The other day I watched with interest as a couple of barang (foreigners) struggled manfully across the busy riverside road lugging a large Cambodian urn between them. It got me thinking about Morecambe and Wise. Not that they were indulging in any humorous bantering interplay between themselves, indeed far from it. They were hissing from between gritted teeth at the barrage of ‘hello – you want tuk-tuk’s’ that they were subjected to from the riverside posse. Judging by how much they were sweating they had been lugging and naysaying for a long time and were pretty much fed up. They did not even resemble Morecambe and Wise, they were in fact clean-cut-t-shirt-wearing-college-boy look-alikes. So why did the humorous twosome spring to mind? Because in the random morass of neurons and thingies that zoom around in the grey(ing) matter that passes for my brain I thought of a ‘joke’ that I am certain Eric Morecambe once used, albeit with a different locational content.

But we’ll get to that later. The grey matter shoots off in a different direction and lands upon things that make me very happy. I spoke to my beautiful wife and baby boy today courtesy of the Thunderbirds videophone that I have disguised as a Macbook. They are both well and happy, and despite the tendency for the digital pixilation to occasionally turn them into a David Hockney-esque explosion of colours, they are looking good. One week to go, yippee! and I can see them in person – I truly am very, very excited by that.

The bad weather here seems to have severely scrambled television signals, so I am unable to watch hours of Khmer karaoke videos as I had hoped. Severely disappointing, but if the weather and signals improve then be prepared for a blog on the finer points of how to create the perfect Khmer karaoke video. So you can put in some preparation, it might be useful to seek out the following – a tree, three people (either two men, one woman, or two women, one man), a shop selling jewellery, a motorbike, and a long path to stroll down (preferably adjacent to the tree.). This masterclass will continue when the reception gets better…

So I have actually been watching some DVDs of late. Here are my thoughts on the last couple. ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ – my kind of movie. Fantastic, in the truest sense of the word, beautifully shot and acted, and in Spanish, which always makes the dialogue more portentous. ‘Volver’ – as above. Today I also bought the first season of ‘The Outer Limits’ – $13 for 8 discs, and oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy, am I inordinately excited about that… the man in the shop tried to put me off by telling me that for some obscure reason the first disc is dubbed into French with no subtitles, but you know something? I DON’T CARE. Now if I could only find a set of ‘Journey into the Unknown’ I’d be ecstatic…

The Khmer grunge outfit that performed on Friday night were rather sweet actually. They were about as grunge as Josie and the Pussycats, but immensely likeable, and played their own stuff, so three cheers for that. I think that the music scene is really showing signs of developing here, which is so encouraging. I think I’ll try and keep out of the way musically, as I don’t want to set things back 10 years or so with my noodlings…

What might Eric have said? Maybe something like this –
Eric ‘look – there are two blokes, lugging a Cambodian Urn…’
Ernie – ‘what’s a Cambodian Urn?’
Eric – ‘just over a dollar a day, based on the GNI of $380 per capita. Boom Boom!’

And before you ask, it was a Big Urn, not a little Ern…

Listening to – ‘Live from Brattles Theatre’ – Evan Dando
‘Iron Man’ – Black Sabbath
‘Highlights from the Plugged Nickel’ – Miles Davis

Eating – Spiced Fish Chowder (Friends Restaurant)
Drinking – Pineapple and Chili Frozen Margarita (as above)

And yes, still really, really, really missing my two beautiful babies, Ani and Oti.