Mikes Thoughts

Starting Saturday

It’s meant to be a gradual evolution. From bed in the morning with the lights all out writing on the iPhone to deciding what I want is coffee and then music. Oh. I want the laptop instead. I have this love affair with the MacBook Air M1. It seems to just be so capable and easy to use. From writing this to that. I cannot imagine ever having another laptop but if I did do another, I think honestly it would be this same laptop. It just works and plays well with my mornings.

Anyways, back to Saturday. The days here in my little slice of the kingdom of wonder do not vary. I wake up with really no idea what it is I will do or will want to do. I know each day comes with no price tag. No set things I must do. My little retirement voice whispers,

this is the way life is supposed to be old retired guy.

That’s likely true. I feel like I did all the things for decades and not I get to do absolutely nothing. My wife shared this photo of us at the wedding this morning. It struck me that life indeed is this rather wonderful thing here. I’ve lost track of the people back in America or other places. That life has mostly faded into some background of some photo. Not one I call up every so often and puzzle over. It’s sad that a last talk with my daughter there ended worse than it started. I would always wish to not have some kind of estrangement with her. Truth is we can rarely influence what another person believes is the truth or what they are manipulated into believing by a person.

I had written a little on isolation and loneliness here. Both things are real and expats experience this just as well as nice things when they leave. They should be ready for them. I don’t feel either so badly and never have. I’m not a community sort of person and I don’t judge my life on social connections or bubbles or circles. Those things seem to be conventions on certain social media sites that like to see each person belong to one or more. I do feel that forever here is this sense of being apart. I cannot ever imagine being more Khmer. Or wanting more expat connections. I guess I’m a mongrel. I take some of this and that.

Maybe that’s what some of this blog is about. This mix. How a person can find more and less at the same time and be happy with both. Saturday becomes a thing. I don’t know which thing. Maybe a coffee thing. Now it’s the coolness of these mornings. How Saturday edged in. How coffee will take me away for a walk. How my wife gives me this unconditional love surrounded by teasing. I never thought to have all this again. So sometimes I flit back and feel like I have so little and yet so much here. Maybe when some expats dream of some life here and find the current reality devoid, they picture some other life. I never did. So today seeing both sides of my life here I cannot imagine being any different than how I am.

I’ll continue to tell my little story here. The blog really is about the story. What I see being these connections. Maybe mentioning how I see them working.

Walking to whatever

Coffee definitely. Part of my daily life is to enjoy the things I carve out for myself myself. The walk every day takes me. The stop for coffee always is a stop along my way. So here I am. Fame cafe. A coffee chain throughout Siem Reap and maybe further. Always seems inviting. Easy to do. It’s sad really because the other place I would have gone is no more. It was really nothing. A small place with few tables. It has wonderful WiFi and the ac always seemed so nice. Usually full of young Khmer workers. Now gone.

So all this is a Saturday. Kind of same same. Yet different. From that morning to walking to coffee. Always feel the same same. But so different.