May 27th (2020)

 

May 27th
73 days here.

3.09am
I am awakened.

I try not to think. Not to worry. But I feel a great weight weighing me down which urges me to write here.

My future seems bleak. Malaysia has gotten itself into a mess with Covid 19, and will not be open to tourists any time soon. My adopted country still has fresh infections daily, with a huge daily jump of 44 newly infected people and being the highest yet, bringing its new total to 187. Cambodia has gone back to 0 cases. I fear that the day will come when I will have to leave Cambodia, but will be unable to return to Malaysia.

Meanwhile, in the country of my birth there were 118 deaths from coronavirus recorded on 25 May, bringing the total number of deaths, in the United Kingdom, to 36,793. A horrific figure. I am just glad that my family in England are safe.

These things concern me. On a more personal level, I am stacking up a huge air conditioning bill, here in Cambodia, which has to be paid. As has my rent in Malaysia. Nothing is for free. Savings cannot be replenished. I am, like millions of others under this pandemic cloud, slowly becoming more impoverished day by day, wondering just where it all is going to end as I am hanging on by a thread.

I read.

It’s 4.10am, there is noise here like someone washing dishes. It echoes through this early morning house. I will try to sleep again when it quietens.

7.55am
I wake for the second time and dash to turn the air conditioning off. If this were a Whitehall Brian Rix farce, the audience would be wetting themselves, but it’s not (the Whitehall farces were a series of five long-running comic stage plays at the Whitehall Theatre in London, presented by the actor-manager Brian Rix, in the 1950s and 1960s).

I have only ‘Red’ for breakfast. I finished the delicious blackberry jam yesterday.

It is hot here as I write this, on the computer, in the front non-air conditioned, room. The small fans just shift the air around and do not actually cool anything.

1.43pm
I will return to the room and grab some air-con. I ought to take lunch as I didn’t have breakfast, but my appetite eludes me. I do not have lunch.

4.57pm
I am about to go to work on The Blue Lotus next door, but it is a shared computer and it is being used. It is very frustrating to have to work like this. First, this morning the WiFi went off, now this. How to put out a magazine under these conditions?

Downstairs, Phany and Phanin have enlisted the help of several students to assist in the making of Khmer sausages. Those two young women are amazing.

I am finally at the computer re-designing some pages when dear Kosal brings an aluminum dinner tray. In it are home made sausages now cooked and cut into bites. There are grilled leaves containing cooked fish paste, which is similar to Malaysia's Otak-Otak, another section with a very leafy Khmer salad and yet another with a sweet chili sauce. It is a wonderful feast, even more so because it is authentic Khmer cooking. I am very lucky to be able to experience this.