Well, dear Readers,
Things have been busy here with preparation for our seminar this weekend. Catering, printing, emailing and phoning have been occupying our hours. James is sitting opposite me on the table working on his talks for Friday. We have had quite a number of bookings for our seminar and the numbers have only been limited by the size of our premises. God willing, all will attend and we’ll have a good two days of talks and chatting. We’re planning, God willing, a boat cruise as our social activity and that should be a blast since we can have a 2 hour cruise for 50 people for only $20.
Have managed to hook up skype credit and tested a mobile call to Prydie. The 5 second lag meant it was like having two random monologues in the same room. The prices was fairly reasonable, but even as 3 cents a minute the cost climbs.
James spends much time out on the balcony. He gets good wireless reception. It's quite a amusing to peek through the window and see James out on the balcony waving his arms in the air as he speaks to someone on the computer. I'm sure the neighbours watch him with fascination like some sort of mad foreign windmill.
At night he learns to regret his internet connection. Mozzies are no respecter of persons.
I have mentioned that we live just up the road from the cinema previously, yes? This cinema is quite odd compared to the movies back home. It opens at about 8:00am and closes by 7:00pm, so no late night movies. Being the sort of considerate establishment they are, they always play the movie shorts on the MASSIVE speaker they have out the front. That means that the entire neighbourhood echoes to the sound of you average DVD soundbite. Normally, this means a mindnumbingly repetitive piece of Cambodian music played on loop every 30 seconds.
I can hum it in my sleep. One day I’ll sing it for you, if you like.
Well it seems like Kirirum cinema also hosts premieres because only the other morning there was a rumbling echoing voice declaring forthrightly something remarkably important to us all. Sadly it was in Chinese. To display the incredible power of the individual and his words, they put an amusing echo onto everything he said. So our precious sleep was broken every 30 odd seconds by some white bearded master of the martial arts no doubt informing his opponent ;
“you kung fu cannot oppose fist of my north star, fool, why you think?”
In any case, once this refrain had played for a sufficient time, they started with the traditional Chinese drumming. Venturing out onto the balcony to see exactly what parade was passing the house, I saw some Chinese dragons dancing the ‘bus stop’ at the end of the street. So much for the amazing acrobatics. I guess you can’t have it all.
Everything is very hard here. The beds, the tiled floors and even things that are meant to be soft, like pillows and mattresses, are hard and unyielding. There is nothing more restful than lying down on my wooden board after a long day explaining how saying ‘wife’ produces a different sound than the question ‘why?’. I was suggesting to Miranda just the other day that maybe the baby would like a thicker mattress under his wafer thin polyester floor blanket so that his head doesn’t always make the ‘donk’ sound when he rolls over. After a characteristic challenge as to what was wrong with the present arrangement, I explained that when I lay down on the mattress, it was quite hard to my soft, soft bones. Not being easily satisfied with such an answer, Miranda pointed out to me that my ample padding should make such an arrangement quite comfortable. I countered with an explanation that my bones sank to the bottom and pressed against the floor uncomfortably. Miranda, ever the master of such arguments, put the lid on the whole thing by proving that lying down on the floor was quite comfortable even without my insulation.
So, I’ve come to the conclusion that many of you have probably taken for granted over many years….maybe I’m just a girl.
We’ve been doing study sessions with a number of young men and have covered subjects like ‘the mortality of man’ and the ‘promises to Abraham’. It seems that many of them are willing to listen to our principal message which is ‘study the bible for yourself – There are many bible teachers, but only one Word of God, so follow what you can find in the scriptures.’
This means that they should readily see the primacy of the ‘resurrection’ in the writings of the apostles, especially as compared to the rather glibly passed over doctrine of ‘heaven going’.
Many of our students are from the Baptist/Evangelical tradition, but we’ve had the joy of actually having some students who have barely heard of the bible.
For all you electricians out there, I’ve had the joy of discovering that buildings here are not earthed. When connected to the power, my laptop bites me like an ant. It seems to be completely random and I cannot for the life of me work out what I am touching that could cause it, as the chassis is completely plastic. It keeps you on your toes… When attached to the data projector, it gives actual electric shocks that make you exclaim loudly your surprise and displeasure. It’s always an interesting bible class, when one of the teachers suddenly cries out aloud. The students love it.
I call it…the projector of DOOM! Since so much of the projectorly doom seems to involve pain, perhaps I should call it the projector of PAIN!!!
You can see Miriam here braving the beast.
Interestingly, none of the electrical misadventure seems to have in anyway deterred tiny little ferocious ants from trying to nest in my new computer. How can this be, I ask? Why should these little monsters be constantly appearing out of the depths of my computer? A computer, I might add, that was only purchased two months ago. I don’t know if these are genuine dell ants being released by some action of my system clock or whether the lurking fiends have laid in wait for me to put this piece of genius electrical wizardry on the table, suddenly crying ‘Finally, The laptop has come! The time of our ascension is at hand’. Either way, it doesn’t please me. Due to the unfortunate state of my portable device, squashing these little insurgents has become a task akin to bobbing for bear traps. Squish the wrong one at the wrong time and ……zap.
Maybe it is a symbiotic relationship, although I have yet to discover what the ants are doing for the laptop.
These ants don’t only nest in my laptop. After a bout of frenzied screaming, I have discovered that the sneaky little pests had infiltrated those defenses of my child’s nappy that even give pause to my wife, and were proceeding to take the fang on his soft little bottom. Poor little beggar. I would have yelled too if tiny little ravenous legions were digesting pieces of my rear end.
In other baby news, the Boo is pulling himself up on the chair and can even commando crawl in a manner that probably wouldn’t win him any prizes at commando school but certainly would merit a near pass. Certainly, he has been practicing his yelling and gurgling. He’s reaching what can be described as ‘the deadly’ stage. By this I mean that he has mastered complex and deadly ninja moves. Yesterday, he reached up to Miriam’s face and in one fluid movement plucked the glasses from off her nose and hurled them out of our speedily moving tuktuk. I’m almost certain I heard him utter a small ‘hey-yah’. We cried out in horror and he chuckled happily as we looked at the now empty air outside the tuktuk. Screaming for Dike to stop, James and I leapt from the vehicle to search for the glasses on a road packed with vehicles. I was sure that they didn’t stand a chance. One moto driver approached me on his bike saying ‘you want moto?’ I watched with trepidation every inch of his huge motorbike wheel turning slowly as it crunched the dust beneath it, fearing that any moment I would see the bits of her glasses lying broken underneath. Despite James and myself scouring the road, it took the eagle eye of Miranda to direct the Tuktuk to the exact spot and retrieve the glasses with only the smallest scratch.
James is earning himself a name as a baby wrangler. He managed to put the man down last night and so he has been awarded the ‘crazy cross’. This highly prestigious award is given for invoking sleep in troublesome children. So hurrah for James. Looks like he would do well with his own children should Miranda ever decide that adopting at the age of two is not the best way to go.
Suffice to say, he hasn’t yet opted for nappy duty, so he still has at least one unpleasant surprise ahead of him.
Hmmmm…Ecstatic pizza. We ordered our pizza from a place called ‘ecstatic pizza’.
The pizza is eaten, but we’re not ecstatic. We’re not even ‘really pleased’ or just ‘happy’. I’m afraid to say that we’re not even mildly amused. Usually, pizza ordered in Phnom Penh is a large item made up from some things that aren’t ever really meant to go on pizza and large amounts of ingredient substitute. So, for example, you could have inferior or almost non-existent cheese or you might see a weird tomato base substitute or no BBQ sauce option. Perhaps you will find cabbage or as one odd menu revealed, a list of pizzas, 80% of which listed as a major ingredient, ‘crabstick’.
As far as I am concerned, seafood is acceptable on the odd pizza…preferably someone else’s pizza. Please save me from any menu that contains crabstick as a pizza ingredient. It’s not right, I tell you. It’s like having anchovy crumble or a toasted ham, cheese and brussel sprout sandwich. There are some things that are not meant to be in this world and a ‘Meat Lovers’ pizza with copious amounts of processed crabstick is one of them.
Despite my crabstick issues, we have recently been spoilt by the steaming, large and cheesy pizzas served at the Kiwi bakery. Superb pizza for what is for a foreigner, a reasonable price.
Imagine my shock and horror to receive a rapidly cooling box containing what could only be called ‘miniature pizza’. Not ‘average pizza’, not small pizza, but miniature pizza. The type of pizza that could be delivered in someone’s pocket or on the back of a matchbox motorbike.
There is nothing more sad than a very, very, very small pizza sitting alone in it’s box. It makes me weep.
I would love to chat further, but it’s time to work on my talks so I’ll say goodnight to all.
Goodnight to all
God Bless
Michael
Things have been busy here with preparation for our seminar this weekend. Catering, printing, emailing and phoning have been occupying our hours. James is sitting opposite me on the table working on his talks for Friday. We have had quite a number of bookings for our seminar and the numbers have only been limited by the size of our premises. God willing, all will attend and we’ll have a good two days of talks and chatting. We’re planning, God willing, a boat cruise as our social activity and that should be a blast since we can have a 2 hour cruise for 50 people for only $20.
Have managed to hook up skype credit and tested a mobile call to Prydie. The 5 second lag meant it was like having two random monologues in the same room. The prices was fairly reasonable, but even as 3 cents a minute the cost climbs.
James spends much time out on the balcony. He gets good wireless reception. It's quite a amusing to peek through the window and see James out on the balcony waving his arms in the air as he speaks to someone on the computer. I'm sure the neighbours watch him with fascination like some sort of mad foreign windmill.At night he learns to regret his internet connection. Mozzies are no respecter of persons.
I have mentioned that we live just up the road from the cinema previously, yes? This cinema is quite odd compared to the movies back home. It opens at about 8:00am and closes by 7:00pm, so no late night movies. Being the sort of considerate establishment they are, they always play the movie shorts on the MASSIVE speaker they have out the front. That means that the entire neighbourhood echoes to the sound of you average DVD soundbite. Normally, this means a mindnumbingly repetitive piece of Cambodian music played on loop every 30 seconds.
I can hum it in my sleep. One day I’ll sing it for you, if you like.
Well it seems like Kirirum cinema also hosts premieres because only the other morning there was a rumbling echoing voice declaring forthrightly something remarkably important to us all. Sadly it was in Chinese. To display the incredible power of the individual and his words, they put an amusing echo onto everything he said. So our precious sleep was broken every 30 odd seconds by some white bearded master of the martial arts no doubt informing his opponent ;“you kung fu cannot oppose fist of my north star, fool, why you think?”
In any case, once this refrain had played for a sufficient time, they started with the traditional Chinese drumming. Venturing out onto the balcony to see exactly what parade was passing the house, I saw some Chinese dragons dancing the ‘bus stop’ at the end of the street. So much for the amazing acrobatics. I guess you can’t have it all.
Everything is very hard here. The beds, the tiled floors and even things that are meant to be soft, like pillows and mattresses, are hard and unyielding. There is nothing more restful than lying down on my wooden board after a long day explaining how saying ‘wife’ produces a different sound than the question ‘why?’. I was suggesting to Miranda just the other day that maybe the baby would like a thicker mattress under his wafer thin polyester floor blanket so that his head doesn’t always make the ‘donk’ sound when he rolls over. After a characteristic challenge as to what was wrong with the present arrangement, I explained that when I lay down on the mattress, it was quite hard to my soft, soft bones. Not being easily satisfied with such an answer, Miranda pointed out to me that my ample padding should make such an arrangement quite comfortable. I countered with an explanation that my bones sank to the bottom and pressed against the floor uncomfortably. Miranda, ever the master of such arguments, put the lid on the whole thing by proving that lying down on the floor was quite comfortable even without my insulation.
So, I’ve come to the conclusion that many of you have probably taken for granted over many years….maybe I’m just a girl.
We’ve been doing study sessions with a number of young men and have covered subjects like ‘the mortality of man’ and the ‘promises to Abraham’. It seems that many of them are willing to listen to our principal message which is ‘study the bible for yourself – There are many bible teachers, but only one Word of God, so follow what you can find in the scriptures.’
This means that they should readily see the primacy of the ‘resurrection’ in the writings of the apostles, especially as compared to the rather glibly passed over doctrine of ‘heaven going’.
Many of our students are from the Baptist/Evangelical tradition, but we’ve had the joy of actually having some students who have barely heard of the bible.
For all you electricians out there, I’ve had the joy of discovering that buildings here are not earthed. When connected to the power, my laptop bites me like an ant. It seems to be completely random and I cannot for the life of me work out what I am touching that could cause it, as the chassis is completely plastic. It keeps you on your toes… When attached to the data projector, it gives actual electric shocks that make you exclaim loudly your surprise and displeasure. It’s always an interesting bible class, when one of the teachers suddenly cries out aloud. The students love it.
I call it…the projector of DOOM! Since so much of the projectorly doom seems to involve pain, perhaps I should call it the projector of PAIN!!!You can see Miriam here braving the beast.
Interestingly, none of the electrical misadventure seems to have in anyway deterred tiny little ferocious ants from trying to nest in my new computer. How can this be, I ask? Why should these little monsters be constantly appearing out of the depths of my computer? A computer, I might add, that was only purchased two months ago. I don’t know if these are genuine dell ants being released by some action of my system clock or whether the lurking fiends have laid in wait for me to put this piece of genius electrical wizardry on the table, suddenly crying ‘Finally, The laptop has come! The time of our ascension is at hand’. Either way, it doesn’t please me. Due to the unfortunate state of my portable device, squashing these little insurgents has become a task akin to bobbing for bear traps. Squish the wrong one at the wrong time and ……zap.
Maybe it is a symbiotic relationship, although I have yet to discover what the ants are doing for the laptop.
These ants don’t only nest in my laptop. After a bout of frenzied screaming, I have discovered that the sneaky little pests had infiltrated those defenses of my child’s nappy that even give pause to my wife, and were proceeding to take the fang on his soft little bottom. Poor little beggar. I would have yelled too if tiny little ravenous legions were digesting pieces of my rear end.
In other baby news, the Boo is pulling himself up on the chair and can even commando crawl in a manner that probably wouldn’t win him any prizes at commando school but certainly would merit a near pass. Certainly, he has been practicing his yelling and gurgling. He’s reaching what can be described as ‘the deadly’ stage. By this I mean that he has mastered complex and deadly ninja moves. Yesterday, he reached up to Miriam’s face and in one fluid movement plucked the glasses from off her nose and hurled them out of our speedily moving tuktuk. I’m almost certain I heard him utter a small ‘hey-yah’. We cried out in horror and he chuckled happily as we looked at the now empty air outside the tuktuk. Screaming for Dike to stop, James and I leapt from the vehicle to search for the glasses on a road packed with vehicles. I was sure that they didn’t stand a chance. One moto driver approached me on his bike saying ‘you want moto?’ I watched with trepidation every inch of his huge motorbike wheel turning slowly as it crunched the dust beneath it, fearing that any moment I would see the bits of her glasses lying broken underneath. Despite James and myself scouring the road, it took the eagle eye of Miranda to direct the Tuktuk to the exact spot and retrieve the glasses with only the smallest scratch.James is earning himself a name as a baby wrangler. He managed to put the man down last night and so he has been awarded the ‘crazy cross’. This highly prestigious award is given for invoking sleep in troublesome children. So hurrah for James. Looks like he would do well with his own children should Miranda ever decide that adopting at the age of two is not the best way to go.
Suffice to say, he hasn’t yet opted for nappy duty, so he still has at least one unpleasant surprise ahead of him.
Hmmmm…Ecstatic pizza. We ordered our pizza from a place called ‘ecstatic pizza’.
The pizza is eaten, but we’re not ecstatic. We’re not even ‘really pleased’ or just ‘happy’. I’m afraid to say that we’re not even mildly amused. Usually, pizza ordered in Phnom Penh is a large item made up from some things that aren’t ever really meant to go on pizza and large amounts of ingredient substitute. So, for example, you could have inferior or almost non-existent cheese or you might see a weird tomato base substitute or no BBQ sauce option. Perhaps you will find cabbage or as one odd menu revealed, a list of pizzas, 80% of which listed as a major ingredient, ‘crabstick’.
As far as I am concerned, seafood is acceptable on the odd pizza…preferably someone else’s pizza. Please save me from any menu that contains crabstick as a pizza ingredient. It’s not right, I tell you. It’s like having anchovy crumble or a toasted ham, cheese and brussel sprout sandwich. There are some things that are not meant to be in this world and a ‘Meat Lovers’ pizza with copious amounts of processed crabstick is one of them.
Despite my crabstick issues, we have recently been spoilt by the steaming, large and cheesy pizzas served at the Kiwi bakery. Superb pizza for what is for a foreigner, a reasonable price.
Imagine my shock and horror to receive a rapidly cooling box containing what could only be called ‘miniature pizza’. Not ‘average pizza’, not small pizza, but miniature pizza. The type of pizza that could be delivered in someone’s pocket or on the back of a matchbox motorbike.
There is nothing more sad than a very, very, very small pizza sitting alone in it’s box. It makes me weep.
I would love to chat further, but it’s time to work on my talks so I’ll say goodnight to all.
Goodnight to all
God Bless
Michael
Comments
I would still only ever recommend an Apple to you though.
It is interesting to tell you, that as I read the post I'm trying to guess who wrote it, because it's not until the bottom. Mostly I have word complexity, grammer and usage as a meter. However, I can tell you, Michael has calmed down of late. It was difficult to guess this time. Well down.
This seemed to have more than one author…
Hugs and kisses all around, xoxo
You may very well have detected the insertion of certain paragraphs later in the evening which may have disrupted the flow.
Also weighing on me was the cumulative worry of many things requiring my attention.
I do however regard this blog and other such communicative activities as critical to our success here in the mission field.
As the Gospel of John says, "the fields are white already for harvest."
More labourers are required.
I have realised that this blog does not allow anonymous comments an so I miss out on the irregular comments of the ungoogled.
Does anyone have any experience of spammers writing in the comments of blogs that allow anonymous blogs? Lay my fears at rest and I will change the setting!
1) examine ant with magnifing glass
2) if ant has dell e symbol stamped on back then ant is genuine dell ant
3) if genuine dell ant, nothing to worry about
4) if no dell symbol, ant is fake
5) if fake ant, procedure with insect spray removal procedure
love to all.
love Mel
I only just discovered this blog...and then I realised that I have a blogspot account! What more reason do I need to comment?
I felt the need to comment because this will in fact, help me study. This semester I'm doing a peadiatric subject and I learnt that little Toby is not doing the commando crawl, but is in fact 'creeping'. That's the term we learnt. Hahaha, that is the extent of my comment.
I miss you and love you all too..
God bless,
From Rosie J
ps. By the way, my blogspot account is pretty much very new and devoted only to crafty and arty stuff. I have ahabit for signing up to random internet blogging and forum accounts (and a habit of forgetting passwords...)
Enjoyed reading all these entries, what a great way to keep us all informed! Love and God bless to you all,
Kylie