Farm News 10-14-07

Sunday morning, after chores, 60°

Barn News

Nine baby ducks hatched, and eight survived the first few days. They are in a stall in the barn where there shouldn't be too many opportunities to involve themselves in fatal accidents.

On Saturday Suzette's bunnies, who are starting to open their eyes, went to the library for the morning, and then took a short trip to Lawrence after lunch. It was a very adventurous day for such tiny bunnies. On Saturdays kids troop to the library to play games on the computers, having bunnies there adds to the fun.

Ray's Asian Adventures – Sihanoukville

Sihanoukville, [from Wikipedia] also known as Kampong Som, or Kampong Saom, is a port city in southern Cambodia on the Gulf of Thailand. The city was founded in 1964 to be the only deep water port in Cambodia and its beaches are making it more popular as a tourist destination. According to the Royal Government of Cambodia some 320,000 tourists visited Sihanoukville in 2006, up by 30 percent from 2005.[citation needed] The city is named after King Norodom Sihanouk. Sadly in 1994, the town was the location where three western backpackers were kidnapped and killed by the Khmer Rouge, which affected tourism in the area for many years after.

Ray writes:

I'm two days in to Sihanoukville, Cambodia. I moved into my new room here at the Markara Hotel.

It's starting to rain hard again for the third time today. I'm rather enjoying the rain. After the rain you get a really earthy soil smell in the air. There's no more stinky odors or the fumes that are prevalent in Asia.

My first night here someone set off a trash fire across the street and another one down the block. I lost my appetite when the hotel outdoor restaurant was downwind.

The sea breeze comes in from the Gulf of Thailand. The beach is across the street. It's a beige colored beach; a low-rent white sands beach. Met Nick where he's bartending down on a bar on the beach. Everyone else I have met here are all packing their bags and going home. He says he knows some places I should look at. I did spend the afternoon on the beach on a bar stool drinking a bottled water while everyone else swilled beer.

I checked into this place into a room without a/c or hot water. The price was $6. OK. I wondered what it would be like to stay in a $6 room. Then I remembered what it is like to spend a night in the tropics, because I have spent quite a few. The next morning I transferred into a room with a/c for $10. It did have air conditioning, but the bed was some kind of Chinese torture device.

Now, I have been here two days, and not had cable TV, since I left Bangkok and my $50 a night hotel room. Today I moved into what has to be the penthouse of this hotel: a room with a balcony cable TV, a/c, and hot water for $18. Right down the stairs is their internet room. Price: $1 per hour. The cheapest place I found in Bangkok was $2 per hour. OK.

It's starting rain again, torrentially. The forecast for this neck of the woods is the same every day: scattered thundershowers and a direct hit on Taiwan with a big typhoon. I would tell you more about all the fun I'm having, but the cheapo plastic chairs they have here in the internet room are a pain the backside. I think I'll watch a little TV for a while.

That was all I knew of his whereabouts and dispositions, as of Tuesday. Then, on Wednesday, another dispatch arrived from Asia.

The good news first: I'm over the dysentery I was plagued with traveling to Cambodia. Cheap over-the-counter antibiotics purchased in Bangkok did the trick.

The bad news: currently I'm now suffering from pneumonia. Perhaps it's only a cold, we don't know until it's over. If you survive, it was a cold. If you pass on, it must have been pneumonia. So I'm staying close to my sickbed. I have a plan to rent a mo-ped (for $5 a day) and ride it around the town looking for a place to hang out. There's some kind of Cambodian holiday going on until Monday. It is a holiday where the country folk go to town and hang out on the beach. I'm sort of putting off the mo-ped thing, because I'm hesitant to jump into traffic on that thing.

I'm staying at the Markara Hotel. It's across the street from the beach. This hotel is run by a Chinese-looking gentleman named Mr. Lee. He is right up there among the top nickel-and-dimers. There are no pictures on the walls or dining room of this hotel. He charges $2 to cash a $100 bill if it has a tiny tear in it. Apparently the sheets are changed and new towels issued only to new people checking in. The cable TV in my room brings in about three channels in English. None of the channels are clear. All the snow in this country is on TV. The TV cable in my room looks to be the problem: it's old and frayed. No one staying here minds in the least. The only thing that counts is they are renting a room for $6 a night. What kind of people enjoy staying in a small room without a/c, TV, hot water, and complete with a hard bed? My kind of people: young, white, well-behaved Europeans.

Oh yes, the fun I've been having! The fun really is the conversations with the tourists. BS sounds so much better when it's done by an Australian. Put a barstool under an Aussie and a beer in front of him, and he's off! They have a lot to say once you get past the conversation openers of where you're from, how long you've been here, and when you're leaving.

The Cambodians all seem to have a hustle. Their hustles are, from our standards, two-bit, making them all (I have to say it) two-bit hustlers. Most want to trick you out of a few dollars, while others are happy just to beg for pennies. The ones I like best are those whose only hustle is a warm smile. The hotel has 'tipbox" in the dining room and check-in area. Tips are split evenly among all the help. Otherwise, of course, the two sweet waitresses would get all the money.

Maybe I'll be able to make a call this evening. The guy whose hustle is the internet room didn't get here until 10:30 AM. Then it was too late to call. Not that it mattered, the internet was down due to fact that the internet people were taking the day off for the holiday. It's working now, and I should be grateful for that. Two years ago there was no internet here. The internet that's here is dial-up. Calling over the internet is about as bad as it can get. Everything has to be repeated and connections have to be reestablished every three minutes. It's probably a good idea for me to put off calling until I get a better connection.

I guess I'll knock out a couple more emails and possibly head down to the beach, health permitting. It's kind of hard to know what to do without a wife whose wishes come first. Freedom takes some getting used to.

Notice that mention of an Aussie? Remember, I said Ray is a looney magnet, and I'll bet that Aussie had the weirdest story of any Aussie in Cambodia. Ray, who never thinks that the rest of us might find his account of the conversation interesting, simply says the conversation took place but provides no details.

Summer of 1958

In the spring of 1958 I was discharged from my duties as an American Soldier and returned to civilian life. I started back in school at Wichita U., became a fraternity man (Phi Delta Theta), and generally floundered around helplessly. I barely made passing grades, stayed drunk whenever I felt it was possible, and boiled with testosterone. When I went more than 36 hours without sex I lost all control. Things being the way they were, I was mostly out of control.

Looking back on those years (I was 21 when I was discharged), they make no more sense to me now than they did at the time. With a few exceptions, I thought the whole damned world was nuts, and, I suppose, I still do, though not in the same way that I thought in 1958. Then, 'they' were all trying to suck me into their madness. Today, I often think the biological activity in a sample of pond water recapitulates the development of the great ideas of mankind.

When at Friends University three and a half years earlier I took a class called, “College Algebra.” When in the Army, I took an extension class called, “College Algebra.” When I was discharged from the Army and enrolled in college, I was told that I must take a class called, “College Algebra.” Hot Dog! Easy 'A'!

When I walked into class the first time, on a beautiful spring morning in Kansas, there, at the head of the classroom, was a babe. A pretty, American Neighbor Girl, blonde babe, the instructor. At some point in the ensuing internal storm I realized that I had to change to a different section with a different instructor. I also managed to ask her to do something with me, I don't remember what, but, within a week, we were doing what I really wanted her to do with me. Oh, Thank God. Returning to America wasn't going to be completely horrible.

I entered into the land that KANU, the local NPR station, now calls The Retro Cocktail Hour, a land of cool jazz, suave jackasses, Playboy bunnies, and term papers. I was a frat man, I had my own apartment (without a roommate), I owned two cars: a cute European sports car and a huge American convertible, (with fins). I had a component stereo system with LP's of Ahmad Jamal, the latest Broadway shows, and the earliest Space Age music. On the Road was published in 1957, Howl! two years earlier, and everywhere, Neitzsche.

The component stereo was important. Stereo recordings, the LP, had become available and musical movements gained a global environment. The world wasn't there, yet, but it was preparing for today's era of global music. Up to that time, most home music players were a single piece of equipment. By 1958, people were assembling music playing systems from components built by different manufacturers. I had a turntable, a preamplifier, a power amplifier, and a set of speakers. There were only two FM stations in Wichita at that time: KMUW and KFH, so I didn't purchase a FM tuner.

I had spent three years in the Army and hadn't matured one bit. America had spent three years with me away in the Army and everyone was just as crazy as they were when I left. Most Americans seemed to think they were living the lives of Ozzie and Harriet, seeing TV in a real world.