Last night a bunch of us from the office went to the only North Korean restaurant in Phnom Penh. The restaurant is appropriately named Pyongyang. It's owned by the North Korean embassy and is used purely as a way for the bankrupt nation to keep its embassy afloat. The waitstaff consists solely of North Korean ladies. They are all dressed in perfectly tailored traditional dresses and they put on musical performances throughout dinner. One plays the violin, they all sing and and they even have a traditional dance routine. They are all quite talented but the service sucks (although if you praise "the dear leader" they might crack a smile); they all seem genuinely upset when you ask for anything. I guess that will happen when you've been beaten and trained since your were 2 in the various musical disciplines and are forced to live in Phnom Penh in dormitories without your passport while your family and children are kept in North Korea to prevent you from defecting. Isn't communism great?

After the restaurant we went to a large club/concert hall, called the Rock. Apparently it's the place to be if you're cambodian, however it sucks if you're not. highlights including a live band that started every song with 2 or 3 chords from various Guns'n Roses songs, only to quickly change into Khmer rock songs. It took me about 5 songs before I realized that they weren't gonna play Guns'n Roses, but for the first 3 seconds of those 5 songs I was excited. They didn't seem to have a lead singer. Instead about 30 seconds into each song, a different singer emerged from backstage under the cover of a large fog machine. the only thing more ridiculous than the entrance were the outfits they wore - lots of hot pink, tight pants and more hair gel than guidos at the jersey shore. And I learned that cambodian rock n roll consists only of power ballads. you feel the music deep in your heart and you aren't quite the same afterwards.

work is going well. right now the whole office is working hard to get our initial submission (kinda like an indictment - it's a civil law system here, so the process is all screwed up). Once we get that finalized, I'll be on the 4-person team in charge of writing response motions. that should actually be pretty interesting, although it'll probably mean I'm gonna have a lot of responsibility, which, as we all know, isn't something I strive to have. oh yeah, they moved me into my new office, which is located on the 4th floor. it however conveniently won't have air conditioning for another week or so. if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because i will have drowned in my own sweat.

Polo shirts cost $4 here, so i'll be channeling my inner Wheeler for the next few months. I don't know why they bother to have lane markings on the road here, nobody even comes remotely close to following them. While on a moto recently, the driver seriously drove the opposite way down one of the busiest avenues for about a mile. you haven't lived until you're on a 50cc scooter squeezing between speeding dump trucks and ox carts both coming at you head on.