Lucky for Me...

I got back to Cambodia late on Sunday night after a wonderful trip to the US. At first, I thought I had totally beat jet lag. I got a decent six hours of sleep Sunday night and woke feeling refreshed on Monday. By late afternoon, however, I was exhausted and, unfortunately, couldn't resist falling asleep at about 6:30pm. I woke at 1:00am absolutely unable to fall back asleep. I had a Bailey's on the rocks, nothing. I read for a bit, wide awake. I ate a bunch of food with a glass of milk, sleep still nowhere in sight. This, of course, made for a tough Tuesday, especially since I was to meet Shanti at the airport at 11:00pm. I nodded off a bit before leaving for the airport, but otherwise stayed awake for a full 24 hours, which led to a 'too tired to sleep' sort of sleep.

Wednesday was even tougher than Tuesday. I managed to make it until about 3:00pm, when a band started practicing for the evening's January 7th celebrations in Hun Sen park. Side note: January 7th is a controversial holiday which, to some is a celebration of the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge, and to others is a more somber date marking the start to the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. Anyways, the music, and the bass drum in particular, was extremely loud, penetrating my headphones and completely disrupting my concentration and causing immense frustration. I left work early to finish a few things from home.

On my way home, I stopped at the cell phone company, MobiTel. Since returning to Cambodia, I realized that I was unable to send any text messages, a significant problem in a country in which this is the preferred form of communication. Between the lack of sleep, the loud music, and the cell phone issues, I was not exactly in the most pleasant of moods. So when, as I parked my bike outside of MobiTel, I was struck with bird shit, I was none too pleased. I have heard and have been told that to be struck with the waste of a bird is lucky, but I can assure you that the moment that you are struck by flying fecal matter, luck is most certainly not the thing that comes to mind.

After a few minutes, however, I had to at least chuckle. After all, who even knew that there were birds in Phnom Penh? And maybe, it was in fact lucky. Perhaps it was because of the bird poop that I slept eleven hours last night. And perhaps it was the Ambien...