Oh hai November

Here comes my favourite month of the year again, and perhaps this year a little even more special than the rest. I think my frequency of posting has dropped this year as a whole, and now that there are so much things to update about in my mind. Where should I begin then. 

My last day of school has officially come to an end yesterday for the semester, though with an outstanding finals waiting for me still next Saturday. It has been a special semester as I move onto the fourth and final year, especially with the 10 days spent on a floating village in Cambodia for my field investigation module. If the previous semesters were like short 2.4km Napfa, then Y4S1 I would say, it's like running a long marathon, with deadline every other weeks starting from as early as second week till the very last. I wonder which system I prefer, and which is more beneficial for us as learners. 

Maybe I want to focus a little more on the Cambodia trip for now, for the sake that I decide to look back at this in the future. We spent a total of five days on the floating village of Chnok Tru, Kampong Chnang, about two and half hour drive away from the Phnom Pehn city. Take away from the week long stay was a 3000 word report on the ethnicity in the village, a 3 minute video and a scrapbook, and also cliche as it is, some memories that's been specially created and will always be a part of me, whether I like it or not. I guess I was really grateful for my project mates in this, though I have almost selectively chosen to be in the same team with somebody I foresee myself comfortable to be with, and it might have turned out as the wisest choice for the trip. I guess the people I work are really important when it comes to a project within such close intimacy. Sometimes I wonder where do I stand in terms of the standard of work I produce for projects all these while, how do others perceive them. Are they of acceptable, or are they absurd and making no sense, do they sense how desperate I tried to piece and cite the researcher, or do they think I know my shit so damn well that it's kind of well written? Oh well heehe.  

Back to this, staying on water for the very first time made me realize how inconvenient yet intrigued these floating lives are. That everyone you go you got to rely on a boat, that almost every bit of your livelihood is dependent on water, whether you fancy it or not. You do your business at one side of the house, and 3 meter away your host mum is washing the food you are about the have for dinner, you saw the fishes eat your very own poop as you pop them into the river, and next morning you see them on your plate for breakfast, how strangely familiar that we are all part of the bigger cycle. Life is simple on the river, but not completely different from the greater society we came from, villagers users phones, though computer is a rare scene. Men in the village drink from morning to night, growing their own weed in the back yard. Very laid back kind of living, I wonder if they crave to exchange their lives with those in the city, or are they contented with their life as it is. 

It was a bizarre experience tasting mouse meat, snake meat and the balut which I never dare to try. I think whenever we go to a new place, there are some things we want to 'go local', and we bring in our own culture for the rest. Like how after the week long stay, we still couldn't bring ourselves to scoop up the river water to brush our teeth like any other villager, like how we couldn't imagine bathing 1m away from our poops ( though we know that fishes must have eaten them all ). And hence the one and only photo I decided to feature, of us bathing in the flooded forest area every evening with our Cambodian buddy who was our translator for the week. 

And oh yeah moving on to the purpose of the trip, I think it was really to get our hands dirty, put on the 'geographers' lens and learn new things from these villagers, who has much more to offer and teach than we could imagine. Focusing on ethnicity and religion was a more boring topic compare to many other groups, and our interviews were kind of, dull and boring I guess. At time I  wonder why are we doing this, drilling villagers on something that's less talked about among them for the sake of our report. But on the flip side, it was only through the interviews we are able to pen down the report, which eventually passed on the knowledge of this village to reach out to more. Sometimes I wonder does our identity as researchers going down to study them put ourselves in a more 'privileged' position as oppose to them who are 'less off' and establish any sorts of unequal power relations. Ohwell.

The week long stay there was not as touch as I imagine it to be for we were lucky to get allocated to a pretty well to do family with electricity that ran on huge battery boxes and we were well sheltered. Though the mini storm on two of the nights made me felt like the house is getting torn apart and we are getting flushed downstream to nowhere the entire night hahaha. And I guess ultimately I knew I'm just a passer who is going to come back to comfortable Singapore at the end of the week. During the stay I wondered how long am I willing to stay there for, well, I guess a month might just be the maximum. 

Teehe, wonder if Sheryl if gone mad if she saw her face here.