My good friends Andrew and Anthea are somewhere in the beginning of a lengthy world tour, currently to be found in Beijing. I hooked them up with my little brother Adam, who is working for the US Embassy there, and his wife Rachel. Here’s a picture of them (mysteriously sans Rachel – maybe she’s taking the photo?). Love to all.

Thanks to a posting by bloggreen, I took the “What Kind of Anarchist are you?” test. I came up, surprise surprise, as an Anarcho-syndicalist.

You scored as Anarcho-Syndicalist. Anarcho-Syndicalism is the anarchist wing of the labour movement. Syndicalists believe in workers’ solidarity, self-management and direct action. This movement is most commonly associated with France and key thinkers include Rudolf Rocker. Anarcho-Syndicalist 80% Anarcho-Communist 70% Anarcho-Primitivist 60% Anarcha-Feminist 55% Anarcho-Capitalist 10% Christian Anarchist 0% What kind of Anarchist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

But then when I wanted to post the results here, I had to retake the test. I answered slightly different on a few items (I found a few of the questions unclear), and much to my shock, I came up this time as an Anarcho-primitivist!

You scored as Anarcho-Primitivist. Anarcho-Primitivism questions not only the state and capitalism but all the institutions which make up ‘civilisation’ including technology. It is perhaps the most recent development within the anarchist movement and key thinkers include John Zerzan. Anarcho-Primitivist 85% Anarcha-Feminist 80% Anarcho-Syndicalist 75% Anarcho-Communist 65% Anarcho-Capitalist 10% Christian Anarchist 0% What kind of Anarchist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

LOL Intertubes.

Every once in awhile, it’s time to do a general review of where the kids are. This web site can easily devolve into an uneven and occasional review of what the kids have been doing lately, without giving anyone a general idea of how they are. Arun’s suddenly started making a whole new level of changes. This largely seems tied in with his still rapidly moving language skills. We’re told by people at the preschool that his English is much better than that of most kids a bit older. He speaks both English and Khmer with a great deal of fluency now, and switches appropriately between the two depending on whom he is speaking with. It’s a little harder for him to switch to Khmer from English than the other way around, but his fluency level in both is about equal. His newfound English skills are wonderfully cute. He’s trying to reconcile himself to a new place regarding both his parents and his younger sister. The other day, I was holding Nahanni in my lap, and he crawled up. He pointed to Nahanni, then to himself, saying:

“This is Nahanni. This is Arun. Daddy got two babies.”

And he’s right.

Oh yeah. That was priceless.

His new language confidence comes at another transition. He’s suddenly gotten a lot less negative – he’s still a 2 year old, and says ‘no’ to just about anything, but the worst seems to have faded – for the moment. But at the same time, he’s developed a real fear of the dark, and finds it very hard to go – and stay – asleep. So, as usual, big changes marked by a disturbance in sleep. Hopefully this won’t last too long, but the other aspects are wonderful.

Our discovery of the Cheng Heng Cambodian restaurant has really made him happy. We went three times last week, and every time he gorged himself. He’s adorable in the restaurant, and really well-behaved.

One of the times, my parents went with us. They liked the food, too!

We’d only been there twice when the lady who owns the place called Leah on the phone (having asked for it earlier) and invited Arun and us to her daughter Sarah’s 8th birthday party! We accepted gratefully, and went on Saturday. It was a great afternoon, with lots of interesting and friendly folks of all sorts of backgrounds and interests. We all left the party in a great mood.

Love to all.



This morning, Arun took a tumble down our ‘front’ stairs. With his 
mother one meter behind him, and Sokhun two meters to his front, he 
still managed to throw himself against his retaining gate, which was not 
properly fitted, and plummet with it down a flight and a half of 
concrete stairs, inclusive of a landing and a turn. He’s going to be 
okay, but his face is a frightful mess – the right side of his head 
looks like roadkill, he’s got a laceration over his eye which is still 
bleeding, and clusters of bruises, bumps, and swelling skin covering the 
rest of that hemisphere. Leah objects to my description of his head as 
‘like roadkill,’ insisting instead that it only looks ‘like he took a 
beating.’




I was in French class when it happened, and rushed home after. They’d 
all returned from our doctor, Doctor Marissa, who had checked him out 
and found nothing seriously wrong – eyes, cranium, vertebral movement, 
consciousness, etc. – all okay. She wants to see him again on Saturday, 
but didn’t even suture the cut above his eye because it will heal just 
as well without one, and would only cause him more pain. Of course, it’s 
in a place where you can’t use a butterfly either, so it’s still just 
‘open.’




At any rate, I returned home to find his beaming bruised face smiling up 
at me. The welter of emotions was hard to absorb – shame was pretty 
strong at least. We all got reacquainted and calmed down. During the 
accident itself Leah had done her usual routine of successfully 
squashing all emotion in order to calmly and rationally implement plans 
of action, which is how she normally reacts during crises – she once got 
a job because during the interview there was an earthquake, and instead 
of panicking along with her interviewer, she guided the shaking woman 
under a desk, reassuring her that everything was fine, etc. It wasn’t 
until after the resumed interview had ended that she noticed that she’d 
begun to shake herself. So while Mae Dara downstairs had picked Arun up 
and was panickedly trying to squeeze life and love back into him, and 
Sokhun was right behind Leah, shrieking and terrified, Leah was calmly 
checking Arun for concussion/lack of consciousness, broken bones, etc. 
At first Mae Dara wouldn’t give Arun over, she was so freaked out. But 
then the landlady, significantly the only other person around to quickly 
and calmly deal with the situation, came out, quickly grabbed Arun, and 
like some barefoot doctor, felt quickly but thoroughly and effectively 
for any broken bones. She then handed him over to Leah telling her that 
he was fine and to take him back upstairs. She then collected q-tips, 
bacitracin, and some sanitary wipes and brought them up and told Leah, 
‘These kill germs. Use them.” Leah was already doing this, but the 
interaction, rational approach, and calm emotions spoke volumes, since 
everyone else was so emotionally upset.




The strangest thing was the way in which the event taught us all more 
about the ways in which responsibility and hierarchy interact in 
Cambodian society. I won’t go into it more here, though I’ve written 
about it elsewhere, but it was really illuminating for all of us.





It’s now two days since the fall. One of the things that was really 
rather heartbreaking about the whole affair was the way that Arun 
maintained an unbelievably chipper mood for the rest of the day, seeming 
much happier than he had the previous day, when he hadn’t had an 
accident. He was a little frantic, but it was like he was working so 
hard to be ‘happy,’ he was a little hyper. He’s calmed back down at this 
point, and although it’s much harder since the fall to let Sokhun go in 
the evening, he’s generally recovered emotionally. Physically, he’ll 
have a few bruishes for a while yet, but little babies seem to heal 
faster than the rest of us. We have a followup appointment tomorrow at 
the doctor’s, and will update if there is any news.

We’ve been offline for a while, owing to yet another computer fiasco.
While Erik was in Battambang province for 9 days, I took a few notes on
some of the things Arun’s been up to:

21 November 05. Woke up chatting about everyone he knows. Must have had
a good dream. He went to the kitchen, pulled a clean glass from the
dishrack, and poured himself a drink of water from the filter. He spent
the following week enjoying thrusting objects down mommy’s shirt.
Insisted that afternoon that his dolly be as naked as he was, and ran
away screaming when mommy suggested puting on a diaper. Started to play
at putting PomPom bear to bed, and taught him how to ride Arun’s trike.
He also made sure that PomPom knew how to beep the horn.

25 November 05. Really starting to acquire vocabulary quickly. He only
has to hear the word for something once or twice and he’ll retain the word. Knows a few words in both Khmer and English, like ‘fish:trei,’ ‘water:teuk,’ and ‘lock:sau.’

26 November 05. Sokhun makes up songs for Arun the way we do now – it’s like living in a musical around here. Today I overhead her walking around the house singing, ‘Don’t play with dirt; dirt contains bacteria!’

28 November 05. His amazing vocabulary spurt continues. When we get to the end of Goodnight Bear it’s particularly evident. Arun consistently recognizes the following in the little bear’s room:

• bird
• komnou – ‘drawing’
• khnaoy – ‘pillow’
• baby
• fish
• ball
• car
• and frequently, recognizes:
  • boat
  • airplane, and
  • domrei – ‘elephant’

29 November 05. Arun told mommy, ‘Bye-bye,’ and ‘I love you mommy,’ as mommy left the house, and seemed okay with letting her leave. Very sweet.

2 December 05. Arun plays the ‘ham nom’ game, where he threatens to pee on the bed or one of hte pillows, and we have to yell ‘ham nom,’ – ‘it’s forbidden to pee!’; it sends him into gales of laughter. He calls towels ‘juut,’ ‘to mop up,’ which I think is him surmising the name of a thing based on what it does, given that towel is ‘konsaing’ in Khmer. Apparently knows the word ‘Lok-sangh,’ since he screamed it when he saw a couple of young monks walking on the street together from the balcony this morning. He is extremely jealous of his pillows, and will let no one have one when we put them out on the balcony for play. He loves mantou. He calls everything that’s round a ‘moon,’ and insists that all stars are also ‘moons,’ even though he knows the word ’star.’ It’s a game. He loves pulling out the contents of mommy’s makeup kit. He loves breasts of all kinds. He taught PomPom bear how to ’sadhu’ the Jomneang Pteah shrine with a stick of incense. He loves books about babies. He knows and can say his own name. He tells mommy when he wants milk by saying ‘dawhgo,’ – which is most of the word for ‘milk.’ And when he’s finished with it, he hands the empty bottle to mommy and says, ‘done.’

As most of you know already, this last week and a half took us into the
neighborhood of Santa’s fabled workshop. Although we didn’t get a chance
to meet the big man himself (we’re actually still in Norway as I write
this, so there’s still a chance), we did get to do a lot of fun things,
learn many new aspects of human culture for the ambassador to pass along
to his handlers, and see lots of sights that none of us had ever seen
before. Following is a brief retrospective of the journey so far.

Sweden

Arun’s no longer as easy a traveler as once he was, but he’s still
undoubtedly easier than any other infant his age would like be. The
plane ride to Bangkok passed without incident (from Arun at least. There
was an unfortunate event involving an unbelievably aggressive
Singaporean businessman who felt like taking on the world, and whose
behavior eventually required flight-attendant intervention, with the
result that the latter wanted us to take a special wheelchair shuttle in
order to not have to deal with him any more. Yikes – the privileged and
unhappy lives of the traveling businessman), but the layover in BKK was
another story, requiring his father, who’s been suffering from a severe
three_month allergy attack, to walk him up and down the airport for
nearly five full hours. The plane ride to Copenhägen was somewhat
easier, although we all arrived tired and a bit grumpy. We immediately
caught a train to Mälmo, Sweden, where daddy managed a shower in the
station, and then connected to a train to Värberg, where the conference
we were attending was held.

The conference went swimmingly, and Arun, as usual, took center stage.
David Chandler took to calling him "The Boss", with great affection, and
Alix Kent, the conference organizer, brought some plastic dinosaurs and
a stuffed banana for him to play with (they were hand-me-downs from her
own son Raul [hope I spelt that right], whose hairstyle betrays that he
is entirely too old to play with them anymore). The conference ended
with a lovely dinner and night out at the Varberg Castle, the dungeon of
which is now a lovely restaurant. The picture above is a picture of,
from left to right, Alix Kent, David Chandler’s forehead, Penny Edwards,
four people at the end of the table who aren’t really visible, Jon
Marston, Venerable Khy Sovanratana, Arun, and Leah, at the dinner. The
picture following is one of a few of us examining a traditional Swedish
folk instrument called the Nickelhammer, which was played skillfully and
melodiously by Alix’s friend Sven, an agriculturalist and nifty guy.

This dinner also led us to confront a cetain amount of culture shock,
mixed in with a large dose of sheer stupidity. Without dwelling on it
too much, the wait staff came through the restaurant asking if any of us
had left a baby outside. That’s right, left a baby outside.
Remember, it was late October, at around 8:30 at night, on a cold and
windy night by the harbor. Concerned, I went outside to help out, and
eventually, with no parent in sight and the staff combing the other
restaurant and the concert hall all attached, picked the child up out of
her stroller and waited inside with another staff member, trying to
soothe the little howler. Finally, after about twenty minutes, the
red-nosed mother, clas in an evening gown, emerged and took her child.
She told us the child had been out there since 6, and usually slept much
longer than this. The wait staff said to me (not to the mother) that it
was "all quite mad". Sven told me shortly thereafter that this was
common practice in Sweden but that the length of time, the lateness of
the hour, and the temperature were all slightly odd. He then related his
own horror at the story (which we subsequently heard repeatedly
throughout Scandinavia) of a Swedish woman in New York who was arrested
for leaving her infant in a stroller outside of a coffee house while she
sat inside and watched her through the window. Clearly different worlds.
Partly no doubt to the relative lack of security in the US. As one of
the conference attendees said to a mother who was considering moving her
three children from Cambodia to the States, "Why do you want to move
your children to dangerous places like Cambodia and America? You should
move back to Australia." Indeed.

Norway

After the conference, our little contingent made a break for the
ancestral homeland (of Erik and Arun, anyway) of Norway. Since we’ll no
doubt never be able to afford another trip to Scandinavia again, we had
decided to make a short trip after the conference, and Nonna Mary and
Poppop Karl had gamely decided to come and meet us there. We met up in
the Hotel Bondeheim in Oslo, where this photo of them was taken on the
balcony of our room.

Mary, a former NY Public School teacher, does wonderfully with Arun, and
commands his rapt attention every time she reads to him.

The next day we did some light exploring of Oslo’s museums, taking in
the Viking Ship Museum and the Cultural Heritage Museum, which were both
astonishingly wonderful. The Viking Ship Museum, an apparent favorite of
toddlers, was less interesting to Arun than to the adults, who kept him
there past his own tolerance.
After that we moved on to the Cultural Heritage Museum, after a light lunch in
a nearby cafe, involving bizarre sandwiches of waffles and goat cheese,
and saw some of the most beautiful exhibits. I myself was very touched -
I kept thinking back to my great grandparents and further, who left the
farms of Ringebu and the fishing coasts of the Lofoten Islands – why did
they leave, and how much were their lives like those depicted in the
museum exhibits? My own conclusion was that they couldn’t have been too
similar – the exhibits, though class-conscious in the way that
Norwegians are (gently), nevertheless largely involved the goods and
arts of wealthy folks, for the likely reason that poor folks didn’t have
much worth preserving. My own ancestors were likely not among the
poorest (they could afford to leave, for instance), but not among the
rich either (they left, after all, and for good reason by most
accounts). But the beauty of the objects was amazing. Leah found herself
entranced as well, and pleasantly surprised by the many similarities
between Norwegian folk arts and those of the Columbia River Basin and
Northwest Coast of America, right down to the production of watertight
bentwood boxes.
In an outdoor section of the museum was a traditional village and a stave
church, which we briefly walked through, not overstaying Arun’s
tolerance of the unusual cold.

The next day it was off on a very exhausting and wonderfully busy
two-day excursion to the fjord and western coast of Norway, ending in
the gorgeous town of Bergen. It was part of a tour called, embarassingly
enough, "Norway in a Nutshell" but having just returned, I must testify
that there is no way that any of that could fit into a nutshell,
regardless of the nut. The train rides were lovely, though a bit of a
trial for Arun, who wanted a great deal more mobility than he was
normally afforded. We took a very modern Norwegian train to Myrdal,
where we transferred to the Flåmsbane, which took us on a short but
shockingly beautiful trip through the mountain, past some of Norway’s
seemingly ubiquitous waterfalls, and eventually ending in Flåm, which is
a tiny little hamlet at one end of the Sognesfjord, Norway’s deepest and
one of its longest fjords.

Unbelievably, the trip just kept getting more beautiful. The boat ride
from Flåm ranked as the most gorgeous leg of all. Of course, it’s
nothing compared to Arun’s mother, who sat in the lower section of the
boat for most of the ride (there were good views to be had from there,
not to worry)
. Karl also stayed belowdecks for the duration, playing with Arun. I’m a bit
concerned that Arun’s going to surprise me with some sort of card tricks
or coin-magic soon, as I think I heard Karl explaining a basic
palming-technique as I approached the table at one point.

We won’t be posting straight scenery shots here (there are almost
certainly more professional shots to be had elsewhere), but you may
feast you eyes on the beautiful Mary Leone, here accompanied by myself
at the front of out little boat on the fjord.

Much of the rest of the day’s journey was less beautiful, owing only I’m
certain to the lack of daylight. Because our visit happened in late
October, the sun set around 3:30 PM every day. Since we didn’t arrive in
Bergen until nearly 9, the last few hours of our trip were spent trying
to get a little shut-eye. There was a bus from the end of the Fjord in
Gudvangen, which took us through apparently beautiful mountain terrain
to Voss, where where transferred back to the original train line and
ended up in Bergen. Without a reservation, we wearily humped our luggage
across the street from the train station to the Hotel Terminus, an
amazingly ugly and dreary hotel which was nevertheless clean and warm,
possessed of bathtubs, and good enough for our needs. Collapsing with
little more memory of the evening, we awoke in the morning to another
hearty Norwegian breakfast (man these people eat lots of meat
for breakfast!) and an amazing setting.
The town of Bergen, which I believe is Norway’s second largest city (?), is a
harbor town at the end of a fjord, surrounded on both sides by high
mountains. Unbelievably beautiful, and equipped with lovely examples of
both traditional-style Norwegian and traditional-modern Norwegian (there
are apparently very few actual old buildings in Norway, as they were
almost entirely bombed or burned out by the Nazis during the second
world war). I hurriedly ran up one of the sides of the mountains
(completely populated with houses and narrow streets, preserved
waterfalls and pedestrian stairways) to take a few panoramic photos.

Meanwhile, back in the room, we found that Arun was enjoying secreting
himself away in the closet. Hopefully not a harbinger of things to come.
Nobody belongs in the closet.

And then, sigh, it was back on the train, for the seven-hour straight
shot back to Oslo. And although it was beautiful, it was also a bit sad,
as return journeys usually are, for we were no longer heading out, but
back, and without the many breaks and carefully-planned sightseeing that
the even-lengthier trip out had provided us. Nevertheless, even here we
were pleasantly surprised. Almost all of the trains we’d taken so far
might have had such things, but more accustomed to the anti-child and
anti-human sentiment of the United States (comparably speaking, of
course), we hadn’t even considered such a thing possible – a "child
car". There it was, an entire traincar devoted to the needs of children
and toddlers traveling on the train. Wow. There was an enormous playpen,
big soft mats, a tunnel, a play kitchen, diaper-changing stations, and
lots of other mothers, fathers, grandparents, and kids. It felt like
heaven. Even the windows were placed at kid-height. Needless to say,
after our discovery, much of the trip was spent there.
Unfortunately, it was not quite big enough to allow good photos. And the photo
here appears to be more one of Arun in some sort of colorful prison.
You’ll have to take my word that he was well pleased.

After a long play period, during which Arun got himself entirely
tuckered out, we took a nice long nap, awaking just in time to arrive at
Oslo Sentralstasjon, where we transfered to the city T-Bane (subway)
which took us back to the neighborhood of our hotel. I took Arun back to
the hotel room while Mary and Karl elected for dinner out, and Leah went
to go procure some food to bring back to us after Arun had been showered
off.

And next…

The next few days are going to be a bit exhausting, which is why I’m
writing this all up now – by the time we arrive back in Phnom Penh, I’m
going to want to sleep for a week rather than do things like this
(actually, I’ll spend my time writing applications for various grants
instead of sleeping, but still). Tomorrow we get on a train in the early
afternoon, and arrive in Copenhagen after nearly 9 hours. We sleep until
morning and then get on a plane to Bangkok, arriving there the next
morning, and transferring to a plane to Phnom Penh. After a quick taxi
ride, we’ll be home, in the heat and noise of our chosen city (it is
apparently over 20 degrees celsius hotter there than it is here. Yikes).

I don’t know if I’ll be able to upload this before we arrive home. It
might very well have to wait until our arrival, but know that we’re
thinking of you all, and wishing you were here with us. If nothing else,
we’d like a few more hands to help with the luggage. Love to you all.

As I write this, Timothy W. and Peou are readying themselves to get on a
plane to Bangkok, where they’ll spend a few days, afterwards proceeding
on to their new home and lives in the United States. I met Timothy in
2002 during my very first field visit to Cambodia. Already an old hand
here, we were both looking for decent dictionaries in a bookshop, and he
generously invited me to join him and some of his friends that evening.
Nearly four years later, he counts as one of my best friends in
Cambodia, and one of the people I met that night, Mick P., is another.

Timothy and Peou, married in a traditional Khmer wedding earlier this
year, received her F-1 (fiancée) Visa and will be married with legal US
standing on January 1, 2006 in San José. We’re going to miss them
terribly here, but wish them nothing but the best of luck, joy, and
marital bliss in the States. Should justice, liberty, and equality also
continue to exist in the US (doubtful, right now), we also wish those
things for them.

Two nights ago, they had a blowout celebration night on the town. Leah
and I joined them for a short period, but lacked the stamina to go the
distance (we also had to return to Arun). But they graciously made time
for us the next day as well, when we met them and our good friend Navin
M. (whom we know from SEASSI 2002) at Khmer Kitchen restaurant for lunch.

Taking a couple of photos with our brand new camera, we caught Tim and Arun
mugging around (left), and a nice group photo (above). The group photo
contains, from left to right, pictures of Peou, Timothy, Arun, Leah, and
Erik (Navin generously offered her services as camerawoman).

This posting just to let Embassy Spectators know that the ambassadors
are preparing to undertake their first Scandinavian tour. We hope to
learn many new things and collect a great deal of scientific and
cultural data to transmit to the offices in Arcturus. We also hope that
the brief stay in the hyper-sanitized environments of Sweden and Norway
will provide the father of the Ambassador with a break from the
crippling allergic reaction he’s been enduring for the past two weeks.
Here’s the schedule:

1. On Tuesday, our little family flies to Copenhagen, arriving Wednesday morning, and immediately taking a three-and-a-half hour train ride to Varberg, Sweden, in order to attend a conference on Cambodian Religion, running from 26-29 Oct.

2. On the 29th, We take a train to Oslo, arriving in the late evening, and meeting with Grandma and Grandpa (Nonna and Poppop) Leone, who are arriving to hang with us in the Land of Ice and Snow.
3. We may, while in Oslo, take a full-day train trip to Bergen for sight-seeing to the Fjörds (there’s an umlaut there, right?)
4. On the second of November, in the afternoon, we take an eight-and-a-half hour train ride back to Cöpënhägën, with a change of trains in Göthëbürg. We’ll stay overnight there, and then…
5. Back on a plane (Thai airways) to Bangkok and the Phnom Penh on the Third.

It’s highly unlikely we’ll be able to update this web page from Sweden, but there’ll certainly be a large update on our return.

Love to you all….

Well, everyone knows at this point that we’ve had a difficult few weeks
– between some health issues, Arun’s refusal to sleep, being robbed,
etc., it’s just been crappy.

However, today (Sunday) was just awesome, a wonderful end to a terrible
week. We got up and went to brunch with Navin, her friend Rosalie,
Phatry (also from SEASSI 2002!), and Caroline and her son Griffin, at
Del Gusto, our Sunday brunch place. Then to the internet shop and home,
for a brief nap. During that period, Sokhun came by unexpectedly with
her family to play with Arun, and they had a grand time together.
Apparently she’d promised them they could come play with Arun this
weekend. On their way home, passing our house, they said to her "Hey
mom, don’t lie to us – you said we could play with Arun!" So she simply
had to come up and see us. It was very nice. She has the sweetest two
kids, Reaksay and Reaksa.

Then we went back out to go visit our friend Penny and her family (her
husband is away in Venice for a friend’s wedding, but her three kids
were there, with a friend and her child, and one more child who was a
friend of one of Penny’s children). It was a loud, fun time for all, and
ended with a big pizza party, a quiet drive home, a bath, and utter
collapse for Arun, who is currently snoozing away

For those who continue to worry about our security and safety, I can
only say, don’t worry. We’re being a great deal more careful with
locking everything up, and the landlord has turned the entire place into
a compound, with electrified hurricane barbed-wire fencing at vulnerable
spots, and enclosing the previously open-air fences (which were
impassable but allowed you to see in) with sheets of metal, preventing
observation. We don’t really have any hope of retrieving our possessions
(though we gave the police $20 to "help with the investigation"- a
classic example of throwing good money after bad), but we’re okay. We
received so much love and expressions of support and solidarity from
people here, even people we didn’t previously know very well, that in
the end, it turned out okay – we lost a great deal of property, but
gained a more real sense of rootedness and connectedness with our
friends and loved ones here (and in the states!). We also learned a new
Khmer phrase -
"kñom jat duk chea romdawh kruwah haery" – "I consider
that [what they stole] was bringing me bad luck anyway [so they really
did me a favor and hurt themselves]."

Hey all,

Despite being being burgled (I suppose you can’t ever technically be
burgled, can you? I mean, your house can burgled, but not you – you
can only be robbed), we’re still trying to make improvements on
the whole web thing. I announced a while back that we would have to
disable comments for a brief period of time, due to a
change in the way the blog is hosted. But now I’ve finally managed to find
a way to put comments back into the web page, using a service called
Haloscan.

To make a short story only slighter longer, you can now comment here at
the web page to any individual postings. just click on the "Comment"
button at the end of each posting and follow the instructions. We’d
really enjoy hearing from you.

So go ahead, patriotic Friends of Arcturus™, sign the Embassy Guestbook!

PS – not to state the obvious, but although this web site will continue
to be updated, we will not be posting any new photos for some time, at
least until we get a new digital camera. Still, stay tuned – the Embassy
is almost ready to make it’s first set of diplomatic rounds to
Scandinavia – reportedly home to the hairiest human beings on the face
of Terra!▫

PS