April 29th (2020)

 

April 29th
I am awake at 7am.

It’s now 7.50am and I am slowly dragging my weary bones to the shower room.

Starting the day does not get any easier, in fact it is quite the opposite.

Eventually I am done.

I have pushed myself out of that small room, heading out for breakfast. I take the road instead of the alleyways, for a change. There is still enough shade to walk under the trees, most of the way. Restaurants are closed, except Viva Mexican restaurant, and I really don’t want a burrito this morning. So, as usual I wander across to the back, or is that the front of the Old Market.

I now sit at Psa Chas Restaurant, as before. The server asks if I want the same as before. I answer ‘yes’, which seems reasonable because I do. She says ‘coffee’ I nod. Perhaps I am early, but today seems quieter. But just as I write this, two American tourists, followed by an Indian male (I know that he’s Indian because of his accent), wander in. One blonde young woman has a very bare midriff.

This is Siem Reap city, not the beach. Is it me? Maybe I am getting old, grumpy, but...isn’t this a different culture? I look around, and do not see anyone else with their umbilicus on show. I know, I know, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, as these visitors probably are, I did stupid, egoistic things too. Life is a learning experience.

I sit listening to John Cale sing Andalusia, in Siem Reap, Cambodia and remember Hotel Duran, Figueres, Catalonia, and dear Luis, with a tear in my eye. I miss them all. I miss my friends in Catalonia, the Durans especially and the tapas walks around town. I miss Cadaques, Dali the whole lot. We have been apart for so long. Luis has since gone. The midnight chats, are over, porrons drained of Perelada Garnatxa, and Catalonia seems so far away.

Life has a way of intervening when you think you are doing fine.

I cut through the alleyways and just reach the back door to Colors of Cambodia. The open door, closes before me. I knock and knock on the door and, eventually, it is opened. I go to take off my shoes and it is then that my yellow bag slips from my arm and falls to the floor. I don’t think any more about it until I get upstairs to the room. When I take my iPad tablet from the bag I notice that the iPad screen has cracked, crazed, quite significantly. While I can still use it, it’s now more sensitive and text jumps around all over the place. It’s just one more petty inconvenience on this trip. I could rant and rave about life being unfair, yet that would only raise my blood pressure.

The reality is that I have been thinking about a replacement tablet for some time. Now I have no choice. The cheapest option would be a simple replacement, another iPad Air. Upgrading to a Mac Air would be an extra RM2,000 on top of the tablet’s cost. Non-Apple products do not have the software. I’ve looked around but non-Apple products just cannot compare to things like Apple’s iPad Air. Especially apps like ‘.Pages’ and ‘Movie’.

I learned this today......from The Expat Newsletter.

‘There are quite a few unhappy expats stuck outside Malaysia, unable to return to the place they call home. Unlike other countries such as Singapore, which has allowed long-term visa holders to return to the country, the government in Malaysia has decided they will not honour the visas issued to foreigners and allow them to re-enter the country during the MCO period if they were unlucky enough to have been overseas at the time the MCO was rather quickly announced and implemented in mid-March.’

Of course we, none of us, were prepared for what has happened. It’s the little things, like having enough clothes, enough money and having the right equipment with us, like a proper laptop instead of just a tablet, which would have made life a little easier. But none of us expected what had happened to happen.

This is, obviously, just plain wrong and smacks of racism. Many people would have paid a lot of money to the Malaysia My Second Home initiative, up to $130,000 and still are treated like second-class citizens (though in reality they are not even that).

Meanwhile, in Cambodia, the Government is taking on Emergency Law measures, they say, to combat the Covid 19 pandemic. I don’t know how this is going to affect the country, or me.

Today’s spend
Psa Chas Restaurant, Eggs x 3, Bacon, Baguette and Coffee with Milk x2….$4.50