THE PHNOM PENH DINNERS

There was a a monk who bestowed a cowl upon a shivering worker, a hooligan shaped by hip-hop culture as a symbol of isolation, an emblem of the Unabomber and Mark Zuckerberg.

The Hoodie is in the hood to power a future shaped by people, to protect them from intense solar radiation amidst a challenge against an evaluation that required adjudication as published in recycled notebooks.  

Blue is indeed a warm color, almost a grilled fish and gut salad, nutty like the Russian Market on a mid-afternoon that ignited a bonfire of frogs and pork belly in the streets of Phnom Penh on the night when a climate initiative was finally grasped.

From a fire drill emerged barbecued offal and an updated charter, the evolution of a staffing covenant that was reviewed with a supervisor before the day's finale of grilled beef and pork ribs.

With the announcement of the annual plan's approval and the arrival of the business development counsel, cigarettes were sold by the stick at Hotel Cambodiana for the price of a Khmer steak, steamed fish, and fried corn in a cosmos of skyscrappers and monuments. 

Craft beer and cheeseburgers were tucked between royal Khmer lunches of the Phnom Penh Workshop where Scenario B was signed-off with a Tim Tam prize and a condensed policy brief on financing coal phase-out, enough wins to justify another dinner between heaven and earth a few hours before a half-full plane took off for Manila.

The banks were on mute, the scent of a woman from PR 2622 lingered in the bus to Bakal 2, a flat tire responded to a fire alarm in Munoz... 

GOOD MORNING GMAIL!

A Babyonian greeting clay tablet was sent to St. Joseph on his death anniversay since no one was picking the phones in Bakal 2.

The front desk at the Manila airport lounge explained that they only have altar wine from the Sunday eulogy for the dead miners.

Outside the Techo airport, a chauffer flashed a signage announcing the sequestration of the 3rd Sunday of June.

On Father's Day, the lady cashier of a Khmer carinderia in Phnom Penh overcharged a solo lunch of grilled pork belly and boiled egg by $0.50.

An early morning Gmail ritual has preceded the daily basura rides but the dreaded bank notices did not come through, not yet, perhaps because the father-at-hand (AKA the Phantom Biker) had a door jamb updated through a payroll withdrawal that also paid for provisions of a renewed internship, not at the newly opened minimarket but for the replacement vehicle that was received with a housewarming and a sinadag.

Notebooks and jackets were prepared for inpress as the last visa was secured for the Phnom Penh Workshop, but what wil be the contract type, how will the confrontation conclude?

Daily Gmail checks punctuated catch-ups, a quickie from the Bali Workshop aborted project grants closure but spawned the Jakarta Assembly.

The bus driver serenaded Bulan with a birthday song from Munoz up to the Manila airport where 28 pairs of ice cream,  yogurt, beer, and wine were served. 

Gmail remained opened for the hawkers of the Chaktomuk Walk Street where fathers were treated with sweet meats, grilled fish, toasted bread, and lots of cold beer.

THE PHNOM PENH DELEGATION

Community, equality, inclusion.

Thus is the culmination of a reluctant trip to Phnom Penh within a 7-day spread that started as a pop-in to those who cease to sleep in the Science City of Munoz, they who spoke about the day of the moon through three consecutive conclaves.

On Day 1 of the Phnom Penh Workshop, such context was confirmed by the Garbage Man from a reunion in San Miguel, the last pilates session deferred as PR 2621 took off from an avalanche of Chilean red wine and Filipino beer.

Gems of wisdom and magic recapitulated Day 2 of the Phnom Penh Workshop --- rainbows of colorful fruits and rice pastries reflecting in the afternoon sky, domed to protect a Khmer beef steak and cold Angkor beer from the deathly embrace of summer.

The donor is a warm morning whose innocence elevated a consultant procurement into contract signing through a catch-up Georgian lunch that turned out to be thunderously heavy platters of khinkali and khachapuri, and loud as the traffic of  craft beer pints near Bassac Lane.

Love and marriage? 

The Bali Workshop intervened but a lovely Pakistani lunch of mutton biryani, nan bread, an array of bowled curry, and a tall mango lassi was wedded with a sky bar dinner of Khmer beef steaks, fried rice and corn, vegetables, and fish before vociferous Chinese pasengers were herded to Shanghai by PR 2622. 

The streets of Phnom Penh smelled of burning meat and docusigned requests that were guaranteed by The Divine Madman whose phallic amulet repelled demons, malicious gossip, and the evil eye that hounded the nubile clientele of the Salcedo Saturday Market.

In Bakal 2, the delegation concluded with the liberation of time by the Son of God, by hikers under the patronage of San Sebastian, and a cache of cold beer a day before fleeing to  Osaka...   

SOLAR PANELS OF OUR MINDS (Breaking Out of Phnom Penh)

Pursat is the Middle Kingdom of 10 solar panels that was redacted in the minutes of the Monday meetings.

From the silhouette of its Kravanh Mountains, boiled leaves were harvested by Khmer Rouge stragglers that were marinated in Pursat's version of the prahok ktis and served as a unique wild cardamom soup with a fish roe garnish that hinted of Monday's pangat na hito and per diem resolution. 

Kampong Chhnang is the New Kingdom with only 6 solar panels, the manifestations of a digital rights review and a sustainable housing discussion.

A day before, huge pots of Khor Bourguignon adorned its pavements where fair finance was debated as either an attrition against credit card debts or topping up three bank accounts while in a nearby canopy, a committee of nubiles carried stacks of potted eel stew and 9 cans of beer on their nimble heads.   

Battambang is the Old Kingdom with 18 solar panels granted from Mao Tse Tung Boulevard where the Ironman of Bakal 2 chaired a caucus.

There, cows graze in flooded ricefields before being herded by a lost stick into plates of delicate Khmer steak and crispy fresh corn, antecedants to a famous bowl of savory yellow pork noodles that transformed into a Khmer-style spicy papaya salad and omelette at a tropical garden near the pumping station. 

Muddy and rugged were the the roads to the solar panels of Cambodia, somber as the monologue of a commune chief and the daily ritual for morning alms, poignant as the children bathing and catching fish in the irrigation ditches, and seductive like a pasenger of PR 2621 flashing the outline of her underwear beneath flimsy white pants to steal the thunder from the shine of the new Techo International Airport and a classy hotel transfer.

The long rip back to Phnom Penh was punctuated by roadside snack of grilled fish paste and boiled rice noodles in lieu of a doubtful farewell dinner.

Instead, the Russian Market laid out a curbside feast of crabs, shrimp, squid, salmon fins, and sea snails while the Grab driver waits somewhere.  

PR 2262 was on time but did not serve wine.

Back in Manila, the blessings of Our Ladies of Remedies in Malate and of the Holy Rosary of La Naval de Manila were implored for the day's nasoendoscopy after an early morning reunion at the Salcedo Saturday Market... 

KHMER BEER, BULALO, LOMI, atbp

Prologue

"The volcano is the lake and the island is its crater!" screamed the town crier as he threw his bike into a maze of last payments made and pending as per a booking list and the required procurement for a couple of annual plan reviews about the siren song of an inihaw na bangus who took out the garbage and swept the yard before jumping into a 6-hour bus ride to an integrated terminal exchange for a late lunch of Hokkaido ramen because the airport premium lounge is a dud.

Chapter 1

The piyaya safely arrived in Phnom Penh, landing on a pavement of coordination meetings shattered by an unexpected budget constraint in Manila that a couple of reimbursement tried to glue together with a paste of Khmer lager and craft beer, boiled bovine offal, fried chicken knees, and dry schnitzel...

...from the kitchen of the widower's girlfriend whose fondness for Dutch seasoning is marked in bottles of SAP/Adobe, Pastel, CORE, PRISMA, and YOSAS to match three greenish amulets that were abandoned in strange outhouses as barriers against the floodwaters of a late afternoon cloudburst of ADP reviews... 

...for the selection of a venue in Jakarta where a bowl of Vietnamese beef noodles, a tray of Cambodian fish cake, and a plate of fried Greek feta cheese were exhibited and will be consolidated for delayed submission to Melbourne as the PMU regrouped to mitigate Kuala Lumpur and talk about HR matters. 

Chapter 2

It was Saturday morning when PR 2622 taxied to the spot where a fisherman netted an image, a less-than-a-foot tall sculpted wood that kept disappearing from its ornate encasement at a widow's home until it was enshrined as Our Lady of Caysasay at where it keeps reappearing near Santa Lucia's well where the music of a wedding ceremony at the cavernous Minor Basilica of St. Martin of Tours can be heard, where it can be seen from the capiz windows of the Apacible Heritage House, where it is venerated by the waving flags of the Agoncillo Museum... 

...and offerings of Leslie's delicate Tagaytay bulalo, lomi from Lipa for a parking slot, and dimsum and mami from Binondo that marked Plaza San Lorenzo Ruiz with a heartburn all the way to the Seng Guan Buddhist temple where Tomas Pinpin might have played mahjong with Voltes 5 and a Chinese pastry chef.   

Epilogue

It was later announced that the Kenny Rogers Roasters chicken chain went bankrupt in the US and that its Asia franchise is obtained by the Berjaya Group of Malaysia who might have sold LED fog lights in Banawe and Easytrip RFID tags in Balintawak, at least according to the Thursday Group who convened for fried Spam on Sunday night.