The World Tetris Championships...

...should be held right here in Phnom Penh. We would OWN them. I'm convinced. Well, maybe not Tetris. Maybe it's that snake game that we should host the championships for. Or even speed-texting. All I know is that a cell phone is all that stands between many Khmer guys and Death By Boredom.

"Waiting" seems part of the job description for house helpers, guards, moto drivers, food vendors, and many others. One house on my way to school always has 3 uniformed guards sitting around, watching me walk. I pass probably 10 moto and tuk-tuk drivers in my 5-minute walk, waiting for passengers. Guys sit outside the car wash, which rarely has cars or motos to clean. I bet 30% of Phnom Penh males spend more than half their day sitting around with their cell phones. (Girls? I'm not sure. Some are vendors or collect recycled goods, but mostly they're not outside as much. They're more likely to be house helpers - cooking and cleaning - or to work in the schools, run stands in the market, raise children, etc. I'm sure many girls and guys also work in factories, unseen by my eyes.)

The lounging guys make it weird for me, because as a girl, I'm not supposed to make eye contact or acknowledge them at all. But I pass them every day, and they have no qualms about staring at me, as they would at any obvious foreigner. Let's face it: a white person is 60% more interesting than Round 92 of the day on Tetris. In the US, if I passed someone daily, we'd exchange a smile, nod, or quick "how are you," but that could get me into trouble here. So I focus on the road until there's a little kid or a woman for me to smile at. Sometimes they even make a joke out of it, staring at me from a few feet away so it's really unnatural for me not to look at them, then cracking up. I sometimes glance at them out of the corner of my eye, but I'm trying to be good and not act familiar with them. (This is also a challenge when I'm in a tuk-tuk facing backward, toward all the moto drivers looking straight ahead.)