Beginnings

I left my job yesterday, by choice. It was and is a new experience. 

It's a slightly confusing feeling to not have to answer e-mails. I went to sleep at 12:40am, earlier than usual.  I slept terribly, and dreamt that my blackberry was missing. Someone in the dream pointed out that it was probably next to me on the bed. It was.

I woke up this morning at 8:08 Am, which is earlier than I would wake up for work, if I had the choice. 

Being free is confusing. I have all this time. 

Bloody Mary is the Girl I love

After my first day back in the NY office, I left work early to see South Pacific on Broadway (at Lincoln Center). It's one of my favorite shows, with short catchy songs and a smart fixation on interracial dynamics in the 1940's.

The show deals with many "ex-pat" questions that westerners living in Cambodia deal with:

Could move here permanently? How invested am I in my sense of home as the familiar place of upbringing? If I get involved with a local or foreigner, can I really see myself building a life with them? What's at stake for getting involved romantically for a local versus for an expat?

The male lead who played Emil de Beck, a french planter, had a deep, rich, voice. I cried when he sang "this nearly was mine. "

During the intermission, I ran into a guy I went to summer camp with, who I hadn't seen in at least ten years.

A strange juxtaposition: missing the foreign and enjoying the long-lost familiar.

A lotta countries: my first conversation back

Touched down tonight in Newark at roughly 7:30pm, was out of customs by 7:45 after a very brief interrogation by middle-aged blond passport officer.

her (reading my entry card): UK, Sweden, Cam-what?, that's a lotta countries, whaddya do that you're traveling so much?

Me: I'm an NGO-er.

her: huh?

me: ya know, non-governmental organization, non-profit... we use computers to help break the cycle of poverty in Southeast Asia.

her: oh, sure. Why not break the cycle of poverty here?

me: Yeah, that's on our list of things to do. We figure start with the poorest people first, $50 a month makes a very big deal in these people's lives.

her: Okay, keep it up. Welcome back.

At customs, they asked me if I was bringing back any meat and then scanned only one of my bags (of four). It's the first time i've seen the US government do post-arrival luggage scanning.

Three Days Later

A brief look on my itinerary of the past three days:

Saturday Morning: Breakfast in Yangon. Flight from Yangon to Bangkok.

Saturday Afternoon: Seven-hour lay-over in the Bangkok Airport. Flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh.

Saturday Evening: Arrival in Phnom Penh at 8pm, at a party on the riverside by 10, a concert by 11:30, and post-concert drinks from 1-4ish.

Sunday Morning: Packing from 4-8am. Flight from Phnom Penh to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), transit into city, checked into a dive hotel in near "Sentral Stration," long dinner from 7-11:30pm with Mr. A-Z, a clever and deeply analytical Malaysian telecom executive (we got to be friends in early 2008 in Phnom Penh). Asleep around midnight.

Monday Morning: Wake-up at 5am, transit to KL airport. "All I ask of you" from Phantom of the Opera is playing on the airtrain, which I find deeply moving, bringing tears.

Flight from KL to Stockholm, 9:15am. 11 hour flight, the plane is almost half empty and I stretch out over a whole row. I watch Ghost Town (of interest), Wall E (wonderful, a good re-watch), Hellboy 2 (poor writing, great imagery). We arrive at Arlanda at 2:30pm. The sun is setting, and it is dark by 3pm. I make the mistake of not spending the remaining 300 kronor from November's stop here.

Flight from Stockholm to Newark, 8 hours. I watch Fred Claus and eat 3 Swedish shrimp salad sandwiches, and get another row to myself.

Three days, three cities, six airports.

Ghosts in Bangkok

I'm in the Bangkok airport waiting for my flight to Yangon. The airport is a ghost town, operating at half of usual capacity. The staff are tense, and nervous, completely on edge. The atmosphere is post-traumatic: as if at any point they expect another demonstration from the PAD with violence and trouble. My flight from Phnom Penh was delayed three hours, which suited me fine: they paid for lunch and I ended up hanging out with a world banker who is part of a new governance project in Cambodia. Smart British engineer, has been around the block in Asia for 30+ years.

After an easy flight, I got here and spent the next hour complaining about awful service and asking for a voucher or upgrade. They told me that they are consider upgrading my next flight (to Burma). Unsatisfied, and then I sucessfully argued my way into an hour using the internet in the business lounge, after a long empassioned speech about service levels and customer satisfaction.

I am tempted to raid the buffet, but I sense that they might arrest me.

Off to Myanmar....

I'm off. 

After submitting an application on Tuesday in Vientiane (Laos) I was granted a visa to visit the Union of Myanmar on thursday. 

I returned to Phnom Penh on friday morning on a quick and painless Vietnam Airlines flight, sitting next to a Laotian/Khmer-American couple from Seattle.  I spent the afternoon at the office tying up loose ends. 

I'll fly out of Phnom Penh this morning, stop in Bangkok (what does one do in the Bangkok Airport for 6 hours?), and arrive in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) in the early evening. 

Just when you think you're not in Kansas...

I took the bus up to DDD's office in Battambang today, a six-hour ride that included two rest stops, an extremely overactive air conditioner, enough Khmer Karaoke to entertain an adolescent troop, and a short nap.

Waiting for the bus to board, the other passengers and I watched a clip of Britney spears perform "I'm a slave for you" at the Video Music Awards, wearing a live boa constrictor.

Then a boy sold me a copy of Time Magazine for $2.50. It had a picture of Obama's face superimposed on a photo of FDR.

Eat, Drink, Work

I had an intense, back-to-work Monday today at the office, punctuated only by a delicious vegetarian lunch at "Fate-Blessing Buddha." The restaurant is located near the Olympic stadium and i've never seen another westerner as a patron, other than those whom I'm eating with. We had imitation roasted pork, two types of miniature chicken cutlets in a delicious mock-oyster sauce, and very convincing beef ribs with thicker gluten/tofu mimicking rib bones. Also, thick egg and sour soup with imitation ham and seafood, and a stewed green vegetable with a hard to remember name. We got five large dishes, a pot of soup, and ice tea for roughly $24.

After a fast afternoon and early evening of work, I had dinner at Friends, a social enterprise that trains street youth to cook and run a fancy Tapas restaurant in Phnom Penh. Friends has marvelous spicy eggplant dip, and we devoured it before munching yogurt and mint cucumber salad, thick and creamy pumpkin soup, beef tacos, and baby bok choy. They also brought a terrific hummus dip on which we didn't order. I drank a fresh green apple juice smoothie.

I rounded out the day with bag of bilar (cars), a Swedish sugar candy I bought in Stockholm a few weeks ago.

The Lieberman Debate

With the defeat of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, the Democrats now have 56 official seats in the US Senate. This number is enhanced by two independents who caucus with the democratic majority: Bernie Sanders from Vermont (a socialist) and Joe Lieberman, formerly a right-wing democrat from Connecticut. This effectively brings the democratic majority to 58, two votes short of a 60 seat majority that can pass any legislation without the threat of a filibuster.

With two senate races still undecided (a close recount in Minnesota and a somewhat unlikely chance of winning a run-off in Georgia), the majority has decided to allow Lieberman to keep his chair of the homeland security committee, effectively cutting a deal: he caucuses with the democrats as independent in exchange for the privileges of seniority.

John Nichols of the Nation defends this decision to keep Lieberman, on pragmatic tactical grounds.

I see Nichols' point: there isn't much to be gained by making the Democratic tent in the Senate smaller. That being said, is it is necessary to punish Lieberman in some way for his support of Mccain during the campaign, relentless promotion of aggressive and militaristic foreign policy, and general right-wing moralizing.

The most effective way to do this is to run a serious and well-backed democratic candidate in 2012 when he's up for re-election. Ned Lamont was brave to run against him in 2006, but the Democrats need to get serious in ensuring some degree of party discipline for core decisions.

Tactically speaking, it seems unlikely to me that the Democrats will win both Minnesota and Georgia, which even with Lieberman joining the group will require reaching out to the dwindling number of moderate republican senators (Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Spector, Chuck Hagel) on crucial legislation or nominees that the republican minority filibusters on.

Ultimately, it seems more productive to build a coalition with these folks on borderline issues (health insurance, minimum wage, large diplomatic initiatives, large federal infrastructure spending, progressive energy policy, center-of-left Supreme court nominees) than it does to keep Lieberman as part of the coalition. Should Lieberman not vote for cloture (the vote that ends a filibuster) on a central issue, he should be stripped of his seniority immediately.

Saturday Run

I woke up to a morning without professional obligations. I've spent a last week executing and facilitating logistics for DDD's annual board meeting in Asia, so today's my first substantive day of freedom. I slept in until 10:30, and met a S (a newly arrived co-worker) for a run along the river.

With the help of Toro (motorcycle driver, guide, friend, comic relief), we drove twenty minutes south of Phnom Penh to the Kandal province, passing impressive embassies, ministries, the Senate, and the majority Cambodian People's Party compound.

We ran under the powerful Southeast Asian sun, first along the river (the Tonle Sap, I think) and then the highway. The heat was overwhelming, and we stopped to walk after a 2-3 miles, restarting the run and then cyclically repeating.

In addition to the dust of the road, the sugary, wet aroma of fresh tobacco hung in the air, a pleasant result of the nearby British American Tobacco plant.