My friend Ericson sent me this link and I found it to be quite useful. Thanks Eric! If you use iTunes, check this out! It’s like a breath of fresh air!

It’s like WHOA!

Let me know how you like the new settings!

I’m spending the extended weekend back home in Long Beach with the familia. I didn’t get a chance to debrief with them after I got back from Cambodia, so this weekend’s just going to be me trying to make sense out of my experiences there, with the help of my family of course…

On my flight down here, I was reading Asian American X, an anthology of short stories and essays from the perspectives of Asian Americans of my generation. While I was reading Vinh Nguyen’s piece, “Comings and Goings,” I was suddenly overcome by the emotions he was writing about: the feeling of coming full circle, of returning to one’s roots, of immersing yourself in your culture again, of being home. How does one make sense of it all? That’s been a question I’ve been grappling with ever since I got back. I took a little more than 1200 photos during my one month stint there and I can’t even begin to explain how each day there has forever changed me in some way, shape, or form. How, indeed, do I begin to describe the amazing people I met and their incredible stories? One story at a time I guess…

SHE-ROES

My mother is my hero. When we first arrived in the US, she worked two waitressing jobs just so my dad could go to school and learn English. She worked hard to make sure that food was always on the table. She made my sister and me go to Chinese school despite our hatred for it. She kept our family together: through the war, through the refugee camp, through the hunger pains. She kept us alive, and for that, I am forever grateful. The women I met in Cambodia were no less extraordinary…

A woman’s work is never done.

The Grandmother

She sat boht-jeunged (prayer pose), unmoved and stoic letting her words move us instead…

I’m 47 years old. All of my siblings and parents are dead, they were killed by the Khmer Rouge. My husband died 10 years ago, leaving me to provide for my 5 kids alone, one of whom has already been claimed by AIDS, she was only 19. Her husband had had sex with a prostitute that had AIDS, and had brought it home with him. Unfortunately, he didn’t tell her–not even when she had their daughter. My granddaughter could have been saved if we had known that her mother was HIV+, but we didn’t, and so she breastfed her, and now, only her daughter, my granddaughter, remains. I’ll probably outlive her too. In order to pay for the hospital bills, my other daughter took a loan from an extended relative. They told her that they would lend her the money if she came to work at their fruit stand in the North country. Seeing that her sister and niece were sick, she agreed. The loan was given, and a week later, my daughter was trafficked into the sex industry.

…yet another survivor…

…innocence stolen…

The Fighter

AIDS has surpassed landmines as the #1 killer in Cambodia, quite a formidable position to hold given the fact that Cambodia has the most landmines in the world. That said, when HIV/AIDS is contracted, many in Cambodia readily accept it as a death sentence and refuse to fight, thinking that living is futile once the virus is contracted. For Bong Lim though, it’ll take more than a deadly virus to prevent her from sharing her gift with the world. She is a master of sewing and is using her talents to teach girls who have HIV/AIDS how they can still earn a living despite the taboo associated with AIDS. Katie and Christy worked with Bong Lim and her girls and taught them to knit. They made brochures for their organization, Women Helping Women with AIDS, and showed that compassion is a universal currency that is needed and accepted by all…

…the humanity!

…thicker than blood…

Bong Lim and myself

The Teacher

In a country where children were taken from their families to be trained to serve as judge, jury, and executioner of the very same people who gave them life, one would assume that compassion and love would have drowned in the bloodbath, but one need only look to the classroom of this amazing teacher to find the contrary…

She taught them more than the Khmer alphabet, she taught them listen to one another, she taught them peace, she taught them hope…

A clean future starts with clean hands….

…and clean teeth too!

…yes, I see hope…

…now is their time…

From 1975 on, the women of Cambodia have served as the stewards for survival. Upon their shoulders alone, Cambodia has been able to weather the hemorrhaging of a society brought about by hate, and the false hopes and broken promises from the international community. These are the mothers, the aunts, the sisters, and the grandmothers who are all my heros, my she-roes…

It’s Thursday. The problem with Thursday is that it’s not Friday…

The day has just started, and already, it’s gone to shits. Why are some clients so impossible? I just don’t get it. Argh! I really don’t feel like being at work today. Boo!

I was up at 4am PST/7am EST today on a conference call with New York, and to make sure that a very important package was received. There was a new delivery person that was used and they didn’t know to go up to the 2nd floor to deliver the package, so they simply left and were going to retry delivering the package before 10:30am EST. It needed to get there at 8:30am. Fortunately, I was up and was tracking this package and noticed the delivery exception so that I could get on the horn and call up FedEx and the recipient to alert them of the problem. A big thanks goes out to FedEx and the visa service for going out of their way to help get this package through. Because of your efforts, a mother and her son are going to the UK…

Before Cambodia, I probably would have verbally thrashed FedEx for being so incompetent as to not know where to go to deliver a package, but my experiences in Cambodia have since tempered my impatience for ineptitude. Shit happens, and it happens all the time, so why let it get to you all the time? The important part that often gets neglected is how people react in these very difficult situations. In this case, the FedEx delivery person was kind enough to attempt the delivery a second time, the operators helped greatly with this as well, and my visa contact in the office stalled their delivery car so they could wait for my package. People helping people–what a concept! It’s moments like these that make the rigorous and demanding nature of my work worthwhile…

We can be truly amazing when we want to be, so why not do it more often?

I’m still feelin’ the jetlag, so as soon as I start to feel better, I’ll work on updating y’all on the second half of my Cambodia trip…

I’m in Singapore now, almost home, can’t wait! Just gotta get through Tokyo and LA, then it’s home, sweet home! See you all soon!

Today, I’m off to Siem Reap. While I’m looking forward to seeing the great temples and breathtaking achievements of the Khmer people, I did want to take a quick moment to thank everyone for helping to make this trip possible, whether it be through kind words of encouragement and/or generous donations. Thank you all for believing in the cause and, more importantly, thank you for believing in me. I wanted to send you each a postcard, but for some reason or other didn’t have your physical address, so I hope that once I get back, we can catch up at some point and I can share my pictures and experiences with you. Thank you all once again!

To my Poch: Happy 10 months hon! I love you and can’t wait to see you when I get back! Muah!

So in Memoirs of a Geisha, Mameha tells Sayuri that when she can stop a man in his tracks with one glance, then she is “ready to be geisha…”

Now, with my mohawk, I, too, am “ready to be geisha.” Haha. Everywhere I go, people stop in their tracks and STARE. People on motos slow down, occasionally running into the person in front of them, so they can STARE. People across the street in their little shops come out and STARE. Why is that? Some people hold it in until after they’ve passed me, then they talk and laugh. Others comment in Khmer telling me that my hair is “loy-ah” (cool). They don’t think I understand them until I thank them, in Khmer, then their jaw drops because they thought that I was Japanese the entire time. Who’d have thunk that the Japanese looking boy with the mohawk was Khmer after all, right?! Haha, I think it’s hilarious how something as simple as hair can make such a big statement and illicit so much attention, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Since cutting my hair, I’ve gotten more smiles, laughs, and stares here than I ever thought possible just from a haircut, but I guess it’s not such a bad response to evoke from people given the difficult circumstances they’ve encountered already. I may not have made a lasting impact on people in the area of human rights, but I am proud to say that I have made people smile here. If anything, this has been a sojourn for smiles, and this countryside has been littered with it.

Forget sarcasm, forget embarrassment, for blessed are we who are able to smile and, more importantly, are smiled upon…

Oh Cambodia, you truly are beautiful! Today is my last full day in Battambang and tomorrow, we’ll be back in Phnom Penh again for the remaining two weeks of the program. I have had an amazing time here in the countryside, and I prefer it over the city any day. We’ve worked with and become friends with many local Cambodians here in the Battambang area, and they are truly amazing people. No matter how long I stay here, I don’t think I will ever be able to understand how these people are able to continue to smile in the face of such struggles and hardships. The locals I’ve worked with thus far have taught me more in the past couple of weeks than I could ever teach them in a lifetime. To my new friends here in Battambang, your generosity and courage are the beacons by which the rest of this world should strive towards, and I thank you tremendously for the wonderful memories and experiences you’ve given me… In order to mark the halfway point of my sojourn, I could think of no better way than with a photo vomit. Sorry, I’d have posted earlier if it weren’t for the fact that the internet is crawlingly slow here, and photobucket’s website is also loading at a snail’s pace…

violence breaks out against those fighting for peace

STUNG MEANCHEY – Garbage Site

life has handed these people a bad hand of cards

scavenging for recyclables and food

Alli and her new friend

life can be a cruel and lonely place

…especially when we must brave it alone…

…but in certain crevices of the world…

hope still remains…

me embracing the future

BATTAMBANG

Ptea Teuk Dong

our living accommodations

the delegation

the kids

the beautiful countryside

the spider we had to deal with

me, in a hole, haha

a glimpse of what Angkor Wat will be like

getting back to my roots

cathartic

the hidden beauty of the country life

my friend the praying mantis, she just ate her husband

my friend Herbert, he just finished eating a cricket we named Jiminy, haha

this is what we slept under to keep the mosquitoes out

Siobhan’s bonding experience

Jessie wows the kids

Christie feels her biological clock ticking

absolutely precious

THE SURPRISE

I want a fobby haircut

the process is underway

the final product, a mohawk!

I convinced Christie and Jenelle to shave their heads with me,haha

Christie and I sportin’ our new do’s

The Bald and the Beautiful

me and the precious one!

me and my new little buddy

haha, I love this kid!

the dynamic duo, haha

BUILDING A HOUSE

work it girls!

this wall is heavy!

Chong, the house-building monk!

oooh, the frame of the house is up

go team, go!

hammering away

I was getting really into it, haha

I hammered my thumb twice, I sweated a lot, and I think I got sunburnt that day, but never has so much trouble been more worthwhile…

Here’s to two more weeks!

I have a surprise…

but you’re going to have to wait…

I LEARNED HOW TO RIDE A BIKE TODAY! WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

…and I almost hit an old lady too…