Today Phan was wearing a t-shirt that said “SMART PERSON IS HERE”. This is quite representative of his character in general. He has quite the populist persona and fashion sense – he brought his own hanging line and clothes hangers to the host home!
His English speaking always comes across as being in the form of wise lesson from an older brother or father figure (bonus edition:incredulous expression at UK words and behaviours), leading to our team calling him ‘Mr. Phan’ to emphasise his pseudo-seniority (and actual seniority – he may be small, but he is 27 years wise).
He ‘lived in pagoda’ as a temple boy from grade 7 (16 years old) to the end of his university life (25 years old), has a degree in Rural Development, and has big plans to radically improve communities like the one we are living in currently. His near-nightly English teaching (we have to convince him to take a night off) is strict but well-attended, with a devout chorus echoing from the living room: “…two-thousand-and-fourteen…”.
Quite often I ‘translate’ between Ruby and Phan, having spent more time with both individually (room sharing with Ruby, and being in the workplace with Phan)…but sometimes I just sit back and enjoy their mutual misunderstandings.
He is secretly great at washing up; after watching me learn slowly and painfully how to dish-wash Khmer over the course of 2 weeks, he has revealed a past funding his first year of university as a dishwasher and waiter in Battanbang (a Western Province of Cambodia).
A final Phan-fact*: he is obsessed with bananas (fresh and fried). He just produces bunches of them at random times of the day. It’s a skill.
*As much as it ruins my alliterative last sentence, Phan is pronounced Pan, making discussion of kitchen implements difficult, as well as differentiation between host dad Pun, and host sister Pang.
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