Random Story: Dah-rid and family

My Landlords are really awesome. Its a family with three young girls, maybe 8, 12, 14 and the mother Setty and the Father Dah-rid. They are always so nice and help us out with anything we need. They also bring us random gifts once in a while for holidays, today is Chinese New Year and the girls brought us a bowl of noodles and some kind of meat and 4 cans of soda. We didn't actually eat the strange noodle dish but it was really cool of them to give it to us.
The mother and father speak some English although its very broken and basic. When talking to Dah-rid its hard not laugh in his face. Not because his English is terrible, but because of the kinds of words he uses. He was in the military for many years where he learned English, and was trained as a doctor and translator. He speaks using strict and serious words, even when explaining the simplest things. Words like, demand, request, confirm, supply, and transaction, speaking in the way military officers might speak.
About 3 months ago I was downstairs and he asked of I could listen to a tape that he was trying to translate (he is a translator for the ministry of defense and also does private work). He had a cassette tape playing with radio news from what sounded like 6 months ago. He had already typed out his transcript in English. Basically what he does is listen to the tape which is in English, and then write or type down what he hears in English. Then later he will go back over it and translate it from English to Khmer. Seeing what he had written down in English so far was comical, but also scary since he’s working for the government. There were many mistakes, some that didn’t really mater but others that changed the whole meaning of the 2 or 3 sentence news point. I really wish I could remember some examples of mistakes he had made. Anyway, what I thought would be about 20 minutes turned into me spending about 2 hours sitting with him listening to tapes and fixing his mistakes. I cant really imagine his work being very important as he was translating news from months ago and getting a lot of it wrong. I have to assume there’s plenty of other translators and ways the government gets the world news that is more efficient and accurate. I asked him about getting news from the internet so its already typed and I think he said something about the government just starting to do that, and that’s why he was working with old tapes.

Another quick story about Dah-rid happened within the first few weeks of moving in. I had bought a fan and it was making an annoying squeaking sound. I went downstairs and asked Dah-rid if he had any lubricant or spray. After he understood what I wanted he said yes yes yes. I assumed he had WD-40 or some kind of spray. He goes into his medical cabinet where he stores medicine, and medical instruments, and pulls out a syringe. Now I’m curious. He then goes over to his moto and opens up a little plug in the engine, sticks the syringe in, and sucks out some oil. I was blown away for lots of reasons: he used a medical syringe, he stuck it in his moto engine, he was giving me pure motor oil to use as a lubricant, he was giving me a medical syringe. It seemed crazy to me but it also seemed like a great and easy, although dangerous solution. The best part was not when he handed over the syringe to me and told me to be careful, but why he told me to be careful. I assumed he would say be careful because that’s a very very sharp needle and it has motor oil in it. Instead he just wanted to point out that I should be careful when applying the oil to the fan and not poke any wires and get electrocuted. I was thinking the obvious, he was a step ahead of me. I still have a medical syringe filled with motor oil (with a safety cap on it) stored away in case I need a replacement for WD-40 again.