Almost but not quite killed, the bonsai!

Introducing some plants into the office for greenery was spontaneous idea one Friday afternoon. $8 later a bonsai a foot high in simple green oval pot, a single stem variegated leafy plant and a shrub were added to a shared office room. As a new staff member the action was treated with distrust by colleagues; what was the meaning of my action? No one else had been so outrageous as to add their own plants!

Within weeks confetti of small dark leaves scattered around my computer. The bonsai was seriously unhappy! This well established, distinguished decoration out of living matter is struggling. A nude dry bonsai is no joke. No one can take the bonsai in, without wondering what the ….?, as almost all its wealth of greenery swirls in the fan’s breeze. Three remaining upper branches with leaves sat above spindly naked arms. Should I take it home into a cooler, airy environment? Clearly its unhappy in its new environment. What to do? Exit humbly or wait and see what happens. The distress had stopped two thirds along the bonsai or yet to die? Cruelty to the human spirit, to watch that shock of new environment onto the bonsai, that was already loved by so many in its short-term addition to the space.

A few more weeks later light green scatters over the lower branches. A miracle of growth! Seemingly arriving all at once after a weekend of its quiet without humans, the tiny sprouts indicate new life. The bonsai has rallied its spirit! Slowly slowly those shoots develop into small leaves. A different dilemma emerges, as the bonsai gains in confidence, the human need to constrain and consign some of those shoots to death; all in the name of keeping the bonsai in the elegant style previously created. Snipping some of the green shoots away so as to keep the shape, does no harm thankfully.

Joining a new space and creating a way to grow into the new environment can almost kill! Yet the wait for acclimatizing is worth it. The partial breaking of spirit, of almost giving up on settling in is on public display as also is the gaining of some equilibrium and tentatively setting forth with one’s own new green shoots of ideas; some shoots will be nipped away immediately all in the name of maintaining harmony while others will be allowed to flourish, contributing to the overall effect.

Sentimental; where is that hat?

Home is where my hat hangs. I have said this many times to the eternal question of where is home, as I have criss-crossed over Australia for work and leisure and now living in Cambodia since 2005. The idea of home was so simple when younger. Where ever I had my meager belongings, including the above quoted hats, was home. I had no ongoing connection to the country town where I completed my schooling due to family breakup and the eventual relocation of both parents. Conveniently they ended up only 3 hours apart on either side of Sydney so over the years I have got to know Sydney as I visit, individually, family. Having never lived in or near Sydney though, it’s not in anyway ‘home’.

The last two times I have visited Australia I lived in a remote Cambodian province that was far from the bustling modern Asian capital of Phnom Penh. Far away physically and culturally from fast internet, bookstores, daily newspapers and groceries I immediately loved the remote location and in 3 years my happiness and sense of ‘home’ only grew. It was definitely and easily where my hat was hanging!

Then the change in where and what was home, as I acknowledged it was time to move on, took place. The change was due to wanting new work challenges and time for cosmopolitan distractions such as art galleries, opportunity for making new friends, options for exercise and a fast variety of food.

But now 3 months after the relocation to Phnom Penh where is home? My hat is hanging in a charming, homely and secure apartment in inner city. Yet is it home? Its not home in the simplified way that Ratanakiri was immediately and absolutely home. Now I confuse myself, as I vaguely think of home as Ratanakiri. It’s vague they as I not really believe its home. It’s where I felt at home but already the town has moved on without me and it’s no longer where my hat hangs. Physically I am here in the city but I feel like a long-term visitor.

How complicated when I also think of Australia as home. My hat is not hanging there?! I will visit there for 6 half weeks in the southern hemisphere spring and I am really looking forward to it. Will it be home? It will be emotionally wonderful to be in Australia but intellectually distressing as I try not to take the materialism and bureaucracy as criminal behaviour by compatriots! Aaaaaggh, where is home! I panic at times? Have I lost home?

It’s complicated now. I liked the simplified time of having the ‘where my hat was hanging’ definition. What has happened to that sense of space and place as I get older? There was no agonizing over definitions of home in my 20s or early 30s.

Very traditional Buddhism believes that if we move too fast and too many times, our spirit will lose itself as it moves slower than our physical body. Such a concept might suitably be used to guess that my spirit is still making it way down along the Mekong River, as it leaves our northern home of Ratanakiri. By the time my spirit rejoins myself, maybe I will know where the hat is hanging.

How low is ‘low season’?

Annual figures are that more than 1 million people visit Siem Seap, so as to see the amazing Angkor Wat Temples. That’s a lotta bods, I think to myself, again. Spread out unevenly across 12 months of low and high season, surely that’s still a lot of people. I look in wonder at empty streets and cafe. I never guessed low season would be so quiet.

I never guessed exactly how low a ‘global financial crisis’ can get. I suspect I am viewing the evidence of that crisis? A total of 50 people at most in ‘Pub St’, usually the busiest part of an incredibly busy tourist town. Its all too weird to grasp from Phnom Penh where I live in a very Khmer neighbourhood. The basic market on the street below my apartment, in Phnom Penh, through to the fancy mall two blocks away, are always busy to my eyes. ‘Country cousin’ that I am, at times, coming from a remote province I forget that Phnom Penh also is in low season. The locals’ food market not likely to alter but of course other tourist areas in the city will get busier once into high season. Hard to imagine the city even busier? Which is why I know I am bit of a ‘country cousin’ in the ‘big smoke’, when assessing what is busy. Come September as high season begins its tourists will fill certain areas of the city and then I will remember that I moved to the city in the off season.

Back to Siem Reap, what I am seeing is the low season plus something else. I knew and lived in Siem Reap in the high season back in 2005/06. I can’t believe that this stillness and lack of people is only due to low season.

Speaking to the long-time staff and owner of the café where I am the sole diner, they assure me they have never ever seen this lowest ‘low season’. Maybe there is no ‘high season’ in September they query rhetorically.

Will I see an impact of this financial crisis once I visit Australia in a few months? I always was aware of the depth of people’s impossibility to understand the poverty, lawlessness and optimism of Cambodia’s economics; I myself not sure I know the depth of these contradictions. Now I realise being based in a developing country, I not understand much more than the superficial, of this global crisis. Cambodia’s tourism industry is its biggest industry and the garment factory is the second. The garment factory has lost a third of all contracts so there are many unemployed. Now I see for myself, the almost complete shut down of tourism. How many people in Cambodia are currently impacted by the global crisis?