chaus felix

Felix chaus oeps!!

a month or two ago I went to the computer place (yes this miserable outpost has something akin to that these days).

On a table sat a beautiful little kitten playing with a not so empty ink cartridge with predictable results. You can have that one growled the shop owner and trust the inky fur ball at me. never one to say no to a cat, especially as our last one got eaten by a snake i took the little fellow home: he who turned out to be a she- is still very young I realized soon, about 8 weeks not more, although a bit big for her age. Pretty she is,slightly cross eyed as some of my guests pointed out, not quite as bad as Clarence of daktari fame but enough to make her miss a jump or two of the more ambitious kind. Eusje as I called her -then vanished. Gone, I thought and missed the most affectionate though extremely vocal little fellow somehow terribly After about a week when I had just about given up hope there she was again: dusty hungry but with an air of; so here I am home, and does a cat get fed hereabouts or what?. She ate two cans of mackerel., slept for about three days, ate more mackerel, hissed murderously at the dogs who were not impressed at all, fell through a weak part in the restaurant's roof onto and into the dinner of several mortified guests, pissed on my bed, when admonished took to pissing under it, sent all the rats and other vermin packing in a panicked frenzy that has not been seen since the last cobra hit my kitchen,- In short , she did all the kitten things to be expected...only more so, just a bit well .. more savagely so, it seemed... then she vanished again....for about four days: just to arrive back 'guiding' some new guests down the garden path...and seemed to have grown to about twice as big. Could she be older than I had thought, I wondered, but no, she still has her milk teeth she is just. Very very big for her age, taller than even a dutch 'model tea cozy' cat.

Then she bloodied Elvis's nose- unprovoked I might add.

When I found her cavorting in the river, with the bulldogs, who hate water in any form looking on in wonder, I had to admit to myself, that this is ,not, well, quite a household variety of cat.

Then I remembered vaguely there is such a thing, referred to by a friend from wwf as bad ass cat:the off spring of a wild jungle cat and a domestic one....a quick look in my wildlife guide of Cambodia sent me running to the internet: sure enough, a half/ chaus Felix, or chaussie as they are known, I have here....photo from the internet:

..and that is Eusje

am curious how this will work out, to say the least!

pp:1- the colonel..:.0 kinda

ooh Shap if you ever read this you gonna love it:
..about 2 years ago Cambo got kentucky fried chicken as  the first 'real' fast food chain. it is too expensive for anybody here (kinda defies the general idea of fast food, of course, but so it be) sooo, only the children of the rich are the only ones who go there: unpredictable and worse at the best of times, they are-all the way to downright dangerous as they get seldom held responsible for their actions due to their well, 'status'.
now on many a street corner in Phnom penh, there are little wagons, and stalls that sell"CP"  (can't call it cpp as that is the reigning party  in cambo and would cause confusion and probably worse than that....)-so chicken phnom, it is... a perfect and better version of the fried Kentucky one...cheaper  too... ( i even saw one shop in the Chinese section of Monivong boulevard  where : buy one kg get one free was advertised...

monkeys

Monkeys are probably my least favorite animals: creepy little fellows that steal, bite and crap all over (how an animal supposedly intelligent has so little ability to control its bowel movements is beyond me).

Granted, monkeys belong in the wild.. which bears the question ; what is wild? Take the monkeys (common lesser macaques) of Wat Phmon: mean, fat ,big monsters that are wild in as far as that they can go wherever they want to go, and do whatever they want to do, even leave phnom penh should they be so inclined. They are not so inclined, and no matter how we view them, they certainly do not view themselves as` nature's wild children in the jungle sense. They happily terrorize the entire neighborhood around the temple: attack little old ladies on pilgrimage, steal tourists cameras and bite children, break and enter into the surounding houses to ransack interiors and defecate on beds; should one dare to interrupt on gets attacked and severely bitten if not worse.. the monkeys disengage the pipes from water tanks, drinks their fill and leave while the entire building gets flooded by the slowly emptying tank.,they pelt pedestrians with mangoes and debris and so on. Every few years the police -(protests by WWI non withstanding- everybody else thinks that it is a good idea)- the police shoots the worst offenders: gangster monkeys they call them- but within weeks a few new leading monkeys will have emerged and the terror begins again...

long suffering friends who live in the neighborhood visited our outpost a few weeks ago. When I asked about the wat phnom monkeys, they sighed and said they are even worse. If you can believe it: see, phnom penh's youth have taken to sniffing glue around wat phnom,when sufficiently stoned they wander off and leave their paraphernalia behind. And well monkey see, monkey do, now the monkeys have taken to sniffing glue too and are all stoned out of their monkey sculls ....

this rainy season is a wimp!

..oh yes, it does rain, but not the copious amounts that we have grown accustomed to in the last years: every few days and sometimes even every day the sky will give a half hearted rumble, the clouds seem to sigh wearily  and let fly a rather stingy amount of rain- and that will be that, an hour at most, and clear skies again. about once every two weeks or so it will drizzle for almost a whole night- then it will stop. Though why these sorry excuses for rain always come down when i have guests and they decide to sit in the garden is beyond me; when we flee inside the restaurant- it stops- but by now the garden furniture  is soaked- it rains just enough for that.
 August has not been a bad month at all:now that the road is ready we get a steady trickle of tourists. so, once the real season will start we will all be very busy indeed and probably not know what hit us.
As for now; it is the dreary September when  it is off off off season...all one gets are dreadlocked- and cheap backpackers if that
Another month of this then we should be off. that does not make it any easier right now of course: everybody is whining- including me- that it is so quiet and will it ever get any better...
the strange weather makes for an abundance of snakes; poisonous an other... a few days ago i went to close the window for the night and came face to face with a pit viper trying to move in; i pelted it with the first thing that was handy, -a jar of candle stubs- it got the message and left.
there are also a few old acquaintance who have moved into town, that is quite fun. Let's see how long they can stand it here; the first one- from sihanoukville- a vague character who has  an uneasy relationship with reality at best- already threw in the towel and left.- after less than three month.
two other old friends who came here a hardier- or so i hope....they moved into town with their girlfriends,
dirt bikes and a champagne colored poodle ( of all things) who quite enjoys being driven around throning on the tank of a motorbike.
of course i am more than curious who will be the next people to move into town: we sorely need ex-pats, we got too many NGO"s already....

now that i do have the internet back and it actually works - surfing- started and in an attempt to catch up with what's happening in the world i looked on a site in america- got to another and another and there you go; before i knew it i was knee deep in white supremacist crap, mixed with so called christian and  'family' (heaven help us!) values...- women against gun laws- for one and then it got worse.... when i tried to find information from the other side.. there was precious little...
reminds me of a nice american kid who had a beer in the restaurant a few month ago: he claimed he was part of the new 'left' of america: when i- ( naive child of the sixties that i am ) asked him what kind- marxist leninist- maoist , socialist etc- i drew a blank ; when i asked him what left wing meant to him he said:free health care... oooh boy


1

are there any French left in France?

the rains have finally caught up with the season- a bit, not as fanatical as last year though- the new 'road is holding up wonderfully well and the buses arrive almost on time and the summer holidays in the west have given us quite a good little season in this outpost: but.... most tourists are French - very French....and they speak the French - and nothing besides. ( and they are cheap and drive the local guides and restaurant owners to distraction- me too.). the other day i sat in a cafe and listened to two French guys bitch as how uncivilised everybody here was as not to speak French. after listening to them for a while i asked them (in French) how it came that if the French were that highly educated and intelligent they had soooo much trouble learning English. ( they did not like that one)
last week i had two older ladies from (zee France ) no English whatsoever, nor any other language'. what the khmers thought of the french- they asked...( am i gonna lie? i wondered, then decided they deserved the truth) and told them they hate them . why they asked: because many French are rude and cheap- i said. ooh but not us they said and then told me how they bought a lot of stuff at some charity in Seam Reap and bargained them down 20%....outch!!

today was one of those days from third world hell that are ' fun for later as the dutch would say:
 it actually did start yesterday: no electricity; now to be fair i had neglected to pay my bill- as had most of the village- so i stormed to the office of electrique du sen monorom- just to find the majority of the town already in line to pay their equally overdue bills- just to find out; no we had not been shut down; the town generator was broken.
being at the office already we all did pay our bills anyways and went home assured that by 5pm the electricity would be back' an lo and behold it was. it was. mine was also for about 20 minutes; a neighbor sold me some high quality chickens - to be killed and cooked for the week end and when he left me the screaching load of young roosters in a wire cage crapping like there was no tomorrow (the roosters- not the neighbor)- and of course there was none for them- there was a kaboum! sound and:
 no more lights and night falling; electrique was phoned and came just to tell me that my main cable was fried and they would be back tomorrow.as they were too afraid of snakes to work on the problem in the dark...
so i closed the joint- albeit grumbling - and went for a few cold ones to town where lo and behold a few nice french were met and they would come to dinner tonight- but;
 this morning no electrique du cambodge. and no electric eihter. bong serrei and me proceeded to kill the four roosters: quite a bit of a chore as there was one that we had left for dead already  took off in the classic chicken without head fashion: man, i never knew they could run that far. quite a pursuit through the wild rainy season greenery!  in the midst of this mayhem a few moto dops arrived to help me move some of my signs in town. they called the electric company just to find out that the generator is down again and they can't test for faults in the cable- after a long telephone fight that i follow through a mist of feathers while plucking the fowl, the electrician arrives anyways. and they find the problem. meanwhile still no electicity of course.
 we truss the birds put them in the cool box, move the signs to more visible points in town and wait for the ( 2!) buses that arrive every day from phnom penh , the first one nets 6  French, the next one 12 French and four israelis.why not some nice dutch or germans. no, not today...french and israelis it is...
when i finally make it home lo and behold there is electricity!great!! i plug in the garden lights and: kaboum!  the electric is still there, but now  the cable for the garden lights a is fried! so: how are my customers gonna find me in this dark town. not. i realize: let it be. after seeing what arrived in town today it probably saves me a lot of aggravation! and tomorrow is another day!!!

there 's a snake inna kitchen what am i gonna.....

 .. various internet and computer troubles have kept me from posting.
the season is over, it was not good and not bad, decent is the best way to describe it. now the rains are  supposed to be here but they are only very moderately so; the odd thunderstorm and a drizzle or two and that's it so far. Cambo is in the claws of a heatwave, temperatures of 45 c seem to be the order of the day in PP. even up here in the mountains we do sweat.
 the tedium, boredom and absence of cash that go with the off season are no real fun at all.
the strange weather  makes for loads of great fruit on the trees and a variety of less appreciated wildlife. bugs, spiders millipedes (oh how i hate those) and - yes- snakes abound.
yesterday, i was sitting at the computer getting ready to blog, when Elvis snarled, growled and barked: when i looked up he was face to face with a rearing spitting cobra.. while stamping my feet and making the wood floor vibrate (snakes are deaf but hate vibration)s and ordering back elvis- who listened for once i was able to defuse the situation. the snake vanished under the freezer.. aaw. spitting cobras are mean and aggressive and i hate those in my kitchen.... i took the dogs and went to get help. bon serrei, her nephew and moni came  immediately, the snake was gone. into the wall, a hollow `space, there was no one under the freezer. moni went and got a special kind of lime in the market, seems snakes hate that smell and won't cross it ever, they rather starve. let's hope he is right. i do not scare easy, but that one did it. lucky break that elvis did not get bitten, and what a great dog he is!
 well where did that beast come from. fro m under the bar we decide; and today bon serrei and me had to  make sure there were no more reptilian surprises under the bar; moni's delightfully khmer  parting remark was; when sit at bar maybe not put feet under bar. maybe more snake.
so this morning, to work we went, with a stick and a flashlight and that was most likely the most scary job i ever did, but in the end:
there was no snake under the bar- not anymore but we found the shedded skin of a beastly specimen that must have been at least 5 meters long. aww god only knows how long it roosted there! (as the life snake i saw was only about two meters- or less, it seems i did not live with one but two cobras for i do not know how long). on second thought there have been no rats around for quite a`while....( rats, they tend to move when there are snakes around)
 pity we did not get to kill the spitting cobra: i always wanted a pair of snake skin flip flops!!

..it has been a while...

loads of work , guests, computer trouble and trips to phnom penh and kratie kept me busy.

The formerly green countryside has turned brown and clouds of red  dust accompany every and each action.

Nice customers in the restaurant these days and it is quite fun to cook for them. Although for the last few days we have hit one of those inexplicable waves of cheapos, let's hope the next load of tourists will turn out to be better.

the main street is still a holy mess: they dig and they sand and dig some more. the river is supposed to get a new bridge: they destroyed the old one and then- stopped. as there is not even a sign to say that there is no bridge, just, well the river, quite a few vehicles have landed in the sink.

the dogs are doing well; , a little mutt- black and white has joined our household to be an outdoor watchdog when she grows up: she wants to sleep inside is not allowed to do so and howls half the night if the spirit moves her.

 Elvis sat in an anthill the other day and did not enjoy the experience at all, poor fellow.

In the last few month it rained only once but quite a bit: somehow the keyboard of my laptop took a load of water when the roof leaked and the  e, the o , u and w and t did not function anymore and writing would turn into the inevitable gibberish. finally a new keyboard arrived and now the frustration of forced silence is finally gone.

..a cow made it into the garden and ate half of the bathrooms straw walls, and half of my favourite bathtowel.

...a few days before the chinese new year my dogs started barking around midnight and would not quit. On the road, about 60 meters from the restaurant quite a rackett was going on and on and on. The dgs kept barking and insisted i come down and open the dor. finally i did relent, turned on the garden lights and found two scared backpackers hiding  behind a banana plant. They  asked to come in and looked pretty harmless so i let them in. close the door quick they are coming after us  they insisted.   as they were pretty clean cut and my dogs did not object to them  i did. 

When they caught their breath, they told me the story; the had dinner and a beer of two at a street stall. next to them were a few police officers having beers too.  one thing let to another and soon the two tables were chatting- as far as possible with the language barrier and buying each other beers. when the tourists decided to go  to their guesthouse the police offered to drive them there in their jeep

they went, and the police drove quite a ways and asked for their room key presumably for the name of the guest house written on the labeled key hanger. then they would not give back the key and pulled a gun and a knife on the tourists. the tourists two rather fit american young backpackers had it and jumped out of the   jeep ran into the dark and somehow landed in my garden.  the police were not yet ready to quit and started chasing them. . indeed they did; stomping down the garden path, shining flash light and banging on my door. i did hide the tourists upstairs, just in case. Then i did my best 'angry granny'  - imitation: how dare they wake me, anger my dogs (who were groweling spectacularly by now)- and no i had not seen two tourists in the middle of the night etc. so they left. . but one stayed behind shining his flashlight around my garden. at about 3am he quit too.  ( the next morning we found that the police had not been  .able to raid their room: security at their guest house just pretende to sleep very deeply, and they had to give up.

still a pretty hairy situation ; armed police drunk and far out in the country. what can one do; call the police? ..

that's it!!!

..this is something i did post on the lonely planet thorn tree. as i have had it with missionaries, and i mean it...,
 what is it with people, can they not leave each other alone, at least when it comes to their innermost and  i believe highly  private  thoughts...? can i afford this, no i can not, but sometimes a conscience is more important than money ...
to the lonely planet:
this is not a nice post
but i have had it!!!

... as an owner of a restaurant in sen monorom- mondulkiri, cambodia, i want to make it official: i have had it with missionaries, and i will not serve them anymore in the future.

I find it highly offensive;if somebody , a Christian, or any other zealot for that matter- (which is their good right to be so, of course for themselves that is..)- comes here and sees it as his or her singular reason and right to convince the phnong- (a` minorities destitute, beleagerd and culturally widely ignored and discriminated) forcing them that they should believe in some extreme version of the christian god- or other; seven day adventists Baptists Mormons and then some...take your pick the place here is swarming

if the Phnong stay with their own beliefs- they can drop dead and more often than not they can forget about any help (not all missionaries are like that, but most are.). as i object for people to be forced/talked or bribed into to believing something they do not and giving up their own culture in the process , i will not aid nor abet this practice in any way, and would appreciate it if these people -those missionaries that is- - who i view as criminals personally- would take their meals and business somewhere else. thanks tanja, bananas, restaurant.
(ps i' m also sick and tired to be grilled about my own beliefs which i consider private too..)

...this is the detour we must take if we want to go to the bank...wonder when that little bridge will fall down.

looks like i will take off to kratie tomorrow  as yesterday was a brilliantly busy day at the restaurant: amongst others: a group of 16 with insufferable brats, and missionaries: i do not have much good to say about those zealots, but their rugrats are well behaved: they probably hit them over the head with the bible on a regular base.

 on the less fun side: the pump was stolen out of the well and Obama my white rooster was stolen too, the garden lights ditto.I hate this town and have defititely decided to sell the place and move closer toward the real world and my friends: maybe Phnom penh or kompong cham....

...and the dust blows on

Hope that all of you had a wonderful chrismas and wish you a happy new year!
here business pretty much as usual, whatever that maybe. the seson staggers away, sometimes marvelous, sometimes sluggish. had hoped to get to Kratie for a new years party at crazy chicago joe's restaurant - the place is on the mehkong and goes by the delightful name of 'red sun falling down'. but it looks like i will not make it there this year...
the city fathers and powers that be came up with a new bubu: now they got rid of the last of the tarmak in town- all the way to the bank- about 2 km out of town: the detour into town is still under construction... and they dug some more and closed off several streets- including mine- with huge heaps of earth, and everybody staggers over debris and that will not change anytime soon...

soo much red dust!

as it is dry and windy the dust is not far behind (or ahead as may be the case..) big clouds of reddish stuff alight on the horizon to join our own plentiful red dust that follows every car and moto, and heavens!- indeed- when the missionary plane hits our sorry excuse of a landing strip, it looks like all the forces of alexander the great are ready to storm our little outpost or... maybe ghengis khan.. but it is only the missionaries arriving (just as destructive if you ask me)...as my restaurant is not on the road- not good for business but better visibility, the dust is not too bad here, not like main street; today lian brought the cambodia daily from pp in his taxi. I read the rag and when i had finished it felt just like sand paper... reason beein' - the powers that be decided to spruce up da town and started by demolishing main street to become a boulevard of fifty meters wide: so everybody had to move their houses back by about ten meters or so. then bulldozers came and destroyed the street. plowed up all the old trees and left ; a dust bowl. then some kind of earth moving equipment was brought in to dig the monsoon drains. and so they did dig: now the street had holes- deep ones too. ( there was some fun when the bulldozer fell into its own hole and it took them several days of satisfying mucking around to get the bloody thing out).
then the powers that be decided that 'they maybe make mistake' and now everybody has to move back their houses yet again by several meters. did not go over to well with the natives indeed. so now everybody is fighting and the dust blows on and why do we need a boulavard anyways? beats us.

the dark days befor xmas..

as the dutch call it:.
...it has been awhile, sorry:
first because nothing was happening and then things happend and kept me trotting at a nice but not too dramatic clip: it was evident something like the season has started. for a little while the place was packed and so was bill's. so we made some money and started paying debts and stocking up and then... no more; the customers were gone and ...nothing. Now, this happens every year: the turnover between the people who want to be home for christmas and those who leave their country to flee the merry season..(still not an enjoyable moment after the 'crisis had hit our businesses rather hard...)..so until yesterday we were broke again, and then the first of the xmas haters arrived: just the people we like. not the ncv's, the dreadlocks, fake tatoos, recently artificially 'balded' 'price- of- cheap- banana pankakers'- discussing gap year idiots, but genuine people: writers, designers artists, photographers, and so on. a fun crowd, interesting and now we wait for the pp crowd to show up to lead these nice professionals astray... and off we will be...
when the eternal rainy season goes on and on, we always say; oh if it were only dry, and then it is and then we realize we did forget that after the rainy season the sunny , crisp( now that's an euphemism, we call it freezing) and.. aww.. the windy weeks start; it blows straight from where? manchuria? vladivostok or some such and it blows and blows. hard, enough to make my building and bed shake, to send the bullies under their blanket shivering and to make us wear multiple sweaters. how the banana plants survive this is beyond me- though they do look a tad tattered and ratty at the moment and tend to keel over prefferably onto power lines or on unsuspecting tourists. we do have a horrific time hacking the bloody things over before they do any serious damage-
..aw the ncv days aint't quite over yet. just had two: belgians, believe it or not....cheap as shit they were.( belgians as a rule can not resist a good meal and a few cold ones when they do they are seriously hardcore cheapos).
do not think any more customers will come tonight; it is cold windy and dark....
sooo an early night. ..

perfect days in paradise...

well, the season is off to a spectacularly sluggish start: yes there are customers and quite a few, and all of them give credence to the saying it's not quantity but quality. quality they are not.. they are on the whole dispicable and then some....
fat and blond and cheap are predominant: yesterday a sizable specimen rolled in after dark: ooh i have not eaten all day. and she ordered a lot and drank some and then she said can you change 50 dollars, and of course i was not able to, this being one of those interminable holidays of two weeks or there abouts- banks closed an all that.... oh i will pay you tomorrow- she said and bored me for another hour and the next day when i did need the money to buy cooking gas she was nowhere to be seen and when finally she came she said she was sick implying my food-( turned out she drank iced coffee in snuol of all places; i did not eat there she said, and you had coffee with that ice there in it i said??? wow that is stupid!!! i thought and she heard me...in the end she coughed up all twelve dollars that she owed me and will come back for more food(?)tomorrow)-to eat- i perceive that as a threat!).
but then yet it was it is one of those days today:
as by now we are truly poor bong sereri has taken to selling the fruit of our trees; and we make quite a bit of money from our bananas, milk fruit, guavas and so on. the bananas are quite a lot and ripe and have to go: so do the coconuts, but that is another` story all together..
the bananas: banana is the biggest grass in the world- also the heaviest as it turns out; the bananas- the fruit grow and grow, the plant: the so called grass lists and lists as the fruit grow, and those things get quite dangerous and one has to cut them down... the fruit by now getting to twenty kilos or more.. so we cut them and down they come shaking the earth and having bong serrei and me running for our lives more often than not...( the other day i tried this alone and the plant fell on me and i got stuck and it took me forever to dig my way out from down yonder, and a few bruises, now how ridiculous can it get bruised by bananas, try to live that one down....).
why are we doing this to ourselves bong serrrei and me wondered let the sellers get the fruit off the plants and we get a dollar less. then so be it we said ( as in depression without champangne is not worth it is as my friend fay would put it so nicely) so now the sellers/buyers come to the land and have to cut the fruit themselves.. so do come their dog; and the bullies killed it.. the dog, not the seller quite.. yet... : the dogs were trying to bite us...( ensuing discussion: you owe for dead dog. no dog bit us. and anyways- says bong serrei :you eat dog anyway..so you want money i get dog i eat myself..) the buyers bought that one .. pouff!! lucky break that one ...we did not have to pay for the dead mutt).
meanwhile: big crashing sound in the bar, glass`works a lot- breaking: damn rats i think and run into the restaurant: no rat, although most of the last remaining wine gasses are broken: stuck on the wall- mortified: caruso the ghekko: sorry he mumbles; there was this juicy spider and i.. i.. just ran into those weird things- , i did not even see them..and the spider behind...' 'getta move on, caruso' i say, and chase him off and remove the shards or our last vestige of civilisation...

teutonic

..another good one when it comes to English speaking hereabouts:
a few years back at Christmas the big tsunami hit the west coast of Thailand.
My manager happily explained to my – (German) customers: no, the cyclops not make the tsunami, tsunami happen when Teutonic plates shift....
( nobody on the hill ever said tectonic plates ever again.of course....).

yesterday i will fix...

..the mouse- another mouse is behaving beautifully and the little arrow stopped meandering all over the screen all on its own without being prompted to s, oo, luxury!!!

the weather seems to be holding up: some clouds and the odd shower while the sun still shines and one or two rainbows are visible..

The terrace lights blew the other day, big time. Polly- the 'politician's brother' and Polly himself, the politician ( I.e. Electrician)- Polly's brother still has not figured out that the word is electrician*)- say we need new cable to fix the problem- from phnom penh- the stuff here is worthless. Which is true. So dark it will stay for the time being, except for candles and maybe some of those unsavory things that I can load up and then hang in a tree just to have them give the ghost at the most inconvenient time..

the nights hereabouts fall with an enormous and quick thud, and the moon is down to a pretty but inefficient sliver... and fireflies, pity one can not train them... so dark it is and American couple got caught in the dark with their hamburgers. Luckily I found a candle or two that had escaped the lightening of the barbeq. Things seem to be moving here and are looking up or so we hope: to day my laundry actually dried!! all of it!!! ( for month on end the only way to get really dry clothes was to just put them on, no kidding.

..the jack fruit tree, seen from my terracde upstairs

*) Polly's brother will start working for me in about two weeks, that will be fun, a classic conversation: the light not broken. Me: ooh ??? not broken?? but they do not work!!- yes ( uttered with some enthusiasm) not broken. Me :then what?, not broke!. Me :so? Him not broke! So we fix! Now I get it : he means broken... another one: ' yesterday after school I will come and fix okay lights not broken!? ' - this will be fun!!!)

seems like the rains have left us for now, maybe even for the duraton of the coming dry season: sunny days, almost hot, and very nippy nights that leave us with a second blanket ready to use and use we do it..
tentatively the first tourists venture into town again- nothing to write home about yet, but it is a beginning.
The garden looks overgrown though beautiful, the river is retreating to manageable proportions, and the jack fruit tree sports a hammock that is almost over the water...and the mouse on the computer will not work to day at all an i am giving up writing for today..

of spiders and collegues...

..i just so wish that for once something nice would happen...

.in the aftermath of the cyclone, the tourists stay away, and will do so for at least another week, and the restaurant is dead and I'm broke and it is boring, like watching astro turf grow or chewing sand so it feels.

Last night a miserable soul stole my garden lights, the ones that light out the path so my customers can make it to the restaurant... ( I think that just maybe a certain lodge in this town pays somebody to make my life harder:the other day they sent some of their customers to spy on me, those people bored me for an hour and did not even buy a bottle of water. Also they 'stole' or shall we say 'took over' jack's elephants while he was in England. Now I do find jack a superb asshole, but stealing his elephants and mahouts is pretty crass.).

As for the chickens, Dumbfuck the second is a calming presence and for the first time in month the chickens seem rather well adjusted: unless I am late feeding them, then Dumbfuck jumps on the terrace, stamps his feet and crows at house party volume until I dish out the feed...

Had a bit of a run in with a spider, a big one , sitting on a beam right next to my bed; at least as big as my hand, legs out to here, scaly looking and quivering and striped, meant to impersonate a snake- a banded krait- I presume... ' I'm here and what are you gonna do about it ..' the spider insinuated: quiver quiver the legs... - now I draw the line somewhere; NO SPIDERS IN BED! So I grabbed the broom – ouh ooh the spider went and vanished behind the beam, when I looked around the beam, I found Caruso, our foot long house ghekko, munching, crunching on the spider, some legs,-about four- scaly and striped still quivering outside Caruso's mouth.. Caruso all but waved to me, and I am sure he would have said ' ' thanks' mate' , if he did not have his mouth so full!

Dumbfuck the second ,der Nibelung and Queen Latiffa

....let's face it, chickens are about the most stupid creatures that walk the earth: besides that, they are also extremely distrustful- they think everybody wants to eat them- and let's face it; they do have a bit of a point there. But chickens are also mean: and some are meaner than others: there was Josephine, ( a good momma, we have to give her that) but man, was she mean and just crazy.... violent too, if one can imagine a violent chicken, but she was, she was.... until she keeled over, presumably of old age as we could never catch her.

Her descendants make up my chicken coop after thefts and the ravages of the rainy season: three hens and a rooster. All as paranoid and as mean as Josephine. Plus the rooster is the brother of the ladies. A three legged chicken does not seem to be too bad an idea to me, but somehow I do not think that it will work out quite that way. The ladies seemed to have figured out the same thing: they are of laying age but no eggs so far. So when Bill presented me with a new rooster a genuine jungle fowl; he , Bill that is-seems to get one a year- with the impending moon festival from a phnong family, and as he prefers coq au vin to a live chicken, I wind up with the gifted rooster: not that I mind, this one is as nice as the last one, Dumfuck (the first), and this will be Dumbfuck- the second....friendly, almost tame, big and pretty he is....

My resident fowl did not agree: the ladies walked off in a veritable chicken huff, and` Der Nibelung, the rooster went after poor Dumbfuck ( the second), who still was a bit wrinkled from his day long jungle trip in a rice bag. Dumfuck ran, der Nibelung followed, and Dumbfuck lost a lot of his baroque tail feathers. And der Nibelung would not let up...

That's it I decided, this month is a bad month for chickens in Asia:` all these festivals, and each and every one needs a sacrificed chicken.... soo there a re no good ones left in the marked and I am out of coq au vin.....

so after dark I raided the chicken coop: grabbed der Nibelung and put him under the chicken pen for holding until his turn came to join the food chain. the next morning, a veritable racket in the front yard:

Dumbfuck running for his life, and der Nibelung pursuing him: the little creep had chewed or shall we say, beaked his way out of the coop destroing it good. Dumfuck left for higher ground and spent a miserable day on the terrace: der Nibelung does not dare to come too close there.

In the evening I caught him again:this time I wised up some: I was not nice and bound him. Put him under what was left of the pen. Just to find him, there in the morning, but the rest of the pen reduced to splinters. ( choy' said bong serrei when she saw the damage, s'one 's Josephine's, isn't it ?' she mused. And let's kill him. And she did.)

I cooked him on open fire, with lots of my last red wine and he turned out great, lot's of meat on him too: shit yeah, said bong serrei, the bastard sure ate enough rice!.

Tentatively, Dumbfuck-( the second ) came out of hiding: the ladies seemed slightly charmed by him, especially queen latiffa, the big whit hen, spitting image of her mother Josephine in more than just beauty, unfortunately....

so the chickens charmed the rooster and vice versa; until it got dark... the ladies had figured that the chicken house was not safe, so they flew into the jack fruit tree's branches. Dumbfuck tried to follow.. and.. fell into the river: the ladies s sniggered and I had to jump in and rescue him as the waters are still running fast after the taifoon...

soo now dumbfuck – the second sits on the terrace drying up-poor guy....he gives sad clucking noises,`wrapped in a` towel he is...

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ouch!

...the rains are abaiting and the insects make up for lost time, it seems.
The electricity is still feeble and slightly soaked. The unmistakable sound of a new electric fire- the problems in the kitchen had been solved by polly my neighbor's son: he learned how ' to be politician'  from the ngo's- according to his brother who is learning english, but somehow can't get the difference in sound between politician and electrician (or electricity for that matter: you have problem politics? he asks, when i come looking for his brother...)
well anyways there was that sound again,but by now it is far too dark to trouble the 'politician' so i just turned off the outside lights that were making that hissing sound and hoped for the best...
and it worked - until i went to the toilet. dark there of course, but i know my way around found the pot and sat down .there must have been something on the seat.... ouch!!! i must have sat down on an ant.. ouch... aouch again! this is NOT an ant! no it was not, it was one of those mean 2 inch big  and very painful cambodian hornets...that i flattened with my sorry hide, and it took revenge. ouch, and i am out of hystamines.. and in a foul mood, it hurts!!!
yet another fun night in paradise!!!