Every Night & every Morn Some to Misery are Born Every Morn and every Night Some are Born to sweet delight Some are Born to sweet delight Some are Born to Endless Night ~ William Blake, c. 1803 Adele Bloch-Bauer was the youngest daughter of a wealthy Jewish banker, born in 1880 in Vienna. She … More The Pursuit of Happiness
Darwin mentioned the word love 95 times in the Descent of Man. He mentioned survival of the fittest twice. Five months ago, days after Paula’s major corrective surgery, Samantha and I left Seattle, bound for Phnom Penh. A week later I returned home to Australia. The last time Samantha or I saw her, Paula was … More Our Fields of Gold
For almost four of the seven years between 2007 – 2013 I was a long term foster Mum to three separate children over four separate periods. It started with a 12yo boy called Mathew at the end of 2006, through a series of often shocking events which I could never have predicted in my wildest … More Global Fortunes
The English word charity has a long and ambiguous history, depending on the source you refer to. It stems from the 4th century when St Jerome translated the Christian bible from Greek to Latin. He used “caritas” in place of “agape” which is referenced over 300 times in the Greek version and is said to … More Speaking of Charity
I had been in Cambodia about a week when one of the MSF expats announced excitedly that on a bicycle ride that day, she’d cycled through an Islamic village with a mosque and many people dressed in Islamic attire. Islamic people in Cambodia seemed a curious thing to our uninformed minds. Since then I’ve learned … More A Cross Cultural Islamic Experience
Mornings in Kampong Cham town and across Cambodia come alive the moment the first ray of sunlight blazes it’s long sharp streak through the fading night skies. The first market sellers start to appear on their motos piled high with what would, in my world, be truckloads of produce. When I appear a few hours … More Trying To Be A Noisy Neighbour
There is nothing serendipitous about the pair of old fools who turned up here yesterday on their big macho motorbikes, drank beer, became progressively louder, harrassed the waitress who is probably a third their age, and asked for directions to the nearest chicken farm. An old American guy who almost immediately stripped his shirt off, … More So Much Serendipity
“Another guy on the construction site, yesterday he fall down and die”. This was the translated reply when I asked after Dara’s parents yesterday. Googling to find out more about construction worker safety, the top search results are: Construction Workers’ Lives Hang in the Balance (November 2014, Cambodia Daily) Construction Worker Falls to Death at … More Hair Raising Inspirations
They are late and still building momentum but the Monsoons have arrived in South East Asia. With a bit of fluctuation, the Mekong River is rising steadily. Slowly surging out into the delta, rising waters are transforming the lowest level green fields into massive brown lakes. Soon many villages will become submerged in a combination … More Cultural Chasms
If I wasn’t so familiar with Cambodia, I might have been afraid. Samantha, convinced that “being in the forest” would be frightening to me, asked over the phone “are you afraid?” and I assured her honestly, not at all. For starters, I wasn’t exactly “in the forest”! Listening to music on the bus I’d missed … More It’s Calling Me Home
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