Adventures with Knives

Introduction

A Taste for Adventure

Every adventure has a high and a low – if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be an adventure. The low point of an adventure, the black hole, is dark and scary. You feel alone, and you want to go home. Something you ate has caused you to fear being 10 feet from a toilet. You want your mommy. You’re one of those pathetic figures in Rodin’s sculpture, The Gates of Hell. If your adventure doesn’t test your deepest emotional reserve, it’s not a real adventure. On the other hand, the high that comes from an adventure, the sweet spot, is glorious. The brights are brighter, and the adrenalin rushes through your veins. Adventure is drama. My adventure with knives didn’t fail me. I got both my black hole and my sweet spot.

My black hole came in late November 2009, five months into my cooking school program. It had been a rough night in the front kitchen with too many mistakes, too much yelling, and lots of do-overs. I finished late and was sitting half-changed in the empty locker room. My colleagues had cleared out to go drinking. It was Friday night, party night for them. I was exhausted – a 60-year-old man with sore knees and a cut on my finger that pulsed with pain. My chef whites were speckled with unidentifiable splatters, reeked of sweat, and desperately demanded laundry. My feet hurt, and I had to trudge home through the cold, pouring rain – 45 minutes of slogging to the gulag barracks that I called home.

My apartment was at its worst. I had a 100-square-foot corner of my former bedroom that I called the bat cave, and the rest was stripped to the concrete awaiting renovation – a bombed-out war zone. One light, no fridge, no stove; my only salvation was that both the TV and the coffee maker still worked. I hoped. Without energy or a social life, I could only look forward to a weekend of sleep to recover enough to do it again on Monday. I was in way over my head. This sucked. What was I thinking when I signed up for cooking school?

The sweet spot was as glorious as the black hole was bottomless. It was the last day of school. My six months of hands-on learning was being tested in one final practical exam. We each had three hours to prep, cook, and plate a four-course meal for two, including an appetizer, a pasta dish, a main course, and a dessert. It was a scary blur of too much to do in too short a time. I was jumping with energy and manic with excitement. This was what I’d dreamed about; high-stakes action in the kitchen, just me and the challenge. I plated everything on time, and the three chefs who had ruled my life for the past six months, Julian, Patrice, and Johannes – the demigods of my narrow universe – were ready to judge my submissions. They would decide my fate. Would it be pass or fail? Was I a hero or a goat?

As I was arranging my dishes for judgment, Julian, the executive chef, wandered over. He looked at my plates, taking special notice of my pasta dish. “Not bad,” he said, with a hint of admiration in his voice. “You’re showboating a bit, aren’t you?”

I knew then that I had passed! I walked out of the school that final night feeling like I had discovered insulin. A simple comment from Chef Julian erased all of my self-doubt, and every dark moment of fatigue, anxiety, and pain fell away.

They loved me! I had hit the sweet spot in my adventure.

This is a book about getting up and off the couch, doing something, and taking some risks. It’s about deliberately making ourselves uncomfortable. It’s about trying out new things and, even though they may not always arouse our passion, it’s about believing these adventures will keep us alive, active, and engaged.

I’ve tried a wide range of adventures, and many didn’t work. As with clothes, some were the wrong style for me. They didn’t fit or, more precisely, they didn’t fit me. Golf never worked. I was more tense and stressed after a game of golf than before it. Full-time employment was a non-starter. I had worked at part-time jobs since short pants and had been an employee for most of my life. A job now would be like a straightjacket, too restrictive of my freedom. My attempts at volunteering usually tagged me for fundraising and public relations, my old work specialties. It would be just like work without the pay. These weren’t adventures.

Travel, on the other hand, was pure adventure. I took advantage of my freedom to travel for weeks and months at a time. Macchu Pichu, the Galápagos Islands, Patagonia, Egypt, the Mayan Temples in Central America, rafting through the Grand Canyon – these were all delightful. I made new friends, shared memorable experiences, and developed a thirst for more. Exciting travel adventures are everywhere. All I need to do is choose one and sign up.

I soon learned, however, that travel can’t fill my life. I can’t just eat dessert, and I definitely shouldn’t eat it every day. It’s not healthy. I crave the anticipation of travel, of packing and jetting off to somewhere new. But I know travel is best enjoyed occasionally, as a treat. Dessert should be dessert – an indulgence made more special by its rarity.

I tried an adventure called international democracy development. I talked my way into a two-week assignment in Kuwait for a respected foundation dedicated to strengthening democratic practices around the world. I was an election observer for the second round of presidential elections in Ukraine in January 2010. Two weeks observing Ukraine’s election was like a vacation on steroids. On election day, we were standing at the doors of the polls freezing, when the village officials arrived at 6 a.m. to ready them for opening. We completed our observation duties 24 hours later, as votes were delivered to regional tally points. This was a vivid personal affirmation of my faith in democracy: a communist regime that, in less than two decades, had transformed itself into a democracy. I wanted more.

I became an adviser for Action Canada, a brilliant leadership development program for Canada’s future political, business, and policy

leaders. Working with smart, ambitious, young Canadian leaders is energizing and challenging. I learned more than I taught.

I’ve been a runner for a decade, and I’ve trained for and finished countless 10-kilometre races, a significant number of half-marathons, and 10 full marathons. I made great friends and experienced the indescribable joy of crossing a finish line – upright, smiling, and in full control of my bodily functions (two out of three of those were usually considered good enough). I’ve run with both my son and my daughter, which were memorable bonding experiences. There’s something about the discipline, hard work, delayed gratification, and the final achievement of crossing the finish line that justifies but never fully explains the mystery of why we run. The side benefits aren’t too shabby either. If you’re fit, you can hike the Inca Trail; if you aren’t, you take the train.

I’ve taken up cycling and swimming. Competitions drive my training. I run a fear-based training program. I sign up for something scary, then train like hell for it. I’ve come to crave these self-inflicted tests of my perseverance. Even when I finish at the back of the pack, I’m thrilled.

All of these adventures acclimated me to change and its highs and lows, the sweet spots and the black holes. While not quite a turmoil junkie, I’ve developed a taste for adventure. If nothing else, these attempts at filling my new life have expanded my world, providing me with flexibility and openness to personal, career, and lifestyle change.

I’ve also moved around a lot. They always send the small moving van for me when I relocate. You learn to travel light after a while.

Going to a real cooking school and learning to cook like a professional would be my next new adventure. Little did I know what an adventure it would be, my adventure with knives.

Before you read this book, let me tell you what is not here. This book won’t give you a checklist of all the things you can do to make your life rich and full. I haven’t got a clue what you should do. I’m making this up as I go along. I think true fulfillment comes from trying new things and finding a fit.

This is not a financial planning book for the retiree. I can balance my chequebook, but I can’t offer much in the way of financial advice for making your money grow, keeping it, and keeping it from the taxman.

This is not an inspirational book – that would be a conceit of narcissism over experience. Having made as many mistakes along the way as I have, I simply can’t hold up my life as a fine example of what you should do with yours.

This is also not a cookbook. I could never masquerade as a chef. That was never my purpose. I was looking for an adventure, not a career. If you’re looking for recipes and tips, I have a few. For a real cookbook, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

I prefer to call this a pass-it-on book.

In my restless, self-absorbed search for meaning in my life, I bored my friends and pestered acquaintances and strangers with questions about what they were doing as they moved through the stages of their lives. They helped me a lot, and I’m hopeful that I can show you my roadmap of my life journey and enhance your life journey. Actually, I can’t believe I even tried to blow that old “roadmap of my life journey” bullshit past you. Forgive me.

This book has only one simple goal: to tell you what I did and how it worked out. If that helps you make some choices, I’ll be delighted.

If that isn’t enough warning, I have a final caveat. They say experience is gained from making mistakes and learning from those mistakes. If that’s the case, should we really emulate the experienced, the mistake prone? Make your own mistakes. Gain your own experience. My fervent hope is that you’ll stumble upon an adventure as glorious as my adventure with knives.

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Beautiful Hoi An, a world heritage site.

By BOB FOULKES

International travel always amazes me. I get into a magic tube not much bigger than a Wayne Gretzky cigar and after a movie or two, I emerge in a far, far away place. I always feel a little like Dorothy and Toto.

Vietnam is not Oz but it’s definitely not home.

Hanoi is home to the national shrine and mausoleum holding the perfectly preserved mummified remains of Ho Chi Minh, the ardent Vietnamese nationalist. It is surrounded by ceremonial guards marshaling long lines of reverent viewers.

Our guide Huy explains the importance of Ho Chi Minh as the founder of modern Vietnam

Huy, our guide, is a baby boomer of the American war. He offers an eloquent and perceptive history lesson from a Vietnamese perspective, highlighting the successful fights for independence against China, France, Japan and the U.S. over several thousand years. Independence was finally achieved as a result of Uncle Ho’s persistence. Huy is a smart, funny and a quiet but firm nationalist; there is no arguing who were the bad guys in the last round of their many wars of independence, it’s called the American war.

The tragedy still offers a cautionary tale of foreign policy interventions, One of our group remarked, missing the point completely: “I still cannot understand how they beat us.” That is what the British said after the war of independence in 1776. A cautionary tale indeed, history depends on who is telling the story.

Today, Vietnam is a one-party communist state run by old men well past their prime. The economy is slowly opening up to foreign investment. Capitalism is pushed by a generation where more than 50 percent of 90 million are under 35. They want cars, jobs, consumer goods and prospects for a better life for themselves and their toddlers.

The French left a legacy of bread and pastries, impossible to resist. The Americans left a country bombed to near ruin, but they are now returning in droves as investors, aid givers and lost souls looking for peace and spiritual closure.

We tour the sights, shop and wander the Old Quarter marvelling at the energy, enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit of the people we see. I buy three custom made linen shirts in less than eight hours, enjoy a cappuccino and a fine croissant at a place called Saint Honore and watch thousands of citizens buzz by on their new Honda motorbikes. Even in old Hanoi, the seat of the communist government, here is a obviously a new Vietnam, thriving under the watchful gaze of Uncle Ho.

Da Nang, in central Viet Nam, was the logistics and supply site for U.S. forces, it is now a resort with high-end hotels and a few golf courses set next to Hoi An, a world heritage site that was a port hub for countries trading into Vietnam over centuries. Hoi An has some interesting house museums and a lot of retail, clothes custom-made in 24 hours being the specialty.

The daily market is produce stand, restaurant and meeting place.

A cooking class was the highlight of the trip. Vietnamese food is excellent, fresh with so many herbs and new flavors — more exotic herbs than any French kitchen delivering a broader range of taste sensations. The lack of refrigeration makes daily shopping a necessity and freshness a certainty. I’m not sure I’ll get used to pho, the ubiquitous rice noodle soup, for breakfast but experimenting with new food in new places is part of the charm. Fruit choices are amazing; colorful, tasty, never seen before and usually requiring a little instruction on which bits to eat and which to discard.

Hue is a small city of half a million that once was the home of a dynasty of emperors. We visit the Imperial Citadel, the inner Forbidden Purple City, several tombs designed by soon-to-be-dead megalomaniacs covering acres and, for balance, a serene Buddhist pagoda. Concubines and eunuchs were regular features of the royal court until the 1940s.

The south is dominated by the rice bowl of the Mekong delta and the cosmopolitan city of Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City — HCMC to us world travelers.

There is little color or drama to rice cultivation, the most labor intensive agriculture ever practiced by mankind. Ask a prairie grain farmer if he’d like to grow his crop by planting each seed individually by hand, irrigating his crop daily, harvesting it with a scythe, threshing it by slapping it on the ground and hauling the grain to a mill to be hulled with only 70 per cent returned.  Most of the work is done bent over, the only view is the mucky soil of your little plot of land. If you’re lucky, you own a water buffalo to do some of the heavier work.

Rice cultivation defines back-breaking, labor-intensive work.

These rice farmers worked their plots for generations, survived a 20-year war, celebrated victory, then were forced under the new unified communist regime to share their crop with the commune, in a manner determined by the politburo cadre in their village. It didn’t seem worth it. Vietnam went from being a major rice exporter to being so poor that rice was donated from India (not the most prosperous country to be giving away foreign aid) to save Vietnam from starvation.

After a decade of failure, the communists relented and allowed capitalism/entrepreneurship/private ownership  into the economy — while never calling it such. Vietnam is now the world’s second largest exporter of rice.

But Vietnam is not a centre of doctrinaire communism. Like most economies, it’s a blend: the rice-growing system is based on the initiative of individual farmers but it only works as a result of an elaborate system of dikes and canals to manage the annual flood — public works facilitating private effort. The government seems to do its best work when it gets out of the way.

The entrepreneurial spirit exists across all sectors. It is impressive to see what can be stacked on a motorcycle – scary actually. A man delivers wholesale goods, a women takes her chickens to market, on a motor bike designed for two people. That’s grass roots entrepreneurialism.

Saigon is well known as a pedestrian nightmare: step off the curb at your peril. Actually it takes courage and bravado. Here’s how it’s done, it’s simple. Step into the street, don’t look, walk deliberately to the other curb. The key is to allow the motorcycles to dodge you — never panic and never make eye contact. That’s the theory. Vietnam has 25 million motorcycles and putting theory into practice is more than an intellectual exercise. It is a matter of survival.

It is a country rich in resources, a major agricultural products and rice exporter, a growing force in manufacturing supported by an energetic, ambitious, entrepreneurial population with a long history of dogged perseverance.

Vietnam is a country struggling to catch up with the successful Southeast Asian economies like Singapore, South Korea and Thailand — through sheer determination and spirit the Vietnamese are overcoming the burdens of past wars and throwing off old fashioned communist limits to create new opportunities for themselves and their children.

Detail from the bas-relief frieze that wraps the temple: A massive diorama of religion, war and hubris.

By BOB FOULKES

Cambodia is one of those countries known to the western world as an unfortunate circumstance, the Killing Fields of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Over a short time, one quarter of the country’s population was brutally murdered, mostly the urban, educated and the successful were butchered by a Chinese sponsored/funded/armed madman.

The country may never recover fully but one has to admire the fact that people even function, much less smile and carry on.  A testament to the human spirit.

Cambodia is filled with history, the iconic ancient ruins of several centuries of temples around Siem Reap are world heritage sites for a reason. They are amazing to behold and ripe for description in superlatives.

First, Siem Reap is a pretty little town, built to handle the massive migration of visitors that happens throughout the dry season. Five star hotels border small B&Bs, the night market jostles for attention with the older town market, other distractions present themselves. We are there for one reason – the pilgrimage to the ancient temples of Angkor, particularly Angkor Wat. Angkor is a must-see. Like the ruins of Greece, the Mayan Temples, the Incan sites of Macchu Pichu, the Pyramids.

Young and old get together with a Buddhist wrist string, which confers a blessing and brings good luck.

Our Angkor visit lasted three days. Trying to grasp, absorb and understand religious temples built over about five centuries, dedicated to memorializing and celebrating several of the world’s more complicated religions was a near impossibility but we tried.

Hinduism, Buddhism and local Khmer animism have fought over centuries for recognition, commemoration and glory through these monuments. Kings, princes, dynastic emperors, and wannabe gods have constructed these monuments to their own vanity, narcissism and hubris proving that inflated egos have endured over the millennia.

Religions come and go, political dynasties ebb and flow, architecture evolves, construction techniques improve, decorative motifs go in and out of style.

Trees overtake temples as time passes.

It’s all here — hundreds of buildings, in complexes large and small, spread over thousands of hectares, suffering less or more under the persistent encroachment of the jungle.

Angkor has been ravaged by weather, overpowered by trees with roots that insinuate themselves everywhere, looted and vandalized by thieves and desecrated by religious purists. Sandstone does not survive like granite — erosion has taken its toll.

It is a glorious mess.

And yet it enthralls. If one has an active imagination, it overwhelms our presumptions of ancient Asian civilization and the supposed supremacy, complexity and richness of western culture. Angkor rivals the best of our great monuments.

Angkor Wat, the jewel of the sites is enormous. Built in the 12th century, the temple complex alone covers nine hectares on grounds measuring 1.5 by 1.3 kilometres. Even the gateways through the surrounding wall are impressive.

On the second of three levels, there is a two-metre-high bas relief frieze that wraps around the building — 1.6 kilometers in all. Incredible does not begin to describe this endless visual story — a massive rolling diorama of religion, war, and dynastic hubris that must be seen. To truly understand the frieze and all the symbols and icons would require a graduate degree in ancient religious myths and stories. Given the Hindu penchant for multiple gods and complex mythology, there’s much to be learned. We pond-skim over it and are soon overwhelmed. The mind boggles at it all.

Words fail, even the requisite superlatives. Pictures help but fall short. The only way to comprehend the majesty of Angkor Wat is to find a way to see it.

A rank of statues lines a path at Angkor Wat.

Near Siem Reap

BY JOHN SKINNER

Book Boy is somewhere between 10 and 15 years old — it’s hard to be exact because Cambodians often look younger than they are because they’re smaller than we are, due mostly to poor nutrition. He makes his living selling on the street. He may or may not go to school. He may or may not keep a decent percentage of the money he makes. His clothes and shoes are well-used, but he seems reasonably healthy.

Book Boy comes beetling into the bar where happy-hour 50-cent beers are flowing, and sits down at our table with his bag of books.

“You want to buy a book.” This is not a question. Book Boy is street savvy, charming in an urchinly way, and speaks about six languages well enough to do his job, like his counterparts in Vietnam, Thailand, Morocco, Nepal, Mexico and lots of other places.

“Look,” he says. “This book, 10 dollars. These two books, 10 dollars. Good books.”

“These two” books are 10 dollars because stacked together they are roughly the same thickness as “This book, 10 dollars.” Literature by the centimetre.

Book Boy is all business, except when he isn’t. He picks up my sunglasses from the table, puts them on and starts making goofy faces. Just a kid, except when he isn’t. Prone to fits of age-appropriate behavior when convenient. Sorry, kid, no sale. Book Boy heads off in search of customers. His world is not your kids’ world.

In many ways, Book Boy mirrors his nation: In Cambodia, things are not always what they seem. Odd contradictions abound:

◊ CAMBODIA HAS a Communist government. Its ATMs dispense American dollars — brand new ones — which are eagerly accepted in most retail places of business.

◊  BUDDHISM, THE OFFICIAL RELIGION, embraces pacifism, meditation, compassion, good deeds and acceptance of the woes of life. The ancient walls of the Buddhist Angkor Wat temple are festooned with friezes of war, brutality, monsters, torture and a multitude of bullet holes from the Khmer Rouge period of the 1970s. Horrific serenity.

Some of the 17,000 torture victims at S-21. All were taken to the Killing Fields, murdered and dumped into mass graves.

◊  THE CONCRETE COMPLEX, S-21 (Security Prison 21) started life as Tuol Svay Prey High School. In 1975 it was commandeered by the insane Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge. Between 1975 and 1978, 17,000 people were tortured at S-21, then taken to the Killing Fields 15 kilometres away, brutally executed and dumped into one of 121 mass graves. In 1980, exhumation of 78 of those graves yielded the remains of 8,985 people. Bone fragments and teeth can still be found by the paths through the Killing Fields.
S-21 is now the Tuol Sleng Museum, a

No-smiling sign at S-21

beyond-grim reminder of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Its walls are covered with hundreds of photos of torture victims; in its rooms, instruments of torture are on display.

Posted by the entrance to the torture chambers are signs that show a grinning face with a red circle around it and a red X through it. No laughing. No smiling.

Is such a warning necessary?

Well, yes. Laughter is one of the ways Cambodians react to the incomprehensibly brutal reality of their nation’s recent history of torture, death and hate. Nervous laughter writ large. Forbidden at S-21.

  ◊ THE KHMER ROUGE PERIOD was the darkest in Cambodia’s 16-or-so-century history (when it came together as a distinct culture is placed somewhere between the first and fifth centuries AD). Between 1975 and 1979, two million to three million Cambodians were killed by the insane and violent zealots of the Pol Pot regime.

Khmer Rouge soldiers: poor, uneducated youths.

. . . and the results of their work.

Almost all of those soldiers were poor, uneducated young males, susceptible to just about any kind of political indoctrination the promised them some power and a better life. They aimed to change Cambodia into an agrarian collective in which the peasant was celebrated.
This goal was rife with irony. Born (and therefore technically) a rural peasant, Pol Pot grew up in the Cambodian royal court, where his sister was a royal consort. He spent a year as a monk, attended elite high schools and attended university in France. He never worked in a rice field.
That didn’t stand in the way of his dream of an agrarian collective workers paradise. He expelled entire populations from cities and towns and sent them to the countryside to work as slaves. Dissenters were immediately executed. City dwellers became a reviled class. Only the rural peasant was vested with sufficient revolutionary purity to be acceptable to the Khmer Rouge. Teachers, doctors, even those who simply wore glasses were suspect.
When the Khmer Rouge reign began, the official calendar was turned back to Year Zero. Currency was abolished. All former senior government and military officials were executed, along with Buddhist leaders and ethnic minorities. (For a detailed look at the Khmer Rouge years, read The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, by Ben Kiernan, available from Amazon.com.)
 It’s against that backdrop that Cambodia must be seen: an entire nation suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, which manifests itself in a massive thicket of cultural contradictions that seldom rise to the surface but are breathtaking when they do. Cambodians are a gentle, friendly, polite and – driving habits notwithstanding – orderly people. Unfailingly helpful, seldom emotional and smiling, always smiling.
Yet there are hints of things bubbling below the surface. When the U.S. began carpet-bombing Cambodia in April 1970, destroying dozens of villages and killing thousands of peasants, an advisor to Norodom Sihanouk, the former king who had been deposed a month earlier by a U.S.-backed General Lon Nol and had set up a government-in-exile in China, made this observation: “Peasants are taking refuge in forest encampments and are maintaining their smiles and their humour, but one might add that it is difficult to imagine the intensity of their hatred toward those who are destroying their villages and their property. Perhaps we should remember that the Cambodians have the deserved reputation for being the most spiteful and vindictive people in southeast Asia . . . .”
So what brings out those smiles on the nation’s faces? Fear, discomfort, anguish: the S-21 phenomenon. 

Phnom Penh traffic: everything you can possibly imagine on wheels.

 ◊ IN MY EARLY TEENS I developed a strategy for dealing with theme park rides, which I was peer-pressured into riding. Most of them scared the bejesus out of me, something to do with the visual and spatial disorientation of travelling at high speed upside down or sideways, or both at once. The solution was simple: I closed my eyes, and all that was left in my sensory world was the breeze going by.
It works with with traffic in Phnom Penh as well. Imagine four large herds, each comprising every wild animal you can think of — elephants, bison, German shepherds, meerkats, grizzly bears, hippos, mice, cats, koalas and more. Imagine them all coming together, at speed, at a crossroads. Does one herd stop to let another cruise through the intersection? Of course not. It’s a free-for-all, red light, green light, whatever. Mixing and mingling. Finding a hole and scooting through it like a football running back (Asian traffic abhors a vacuum). Near misses by the score, much tooting of horns (in the developing world, horns are used to convey information — “I’m coming up on your left”; in the West, horns express anger — “Asshole!”)
So here we are, my partner and I, in a tuktuk, which is a motorcycle with a sort of cart attached, and a fearless driver. We’re moving at a leisurely pace, top speed for a tuktuk, through the streets of Phnom Penh, and all around us are those damn wild animals, except these animals are big trucks, small trucks, small motorcycles, big SUVs, bicycles, sedans and dozens of vehicles that defy description. Once in a while, an elephant. Occasionally a car with “Driving school” painted on the sides, despite overwhelming evidence that you can’t teach this stuff any more than you can teach survival.
And they are coming at us, around us, from the left, from the right and from behind. And somehow, there are no collisions.
“Just don’t look,” says my partner, an Asia veteran. And it dawns on me: the theme park strategy. It’s chaotic and it’s calm. 

The Elephant Bar at Raffles: echoes of The Raj.

◊ FOR A BREAK we decide on a drink at the Elephant Bar at Raffles hotel, one of nine in a high-end chain that began lfe in Singapore in 1887. Oddly, two of the nine are in Cambodia; the rest are in wealthier countries. In Phnom Penh, you’ll pay up to $405 US per night — 10 times the price of a decent three-star Cambodian hotel, but cheap for Raffles; rooms at Raffles Paris go for up to $1,500 a night.
So one expects a pretty good bar, and one isn’t disappointed. It’s like stepping back into the First World: three white businessmen with loosened ties suit sipping beer at the bar. A Tilley-clad couple lounge at a table with martinis, a Lonely Planet guidebook and an iPad, not talking to each other.
The service is impeccable, the décor reminiscent of the Raj. We finish our drinks and step back out into the night, walk the long walk down the tree-lined approach to Raffles to the street to find a tuktuk (they’re not allowed on the Raffles grounds) and ride slowly back into the waiting maelstrom.
 
◊ Cambodian police work hard, but the country is so poor that they have to pay for their uniforms, weapons and ammunition. It’s a classic developing-country story: those who enforce the law are so poorly paid that they’re open to bribes. They can’t support a family on what they earn. Those who run the country have endless opportunities to make big money. So top government, police and military officials own the brothels and gambling dens. They pay off the judges and police and are never charged. The laws exist; a reasonable level of enforcement — by Western standards at any rate — doesn’t. Lots of law, not much order.
 
◊ ONCE I HAD UNLOADED THE HOCKEY STICKS with Reaksa, the burden was lightened, all the better in a tropical country where humidity and temperature produce the perfect sweat storm, even when all you’re carrying is your camera.

Reaksa Himm

The sticks were destined for the community centre and library that Reaksa built and where he’s teaching the boys to play street hockey. A little Canada in Cambodia.
Soreaksa Himm was 13 in 1977 when his mother, father, seven brothers, two sisters, a nephew and a sister-in law were clubbed and hacked to death by the Khmer Rouge. Viciously beaten with shovels and hoes and dumped into a mass grave in the jungle. Rieksa was among them, barely alive and hidden under the bodies of his family.
When the assailants left to find more victims to throw into the grave, Reaksa managed to struggle out and escape to a nearby village where he was taken in by a family. His journey took him to Thailand and he eventually ended up in Winnipeg where he went to school, started a business, converted to Christianity (his experience in the jungle led him to conclude that Buddhism wasn’t working for him, and the Christian NGO World Vision sponsored his move to Canada) and became a hockey fan. The Lord called him back to Cambodia

The young refugee Reaksa, 1987

to preach and help his people. He brought hockey with him.
“Thank you for the sticks,” he says humbly over lunch. “We were running short.”
Rieksa later tracked down two of the men who murdered his family — and forgave them. Forgave them! Embraced them and presented each with a Bible. Among the “most spiteful and vindictive people in southeast Asia” he stands in contradiction.
He tells the breathtaking story of his experiences in two books, The Tears of My Soul and After the Heavy Rain, both available from Amazon. 

◊ HAPPY HERB’S PIZZA, a minor Cambodian institution, is not run by a guy named Herb. The name refers to a mood-enhancing topping. As Lonely Planet puts it: “Ask for extra happy and they won’t be able to wipe the smile off your face for a week. Nonhappy pizzas are also good.”
 
◊ AT SOME POINT YOU WILL SEE racks of whisky, gin and large soft drink bottles by the roadside, with the remnants of Johnnie Walker Black or Seagram’s labels still affixed. The liquid inside is a pale gold. You can be forgiven for thinking it’s cheap homemade booze for sale. It goes in the gas tank, and chances are it’s leaded gas, smuggled in from Thailand. Unleaded fuel is easily available in Cambodia, but it’s pricier. So they save a little now and pay for the engine rebuild later.
 
◊  WHEN MY PARTNER AND I were in Siem Reap on the first of our two visits, a decade ago, we stayed in a decent, and cheap, hotel that provided the usual amenities, including small container labelled “Toothbrush”. Inside was, well, a toothbrush, and a small tube labelled Tooth Paste with the additional inscription “White Men inside.” Tiny white men, no doubt. Baffled, we put it down to some weird Cambodian dental custom until some time later the little light bulb went on and “White Men” became “White Mint.” We never confirmed it, though.
 
 
Toothpaste with humans in it, cops who must break the law, children who are part-time adults, thoughts of brutal terror that raise smiles, religious temples that celebrate violence and death, ATMs that dispense the currency of the enemy, scotch whisky that isn’t . . . Cambodia is not always what it seems. Its contradictions run deep; its sights, sounds and people are endlessly engaging; its heart beats strongly.

But see it soon: Dairy Queen, KFC and other fast food faves are moving in. Tourist hordes are growing (in particular the, er, exuberant Chinese and Koreans, who the locals call The Yelling People). Prices are rising.

Cambodia has much to offer — low prices, friendly people, good food, wonderful experiences — and the world is beginning to discover it. That can only mean another Cancun or Phuket in the making. Place it high on your bucket list.
 

By BOB FOULKES

Regardless of how worldly I think I am, I’m confronted with the fact that I’m not. There are two constraints in my life. The first is that, as I age, I suffer from what my friend calls a hardening of the attitudes. It concerns me. The second is equally alarming: I Iive in a narrow band of human uniformity.

Almost all my friends are white, middle class and my age. Apropos of this story, I count only one Sikh in my circle of acquaintances.

To break out of my hardening attitudes and my narrow band of daily life, I accepted an offer to become a deputy returning officer for an election of the board and officers of a Sikh temple society in Surrey, about 45 kilometres from my home in downtown Vancouver. Surrey is uncharted territory for me; sadly, in all my time here, I have never been to Surrey.

At 6 a.m., on a dark, wet, December Sunday, I picked up a few other hardy adventurers, younger than I by about 30 years, and we drove to Surrey. We arrived as an RCMP mobile tactical command post was being parked at the end of the school parking lot, the site of the election. There had been some violence in years past and the temple community was determined to run a free and fair election without threats and intimidation. They had hired my friend Ron, an outsider, with experience running elections and monitoring them in dozens of countries, none of which are considered tourist destinations.

This Sikh temple society has about 20, 000 registered voters. I was one of 50 or so outsiders who would try to ensure the smooth, fair operation of the election, along with a vast community of temple volunteers running the election as poll clerks, parking attendants and cheerful helpers.

The polls opened at 8 a.m., about 18,000 members voted and we closed at 8 p.m., cleaned up and went home. The election went as smoothly as any I have ever witnessed: few spoiled ballots, few rejected voters, short waits amid a calm peaceful but serious demeanour. I met some wonderful volunteers from the community, learned a bit about the history of the temple society and the issues framing the choices facing voters as they elected their directors. Time well spent.

What did I learn?

•  That I alone am responsible for breaking down the barriers of my own isolation and softening my own hardening attitudes.
• That there is an interesting, and to me exotic, world just a short drive from my home. I could explore that world anytime I chose.
• That people are people, even if some of us wore turbans and saris and others wore blue jeans and Banana Republic sweater combos.
• That life can be richer if I dare to climb out of my rut.
• That boredom is self-inflicted.
• That I have to relearn all these lessons on a regular basis, and as I get older I may have to shorten the time between lessons.

We Canadians live in a rich mosaic made better by a wide variety of cultures, habits, traditions and values, but we have to seek them out to benefit from them.

There was but one flaw in the whole day. We needed to be fed and they gave us pizza.

I was hoping for a few hot curries. I guess I’ll have to go back.

Chicago Cubs outfielder Andre Dawson (left) on being a role model:  ”I wan’ all dem kids to do what I do, to look up to me. I wan’ all the kids to copulate me.”

 New Orleans Saints RB George Rogers when asked about the upcoming season:  ”I want to rush for 1,000 or 1,500 yards, whichever comes first.”

And, upon hearing Joe Jacobi of the Washington Redskins say: “I’d run over my own mother to win the Super Bowl,”  Matt Millen of the Raiders said: “To win, I’d run over Joe’s Mom, too.”

Torrin Polk, University of Houston receiver, on his coach, John Jenkins:  ”He treat us like men. He let us wear earrings..”

Football commentator and former player Joe Theismann (left):  ”Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like  Norman Einstein.”

Bill Peterson, a football coach:  ”You guys line up alphabetically by height.” And, “You guys pair up in  groups of three, and then line up in a circle.”

Boxing promoter Dan Duva on Mike Tyson going to prison:  ”Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.”

 Stu Grimson (left), of the Chicago Blackhawks, explaining why he keeps a color photo of himself above his locker: “That’s so when I forget how to spell my name, I can still find my #%@# clothes.”

 Lou Duva, veteran boxing trainer, on the Spartan training regimen of m heavyweight Andrew Golota: “He’s a guy who gets up at six o’clock in the morning, regardless of what time it is.”

North Carolina State basketball player Chuck Nevitt, explaining to Coach Jim Valvano why he appeared nervous at practice: “My sister’s expecting a baby, and I don’t know if I’m going to be an uncle or an aunt. 

Frank Layden, Utah Jazz president, on a former player:  ”I asked him, ‘Son, what is it with you? Is it ignorance or apathy?’ He said, ‘Coach, I don’t know and I don’t care.’”

Shelby Metcalf, basketball coach at Texas A&M, recounting what he told a player who received four F’s and one D:  ”Son, looks to me like you’re spending too much time on one subject.”

North Carolina State basketball great Charles Shackelford:  ”I can go to my left or right, I am amphibious.”

‘Half the lies
they tell
about me
aren’t true.’

For more great
Yogi Berra quotes,
click here

Ryszard Kapuscinski: ‘Three plagues, three contagions, threaten the world.’

By BOB FOULKES

I read an interesting book over the holidays, Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007), a controversial Polish writer who chronicled big political events around the world for decades. He was a journalist, a poet, a philosopher and a keen observer of the uses and abuses of power.

Imperium, probably his most famous book, is a chronicle of the abuses of power of the Russian communist hegemony, mostly the Stalin period, and the effects on the lives of Russians and the millions of unfortunates of all the satellite states under Russia’s control since the communist revolution of 1919.

The systemic and prolonged abuse of people, the destruction of human lives, the terror and the folly of Russian communism . . . the Imperium boggles the mind. Kapuscinski documents the calculated deaths by starvation of millions in Ukraine, the forced imprisonment of intellectuals, dissidents and random citizens in the gulags and work camps of Siberia — men, women and children of all ages who simply disappeared into that vast wasteland never to return — and the draining of the Aral sea, one of the world’s four largest inland lakes, to provide water for Russian central-planned cotton growing. These are but three examples of the havoc wreaked on the people under its power.

I was particularly captivated by this passage:

Three plagues, three contagions, threaten the world.

The first is the plague of nationalism

The second is the plague of racism

The third is the plague of religious fundamentalism.

All three share one trait, a common denominator — an aggressive, all-powerful, total irrationality. Anyone stricken with one of these plagues is beyond reason. In his head burns a sacred pyre that awaits only his sacrificial victims. Every attempt at calm conversation will fail. He doesn’t want a conversation, but a declaration that you agree with him, admit he is right, join the cause. Otherwise, you have no significance in his eyes, you do not exist, for you count only if you are a tool, an instrument, a weapon. There are no people there is only the cause. 

A mind touched by such a contagion is a closed mind, one-dimensional, monothematic, spinning round one subject only — its enemy. Thinking about our enemy sustains us, allows us to exist. That is why the enemy is always present, is always with us.

Kapuscinski’s description of the zealot and his single minded obsession informs us all; it is a window into the soul of closed minds. Moreover, it provides a clear understanding of one simple axiom: You can’t negotiate with a terrorist. Or a close-minded racist. Or a fervent nationalist, Or a religious extremist.

His assertion needs little validation — we need only look back to the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, interminable wars between states, the American civil war, 9/11 and the recent outbreaks of violence in the Middle East. These are proof enough that plagues of nationalism, racism and religious fundamentalism, however we define them, account for most of the world’s long history of human suffering.

What can modern governance do about it? I wish I knew.

I watch the news with increased discomfort. Is Syria intractable, forever condemned to generations of internecine war? Is Russia slipping back into dictatorship, with Putin becoming the new Stalin? Do the radical elements of the various religions of the world, the Taliban and other Muslim extremists, the Christian fundamentalists, the ultraorthodox Jews tarnish our wish to have faith in a higher power? Does the race-based slaughter in the Balkans in the ’90s mean we will forever face genocide on a mass scale?

I recently visited Ukraine as an international election observer for the latest round of parliamentary elections. The country seems to be sliding down the slope to dictatorship with abuses of power, rampant corruption, captive courts, a dysfunctional civil service and intolerable distribution of income and wealth.

As if the long-suffering Ukrainian populace needs another lesson in the uses and abuses of despotic power. The bright spot is that Ukrainians, understanding the pathology of zealots and despots and seeing what others throughout history have shown, know there are ways to contain the malevolence of dictators. Ukrainians are resisting dictatorship. I hope and expect they will succeed.

We may scoff at the United Nations, and wring our hands at the slow reaction of the western world at unseating despots, but the world has become a safer place in many ways. Myanmar has seemingly turned a corner as the military rulers are voluntarily shift power back to the citizens. The seemingly intractable and insoluble problems of sectarian violence that have defined northern Ireland seem to have given way to more palatable methods of dealing with differences, even with recent flareups. The sweeping changes across the Middle East hold out hope for a future in which power may be distributed more equitably. Africa still has its challenges but these challenges seem to be more manageable, more capable of modest progress toward social harmony.

While the world in which we live may face perpetual plagues of irrational zealotry, whether motivated by racism, by religious extremism or by irrational nationalism, we at least see more clearly the pathology of zealots, we have more tools with which to contain them and slow their progress and we have a more enlightened citizenry more likely to resist such zealots and their excesses. We also have developed methods to punish zealots for their excesses; no more can a despot expect to retire to a villa on the Mediterranean when his run of power is over.

Kapuscinski’s quote captured my attention eloquently. It’s a reminder for us all to be forever vigilant and practical in dealing with zealotry in all its ugly forms.

By BOB FOULKES

Is it just me, or are there more rude people in the world today?

I went to an afternoon movie on Saturday; we arrived early to get good seats. By the time the trailers started, the theatre was about one-third full. Sitting behind us and slightly to the right were three people. The middle one chattered through the trailers; I immediately went on low level alert. When the movie started she continued to chatter, not in a whisper, not sotto voce, but in a full thespian splendour; her voice didn’t insinuate, it invaded.

I calmly turned after her third or fourth comment to her seat mates and asked to her to be quiet. It didn’t stop. It seemed to encourage them; her seat mate joined the  conversation. I asked again, noting that we had come to see the movie not listen to their idle chit chat. That didn’t stop them either. Finally, 20 minutes into the movie, to rid ourselves of their distracting behavior, we moved. We left our carefully selected seats, climbed to the back of the theatre and spent a moment resettling.

We managed to pick a worse spot to view the movie and we were now surrounded by conversations in stereo; couples on either side of us wanted to discuss the movie as it was unfolding. I watched the rest of the movie in a seething self-contained rage. The movie was memorable only for the rudeness of these few talkers. If it had been a serious movie, you’d be reading about me in the papers as we speak. I can throw quite a hissy-fit.

I poisoned my day with resentment which, as Carrie Fisher describes it, is “like drinking poison, while waiting for the other person to die.” The chatty audience members likely enjoyed the movie, oblivious to the annoyance they inflicted on others. I allowed their talking to crowd out any enjoyment I might derive from the movie. I drank the poison, I paid.

I have asked others what they thought about this public display of rudeness. Are we as a society becoming more selfish and self-centred, less considerate in public spaces, less charitable toward others, less likely to curb our behaviour? Do we even care about not offending others? Is this our future?

Or am I just getting old, suffering, as my friend Bob calls it, from hardening of the attitudes. Have I become less accepting of behavior for which I do not approve? Am I becoming old and grumpy, like Stattler and Waldorf, the curmudgeons of Muppets fame?

Answers were mixed; most friends have their own stories of rudeness inflicted on them. We shared horror stories, revelled in our moral superiority while mutually abhorring society’s march toward narcissism and kvetching about the decline of manners and civility. The high ground of moral superiority gives one perfect perspective: rude, dangerous drivers, noisy people in public places and the constant interruption of cellphones were all grounds for public scolding.

My other pet peeve was universally acknowledged: Who has not been made instantly invisible and insignificant, made to wait to finish a sentence while our companion checked his iPhone/Samsung/Blackberry? The little flashing light on the evil device always wins.

Much has been written about whether our constant connectivity is degrading our intimate relationships. There is no doubt in my mind that it is. We have thousands of Facebook friends but may not have anyone to call when we need to move the fridge. We may be LinkedIn but cannot find a single person who knows us well enough to write a reference letter for our next job.

There is another consequence. We now live in real time, the now of instant gratification. We all have short little spans of attention. We are easily distracted and such constant distraction is addictive. Our concern for others, our collective civility, our focus on intimate relationships is weakened. It is my movie and I can talk if I want; I get to say it — out loud and now.

I am not yet resigning from the human race and heading for the Yukon with a year’s worth of survivor supplies, not that anyone would notice. I hope I’m just slow to adjust to new realities of this crazy world I live in. I hope my skin gets thicker and I can better tune annoyances out. There are probably too many boors to discipline, and resentment will consume me. I try to develop a more charitable view that minimizes my exasperation, not because I’m nice, but to save myself from death by the poison of resentment.

So I have been working on a new year’s resolution; I’m going to drink less of that poison and more from the fountain of kindness. In the end, it may not be about me, it may just be about life as we know it today.

Joshua Halberstam in his book Everyday Ethics summed up the main reason for my resolution to be more accepting of such behavior:

“When you judge other people remember one overriding axiom: ‘Everyone is having a hard time. Everyone is insecure, Everyone is tired — we all need more sleep. Everyone wishes he had more courage, more money and better social skills. Everyone wants more glamour in his life and we all desperately need more laughter. Few can figure out how they ended up living the life they lead. Don’t be misled by flippant talk: It’s a battle for everyone.

“Give people a break. It’s not easy doing a life.”

The ballots: Ukraine’s election has been internationally condemned as flawed.

By BOB FOULKES

A few weeks ago, two things happened to me independent of one another. I finally tracked down a book that I had been looking for and I went off to Ukraine for my second electoral observation mission.

The book is called From Dictatorship to Democracy, A Conceptual Framework For Liberation by Gene Sharp. It’s a small book, no bigger than a pocketbook and with only 130 pages, thin enough to stuff easily in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. It is an enormous book in that it is a non-violent how-to manual for citizens who want to throw off their dictatorship and replace it with more democratic government. Like Machiavelli’s The Prince and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, it is dense, carefully written and full of blinding flashes of the obvious — at least they become obvious to me once I have read them. It is a book of big ideas and practical lists. There is an interesting New York Times interview with Sharp.

As I was labouring through this book, I joined a Canadian mission of international observers to witness Ukraine’s 2012 Parliamentary elections. Canada fielded 420 long- and short-term volunteers to observe, record and report on whether the October 28 election was in compliance with Ukraine’s election laws and regulations and with international standards for free and fair elections.

I was a better observer for having read the book and a better student of the book’s subject for having observed the election.

The international community, including Canada’s mission, has roundly condemned Ukraine’s election as flawed. Weeks after the vote, the outcome of Ukraine’s parliamentary elections is still not settled. Several of the 225 districts that elect a single parliamentarian will be required by the Central Election Commission to undergo another election since tabulation of the October 28 count has been declared flawed. The proportional-representation votes on a separate ballot are also in dispute.

The stakes are high. If the Party of Regions wins a supermajority in Parliament it will be able to revise Ukraine’s constitution. With little opposition, the Party of Regions will likely increase the already extensive powers of the Party’s President Viktor Yanukovych. This is all part of a larger drama being played out in Ukraine that started in 2004 with the Orange Revolution. The future governance of Ukraine, democracy or dictatorship, is at centre stage.

Our small role as a monitoring mission was simple. We were to systematically and objectively record our observations of the voting process at the poll level and report them to our headquarters. This data would form the basis of a final report by our mission to the Canadian government. As a data gatherer, it was not my role to judge the various events occurring before election day, form opinions about any aspect of the whole mosaic that is public governance or violate my commitment to confidentiality. I was there to gather data in one of 225 constituencies on election day by visiting a random sample of polls.

My group was deployed to Donetsk in the southeast. Six of us were sent on further, a two-hour car ride to Mariupol, a steel town on the Azov Sea. The predominant language was Russian. My partner Maria spoke Russian — lucky me. We also had a driver and a translator. Our task was to observe preparations at polling stations before election day, observe about 10 polls on election day, including an opening and a closing, observe the counting of ballots and transmission of one poll’s vote count to constituency headquarters. It was for most of us an 18-to-24-hour shift.

At each poll, we found more than 20 dedicated volunteers — all ordinary citizens who were paid about $25 US for their services. There were independent observers checking to see if the electoral rules were followed.

Voters stood in line to vote when the polls opened. Even amidst anxiety and cynicism, more than 58 per cent of Ukrainians voted. This was impressive: Showing up to vote is a powerful indicator of the Ukrainian citizens’ belief in this fundamental principle of democracy.

We tried to be as visible as possible, to show everyone we were around and might even come back; the deterrence factor was one of our few tools.

On voting day we saw a broad assortment of other “observers” many of whom claimed to be with the media, though there wasn’t a pen to share amongst them.

Most polls we visited had three observers from the Party of Regions; they wore black slacks, black turtlenecks and black leather jackets — the junior thug dress code. They must have been trainees because they all got embarrassed when we asked for their ID.

Police and military are not allowed in the polling station. At one poll, we saw two guys dressed in colour coordinated combat fatigues with body armour and some well-designed badges. I thought they were serious military types. After talking to them, we determined they were self styled Cossacks:  military without guns, rebels without causes and mercenaries without a contract. Just hanging out on election day showing the colours; we all agreed they had the best and most expensive Halloween costumes we saw.

The elderly vote: pride and fierce determination

We loved the elderly: They voted with pride and fierce determination. In some polls, first-time voters were given a flower and everyone stopped work and applauded them. At many polls music was played outside the halls and people set up food stalls.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the only monitoring agency with a larger contingency than ours, has publicly called the last two years a major step back for democracy in Ukraine. In its report, an official says: “Considering the abuse of power, and the excessive role of money in this election, democratic progress appears to have reversed in Ukraine.” It noted:

• The jailing of two top opposition party leaders, one of whom is the former president.
• The suppression of media critical of the president
• Widespread use of public resources by the president’s party and the intimidation of opposition candidates.
• Many new election administration rules for tilting the process toward the president and his party.
• Many aspects of the actual election that violated Ukrainian electoral law and international standards.

The report is being characterized as scathing in the international media. The Canadian mission of which I was a part was equally critical.

I constantly reminded myself that I was an observer. There was no place set for us at the table. We had no power. Yet even without power, our contribution was significant. We acted as a deterrent, damping overt and excessive chicanery while we were in sight. We also showed citizens with little power that we cared; the international community supported them in exercising their right to vote. I hope our presence gave them confidence and maybe a little power.

We had to remain unbiased while recognizing that subverting democracy is more than interfering with votes on election day. In places around the world the scale of chicanery is grander and the tricks are dirtier. Our role, to observe an election, can feel small if we see bigger wrongs we would like to right. Yet if we exhibit bias, we rob ourselves of the power of our presence granted by our objectivity.

One conclusion is worth stating. The international community can do little when the issue is democracy or dictatorship, but we must do what we can.

The power to choose rests in the hands of the people; they may have to overcome serious obstacles before, during and after election day.

That is where Gene Sharp’s book comes in. We can see what is happening in the countries caught up in what we in the West blithely call the Arab Spring. We have watched the profound effects still rippling through the lives of millions as the former Soviet Union states (including Ukraine) experiment with a multitude of governance structures. We have seen the genocide and human suffering as ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia ripped themselves apart. In all these instances, the rights and the lives of the citizens are radically changing.

My only observation affirms Sharp’s central thesis: Revolution and the eventual choice of governance structure is the choice of the citizens. The international community may help but ultimately the people are responsible for their governance. Sharp’s book offers guidance and legitimacy, there are many ways to change from dictatorship to democracy. The quicksilver that is democracy is hard to handle and easily lost; but it is possible.