Another day goes by, a day in the life

Nearly a month ago, I moved into my ramshackle abode. It’s a 6-unit apartment complex located near the front of someone’s property off a faintly lit, pot-holed rocky dirt road that is mostly muddy in the rainy season. I live downstairs in the middle and cannot complain an inch about my neighbors. I rarely see them or hear them and when I have, they have been pleasant encounters. Even the other family that lives basically out my front door are nice people. No complaints.

But I do have complaints. Oh yes I do. I hate when my key gets stuck in the front door. I jiggle it around and eventually it goes, but I hate that one second delay. I could probably find a little oil and dribble it into the keyhole, but I don’t have oil lying around. I also hate how there is sometimes a multi-second delay before the long florescent tubes light up my dirty pink walls. Standing there in the dark before I move along just in case someone is standing there in the darkness waiting to pounce. So I breathe and hear it flicker….come on…. it hesitates again and finally it goes and there was nothing there after all.

I hate cold showers every day. They are fantastic after an evening run or a morning session at the gym because they do exactly what you’d imagine. But when you’re not in the mood for a cold shower and have no other alternative, it’s not the most pleasant experience. It’s like touching an earthworm and seeing it recoil into itself. Or feeling that the shock from the cold might actually trigger a heart attack. Here I am in Cambodia complaining about cold showers. I can’t even imagine what a cold shower in a cold climate might actually feel like.

I do not like rogue mosquitoes. And there is always one on the loose in my apartment. Waking up with itchy ankles is just another thing to think about and I already think too much. Thank you very much. I’d like to leave the back door open, but that’s just inviting trouble. The extra light and the breeze are not worth the extra time spent trying to locate the troublesome mosquito in the poorly lit interior of my home. They are usually easier to capture in the bathroom when I’m taking a shower as I can spray the entire room and if I’m lucky, knock the fucker to the floor and take care of him without too much anguish.

I do like my bathroom aside from lowering my head upon exiting in order not to bash my forehead on the door jam. That’s never pleasant. Even the towel rack that falls off the wall if you’re not careful doesn’t bother me too much. You learn to live with it. I have a toilet seat that stays put, a toilet that flushes, a sink that doesn’t leak, a mirror that swivels and access doors from both the “kitchen” and my bedroom. Quite a luxury if you ask me. I even have a fan that works to semi-aerate the otherwise confined box known as a bathroom.

I hate sand. Unless there is a reason to be in it or on it, such as lying next to a scantily clad female who is horny and wants to roll around in it. Then I like sand. But generally I don’t enjoy finding it in my hair, my crack or in my pockets. Gets under the fingernails, fucks up the keypad on your mobile phone and could wreck all kinds of havoc with your digital camera or laptop if you’re not careful. The road leading to my heaven on earth is basically sand and that shit gets all over the place despite leaving my footwear either outside or just inside the front door. I hate it in my bed, rolling over to find sand sticking to your sweaty body is not an enjoyable experience. And despite sweeping the floor every day or more, it is not enough to keep it fully at bay. The sand wins every time.

Outside my front door, on a near daily occasion I am the lucky recipient of either a pile of ants, usually covering the corpse of an unlucky gecko or a torn up diaper thanks to the mangy dogs also residing in the gated complex. The gate is another story, which I will get to later. These dogs, aside from the occasional barking in the wee hours, generally do not bother me aside from their penchant for bringing me unwelcome gifts. But they are fucking mangy.

One has the dirtiest dreads you could imagine. Another has a mangled front leg and therefore hops around fairly gracefully for his rather unfortunate condition. And then there are the other little scruffy dirty white dogs chewing up diapers, sniffing asses, chasing tail and sunbathing in front of my stoop. Beat it! And when I leave the gate, there are always more on the pot-holed road getting in the way always wondering if they’re going to bite my legs and give me rabies. So far, so good.

They also generally have little fear. They sleep in the dimly lit streets at night and one night, even with my bicycle’s headlight on, I nearly hit three of them. Can’t fucking see those beasts in the shadows. Don’t want to hit a three-legged dog and leave him with just two. Just this morning, I saw another dog chewing up a diaper on the street connecting with my rocky lane. What is in these things?  I know some dogs have a penchant for eating shit, but this is just nasty.

Ok, the gate, the gate. I told you I’d get to it. The thing is locked nearly every night at half past eight or perhaps quarter til. Right before I’m usually leaving the house. Not that big of a deal you say. But it is. Unlock, slide the gates apart, move my bike to the other side, slide the gates back together, reach my hands through the gate and feed the lock back through the hole and click it closed getting grease on my fingers, which I proceed to wipe on the bars of the gate. Just one more unnecessary step in order to get out of the house. And when I come back home, do it all over again along with opening up another gate to lock my bicycle in the storage shed. Ballache if you ask me.

So, having said all of that, I hope to move out soon. Get to a more central location. Find a cheap guesthouse on a paved road. A place that has a fridge, wifi and perhaps even hot water. And no gate surrounding the place. And no dirty diapers outside my door. The only problem with a guesthouse is you end up having a lot of neighbors and some of them will be quiet and some will be noisy assholes. However, as with anything, you have the good and the bad. And you just deal. And in the grand scheme of things, life is good. I’m in Cambodia, living life. I’m alive, I’m fit and relatively healthy, eating good food every day and going about by bicycle. And today, it’s not raining. Things could be far, far worse, I just had to complain about something.