writing and walking
Today was a really good day for both I think. I had felt tired all morning so when I went for coffee downtown by the river, I felt I would probably not do a longer walk or even feel good doing it. Instead, like I have learned so many times, it is better to listen to the body than the whimpering of the mind about things. I got walking today and it felt like the steps just took over. Up the river to a street named 30 which takes me down to parts of Siem Reap where most expats don't go. There are streets with wonderful markets and shops. Little coffee places. Cafes with tables out front. Places I go like this I always think would be wonderful places to live. They have all the pieces needed to just enjoy the things with downtown a walk away still but with so much more right down the street.
Homes are secluded by fences and privacy guards which I like. I particularly do not like some of the ways our neighborhood where we live works. Privacy is never guaranteed. We had this privacy curtain put on the fence but I have never felt it really fixes the main issue I have with how people are here. The main problem is people are packed in closely, it is just easy to wonder and look and sometimes stare at someone like me. One Khmer person in particular would stop in his walk to the neighbor and landlord and just stare. While I guess this is regular social behavior with Cambodian people, I do not appreciate it. I guess I subscribe to the somewhat mistaken belief here that this home is,
A little bit of a private estate for me
Alas not really true ever.
I made it back downtown walking down Sivutha Street which is a big shopping street and many small and larger stores. We do not have malls here but shopping is always nice by visiting so many local markets and nicer western grocery stores. At the end of the walk, I realized just how I felt sitting there at this bench by the river by the Old Market and drinking a freshly made Mango Shake. This wonderful feeling I had found my way while at the beginning of the walk I felt rather lost.
then writing
All the time spent walking this morning, and really off and on again, I have thought of changing the blog to using blot. I like the static site generators but I really do not want to have to use GitHub or some service like netlify. I guess I want it simple. One thing blot really has working well now is how obsidian does things. Obsidian is just too much and yet not enough for me. I don't need wikilinks or fancy knowledge graphs or canvases. What I do like is simple writing and I don't believe obsidian does that. Instead it has always overwhelmed me with its choices. Really the themes do nothing to hide just how butt ugly obsidian is. The plugins only obfuscate the writing which is what I want editors to do. It’s fun trying different markdown editors. I really like Typora. Its aesthetic is both minimal and elegant to me. On the iOS side when I go play, I use 1Writer. It doesn’t really take long to stop playing though. iA Writer just gives me the goods and I love the same app, how it works on both devices. There are some nice apple shortcuts iA made too for adding new files, read later, creating a diary file. I just add the diary file one to automations on the iPhone and I get a new file every morning all ready for me.
all of this and coffee too
This really came about today because I ventured down to Time Coffee and got to see my Khmer friend that owns the place. I felt this sense of happiness and joy seeing her again and how glad she was I had managed to stop by. It used to be an every day stop for me when we lived closer so I would stop often in the mornings, play music on her bluetooth speaker, talk with her. I met some of the other Khmer regulars like my acquaintance that is a travel guide to Angkor that I do not see so often any more. I also met my friend Russell there. We would meet at least monthly to talk and sometimes debate gently different things about life in Cambodia.
So the coffee came around and so did the walking and writing and then coming home, my wife made a wonderful Cambodian dinner for me. Something I do not have regularly but she does make when she wants to change things up. The day came along to evening and here I am writing. I guess I know this will not really become "a thing" until Sunday when I want to write yet again about a Sunday coffee and perhaps other things. See you then.
Sunday and its time
Today seems like a good day to finish this blogpost. I never really know. Shall I find a reason to stop writing? Share some Siem Reap morning with you all? Yeah. I will do that.
A walk beckons for coffee and some time away. A joy of life is a Sunday at spring coffee with the wonderful warm almond croissant and their always great comfort and WiFi.
I’m done with a weekend almost blogging. It’s been good. With some wonderful tossed in. My wife always does more for me. I’ve never had a person so dedicated and wanting me to be happy. It always makes me think back. Thinking about then luckily is not missing then. There’s few things about America that are tempting things to me. Definitely not the day to day life there.
So take a bite of that croissant I tell myself. Go slow but I cannot. It’s just too good.
Just like today writing here. Feeling done with this and happy with it.