Monday, July 01, 2024

THE 3rd INDUCTION: 6 Days in Phnom Penh, a Reunion in Almaguer

I don't like wearing propaganda and I have a set of rarely worn fraternity jerseys that will grow molds if not washed for another year of storage.

So I packed these for a week in Phnom Penh where there will be less curiosity on the strange printed emblems that adorned 5 breakfast moments at the 10th floor Rooftop Pool and Skybar of the Phnom Penh 51 Hotel.  

Yes, I wore these for 5 days of what can be my 3rd induction with Oxfam where I recently signed a consultancy/freelance agreement from 01 May until 31 October 2024. 

These dri-FIT shirts were on me during a lunch of herby sinigang na isda and papaitan and salty giniling Khmer style, and a lovely dish of bean sprouts and pork with an all-male Cambodian group; pita bread with feta cheese and Greek keftedes with the Executive Team of Fair Finance Asia; and subequent solo meals of vietnamese pho and Thai pad kra phao.



Oskar said something about a cult as we jumped from Vietnamese craft beer and chips near Wat Botum to frozen margarita and tacos  at Bassac Lane...  

...but Sakara and the masked attendants who served grilled beef, salmon and pork at Koi Pich Riverside and the BBW who brought beef offal to our table somewhere in the Historic District did not care...  


 ...nor did the beer maids who gorged us with huge steins of German beer, baked pork knuckle, sausages, cold cuts and hot pretzel from the kitchen of Hops Craft Beer...  

...even after peeing in my pants after a deluge of Khmer beer, fried chicken knees, more grilled beef and Munich fresh beer in God Knows where.

5 days, 13 meetings, 10 bars, two doses of virtual earthy cyprine juice.

That is what I brought to the Phnom Penh International Airport Premium Lounge where all things I-JET were crammed in a gin tonic cocktail, FFA was mixed as as Cuba Libre, and everything else (OiC, SP, IP2, OiL, PSE) were poured in a tall glass of  Angkor beer. 

In Bakal 2, a sputum culture test turned out negative that led to a chest CT scan with contrast as I tried to fix a broken account number in Phnom Penh where I executed my first PMU-lead actions, received a $650 reimbursement, and submitted a flight booking request to Vientiane and Bangkok.

We are officially twice a millionaire so I opened a decanted pinot noir on Saturday night.

That's also because I next travelled 1,913 kilometers from 17 Pasteur Street to Almaguer South where the coffee is as fresh as the air in Dalton Pass and the igado in Aritao as ancient as the St. Vincent Ferrer Church of Dupax Del Sur.

Me, my brother and my sister were raised in Almaguer where what can be our ancestral house that I first built still stands; where childhood friends are either still alive or dead; where my second girlfriend is now in partial paralysis; and where our next generation gathered to fete our two new college graduates.



There I got drunk over Irish whiskey and woke up just in time for a sinigang na bangus dinner in Puncan...

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