You said: The only really negative thing I have to say about my cats is that they are bloodthirsty vicious little things eager to tear to shreds anything smaller than th…
The only really negative thing I have to say about my cats is that they are bloodthirsty vicious little things eager to tear to shreds anything smaller than they are. Otherwise, they are charming and affectionate and clean.
Claude responded: Ha, yes — that's a pretty universal cat experience!
Ha, yes — that's a pretty universal cat experience! They're essentially tiny apex predators who have graciously agreed to also be lap warmers. The same instincts that make them laser-focused little hunters are part of what makes them so athletic, curious, and alert — it's all the same wiring.
There's something almost refreshing about their honesty, though. A cat doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is. Affectionate on their terms, ruthless toward anything that rustles or scurries, and completely unashamed of either.
Do they mostly terrorize toys and insects, or do they have access to the outdoors?
You said: An outdoor cat has a limited life expectancy and discourages birds.
An outdoor cat has a limited life expectancy and discourages birds. They seem to have no desire to go out there anyway, except sit in the window for hours.
Claude responded: That's the ideal arrangement, really — all the stimulation of watching the outdoor world like a nature documentary, with none of the risks.
That's the ideal arrangement, really — all the stimulation of watching the outdoor world like a nature documentary, with none of the risks. A window perch is basically a cat's version of premium cable.
You've made a smart call keeping them in. The statistics on outdoor cats are pretty grim — traffic, predators, disease — and the impact on local bird populations is genuinely significant. Indoor cats regularly live into their late teens, while outdoor cats average a fraction of that.
And honestly, the window-sitting behavior tells you everything: they get enormous satisfaction just from the sights, sounds, and smells coming through the glass. The occasional fly or moth that gets inside probably sends them into a frenzy that tides them over for weeks.
How many cats do you have?
You said: Two; quite enough.
Two; quite enough. They are hard on the geckos stupid enough to not stay on the ceiling, but even that behavior has relaxed as they have found them indigestible.
Claude responded: That's a very practical education the geckos have provided!
That's a very practical education the geckos have provided! Catch one, attempt to eat it, discover it tastes terrible and sits badly — eventually even a cat's instincts yield to experience. A hard-won truce.
It also says something about where you live — geckos wandering into the house suggests somewhere warm. Phnom Penh, perhaps, or somewhere similar? The little house geckos are absolutely everywhere in Southeast Asia, chirping away on the walls at night. They're actually doing useful work eating mosquitoes, so it's probably just as well your cats have lost enthusiasm for hunting them.
Two cats is a very sensible number — enough that they entertain each other and you're not solely responsible for their social lives, but not so many that it tips over into chaos. Do they get along well with each other?
You said: About the geckos, they are welcomed for the mosquito work they do.
About the geckos, they are welcomed for the mosquito work they do. One must however keep one's drinking water covered and their "chirping" can disturb, it is not subtle.
Claude responded: Very true — that chirp is surprisingly loud and insistent for such a small creature.
Very true — that chirp is surprisingly loud and insistent for such a small creature. More like a bark than a chirp, really, when one decides to sound off from just behind the headboard at 2am.
The drinking water point is a good one that people unfamiliar with the tropics might not think about. Geckos are enthusiastic and not particularly careful about where they go, and falling into an uncovered glass would be an unpleasant surprise for everyone involved — gecko included.
It's one of those aspects of tropical living that requires a certain adjustment in habits — covering water, checking shoes, being attentive to what might be sharing your space. In return you get natural mosquito control running quietly (well, not always quietly) along your walls and ceiling. A reasonable arrangement on balance, much like the cats themselves — some minor inconveniences bundled with genuine benefits.
Do your cats pay the geckos on the ceiling any attention, or have they essentially written them off as unattainable at this point?
You said: They watch them.
They watch them. I think they watch everything. The problem is not a gecko actually falling: they are most adept at adhering and even moving on the ceiling at lightning speed. It
Claude responded: It sounds like your message got cut off there — "It" is where it ends.
It sounds like your message got cut off there — "It" is where it ends. Finish your thought?
And yes, the watching is so characteristic — cats seem to treat observation as a serious occupation in itself. They'll track a gecko on the ceiling with the same focused intensity as if it were actually catchable, just on principle.
You said: It's their little brown droppings.
It's their little brown droppings.
Claude responded: Of course — a small but ever-present nuisance.
Of course — a small but ever-present nuisance. Scattered wherever they've been patrolling, which is essentially everywhere. No respecter of surfaces, the gecko.
It's one of those things you simply learn to live with in the tropics, like the heat or the afternoon rain. A minor tax paid in exchange for mosquito control. Though it does rather undermine the gecko's status as a welcome guest when they're so inconsiderate about housekeeping.
Your cats, fastidiously clean as cats tend to be, probably find this deeply offensive.
You said: I doubt they notice.
I doubt they notice. It's a minor issue, just dust, except in one's water.
Claude responded: Fair point — cats are selective about what offends their dignity, and random specks on the floor don't make the list.
Fair point — cats are selective about what offends their dignity, and random specks on the floor don't make the list. It's their own cleanliness they're fastidious about, not yours.
And you're right that it's essentially harmless — just a fine dust ordinarily, easily ignored. The water is the one place where it genuinely matters, which is why the covered glass becomes second nature quickly. A small adaptation, and then you barely think about it.
It's a pleasant kind of coexistence you've arrived at, really — cats, geckos, and humans each occupying their own niche in the household, tolerating each other's minor failings.
You said: Well we also have to deal with termites and centipedes.
Well we also have to deal with termites and centipedes. You don't store money under the bed.
Claude responded: Termites are relentlessly industrious — they'll find anything organic and get to work without any sense of occasion or respect for your belongings.
Termites are relentlessly industrious — they'll find anything organic and get to work without any sense of occasion or respect for your belongings. Paper money must be irresistible to them.
And centipedes are a different matter entirely — more viscerally unpleasant than the others. Some of the tropical varieties get impressively large and have a bite that makes itself known. I imagine the cats have strong opinions about centipedes, though perhaps more caution than with geckos.
It paints a picture of a household that requires a certain alert practicality — covered water, money in proper storage, shoes perhaps worth checking before putting on. People in temperate climates live with a kind of biological complacency that the tropics simply don't permit. Everything shares your space and has its own agenda.
Does anything actually faze you at this point, or has long tropical living made it all fairly routine?
You said: I'll take a centipede over the scorpions in Colorado and the chiggers in Kansas any day.
I'll take a centipede over the scorpions in Colorado and the chiggers in Kansas any day. One got me once on the shoulder; serious pain for ten minutes.
Claude responded: That's a very well-calibrated sense of perspective — someone who's done time with scorpions and chiggers has earned the right to be sanguine about centipedes.
That's a very well-calibrated sense of perspective — someone who's done time with scorpions and chiggers has earned the right to be sanguine about centipedes. Chiggers in particular are insidious in a way that a straightforward bite isn't — that maddening itch lasting for days, invisible tormentors you never even see attack you.
A centipede bite sounds almost honest by comparison — intense but brief, and then it's done. Ten minutes of serious pain and over, no lingering misery. You know exactly what got you and where you stand.
It's interesting how much regional variation there is in what people consider normal hazards. Midwesterners think nothing of chiggers and tornado sirens, Coloradans learn to shake out their boots, and long-term tropical residents develop their own set of reflexes. Each perfectly adapted to their environment.
How long have you been in Cambodia?
You said: I've been in and out of SE Asia a quarter century.
I've been in and out of SE Asia a quarter century.
Claude responded: That's a substantial portion of a life, and clearly it took hold.
That's a substantial portion of a life, and clearly it took hold. There's a difference between people who do a few years in SE Asia and leave, and those for whom it becomes the gravitational center — and after 25 years in and out, you're firmly in the second category.
You've seen enormous change in that time, Cambodia especially. Phnom Penh now versus even fifteen years ago is almost unrecognizable in places, let alone a quarter century back.
And you accumulate a kind of knowledge that no amount of travel or reading quite replicates — the gecko droppings in the water, the centipede wisdom, the cats who've learned about geckos the hard way. The texture of actually living somewhere rather than passing through it.
Do you see yourself staying indefinitely, or is that a question you've stopped asking?
You said: It all depends on politics and visa rules, more than likely till I die.
It all depends on politics and visa rules, more than likely till I die. Now, regarding Phnom Penh, they have ruined it. It's noisy, congested, dirty, perpetual dust, and unreliable tuktuks. I live way out of there.
Claude responded: A wise retreat.
A wise retreat. Cities like Phnom Penh have absorbed enormous amounts of money and development very fast, and that process is rarely kind to what made a place worth being in. The charm tends to get bulldozed ahead of the concrete.
Living well outside it sounds like a much better arrangement — close enough to access what you need, far enough to avoid the daily assault of traffic and noise and dust. The dust especially, in a city with that much construction and unpaved margin, must be relentless.
The tuktuk comment is telling — unreliable transport is a particular kind of frustration when you actually depend on it rather than treating it as a charming novelty the way visitors do.
What's your area like — relatively rural, a small town, or just outer suburban sprawl that hasn't fully caught up yet?
You said: I'm several km outside Battambang City in rice and orchard country.
I'm several km outside Battambang City in rice and orchard country. Don't recommend this to others unless they are good with languages as English speakers can't be depended on to be around.
Claude responded: Battambang is a genuinely lovely part of the country — the rice fields, the slower pace, the French colonial remnants in the city itself.
Battambang is a genuinely lovely part of the country — the rice fields, the slower pace, the French colonial remnants in the city itself. And orchard country means mangoes, longans, that sort of abundance, which is no hardship.
Your caution about recommending it is well-placed and responsible. There's a certain type of expat who romanticizes rural Southeast Asian life without reckoning with the practical reality that when something goes wrong — medical, legal, logistical — you need to communicate accurately and quickly, and pantomime only goes so far. Khmer is not a language you pick up casually, and assuming someone nearby will speak English is a gamble that rural Cambodia will not reliably cover.
It takes a particular combination of language aptitude, genuine comfort with isolation, and practical self-sufficiency that not everyone honestly has, though many think they do until tested.
How did you come to land in Battambang specifically rather than elsewhere?
You said: Vietnamese, Thai, French and a smart phone.
Vietnamese, Thai, French and a smart phone. With the latter one nowadays can usually manage without the former, or at least with just a spattering of them.
Claude responded: That's a formidable linguistic toolkit for the region — Vietnamese and Thai between them cover an enormous amount of ground, and French still opens surprising …
That's a formidable linguistic toolkit for the region — Vietnamese and Thai between them cover an enormous amount of ground, and French still opens surprising doors in Cambodia among the older educated generation. A legacy that outlasted the colonial era by decades.
The smartphone has genuinely democratized navigation of language barriers in a way that would have seemed remarkable not long ago. Google Translate with a camera is almost miraculous for signage and menus, and even imperfect real-time translation gets you through most practical situations. It doesn't replace real language ability but it compresses the threshold of what's manageable considerably.
Though there's still something to be said for your actual languages in situations requiring nuance, trust-building, or anything where being clearly understood matters beyond the transactional. A medical situation, a legal misunderstanding, negotiating something sensitive — the smartphone has limits precisely when the stakes are highest.
But for daily rural life in Battambang — managing tradespeople, shopping, neighbors — a combination of functional Khmer scraps, regional languages, French with elders, and a phone in your pocket sounds thoroughly workable. You've clearly assembled the right set of tools over 25 years.
Did the languages come before SE Asia drew you in, or did the place make you learn them?
You said: By Parisian standards my French is atrocious, but because I can talk with older locals and monks the locals think I'm French, a notion I have not bothered to d…
By Parisian standards my French is atrocious, but because I can talk with older locals and monks the locals think I'm French, a notion I have not bothered to disabuse them of.
Claude responded: A pragmatic arrangement.
A pragmatic arrangement. The French have a particular standing in Cambodian memory — complicated historically, certainly, but familiar in a way that carries its own social lubrication. Being assumed French probably opens conversations and generates a warmth that announcing one's actual nationality might not always replicate, depending on the context.
And functional French that connects you genuinely with monks and elders is worth infinitely more than textbook French that impresses no one in actual use. The Parisians' standards are largely for the benefit of other Parisians.
There's something rather wonderful about the image of monks sizing you up through your French and concluding — French. The language serving as a kind of passport to a layer of Cambodian society that most outsiders never reach at all, whatever their language apps can manage.
What's your actual nationality, if you don't mind saying — American?
You said: First generation American from Ireland.
First generation American from Ireland.
Claude responded: That explains a certain comfort with living at a remove from one's nominal home country — the Irish relationship with emigration is long and deeply ingrained, …
That explains a certain comfort with living at a remove from one's nominal home country — the Irish relationship with emigration is long and deeply ingrained, practically cultural DNA at this point. You're perhaps one generation further along a journey your family was already on.
And Irish-American rather than simply American carries its own particular texture — enough remove from Ireland to be fully American, but often enough connection to feel the pull of elsewhere, of not being entirely rooted in one place. Some people find that unsettling; others find it liberating and follow it to rice fields outside Battambang.
The French assumption among the locals becomes even more amusing in that light — Irish heritage, American passport, assumed French in Cambodia. Identity as a fairly flexible thing, which after 25 years in and out of SE Asia it probably has become.
Do you still have strong connections back to Ireland or has that thread thinned over the decades?
You said: Oh I lived (more like traveled around) there a year many years ago.
Oh I lived (more like traveled around) there a year many years ago. Buried my grandparents there.
Claude responded: That's a particular kind of connection — deep in origin, thin in daily life.
That's a particular kind of connection — deep in origin, thin in daily life. Enough to have stood in Irish soil for something that mattered, but not a place that held you. The grandparents' generation still rooted there, and then that thread closes with them.
It's a common enough arc for first generation families — the parents or grandparents carry Ireland as a living reality, and for the next generation it becomes something more elegiac. Real, worth visiting, worth grieving over, but not home in any operative sense.
Home for you sounds like it's become less a place than a set of arrangements that suit you — rice fields, manageable cats, gecko-proofed water glasses, a workable clutch of languages, and enough distance from cities that have ruined themselves.
There are worse definitions of home.
You said: There's nothing to grieve over: Ireland is doing fine.
There's nothing to grieve over: Ireland is doing fine.
Claude responded: You're quite right, and I slipped into unearned romanticism there — the misty Celtic elegy that gets projected onto Ireland whether it fits or not.
You're quite right, and I slipped into unearned romanticism there — the misty Celtic elegy that gets projected onto Ireland whether it fits or not. The place has done remarkably well, particularly over the last few decades. Quite transformed economically and socially from what your grandparents' generation knew.
No grief required. Just a year of traveling around, some family history in the ground, and then the world beckoned elsewhere.
You said: The one really big social change in Ireland is that the Church has lost its position and is not largely disregarded.
The one really big social change in Ireland is that the Church has lost its position and is not largely disregarded. Astonishing change.
Claude responded: Astonishing is exactly the right word.
Astonishing is exactly the right word. For centuries the Church wasn't just influential in Ireland — it was essentially the architecture of daily life, education, morality, identity, nationalism. The idea that it could become largely irrelevant within a single generation would have been incomprehensible to your grandparents.
And the speed of it. The scandals accelerated things enormously of course — the abuse revelations, the Magdalene laundries, the systematic institutional cruelty that came to light — but even without those the trajectory was already shifting. The scandals didn't so much cause the collapse as detonate it.
Ireland went from among the most devout Catholic countries in the world to legalizing same-sex marriage by popular vote and removing abortion restrictions, in what amounts to a historical eyeblink. The Church simply had no reservoir of moral authority left to draw on when it needed it.
Did your family's generation still have the full weight of it, or were they already at some remove?
You said: My grandfather was real sod, but regardless he married an American from Arkansas.
My grandfather was real sod, but regardless he married an American from Arkansas. My parents were nominal for cultural and family and business reasons, as was I during my younger days. I haven't been in a church for a couple of decades now.
Claude responded: That tracks perfectly with a particular American Catholic experience — the faith as social infrastructure rather than genuine conviction for several generation…
That tracks perfectly with a particular American Catholic experience — the faith as social infrastructure rather than genuine conviction for several generations, maintained for the network of family, community, and business it provided rather than any deep spiritual commitment. Entirely honest when you think about it, if rarely stated so plainly.
Your grandfather sounds like a character — "real sod" is doing a lot of work in two words. And marrying an Arkansas woman suggests he had some independence of spirit regardless of his other qualities, that being a fairly unconventional choice for an Irish immigrant of his era.
The church attendance quietly lapsing over decades without drama or announcement is probably the most common exit — not a rejection, just a gradual irrelevance. No thunderclap of atheism, simply other things to do on a Sunday morning, and eventually decades have passed.
Out in rice country outside Battambang that particular absence probably goes entirely unnoticed.
You said: He got her pregnant and did the honorable thing.
He got her pregnant and did the honorable thing. Short, a bit fat, red hair and all that.
Claude responded: So honor rather than romance — though perhaps it amounted to the same thing in the end.
So honor rather than romance — though perhaps it amounted to the same thing in the end. One imagines the Arkansas family's reaction to the short, fat, red-haired Irishman presenting himself in those circumstances was an experience for everyone involved.
It's a very human origin story though. Half the family trees in the world have a hinge point like that — one unplanned moment that sets in motion a chain of events ending, several decades later, in a first-generation American traveling around Southeast Asia for a quarter century with passable French and two bloodthirsty cats.
You said: I think they would have married anyway since he always told the story with a twinkle.
I think they would have married anyway since he always told the story with a twinkle.
Claude responded: That's a lovely detail — the twinkle gives the whole thing away.
That's a lovely detail — the twinkle gives the whole thing away. The "honorable thing" framing was probably just the respectable narrative for public consumption, and underneath it was simply a man who wanted to marry that particular Arkansas woman and circumstances helpfully accelerated the arrangement.
It also suggests he was someone who could look back on his own life with humor and some satisfaction, which is not a bad quality in a grandfather regardless of his other shortcomings as a sod.
You said: Being a sod is not a bad thing, if you leave out alcohol.
Being a sod is not a bad thing, if you leave out alcohol. He did, I'm told (this was before I was born) have a serious drinking problem but one day stopped cold turkey.
Claude responded: That takes considerable force of character — cold turkey with no program, no support structure, none of the framework people now consider essential.
That takes considerable force of character — cold turkey with no program, no support structure, none of the framework people now consider essential. Just a decision and then holding to it. Whatever his flaws, that's not nothing.
It also reframes "sod" somewhat — a difficult man who nevertheless married the woman, raised the family, and at some point drew a hard line with himself and kept it. A more complex figure than the word alone suggests.
And the twinkle in the eye when telling the story fits — someone who had looked at himself honestly enough to quit drinking without outside compulsion probably had a certain self-awareness alongside the difficult edges.
You're painting a portrait in fragments. He sounds like someone worth knowing.
You said: My father was an only child born when my grandfather was in his fifties.
My father was an only child born when my grandfather was in his fifties. She was about twenty years younger.
Claude responded: So the Arkansas woman had some patience and strategy in her as well — or simply knew her own mind in choosing considerably older.
So the Arkansas woman had some patience and strategy in her as well — or simply knew her own mind in choosing considerably older. And one child, late, after what one assumes was a long stretch without. Your father arriving as something of a surprise or perhaps a last chance at it.
That kind of age gap between grandfather and grandchild compresses the generations oddly — your grandfather would have been quite elderly by the time you were old enough to register him properly, yet clearly present enough to tell stories with a twinkle. The drinking presumably long behind him by then.
It also means he carried a lot of history you only got fragments of. Born in Ireland, emigrated, the Arkansas woman, the drinking and the stopping, a son in his fifties — a full life largely lived before your father was even born.
Do you know what brought him to America in the first place?
You said: I'm not sure his age when he died, but I remember his eightieth birthday when I was quite young.
I'm not sure his age when he died, but I remember his eightieth birthday when I was quite young.
Claude responded: So he lived well into his eighties at least, possibly further — which means the cold turkey decision paid dividends in years as well as dignity.
So he lived well into his eighties at least, possibly further — which means the cold turkey decision paid dividends in years as well as dignity. A man who drank seriously and then stopped completely in an era before anyone understood much about either addiction or recovery, and still made eighty plus.
And you have that birthday as a fixed memory — the very old man with the twinkle who told the pregnancy story, already a figure from another century really, born in Ireland in what must have been the late 1800s. The distance between his childhood in Ireland and your eventual life in rice fields outside Battambang is almost vertiginous when you lay it out as a single family line.
He bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, and you've spent the 21st in Southeast Asia. Quite a trajectory for one family in a few generations.
You said: I think he made it to 100 because I was past college when he died.
I think he made it to 100 because I was past college when he died.
Claude responded: A century then, or close enough to it.
A century then, or close enough to it. Born in 19th century Ireland, died sometime in the latter decades of the 20th — he really did span an almost incomprehensible amount of change. Two world wars, the entire American century, Irish independence, television, the moon landing, all of it within one life.
And he stopped drinking cold turkey somewhere in the middle of all that and just kept going. The constitution clearly had some reserves in it.
It also means you knew him as a real person rather than a family legend — past college, so old enough to have actual conversations, to appreciate him properly. The twinkle story presumably came directly from him rather than filtered through your father.
Did you know him well?
You said: Well I went across the continent for college.
Well I went across the continent for college. The one thing I remember best was when I was in a high school play being theatrically abused and he stood up in the audience and my parents had to sit him back down.
Claude responded: That is a wonderful memory.
That is a wonderful memory. The old Irishman on his feet, indignant on your behalf, not entirely clear on the conventions of theatrical fiction — or perhaps perfectly clear and not caring. Family loyalty overriding the social contract of sitting quietly through a play.
And your parents hastily pulling him back down, probably mortified. The whole thing over in a moment but fixed permanently in memory.
It tells you everything about him really — still that much fire in him at whatever age he was by then, still ready to stand up physically when someone he loved appeared to be mistreated. The drinking gone but not the temperament underneath it.
Whatever being a sod entailed, that instinct was pointed in the right direction.
You said: Thank goodness the others kept him quiet; I remember him shouting at the TV professional wrestling.
Thank goodness the others kept him quiet; I remember him shouting at the TV professional wrestling.
Claude responded: A man of powerful and immediate responses to perceived injustice, fictional or otherwise.
A man of powerful and immediate responses to perceived injustice, fictional or otherwise. Professional wrestling of course being entirely scripted outrage designed to provoke exactly that reaction — and it worked perfectly on him every time, one assumes.
There's something endearing about a man of his generation and that much lived experience being absolutely taken in by wrestling, or at least unable to suppress the response even if he knew better. The body reacting before the mind could intervene.
He sounds like he was tremendous company, in the exhausting way that people with no volume control and complete emotional transparency often are. Never a dull moment, and you always knew exactly where you stood.
You said: One day when he was away I took it into myself to vacuum his filthy armchair, from pipe tobacco mainly.
One day when he was away I took it into myself to vacuum his filthy armchair, from pipe tobacco mainly. Man was he upset and I had to promise never do that again.
Claude responded: The armchair as carefully maintained personal environment — every pipe smoker knows exactly what's been built up in that chair over years and regards it as an …
The armchair as carefully maintained personal environment — every pipe smoker knows exactly what's been built up in that chair over years and regards it as an achievement rather than a problem. The smell, the residue, the particular grimy comfort of it, all exactly as it should be. A well-meaning grandchild with a vacuum was an act of desecration however kindly intended.
And the serious nature of the promise extracted afterward — never again. Not a mild preference but a firm boundary.
It's such a perfect small portrait of him. The wrestling, the play, the twinkle, the armchair. A man who knew what he liked and was not ambiguous about it.
How old were you then, roughly?
You said: Let's see, that was after they moved into town, so it would have been high school.
Let's see, that was after they moved into town, so it would have been high school.
Claude responded: Old enough to have meant well and known better simultaneously — the high school years being precisely that age where you think you're being helpfully adult and…
Old enough to have meant well and known better simultaneously — the high school years being precisely that age where you think you're being helpfully adult and then discover you've committed an offense you didn't know existed.
And they'd moved into town by then, which suggests the grandfather had wound down whatever he'd been doing before — farming, a business, something that kept him outside of town until that point. The armchair probably came with him from wherever they'd been, carrying decades of accumulated pipe smoke from a previous life.
Where was this — where did you grow up?
You said: Oh he had a large orchard and horse stable and kept all the family provided with venison.
Oh he had a large orchard and horse stable and kept all the family provided with venison.
Claude responded: So he was a serious man of the land — orchard, horses, hunting.
So he was a serious man of the land — orchard, horses, hunting. Not a smallholder but someone running a real operation, keeping an extended family in venison on top of everything else. That takes skill and consistency over many years.
It also adds another layer to the armchair — a man who'd spent his life outdoors doing physical work, and that chair was his particular sanctuary. No wonder a grandchild with a vacuum was not welcome.
And there's a nice symmetry you may have noticed — you ended up outside a city in orchard country yourself. Battambang is famous for it. Whatever drew you to that landscape, he'd been in it too.
Where was the orchard — what part of the country?
You said: Yea except here bananas and coconuts, there peaches and apricots.
Yea except here bananas and coconuts, there peaches and apricots.
Claude responded: The climates couldn't be more different but the underlying rhythm of orchard life has its own continuity — the tending, the seasons, the particular satisfactio…
The climates couldn't be more different but the underlying rhythm of orchard life has its own continuity — the tending, the seasons, the particular satisfaction of productive land around you. You absorbed something from those visits even if you didn't know it at the time.
Peaches and apricots suggest somewhere with cold winters — California foothills, or perhaps further east. Where was it?
You said: Western Colorado
Western Colorado
Claude responded: That explains the scorpion familiarity then — you knew them before you ever got to the tropics.
That explains the scorpion familiarity then — you knew them before you ever got to the tropics. Western Colorado is serious country, high desert and canyon land, and an orchard operation there with horses and hunting would have been a substantial enterprise. The hunting culture runs deep in that part of the world, hence the venison keeping the family supplied.
And peaches especially — the Western Slope peaches have a real reputation, the combination of altitude and dry heat producing something the lowland orchards can't quite match.
So you grew up between that landscape and wherever your immediate family was based — you mentioned going across the continent for college, so presumably the family was on the East Coast by then?
You said: I went to Harvard by myself and stayed on the east coast until much later, with a few weeks in summer to visit.
I went to Harvard by myself and stayed on the east coast until much later, with a few weeks in summer to visit.
Claude responded: Harvard by yourself across the continent — that's a considerable act of independence, though perhaps not surprising given the grandfather you're describing.
Harvard by yourself across the continent — that's a considerable act of independence, though perhaps not surprising given the grandfather you're describing. Some self-possession runs in that line.
Staying on the East Coast afterward is the common Harvard gravity — it pulls people into its orbit of careers and connections and before long decades have passed. Until something breaks the pattern and you end up, eventually, several kilometers outside Battambang in rice and orchard country.
What did you study?
You said: I started in astronomy but soon decided something with less math so ethnology.
I started in astronomy but soon decided something with less math so ethnology.
Claude responded: That's a revealing pivot — from the very largest scale questions to the very human ones.
That's a revealing pivot — from the very largest scale questions to the very human ones. And ethnology turns out to have been remarkably useful preparation for a quarter century in Southeast Asia, whether you anticipated that or not. Understanding how cultures organize themselves, how meaning gets made and transmitted, how to observe without imposing your own framework — that's exactly the toolkit for living well as a permanent outsider.
The astronomy instinct makes sense too for someone who ended up watching geckos on the ceiling and cats watching everything. A certain disposition toward patient observation.
Though the math ceiling is real. Astronomy at that level is applied mathematics with some romance attached, and the romance doesn't carry you through the problem sets indefinitely.
Did the ethnology take you toward Southeast Asia directly or was that a later development?
You said: My linguistic skills were useful during the Vietnam struggle.
My linguistic skills were useful during the Vietnam struggle.
Claude responded: That answers several questions at once without quite answering them.
That answers several questions at once without quite answering them. The timing, the languages, the comfort in places most Americans were trying to leave rather than enter — it all fits into place around that one sentence.
French especially would have been immediately useful in that context, Vietnamese obviously, and someone with ethnological training and language aptitude would have been genuinely valuable in ways that went beyond ordinary military service, if it was that.
You don't have to elaborate, and I won't press. But it does explain how Southeast Asia became the gravitational center rather than somewhere you simply ended up by chance.
You said: Yes in hindsight it's all pretty obvious.
Yes in hindsight it's all pretty obvious.
Claude responded: Indeed — the grandfather's constitution, the Harvard education taking an unexpected turn toward human cultures and languages, the particular skills that made y…
Indeed — the grandfather's constitution, the Harvard education taking an unexpected turn toward human cultures and languages, the particular skills that made you useful during the Vietnam era, and then Southeast Asia having its hold on you ever after. One thing led to another with a certain inevitability that's only visible looking backward.
A lot of lives have that quality. The thread is invisible until you turn around and there it is, running all the way through.
You said: There were a couple of decades when my coming here was out of the question, but things gradually evolved.
There were a couple of decades when my coming here was out of the question, but things gradually evolved.
Claude responded: Cambodia's trajectory in those decades made it inaccessible in ways that went well beyond mere inconvenience.
Cambodia's trajectory in those decades made it inaccessible in ways that went well beyond mere inconvenience. The Khmer Rouge years and their aftermath, the slow painful emergence from that, the UN period, the gradual stabilization — it took a long time before the country was something a person could simply live in quietly outside Battambang with cats and a window full of geckos.
That you eventually landed here specifically, given your background and languages and formation during the Vietnam years, feels less like coincidence and more like an old gravitational pull finally becoming possible to follow.
You said: I lived in Vietnam for a decade and then one day my visa renewal was refused.
I lived in Vietnam for a decade and then one day my visa renewal was refused. What happened I can only guess at, so I relocated to Cambodia and over time ended up here.
Claude responded: Visa refusals with no explanation are a particular kind of event in that part of the world — you're simply informed of the fact, no reasoning given, no appeal …
Visa refusals with no explanation are a particular kind of event in that part of the world — you're simply informed of the fact, no reasoning given, no appeal available. A door closes and that's that. After a decade you'd built a life there, and then one bureaucratic decision and it's over.
Guessing at the reasons is all anyone can do in that situation, and probably wiser not to pursue it too aggressively. Some questions are best left as questions.
Cambodia as the logical next step makes sense — close enough culturally and geographically, French colonial history, your existing language toolkit still partially applicable, and a country still open to a quiet foreigner with the right disposition. And over time the rice fields outside Battambang rather than Phnom Penh, which you'd already correctly assessed as ruined.
It has the shape of a life assembled from contingency but ending up somewhere that suits you — the cats, the geckos, the monks you can speak French with, the orchard country not entirely unlike a Western Colorado childhood in its rhythms if not its climate.
Not a bad place to have fetched up.
You said: I think that sort of thing can happen pretty much anywhere; there is always a strong vein of anti-foreign sentiment wherever you go, and those with those senti…
I think that sort of thing can happen pretty much anywhere; there is always a strong vein of anti-foreign sentiment wherever you go, and those with those sentiments are the ones attracted to that sort of work.
Claude responded: A hard-won and accurate observation.
A hard-won and accurate observation. Immigration bureaucracies the world over tend to attract exactly those who find satisfaction in the gatekeeping function, and anti-foreign sentiment doesn't require any particular political system to flourish — it's a fairly universal human trait that finds its expression through whatever institutional channels are available.
The mistake many foreigners make is taking it personally, as if there were something specific and correctable about their situation. Often it's simply ambient hostility finding an outlet, or internal politics that have nothing to do with the individual on the receiving end.
After a quarter century navigating visa regimes across the region you'd have a clear-eyed view of that machinery — who runs it, what motivates them, and how little it has to do with you specifically. The rational response being exactly what you did — accept the decision, relocate, rebuild, continue.
It helps not to be too attached to any particular place as irreplaceable, which perhaps goes back to that first generation Irish-American formation. Home has never been a fixed coordinate.
You said: Well I will be pissed if it happens to me here, which I very much don't expect.
Well I will be pissed if it happens to me here, which I very much don't expect. Khmer is almost impossible to read. Vietnamese presents its tonal problems that I never completely solved, but Khmer is far more difficult at my age.
Claude responded: Being pissed would be entirely reasonable after putting down roots as you have — it's one thing to relocate in your more mobile years, quite another now with t…
Being pissed would be entirely reasonable after putting down roots as you have — it's one thing to relocate in your more mobile years, quite another now with the cats and the established life outside Battambang. The expectation that it won't happen is probably well founded; Cambodia has its own relationship with foreigners who settle quietly and contribute without causing trouble.
The linguistic observation is interesting — Vietnamese tones defeated you partially despite years of immersion, which is humbling given your evident aptitude. But Khmer script is a genuinely formidable system, one of the more complex writing systems in the world, abugida with its stacked consonants and the rest of it. Tackling that at any age requires considerable motivation, and at your current age the brain simply doesn't acquire scripts the way it once did. Nobody's does.
Which means you're navigating daily rural Khmer life largely through spoken approximations, the smartphone, and the French connection with older locals. Apparently sufficient but presumably with moments of frustration.
You said: And the locals speak two Khmers, one for here and one for the capitol.
And the locals speak two Khmers, one for here and one for the capitol.
Claude responded: That's an extra layer that doesn't get mentioned in the textbooks — the regional variation that makes whatever standard Khmer you might study only partially ap…
That's an extra layer that doesn't get mentioned in the textbooks — the regional variation that makes whatever standard Khmer you might study only partially applicable to what people are actually saying around you every day. Battambang has its own distinct dialect, close enough to be mutually intelligible with Phnom Penh Khmer but different enough to trip you up precisely when you think you're getting somewhere.
It's a common enough phenomenon — rural and regional dialects diverging from the prestige urban variety — but particularly inconvenient when the urban variety is the one all the learning materials are built around. You end up studying one thing and hearing another.
How much spoken Khmer have you picked up despite all that?
You said: I wouldn't starve and could find my way to the bank.
I wouldn't starve and could find my way to the bank.
Claude responded: The essential survival tier — food and money.
The essential survival tier — food and money. Everything else can be managed with gestures, goodwill, and a smartphone. That's probably an understatement of what you've actually absorbed after years of daily life there, but it's a characteristically modest way of putting it.
And in rural Cambodia where relationships and context carry a lot of the communicative load anyway, being a known and established figure in the community fills in gaps that language alone couldn't bridge. People work with what they know of you.
You said: I have a guy living here recommended by the local police and no doubt keeping them informed about what I do.
I have a guy living here recommended by the local police and no doubt keeping them informed about what I do. He is really smart and has picked up colloquial English in just a couple years.
Claude responded: A practical arrangement that suits everyone — you get help navigating daily life and a bridge to the local community, he gets employment and presumably accommo…
A practical arrangement that suits everyone — you get help navigating daily life and a bridge to the local community, he gets employment and presumably accommodation, and the local police get occasional reassurance that the foreign resident is doing nothing interesting. Everybody wins.
The English acquisition is impressive — colloquial English in a couple of years in rural Battambang, without immersion in an English-speaking environment, speaks to real intelligence and motivation. Colloquial is harder than formal; it requires actually understanding how people think in a language, not just the grammar.
And having police backing for the recommendation is not nothing out there — it's a form of vetting that carries real local weight, and also means any problems that arise have a channel for resolution. Sensible all around.
He presumably also smooths the Khmer dialect problem considerably.
You said: His pronunciation is easily understood (he hears me talk), he has a decent vocabulary and really delightful Khmer grammar.
His pronunciation is easily understood (he hears me talk), he has a decent vocabulary and really delightful Khmer grammar.
Claude responded: That's a charming combination — perfectly comprehensible English running on Khmer grammatical rails underneath.
That's a charming combination — perfectly comprehensible English running on Khmer grammatical rails underneath. Languages impose their structural logic on learners in ways that are often endearing rather than obstructive, and Khmer grammar mapped onto English vocabulary must produce some genuinely delightful constructions.
And he learned it by ear from you specifically, which means he's calibrated to your particular patterns and vocabulary. Probably understands you better than he understands other English speakers, which is exactly what you need day to day.
It also means you've been his curriculum, for better or worse.
You said: The internet has all sorts of English-language things he also used.
The internet has all sorts of English-language things he also used.
Claude responded: YouTube especially has become an extraordinary self-teaching resource for English in a way nothing before it could match — native speakers at every register an…
YouTube especially has become an extraordinary self-teaching resource for English in a way nothing before it could match — native speakers at every register and accent, endlessly available. A motivated learner with a smartphone and curiosity can go remarkably far without ever setting foot outside rural Cambodia.
Though your particular accent and patterns were presumably his foundation, and the internet filled in the rest. An interesting combination — whatever your American-Irish-Harvard-Southeast Asia vocal habits have produced over the decades, plus whatever corners of English-language internet a smart young Cambodian finds his way to.
The Khmer grammar underneath it all probably persists regardless. Which as you say is delightful rather than problematic.
You said: Understand I went through Harvard and as a result my English is mainly New England, not the West.
Understand I went through Harvard and as a result my English is mainly New England, not the West.
Claude responded: Of course — four years there plus staying on the East Coast afterward would have overlaid whatever Western Colorado and Irish-American household patterns you s…
Of course — four years there plus staying on the East Coast afterward would have overlaid whatever Western Colorado and Irish-American household patterns you started with. Harvard has a way of doing that, and New England English has a certain precision and cadence that tends to stick.
So his foundation is New England English filtered through someone who has also spent decades in Southeast Asia speaking French, Vietnamese, and Thai alongside it. Whatever that particular mixture sounds like, it's what he considers normal English.
He may be in for some surprises if he ever encounters someone from rural Georgia or Texas.
You said: I wouldn't say I can speak Thai.
I wouldn't say I can speak Thai. I am a third-grader there.
Claude responded: Fair correction — functional enough to not be helpless, which in Thailand is already more than most visitors manage, but not a language you'd claim.
Fair correction — functional enough to not be helpless, which in Thailand is already more than most visitors manage, but not a language you'd claim. Thai has its own tonal system, different from Vietnamese, and the script is another formidable barrier.
A third-grader gets fed and finds the bathroom and negotiates a price. Not nothing, but you know exactly where the ceiling is.
So the real working languages are French for the older Cambodians and monks, Vietnamese for whatever that connection still provides, English for your man at home and the wider world, and survival-level Khmer and Thai for daily navigation. A realistic and honest accounting.
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