Monday, July 27, 2009 – Day 3

**NOTE: NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED**
Office hallway- stairs on right lead down to the patio/courtyard of the WHO office.
The A/C directed at me.
Nemo's desk on left and Dory's desk on right.

Entrance to Post Office.
Post office- if it weren't for the sign, I would've missed it entirely.

I wake up early and get ready for work, be there at 8 AM. I get to the gate of the WHO building and present my passport and WHO paperwork to the guards who finally let me in after Bunny helped explain. I sat in the receptionist area and Dr. Nemo, my mentor, swirls in. He is a former cardiac surgeon from the UK, now working on influenza surveillance in Cambodia. He was stationed in Beijing when my friend Kevin worked with him. He takes me to the Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response (CSR) office and I meet Coral (the secretary), Dory (field epidemiologist/pediatrician/Filippino/trained in US CDC EIS program), and Marlin (pediatrician/Khmer/in charge of influenza-like illness, ILI, surveillance, in the office. I am given a heads-up about what I’m supposed to do – compile a monthly report of all Cambodian influenza cases for the head honchos of the WHO. Weekly reports are made about influenza activity from at least 4 different surveillance systems but this is the first time that WHO and Cambodian Ministry of Health wanted monthly reporting because H1N1 is now a pandemic and the strategy is to mitigate it, and less on prevention, because transmission and infection are now inevitable. I research all the surveillance systems, NAMRU, ILI, SISEA, etc. Turns out the US CDC also has branches here and funds some of these. Have a hard time finding things and getting onto the intranet/email. So Nigel (bf) of course helps me from across the world.

Lunch break is 2 hours from 12-2 PM and I try to find a post office and bank to cash my traveler’s cheques. I walk for forever (maybe 1 mile) and am sweating profusely. The bank I had on my print out of Cambodia Asian Banks is now another store. I try looking for a different CAB and no use. I bump into a white girl outside Lucky Market and ask her if there’s a bank that wouldn’t charge a 2% commission. She is Russian and is learning English here. She takes me to another CAB on her moto; I am impressed she learned to ride one so quickly. She drives me to one and we exchange information, as we are both looking for gyms to join. I enter the bank and am hit with a 2% commission fee again, after paying 2% for the traveler’s cheques in the first place. The woman said that exchanging for Riels would be $0 fee but I don’t want to carry hundreds of thousands in foreign currency – too bulky. $1 is 4100 Riels, so $100 is 410,000 Riels. Imagine 2 times that. I get antsy carrying around $50! It’s now nearing the end of break and no lunch yet. I find a cyclo driver, he bikes with a mini seat/rickshaw thing in front of his bike gadget. He says $3, which is more than 3 times what he should be charging. After bargaining for a little bit, I keep walking. I find another guy in a tuk-tuk and he says $3 too. He is hard to bargain with too. I walk a few more meters and a couple of guys are hanging out in their tuk-tuks. Lucky market, how much? $3. No, 2000 riels. 6000 riels. No. $1.50. No. $1. So one guy takes me for $1 after I begin to walk away. I am sick of this bargaining for a ride. I just want to pay what is standard and not get taken advantage of everywhere I go. I decide to put a stop to that. I arrive at Lucky market and buy a couple of Asian buns while the tuk-tuk driver waits outside. I ask him to take me to the WHO office, only 1.5 blocks away and then pay him the $1 and walk quickly back to the office.

The WHO office gives me a cell phone to borrow while I’m here, which is nice because my cell phone needs some sort of unlocking code that AT&T needs 5-7 business days to process. Forget that now! I have a working cell! Dory and I have a long chat about medicine, Spanish, life, etc. Then I meet with Marlin to go over the ILI surveillance system. I took a tour with Nemo and met others in malaria, health services, child and maternal health, TB, dengue fever, etc. and picked up a couple of business cards. I also met the head honcho, though I didn’t know it until after I left. I left at 6:10 PM tonight and headed to the Place, a new flashy black building I thought was a club, to check out the gym. It is $100 for a month, which is 2x the rate in the US. The gym is on 3 floors and the cardio equipment face floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the city and the Independence Monument. There are nice showers, free towels, and a sauna. Free Mac computers to use for the Internet, some gym classes, but the only people who can afford this are expats and foreigners. Natives work out in the park by the IMonument. The Place also has restaurants and a sky bar and clubs/discos. Everything just screams “I have money – look at me.” I leave to ponder if $100 is worth it because I walk a lot and there is inevitable sweating from the hot sun, even at 8 AM.

I go to Lucky Market to buy groceries and there is a limited selection of fresh fruits and veggies. Apparently, fresh broccoli is a delicacy in countries other than the US. I buy frozen veggies, overpriced and from the US, and a small container of tofu to make fried rice. I buy 2 bananas… or at least tried to. The guy rang up all my groceries and then held up the 2 bananas and showed them to a guy near me. They spoke and laughed and I noticed the price tag was on one of the bananas so I didn’t know what was going on. The other guy takes away the 2 bananas and returns with a bunch of bananas, about 8. I say sorry, I didn’t realize you had to buy the whole thing. So no bananas for me this month. They are short, and very green, and not healthy-looking. I get home, make food, and it is the worst fried rice I’ve ever made. Lucky for me, I made a ton to last me 4 days.