhere. This is just unsettling if you like even the smallest bit of structure or predictability in your life. An Australian nurse tried to get to the bottom of what was happening with lessons around the holiday earlier today, and after five minutes of asking the same question in slightly different ways (‘Do I need to come in and teach?’) and being given several different answers, all equally confusing, was no better off. Cambodians have the equivalent to the Indian head-shake (rolling the head from side to side as if pivoted somewhere just below the nose), which is just to smile sweetly. It disarms you but leaves you just as clueless as when you started, if not more so.

In my classroom, I have to contend with mosquitos, cockroaches, and ants. They get onto me and irritate me, nest inside the computers doubtless shortening their lifespan, and generally have no appreciation of the wonders of education. There are the insects, and then there is grand mother Voth regularly entering the classroom for pots, pans, rice or whatever else is in the store cupboard, but as I’ve already said, I’m terrified of her so she can do as she pleases.

So all in all the main problems you have here are kitten herding on a large scale and total confusion about what is supposed to be happening on a day to day basis, but at least there aren’t as many meetings.