Power outages bring reflection
After walking some kind of walk today, I managed to get back to the house to face an hour and some power outage. These things happen in Cambodia so no one should ever take things like electricity for granted. Normally though here, the power seems remarkably stable. Unlike Phnom Penh where monthly outages are planned. Fun times.
Down the street from our house is a party going on. It’s a house warming thing I am told where the monks show up to bless the house, food is served, people gather. I can hear the music all the way down the little dirt road that goes to our place. I have to say it’s better than a funeral here. It does give me time to fill out the blogging prompt I silently set for myself when I was eagerly anticipating the power’s return. Mostly so I could turn on the fan and again hide out in the bedroom. Now I can look back with some short term memory ability to see what I was thinking and doing during the outage:
- music. I have a nice playlist in Spotify so I can listen on cell service and I have plenty of 4g data. The music transports me all over the place. A song reminding me of my ex wife comes and goes. Yeah. Kinda like she did. Then a song by Death Cab I really like that reminds me of traveling with no real itinerary. Ain’t that the best way to just go?
- what I did when. Do you play this game? I kinda use google photos for this. It will happily show me photos from roughly a year or 10 ago and let me see perhaps what I was doing then. Like in 2019. I was wandering around that year. I started in Singapore. Went to Malaysia. Thailand (big mistake) and then back to Phnom Penh I think and Vietnam a few times and just kinda did things. Then I left for Taiwan and ended up in Manila which I left for KL and Saigon. It did not feel like a rush or a challenge. I just did what when.
- people that have entered and exited. Some I am happy to have seen do both. Others I wonder what I did wrong. It never does last. I am no friend of guilt or desire to relive some previous moment. It has gone by. I cannot just relive it all and have never wished to. I do wonder about some of the people and I imagine somewhere in the tenuous grasp of time I have wronged them and it stuck.
- life now in Siem Reap. I like life now here for the most part. I am not generally a positive or a negative person. I just am. If someone takes me a certain way, I think they are judging. I just go with that feeling when there is no power.
- writing in this and that. I sometime think on just the writing. What I want to say that I sometimes get close to and other times when I think somehow I need a complex PKM, second brain, zettelkasten. Then I realize, with gratitude, I have nothing to put in any of those things. There are no atomic or subatomic or evergreen notes and nothing to link together of them. Instead I write the journal, find an idea and create that wikilink. Then I can write on that. I still reflect on it all though. Because I’m human of course. Honestly though with no power, I have no sense of wanting any of that. Instead what I want is just this writing. This is enough for me.
wife home and writing
Now the power decides it’s time to return and I can end this soulful regression. My wife gets back on the moto so I take some time to tease her. She tells me of my dinner tonight and gets some food for herself. She has blood sugar and blood pressure problems so food is very important to her. Eating better food. Or at least she tries.
I also then can write without having to deal with the power outage and its insistence I remember and categorize. I think on my morning and the coffee stop along the street.
The fun part of this is just sitting on some street and watching Cambodian people come and go. The baristas dealt with me with good humor and made my iced coffee with less ice and more coffee. Thanks for that! I could then walk and find out as I made my way home that the power was out so it all goes back to the start. And the end.
That’s the end of this reflection most likely. Unless I decide to just write more tomorrow. Hopefully with no power outage.
Finishing up with a few little things on reflection. The power came back. I left this morning wanting a place for coffee that I reached. In hours I will do the same as the power. Go back and find mixed feelings. Pretty sure no one had those feelings when the power restored.
This blogpost deserves its time so here it goes.
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