Bits and pieces

It's been an odd week - some good things, some not so good.

Let's start with Thursday. Thursday was a good thing. I went around Phnom Penh helping another organisation to administer a cyclo driver survey. We asked questions like how long have they done this work, how much do they make and how can we help make their lives easier. Generally speaking, these men (there are no women cyclo drivers), make around $1.50 per day, which is used to support their families of around 4 or more. Many sleep in their cyclos at night on the street and don't feel very safe. One driver was 69 years old! After getting over initial fears that the questions would be too hard, most drivers were very pleased to be able to voice their opinions and were doubly pleased when they were given a bar of soap for their efforts. I would never have thought something as basic as a piece of soap would be so appreciated. Many seemed to be very gentle, beautiful people who live very hard lives. So lessons learned - be nice to cyclo drivers and if you are going to give anything to people begging (something which I'm always torn as to what to do), a piece of soap might be a viable alternative. Also, when I say "helped administer the survey", I mean I held the soap and tried to look intelligent - well, there's not alot you can do if you cannot speak Khmer.
The night before, I was the fourth in a quartet of musicians hired to play at a function at a swanky hotel. I did not know what the event was about so when I got there, I was mildly surprised to see the slogan "It's not just a hanger" emblazoned on the central banner, and a very large clear plastic coathanger suspended from the ceiling. The launch for this new coathanger company/brand spared no expense - fireworks, dinner, and girls dressed to the nines catwalking around stage and posing for photographers with, which looked like to me, a pretty normal looking disposable plastic coathanger. After spending the past 5 months focusing solely on poverty, basic rights etc., to see this level of decadence for something as ...eh... non-essential as a plastic coathanger was kind of overwhelming.

Then the weekend. I'm a bit cross about the weekend. Let's just say that I roamed the streets for a good part of it looking for someone and then, at 4pm on Sunday, I find out that he is in another city, 6 hours away. I guess it was a bit unlikely that I was ever going to find someone by simply walking around - I would never try to do that in Brisbane - but for some reason, I just thought I might run into them. And I did manage to squeeze in 4 episodes of West Wing, so it couldn't have all been that bad.