Grumpy old men

I found myself becoming one of these guys for a bit this week. Was it Wednesday?? - anyway I arrived at the Healing Home to discover that visitors were, well, now camping. The Healing Home was becoming a marae and I still have too much pakeha blood in these veins. Silly stuff really - it's most likely set back my sainthood a year of two.

We try to have a 'one patient may have one family member' policy. Not two family members and two kids - one person. Read my lips.

Sophea and Donnie - who live upstairs and help me to keep laughing through my wifeless days. Sophea has discovered my love for passionfruit - and knows the one stall in a local market to source these beauties. She gave me half a dozen yesterday - yay for Sophea!

Part of the fun at the mo is navigating the public holiday system. Cambodia has over 20 public holiday days - I kid you not a bit. This Wednesday and Friday were holidays; then Monday week followed by Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for the Water Festival. Our staff have happily agreed to take a full week off over Water Festival and I'll owe them a day in the lieu thereafter.

This means that the Healing Home will close for a week from 9 November. It is not actually a problem; people want to be with their families and a number of our folk were plannng to exit anyway and come back afterwards. Susie is due back in the middle of that week (12 November). I'm trusting that I'll be grump-free by then!