Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the last day of the Water Festival here in Cambodia. This is the fourth time I had spent this particular holiday here in Phnom Penh, unlike many of my friends and the people I know. Last year Kimrun and I planned a holiday outside Phnom Penh but we canceled it because we were going to Manila anyway. This year we discussed going to Laos but Kimrun couldn’t leave because of too much work.

Yesterday some of my friends dropped by for a merienda of ginataang mais (sweet corn in coconut milk). We started playing mahjong at around 3PM and stopped at almost 2 in the morning. For dinner, I served the beef bulalo that got cooked too late for lunch (I started late and the beef tendons took longer than I expected to become tender and gummy. Lou tried and served a recipe of pata tim (braised pork trotter) that was different from the one I am used to. It was different, but nice nonetheless.

Today the same group of friends is coming in an hour for day 2 of our mahjong tournament, the Phsar Kapko Open. I just informed them that we have to wrap up earlier because…

Tomorrow I am flying to Chiang Mai, Thailand to attend a training on conducting rapid assessment and response (RAR), a qualitative research tool, on drug use and HIV. Harm reduction has always been an interest of mine, and this is the first opportunity I had to receive training on the topic so I am grateful to the Technical Support Facility (TSF) for granting me a scholarship to be able to attend it.

I first came to Chiang Mai on May this year, and I must admit that I fell in love with the city right away. It is as relaxed as Phnom Penh, with all the modern amenities of a cosmopolitan city like Bangkok. The weather is wonderful as well. I even seriously considered moving to it when I got shortlisted for a job with an international NGO there, so I was a little let down when nothing came out of it. Anyway, I vowed to visit it again and I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. I am excited, even if my real purpose in being there is to learn and not to gallivant. Learning is fun, anyway. And if it seems not, I’ll make it fun, even for myself!

I’m blabbering…