Photos

Proof that it is actually me typing up these posts. Photo at the bottom was actually taken by a Burmese couple that now live in thailand. First Burmese people I've ever met--sorry, but the python doesn't count as a person.

Also, skype might be great for those of you wishing to save money on long-distance and international phone calls, but its annoying as heck to those of us who have to listen to your conversations in an internet cafe. It might as well be another version of using your cell phone in public places. I'm almost tempted to start up an internet site where people can post what they overheard from people using their cellphone in public. Its not that I don't want to learn about your life--I'm sure its incredibly interesting--its just that I don't care about every mundane detail. If you are going to broadcast the details of your life to everyone sitting/standing around you, then at least make it juicy. None of this mundane mumbo jumbo. What I wouldn't give to be fluent in several different european and asian languages right now. Imagine the stuff I could learn!

Meanwhile, it appears that news of Celine Dion's musical death has been greatly exaggerated. It seems that Laos and Cambodia missed the memo sent out to the entire world that "my heart will go on"--the titanic song. Don't pretend you haven't heard it or know it. You know exactly what it is and have the aspirin bill to prove it--should have vanished like the Y2K scare. Yet I've heard it more times in the past three weeks than I've heard it in the past decade--some people even use it as their personalized cell phone ring, a pet peeve of mine that I've previously discussed.

So, the french couple in Phnom Penh. Proof that smoking ages you? They both looked to be in their late twenties. Turns out I was older than both of them. The girl could speak okay english--but the guy could hardly speak it--and they had spent the past several months driving in a camper van around australia. What's interesting is when you apologize to people (europeans) who can't speak english well, and tell them the words that you do know. With me, its usually a mixture of basic words (hello, goodbye, etc.), historical terms (ie. in french, pied noir--name given to the french colonists who lived in algeria), and your good old fashioned cuss words.

This is usually bound to create some sort of laughter, especially when you manage to mispronounce the cuss word or term in question. For whatever reason, I forget that the "silent e" in english came from french, and typically pronounce french words with the "e" at the end, like I would in german--the closest thing I have to a second language. So, when I was telling them what I knew in french, I kept saying (phonetically) mer-deh, and they both gave me a quizzical look as if to say what the heck is this american talking about. After some gesturing they finally realized that the term I knew was merde, pronounced phonetically as merdt.

If you watch hockey, though, you'd know that the french or at least the quebecois french word for stop "arete" is no longer being used by those in montrealers. In a rare case of linguistic unity, both the anglo-montrealers and the french-montrealers now agree that the debate over whether to use "stop" or "arete" on the red octagonal signs is now over. They've chosen "Halak" as a replacement. If you watch or follow hockey, then you get the joke. If you don't, then I have to explain that "Halak" is the last name of the Montreal goaltender that has had a breakout playoff year and is the main reason why Montreal, the statistically worst team to qualify for the playoffs out of both conferences, has managed to upset both the NHL's regular season champions (the Washington Capitals) and the defending Stanley Cup Champions (Pittsburgh Penguins). Of course, the magical playoff run appears to be over, as les Habs are down 3-1 to the Philadelphia Flyers, but the boys in rouge have rallied once already from a 3-1 series deficit, and the Flyers themselves overcame a 3-0 series deficit this playoff season.

In the west, San Jose continues to prove that they are the hockey version of the Dallas Mavericks--great in the regular season and talented enough to be the favorites for the stanley cup, but can never get their act together in the playoffs (read: big time chokers). They are down to Chicago 3 games to none.