It Starts!

I've already started to do the research loosely around asia and more specifically about Cambodia. I am often to be found on khmer440.com gleaning all the information I can about day to day life there, it absorbs me almost to the point of obsession. Why Cambodia then? Some people seem almost suspicious when I say Cambodia, vague memories of articles they have read about the khymer rouge or child sex slavery but it's not this. I was in country quite a while a number of years ago and the place just grabbed me, there's a kind of untamed wildness about the land. It's not like any other country I've ever been to, it's unpredictable and lawless, it's a challenge to get around, it's a contrast in and of itself, it's a wake up call to stay on your toes and start living and most of all it's not comfortable and easy like the most part of western europe. I met a westerner in sihanoukville who ran a guest house and he told me;

"First come the freaks, then come the backpackers and then come the tourists and thats when I leave."

Cambodia is a place you move to when you don't really fit in where you are from any more, when the round peg has been battered out of shape so much that it just does not go in the hole any longer. Thats my take on it anyway, I may be way off track for many people but thats my reasoning for the move. I am not a round peg any more and I want no more of this country. I want to live in ten different countries before I die, I've always been something of a transient, nomadic blood I guess.

I woke up in a police cell this morning. I had been out last night and spent ridiculous amounts of money on champagne and I was way too drunk to get home so the police took care of me for the night. It was the first time I have ever been in a cell, hard plastic bed with one blanket and no pillow and a small water disenser in the wall, and of course the best of all, they lock you in. It's a symptom, not of an alcohol problem but of a deep feeling of being grossly unsatisfied with my position in life right now. After release they contact the social services and tell them that they had you locked up as well, I imagine if you were to end up there often you would offered professional help.

I have a theory of life which I like to follow. A trained barista makes tens of thousands of cups of coffee in his life and they say that very occaisionally everything is just perfect, the perfect temperature, the perfect amount of coffee and the resulting espresso is known as a "god shot", it is perfect in every way. I like to look at life the same way, life should ideally be a series of god shots one leading quickly into the other, of course it never is but if you reach for the stars.....

I am convinced that I will not experience many god shots until I get out of this place, this is my motivation.

This blogg is my lifeline, I simply must get out and my therapy involves sharing the process with anyone who would like read it, kind of Oprah Winfrey really. This blogg is a burning fuse, in one years time my final entry will be written from Cambodia, newly arrived, or I will have self destructed along the way. This blogg is a ticking bomb.

I have been chasing demons all my life, it's really just a matter of time before I catch one.


I walk the world of men with head held high
'cause I know why
they do the things they do

they do believe
I am a theif
because I take my time

my time

the time I give them from my time
becomes their time
I must not whine
I must not complain
on their time

I have no time
my time is running out I shout
I need more time!

show me the way
to seize the day

'cause I must make a stand
or die today
I'm just not sure I can
because
I am not the man.



Lucien