Kampuchea Crossings

Bump to baby on the beaten expat track

Flags Campaign: Meet the World

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Check out this project from Grande Reportagem, a Portuguese news magazine that is recognised for its investigative reports and excellent photo-journalism. The “Flags Campaign” focuses on the concept of “Meet the World.” The creative team for this project used the colors on flags to transmit statistics about social and political issues relevant to various countries. The statistics were thoroughly researched and come from information given by the United Nations, Amnesty International, and other national institutions.

The US flag is quite funny…

Flags Campaign: Meet the World

Chiang Mai, Thailand: Tourists on the Prowl

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K Kelly has finally arrived in– well, somewhere hereabouts Asia, and was recently spotted in Chiang Mai, Thailand, trying the patience of geckos, who are widely believed among reptilian experts to be imperturbably tolerant. But apparently, tall Anglo tourists poking formidable camera lenses at their noses waiting for a striking pose can trigger a long-dormant evolutionary response of sighing.

“This is a groundbreaking discovery. Who knew that geckos can sigh?” Albert Felbrek of the Center for Gecko Studies at Harvard University gushed yesterday. A gaggle of animal rights activists were gathered outside the traumatized gecko’s cement crack abode while Mr Kelly bewilderedly insisted he did not intend to harm the urban wildlife. Fellow traveler D Hirschey declined to comment, inquiring instead for the nearest market stall so she can unload her person of hard-earned greenbacks in exchange for useless dust-collecting ethnic trinkets to bring back home to friends in the USA.

Mr Kelly was also advised to stay AWAY from the rebel-held vicinity of the moving Burma-Thailand border, and keep to the relative safety of tourist-mauled market regions, a suggestion eagerly appreciated by his shopaholic travel partner, who vehemently insists she is just supporting the Millennium Development Goal of Reducing Poverty by purchasing all tribal knick-knacks in sight.

We await in eager anticipation that mass email detailing scrapes and misadventures along the lines of “I am alive and in X. Love, K”.

The Mighty Mighty English

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Unbeatable. Unstoppable. A most superlative cast of characters is literally a word or two shy of the million word mark. Tres cool tres cool all! Here’s some more lingual trivia:

There are 6,912 living languages per the language clock on Language Monitor.

The top spoken languages, in order, per Info Please :
Chinese
English
Hindustani
Spanish
Russian
Arabic
Bengali
Portuguese
Malay-Indonesian
French

“According to traditional estimates, neighboring Germany has a vocabulary of about 185,000 and French fewer than 100,000, including such Franglais as as le snacque-barre and le hit-parade.” (This site has English at 500,000 official words and another 500,000 uncatalogued.)
Words in the Language

The lowdown on the English:
NPR: 900,000 Words and Counting
Chinglish: Word in a Million
USA Today: Do You Speak American?

ode to the word

onwards ho with the passage of time
out on a limb won’t stop on a dime

what’s a word to a lyric or a riddle in a drivel
lingo to a language or a tickle to a pickle

i’m plunking words on a rhyme, aiming for a pun
dining on a lentil under the singe-ing tropical sun

here a word defiled, and there spawns anew
so there you have it, now i have two

one word, two words, three, four
all else fades to myth and lore

lingual dexterity
on a vocal propensity

listen and hear
words daily appear

Remote ordering extra fries

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It is Khmer New Year– Chunpo Chnam Thmei to y’all by the way– and despite all counterparts in the Ministry of Health off on vacation and/or firing short of a synapse for weeks before and after the holidays, we foreigners are here at work. That craving for things not-so-Cambodian has struck again. And for some odd reason those golden arches plucks at the fringes of fancy– it isn’t really what I’m hankering for, but McDonalds are momentarily reminiscent of the familiar {{shoot me now}}}.

So check this out: How about remote-ordering extra fries? Ah the things I miss out on…

In Other News…

Deanna Hirschey and her fanny pack have been spotted in Cambodia fretting over endangered monkeys at Wat Phnom and feeding hungry street children Italian food.

And Doualy Xaykaothao, IRP Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and Foreign Correspondent Extraordinaire, will be LIVE on C-Span Television on Wednesday 12 April 1400 EST (Daylight Savings Time).

And this from Scrapple Face:
The United States will not seek a seat on the new United Nations Human Rights Council, according to U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who said the application for the post included the question: “Have you stopped beating your prisoners?”

news you can lose…

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Coming up for air….

US Won’t Get Into Civil War, But Will Sort of Hang Out in the General Vicinity

White House Issues New Port Security Guidelines
“Every friendship requires vulnerability,” Mr. McClellan said. “We demonstrate our love for our friends in the United Arab Emirates by trusting them, without regard to previous wrongs.”

…and Jon Stewart on Larry King Live–cuz he’s da bomb

Jon joined Larry King last night and talked about the administration and Democrats in depth. Larry asks him if he’d like things to be bad, kinda like O’Reilly saying that left wing websites want the US to fail because Bush is in charge.
Video-WMP low res Video-QT
(transcript)

KING: You don’t want Medicare to fail?

STEWART: Are you insane?

KING: No.

STEWART: You’re literally asking me if I would prefer — yes, Larry, what I’m saying to you as a comedian I want old people to suffer, old and poor people to suffer. That is — that is — what we want is — what seems absurd to me is the length that Washington just seems out of touch with the desires of Americans to be spoken to as though they are adults.

I mean when you listen to Bush’s speeches, and I’m leaving the Democrats out because I honestly don’t feel that they make an impact. They have 49 percent of the vote and three percent of the power. At a certain point you go “Guys, pick up your game.”

But Bush, you know the other day when he had the speech about us being addicted to oil, he says those things as though, you know, he just thought of it and we’re disagreeing with him, like everybody’s been saying that. Jimmy Carter said it I think in 1978.

And he comes out, “What people don’t realize is we’re addicted to foreign oil” and he’s saying it like you’re going “Get out of here.” We’re addicted. You don’t get it people. You know he was the guy on the stump a few years ago making fun of hybrid cars because it wasn’t manly. And — and his vice president did shoot a 78-year-old man in the face. Aaron Burr was the last vice president to shoot a guy in the face, Alexander Hamilton.

KING: And that was a duel.

STEWART: That was a duel based on personal integrity. This vice president thought a 78-year-old man was a bird. It happens. What are you going to do?

KING: We’ve declined as a society right?

STEWART: I cannot tell you how many times I’ll turn around and go, “Grandpa,” oh no it’s a pigeon.

Merriest sentiments this side of the Rock

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Adapt? Haa bumbug!

Avian flu paranoia thwarted my joneses for that turkey dinner spread. We were told by the maître d’ at a premier establishment, Le Royale, how pleasantly surprised they were that all three whole turkeys (quote unquote don’t forget the emphasis) they imported for the Thanksgiving Dinner buffet were consumed…. Hmm, to feign appropriate shock astride a diametric quip of american gluttony on tip of tongue…. Likewise in the sweetest misguided gesture, some colleagues this week inflated a large squash in the office and decorated this jack with blinking lights. What is–?? It’s a christmas pumpkin, I’m told cheerily.

:-| Oh.

Riposte-riddled mirth in season’s greetings: Priceless

Cheers to y’all living abroad and/or apart of friends and family! May your yuletide (or other) fancies be fulfilled– safe travels, sensible indulgence, and always, much much love. I hope in the new year to see more of you guys–