USA! USA! USA!

It feels good to be back in Siem Reap and going back to the clinic.  Yesterday was another busy day at the clinic with a variety of geriatric and pediatric cases.  A young med student from London named Oliver has found me through a friend of his, Dominic at a volunteer organization they were both at.  I had met Dominic earlier at a New Year's Eve dinner.  Oliver had become dissatisfied with their setup and so he asked to come see the clinic.  It's a bit crowded now, but at least it will free me up to do some more teaching, which I would very much like.

At night, Kuro and I joined Oliver, Dominic and other volunteers from their other organization for dinner.  They included three other guys from the UK, and a couple from Holland.  When I first introduced myself, a groan went up from the table.  "Oh, you're an Amerrrricaaan.  We don't see very many of you around.  Fortunately.", joked one of the UK guys.  At least I think he was joking.  You could tell this was going to be one of THOSE dinners.

We made the usual small talk, but things got lively when the Dutch guy, Jasper somehow brought up Sarah Palin.  I was in the middle of talking to one of the UK guys, Ed, when I heard the name.  They all then looked at me and Jasper says, "Yah, you Americans love Sarah Palin!"  I laughed and shrugged my shoulders, "Hey, I voted for Obama and I have no idea why she's so popular.  In fact, why do you all know who she is as well??  Why would you care about someone like her?"  Davi, the Dutch girl replied that it was because they were starting to get some extreme right wingers in their government who were now imitating SP's fear mongering tactics.  And, she went on, unfortunately it has had the result of polarizing the country and the fringe groups now have enough power to really bog down the government when it comes to legislation.  Not at all unlike the USA I suppose.

As it turns out, the Europeans follow a lot of the same media that we in the US do - they know about FoxNews and Glenn Beck, they watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  However, I was told by the Dutch couple in no uncertain terms that liberals in the US would be considered the far right in Holland.  Okaaay.  I'm totally feeling the love at this point.  Jasper was obviously quite politically informed with equally strong opinions.

After the dinner, Kuro and I came across another traveler from Switzerland, Phillipe and joined him for a few drinks.  Phillipe is a chef now splitting his time between Zurich and Singapore.  I only got to chat with him for a bit, but he's a great guy, and has a fascinating backstory I'll get into later.  He's going to join a group of us for dinner later tonight.  At some point in our chat, we started talking about the largest cities in the world.  He was convinced that it was Tokyo.  Kuro of course agreed, but his opinion didn't count since it was obviously biased.  Phillipe claimed to be a geography geek and an avid reader of The Economist.  Tokyo was apparently said  to be the world's largest city from some article he read.  Well, I happened to have had this discussion just this past summer back in Portland with a couple of friends and remember looking it up online.  However, I conveniently forgot to mention this little piece of information.  I stated with confidence that it was Shanghai.  Phillipe insisted there was absolutely no way and he was quite sure it was Tokyo.  I insisted that he was wrong and that Tokyo wasn't even in the Top 10.  Phillipe then laughs and says, "Ahh, but you're an American!"  Okay, NOW it's on.  "Yes, but I'm an American who's going to prove your Swiss ass wrong."  Phillipe suggested a friendly bet of one beer and we could check by internet by tonight's dinner. Wikipedia's info was agreed upon as the definitive answer.  And so to be sure, I just looked it up and reconfirmed.  Woohoo, in one hour, I'm going to have a delicious FREE beer with my dinner.  Who's your daddy now, Switzerland?