obama, black outs and fairytale endings...

It's just one of those days again...

...when a great moment in history is unfolding and you are there, stuck on the couch, contemplating how unfair life is because there is a massive black out in the entire neighborhood. You have an entire office and workshop to run and there is nothing you can do as you are on the mercy of the electrical current. Your 3 year old son is complaining because there is no tv and airconditioning in the house. Your fridge is losing ice fast and its filled to the brim with food that is turning stale fast! You have a mountain of things to print, lay-outs to finish and client deadlines to beat - but sadly, their destinies are all connected to the plug. Welcome to the wonderful world of black outs in Cambodia...



It's already 10 pm. We've just gone back from the mall to get dinner as it's almost impossible to do anything in a house which is darker than a cave. No power still. Then I remembered that it's the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama - a momentous new chapter in world history. And our tv is dead.

So with my family in tow, we packed our bags and searched the inner folds of Siem Reap for a decent guest house with air conditioning and cable tv. We thought of the $8 a night room Olive has found while searching last weekend for a place her friends from Vietnam could stay... or perhaps the dingy old annex guesthouse extension in the hotel where I used to work... or perhaps we could just camp out in the park in front of Raffles (it's cold anyway, so a blanket would be enough)...


Then as we thought that our lives are on the road to the pits, we found the answer staring us right in our faces as we drove down Achamean Street and Sivutha Boulevard - Hotel de la Paix.


A shining beacon of hope amid the dead of winter (I am quoting Obama's speech already), everyone's favorite hotel is a client of mine and owes me a couple of night stays for several posters I did for them. One of them was for the hotel's coverage of the Obama-McCain presidential race last November (which is strangely a coincidence).


So we tried our luck and asked at the front office if we could avail of our barter agreement. It worked, so we were quickly hushed into our gorgeous Bill Bensley-designed room.


So while several hundred thousands were waiting at the National Mall in Washington DC on the unbearable cold of winter on January 20 to witness history unfold, we watched it in the warmth of 300 count Egyptian cotton sheets in a lusciously indulgent hotel room for free.

Thank God for black-outs.