Quite Random

Scary faces

Mexican mosaic masks taken in the British Museum the other day – click to see larger.

“I want to know you have a RIGHT TO BE HERE”

The attached leaked government document, annotated by NO2ID, makes for interesting reading.

UK campaigners NO2ID this morning enlisted the help of bloggers across the world to spread a leaked government document describing how the British government intends to go about “coercing” its citizens onto a National Identity Register. The ‘ID card’ is revealed as little more than a cover to create a official dossier and trackable ID for every UK resident - creating what NO2ID calls ‘the database state’.

As if Facebook’s privacy policy and the UK government losing CDs of personal data left right and centre weren’t enough, the attached document describes using “various forms of coercion” to introduce the ID card to the UK. It’ll feel like flying into the US before too long.

File Attachment: NIS_Options_Analysis_Outcome.pdf (1200 KB)

Home?

After a brief flight from Siem Reap to Bangkok, followed by an evening in Sukhumvit spent with a Finnish bloke getting sociably sozzled on Chang Beer, then two seven-hour flights from Bangkok, I’m back in the UK. At one end of the ball-achingly tedious fifteen-odd hours I spent in the care of Qatar Airways was the clean blue neon and glass cathedral that is Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport, at the other end the worn-out, tattered embarrassment that is London Heathrow. I swear they were trying to crash that BA plane into the airport the other day just to force someone to redecorate the place.

On the plane, the little TV in the back of the seat of the person in front showed the usual choice of half-interesting movies as well as the interactive map that shows you just how very far away from your destination you are, and which occasionally pointed out the direction of Mecca. I would rather have had the little TV point out the direction of somewhere where I could lie down in a darkened corner doped up with tranquilisers and sleep through the flight, but you can’t have it all.

I felt a weird sensation when I got back to Heathrow – I suddenly understood virtually everything people were saying because they insisted on speaking in English. This brought on a feeling of sensory overload after spending months listening to Khmer, Korean, Chinese and Drunk without a clue what it all meant. Just like the last time I got back from a long trip I got to hear a group of lads outside the arrivals hall listening to the most jumped-up of their number talking about how hard he was, using ‘Fuck’ as a noun, verb, adjective and punctuation mark.

Now I’m hiding in darkest Suffolk, the cat never noticed I’d gone, the TV is still dominated by ice-skating celebrities, the mornings are cool and crisp, I have tea and cake on intravenous drip, and all the fresh milk, roughage and Radio 4 I can handle. I’m back for about a month to start studying my next OU course (International Development), do some research on the Young Adult Preparation Program I have been working on at the Sangkheum Center, relax for a while and draw a line under the last five months. More soon.

I believe now.

This video was for me hard, conclusive evidence that only our Lord God could have brought about life on Earth. If peanut butter cannot spontaneously produce new life, all of our so-called scientific theories on the creation of life must be false. I’m just sorry I was wrong for so long. Lord, forgive me.

A button for rude people

I have spent quite some time thinking of a suitable instant punishment to mete out to rude people. Years, literally. And I was reminded of the need for this this evening when, sat talking with friends, a self-satisfied looking tosser shouted “OI!” at one of the bar girls to get her attention. It’s not just him. People in this town treat the locals disrespectfully all the time, maybe thinking that the ubiquitous Khmer smile is attached to skin like a rhino, or not giving a monkeys in the first place. I’m thinking mainly of tourists here – local expatriates mostly seem to understand that to get along in a small community, they need to play nice, whereas busloads of Korean tourists sometimes have all the manners of a herd of stampeding buffalo in bad trousers.

People are rude everywhere all the time, so I’m thinking of a one-size-fits-all punishment. It’ll do for the smug tosser, it’ll do for idiots on late night trains, it’ll do for taxi drivers who can’t be bothered to take you South of the river, it’ll do for bouncers who look at you like something they just scraped off their shoe, up-themselves celebrities, people who don’t say please, people who don’t hold the door open for you, people who belittle others through word or deed, people who think the whole bus wants to hear them play drum and bass out of their mobile at top volume, people who don’t understand how to queue, and many many others.

Some unfortunate dogs have had collars attached to them that gave them an unpleasant electric shock when they barked – I’m thinking of something similar. I’d like to deliver a quick, painful electric jolt to rude people just when they commit the act. The shock, surprise, and a momentary loosening of their sphincter muscles would all serve to condition them out of their rudeness and maybe encourage them to employ some basic civility next time. Pavlovian conditioning works on humans just as well as dogs.

By far, most of the people I know would never get the jolt. My friends are pleasant people who know how to say please and thank-you. For all the others, I’m already imagining a red button in my pocket that I can squeeze at free will, to give all of the unpleasant cretins I encounter a reminder to just… be… nicer.

Man vs Creature

Two species rule here – insects by day, and dogs by night. At least that’s the way it seems.

The insects here make the ones at home looks like pathetic underachievers. Flies are wily, fast and persistent. They irritate the hell out of you, landing on your food, your face, and particularly any cuts or scratches, and take the swatting motion of a hand as little more than a temporary inconvenience, always returning to the same spot they were checking out. They may as well sit there saying “yeah, whatever buddy, I’m not done irritating you yet”. The ants are small and unbelievably fast – go anywhere near them and they scatter in seconds flat before you’ve even reached for a can of Raid, even when you interrupt a team of thousands of them moving your TV across the room. The mosquitos don’t even have the decency to make that high-pitched zuzzing noise when they fly around - the little bastards are on you, sucking your blood and leaving you with a swelling bite mark before you even know it, like Dengue-fever-ridden miniature stealth fighters. Crickets randomly land on you, spiders don’t give a monkeys about your personal space (one large one cornered me in my own bathroom the other week) and cockroaches strut along the ground waving their antennae like some insect gangster who just dares you to look at them the wrong way. You actually end up letting them do what they want, adopting the calm but exasperated expression of a water buffalo, just because it takes so much energy to twitch them off that you end up looking like you have a case of Tourette’s.

Then there are the dogs. By day, they sleep or occasionally bark at each other. By night, anyone is fair game and the buggers even chase me on the motorbike. I’m actually developing a good move which involves accelerating while simultaneously kicking out sideways, a move that Evil Knievel would have admired were it made twenty feet in the air above a row of double decker buses. The other night I sped towards a pair of them mid-coitus, and both of the little swines were so put out at my rudely interrupting them shagging in the middle of the road that they abandoned their love-in to try biting my ankles instead. I’m an animal lover, I really am, but the animals here change your mind about unconditional love. I learnt early on that if a dog around here runs towards you, you bend down ready to pluck a stone from the ground, and nine times out of ten they turn and run away, but you should be ready to actually throw the stone at them if they don’t. I always walk through Wat Bo armed with a decent sized rock, and my aim is getting better all the time. The other night I chased a dog down the street growling at it, and a friend told me once he even bit a dog back when attacked. The growling and chasing is one thing, but what I could never figure out is the Mexican Howl that goes round the neighbourhood about three times a night. I swear, a dog howls somewhere in Thailand and three hours later they’re joining in here. They don’t even know what they’re howling at. It’s like a football chant.

2008

Last night Pub Street was packed with revellers, spirits were high (and abundant in glasses left right and centre) and the fireworks were ready to go. People were happy, the music was loud, all was well.

I went home at eleven and watched telly. Couldn’t be bothered.

New year’s eve I can take or leave, just like Christmas. Some highlights stand out, like hundreds of revellers in the shadow of York Minster at midnight, an amusing evening of sock-burning, fireworks and hedge-diving in Wakefield, or the millennium celebrations where I went to bed at ten and left the house on new year’s morning to walk around Malham Cove and had the whole place to myself. Last night was never going to happen, especially since I started living by the rule “If you don’t want to do something and you don’t have to do it, don’t do it”.

I’m ready to go home for a while… and take a break from Cambodia. I’m looking forward to good fresh milk, curly kale, Porkinson sausages and mash, Columbo on TV, my cat standing on my chest and purring at me at four in the morning, old friends, driving a car, red wine and a conversation with my mum, wrapping up warm, wearing jeans, Sainsbury’s, and all the joys of an English winter.

I love it here, but it drives me nuts sometimes. I can’t even list what is infuriating about living in Cambodia without getting into why I love it, and both lists are way too long when it is so late, suffice to say this place is just a little bit removed from reality, and that is dangerous, addictive and frustrating in equal measure.

I’m hopeful that this next year will be a good one. I still have work to do here, I need to find a job by the end of the year, and I have another interesting degree course to do, that being the biggest challenge of the year. Alice, a girl who is volunteering here, has an interesting way of looking at each new year – she doesn’t make resolutions (too prescriptive) but sets a theme for the year, something which has the potential to trickle down into everything you do. Hers for 2008 is perseverance and happiness. Mine might be focus. Focus on my course, focus on making the best of my time here, focus on walking away at some point later this year with something to show for it.