Sometimes the question doesn't mean the same thing to the askee/questioned as it does to the asker/questioner.

"What's your mum and dad doing for Pchum Ben?" I almost laughed when I heard my mother in law asked this.

In Cambodia its one of the major holidays, the religious stuff goes for about 2 weeks and the last 3 days are public holidays, many people travel to see relatives. So around this time everyone in Cambodia asks each other what they are doing for the holiday. Its totally relevant to ask within Cambodia but totally irrelevant to ask of people who live in Australia and are not Cambodia.

It reminded me of 2 other questions:

What are you doing for Christmas? (when I'm asked by a fellow Aussie, or other white person)
What are you doing for the summer? (when I'm asked by a fellow expat white person , usually from North American)

yays and yucks of my week as an aussie expat

Yays
*I saw some Australian friends!

*I found out Canadians say the final letter of the alphabet "correctly"

Yucks
* Knowing that today my government is planning on signing the refugee deal with Cambodia, happening now
 http://cambopedia.com/2014/09/26/stories-tweets-cambodia-refugee-deal-with-australia-auskhrefugee/

* Knowing the budget cuts kick in and this is the last week of the Aussie channel, hardly compares to the yuckiness of the refugee deal, or the other budget cuts but it has been nice to watch Aussie TV, the baby watches Playschool and Giggle and Hoot, I watch Sunday night dramas and the news. If I want to hear and Aussie accent from nextweek I'll have to turn on the radio or internet.

Discovery- 3 things I only just found I can get at the local market

I usually get some food etc at the local market and some at the supermarket. For example most of our meat, veg, fruit etc we can get at the market but if I want to buy foreign things like oats or wholegrain pasta I need to go to a shop.

I recently saw this cinnamon packet in a shop and asked Soeun about the khmer name for cinnamon. I hadn't heard of it used in Khmer cooking so I was surprised to see this was made in Cambodia. Soeun said when he was little he heard people talking about "sweet wood" used in medicine. THen i remebered when i was in CHina i used to buy cinnamon from the chemist.

For some reason I alwyas thought I had to buy cooking foil at the market, I guess I haven't seen khmer use it much, but recently I got some at the market after ages trying to explain what it was- like paper but made of metal.. "oh you want to cook fish"" no i ddon't want to cook fish but i said yes anyway and the seller handed me the foil!

And the other thing is cheese cloth, well thats what I call it. PPl use it cover dishes and food, and wipe dishes and maybe strain food too.