Friday, March 16, 2007

Please Clean Up Our Town

One way or another
by Mark Norris for the Kampot Dar'laing
The dry season brings a flurry of building activity - resurfacing roads, new statuary, more houses and hotels. The work must be finished before the serious rains begin. This flurry brings with it an increase in dust and debris. This season it has also brought an increase in fees for garbage collection. The new rates are applied to local residences and businesses based on a fair and detailed pricing structure as laid out in the document titled, “The Prices that we needs to collect”.
The fees fall into six well defined categories: 1) Normal House, 2) House to be Corporation, 3) Restaurant, Hotel, Dance Hall, and Entertainment Club, 4) Good Shop and service, 5) Service of the Clinic and Schools, and 6) Companies, Factories, Handicraft, and Ports. These have clear subcategories, like, “Ground of the flat ($1/month)”, “House for foreigners ($5/month)”, “House in Plot ($5/ month)”, “The house in the building of an orphan ($0.50/month)”, “Dance Hall, Discotaquiet, Night Club that has bigness size (parking space)($15/month)”, “The hotel has not restaurants, are cheaper that $10 per night ($15/month)”, and, “The other Dust that has no Limit time ($5/month)”.
It is not clear, however, if these fees are cumulative. For example; if you owned an international ($100/month), royal ($100/month), port ($50/month), with a Parking space ($100/month), and “the other Dust that has no Limit time” ($5/month) would you pay a combined $355/month or could you assume that the Dust comes with the parking space and only pay $350/month?
I have a vague recollection of living in a city where they charged a set fee per barrel of garbage regardless of whether or not my noodle shop had an air-conditioner...
PS. If you must know, I am building an orphan in my house ($0.50/month)

This article was published in the Kampot Dar'laing. I would note that our garbage collection was 2000 riel per month ( $0.50) for the past year and under the new rules it would be $20 per month with no change in service other than new uniforms for the garbage collectors. We negotiated them down to $5/month and got them to agree to sweep the street occasionally (hasn't happened yet).

Snuggles

Coming out of a up-tempo record... The restaurant is doing very well. Recently, a pair of puppies showed up on our door step. I thought they were just strays from the neighborhood until Jasmine asked me to name them. I saw the two snuggling together and suggested Luke and John. She liked the names and called the affectionate, adventurous one John - the shy and quiet one Luke. I really liked John, he got run over the next morning.

T.G.I.F.T.

Thank God It's Fucking Tuesday - because we are closed on tuesdays.