Time for a Toothpick

Colors: There's a lot of color, mostly in muted tones with vivid accents. Lots of muted greens, blues, and reds on buildings. Most buildings vary between yellow and off-white, with enough hard white buildings to create a good sense of contrast. Strong red pops up a lot as it's the color of most tuk-tuks and the dominant national color (blue is the other color on the flag, but it tends to appear more to bring out the red.) Also, since it's the national color, it's also on all the signs for the country's leading beer, Angkor (motto: "My Country, My Beer."). Even when the streets are paved, they still have a dusty color. It's a dusty country (most people's reason for not wearing contact lenses), so it makes sense that there's a lot of off-white. But by far, the strongest color I notice is the buddhist gold and orange, or more accurately, saffron and deep saffron. The monks all seem to have saffron umbrellas, which look amazing when they catch the light. But it's not only the color of monks; plenty of companies have adopted that particular shade of orange, in particular telecom company Cellcard, whose umbrellas are nearly ubiquitous on the streets.

Smells: Lots of stuff I can't quite pin down all the time. Smoke is ever-present, but the tone of it changes during the day. In the early morning, everyone burns incense near their door, so when I come in early to email, it's a pleasant smoky smell. There are also a lot of open cooking fires for street food in the early afternoon, so smoke is more harsh, but also has meat-smells attached to it. This is also the time of year they make their fermented fish paste, so that smell pops up from time to time. And then in high-traffic areas there's a lot of engine smoke. There's a lot of spice smell that I can't identify. Some areas of the city also stink like shit, often because they are basically open garbage dumps or sewers. As for the reputedly-stinky durian fruit, I can't say as I've noticed it yet as I've passed them at the market. Apparently some people think it stinks, and some people like it. Smell is very individualistic--sort of how if you really like someone, their sweat smells good.

Where I work: The Royal University is situated a bit on the outskirts of town, near the airport road. Like most of the impressive institutional buildings here, they were designed and built during the early 60s, a sort of golden era for King Sihanouk and the country at large: peaceful, neutral, with no idea about what hell they were in for. The A building, where I'm going to work at, is 7 stories high. The older expat teacher who showed me around ruminated on how for students coming here from the provinces, this might be the highest up they've ever been, maybe the highest they're ever going to get. The buildings are also the off-white of most architecture here old and new, but were done in the "New Khmer" style, which reminds me of a lot of those modernist post-colonial government buildings of the late 50s-early 60s, carrying in their designs all the hopes of that strange and electric time (If you watch Last King of Scotland and pay attention to both the architecture and the rhetoric, you'll see what I mean.) This giant building is seated on a number of massive pylons, which allow you to walk underneath the mass of the building when you're on the ground. It's got a U-shape, and there are 'inside' and 'outside' walkways. It's all open-air, and though you can close the windows (maybe if a monsoon comes or something) the cross-ventilation is key to keeping cool.
The library's entry system seems much nicer than firestone's: An old woman who speaks no english hands you two matching numbered metal tags for your bag. You tie one on your bag, and keep the other one with you. Then you put a bead into a bin as an attendence counter (with different colored beads for each gender), and walk in. Low-tech, and effective.
There's an olympic pool that's never been restored, so it collects rainwater in a murky mess. It's a breeding pool for mosquitos, and it looks like it could be dangerous if you left a child near it, but the head of the university (one of the two professors out of several hundred to return after the mass exodus and extermination during the KR years) keeps it because "one day" it's going to be restored to its former glory.
It needs a paint job, but it has a lot of character and potential. You want to believe in it.

Some People I've Met:
Phillipe, a cameroonian soccer player by way of france, recovering from injuries by playing for the Phnom Penh Empire soccer team. Met him at the king kong club. He gave me his cell number so that we can go work out.
Miwa, an American friend of a friend, who worked a long stint last year at an AIDS orphanage in the hinterlands, and is now working on a fellowship in some sort of Arts and Culture thing here. She was glad to find my attitude seemed very compatible with cambodia, especially the part about embracing the random and absurd.
Steven, the older expat teacher who tends to show newbies how things work around here. He has a Khmer wife, and his advice for learning the language is to "learn the painless way: get a girlfriend who speaks Khmer." Just the other day his wife brought in a buddhist monk to perform some ceremony to remove what she perceives as the bad mojo on the house (earlier this summer he got into a moto accident just before his flight to America, along with a number of other misfortunes). He's going to take me to look at apartments today.
Angel, a chinese (?) fellow who has worked in Cambodia for about six years or so, and is a regular at the fate-blessing buddha vegetarian restaurant. He's mostly worked in the import-export business, specializing in fruit. He told me a bit about the fruit scene here, and told me I should try the small, flavorful bananas.
Sovannthea, who handles administrative stuff at the RUPP. he picked me up at the airport, and installed microsoft office on my computer. He's really upbeat and cheerful, and has studied in America. He also needs a crutch to walk.
Larry (Harry?) and Ellen (Evelyn?) A very nice couple at the embassy waiting to have extra pages sewn into their passports. They retired 6 or 7 years ago, and have been sailing the world ever since. They started in the great lakes, and have been moving east to leisurely circumnavigate the globe over the past 6 years. They had a lot of great stories about their visit to Madagascar and the Comoros.