Cambodia Diaries - 28 August 2010

Your average faux Irish bar in Singapore!

PP doesn’t really have a lot to offer and so the marathon training was a blessing of sorts. Now that chapter has been slammed shut, the need to source a new challenge has come along in the form of two wheels and we’ll chat more about that in due course. However, suffice it to say, one is back in training for a 100kms bike race on 4 December!

Because its ‘only’ cycling I gave myself four get out of jail free cards to allow me to have a few beers during training and one week into the strict regime, I cashed one in on a weekend jaunt to Singapore and with it, a series of random events from many years back collided together in an Irish bar of all places.

But before I explain everything, I need to go back to the early summer of 1996 and when I was introduced to a chap by the name of Anthony Hobbs in Manchester. It’s hard to describe Hobbsy without using the words raconteur, funny, illuminating and a sage with the written word. In fact, it defies logic that our book cabinets don’t contain one of his musings, but then he’s too lazy to write something. As we parted outside the restaurant where we had enjoyed a few glasses of lunch, we shook hands and agreed that we would form the first out of London Queens Park Rangers supporters’ club form which, the Manc Rs were born.

As our membership grew to levels that defied common sense I fondly recall arriving at a bar in Crewe to see a huge Manc R’s flag and a tremendous presence of north-west exiles to which I looked at Hobbsy and said “It’s getting out of hand”. But there were two things that happened towards the end of the 1990’s that came to the fore recently here in South East Asia and which appeal to my fascination with the random nature of chance meetings that life occasionally throws up to make us all feel very insignificant.

The first incident was around 1998, when sat in my office in Liverpool, my computer went ping to announce the arrival of an email enquiring if the Manc Rs were going to be sending a representation to the Wirral the next day for our game against Tranmere and if so, could the sender, Kevin Hastings from Washington DC, join us upon arrival in Liverpool off the 1pm London train.

The following day sat in a pub called the Crown next to the station, I was unable to answer the question as to who this Kevin character was beyond saying that I thought he was an expat. Stupidly we had not exchanged any info about recognizing each other and so as random blokes walked into the pub and looked around, a cry of “Kevin” we hoped would unite us and him. Alas no and a quick foray to Lime Street station revealed the 1pm train was running late. More random shouts of “Kevin” at random men entering the pub resulted in nothing as we began to look at our watches as time moved on.

It was then that a nudge in the ribs and a comment “I think this is your mate” saw me turn round to see a statuesque character in a puffer jacket with a baseball cap rounded at the peak before us. The cry of “Kevin” was more one in incredulity at this obvious Yankee before our eyes which was then surpassed with the “Hey Jaan” reply and several blokes looking wondering what my idea of an expat was.

Kevin as many will know became a mate of us all and was a visitor to Atlanta and a supporter of Lloydy and myself when we ran in Chicago. He’s useless at keeping in touch and so when his wife emailed to say her mate Sara was looking for any internships in Cambodia and could I help, I sent a link to the little legal farce called the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and before I knew it, there I am sat having a lime soda with Sara.

Whilst the 11 year trial of Duch, the heinous governor of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison dragged on and on, it was ironic that within a few weeks of Sara’s arrival, his sentence was handed down. Whilst we cannot necessarily say that Sara’s arrival chivvied things along, I did however take some solace from the fact that in a very small way, Hobbsy and I had provided the final nail in the mass murderer’s coffin!!

A few years after Kevin’s debut, the Manc Rs communications department, a.k.a. a bloke called Andy, received an email from a chap by the name of Sebastian Garcia from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Sebby, though a Racing Club fan, had become a bit of a long distance follower of the shower from W12 and was using his non-work hours to clue up on QPR. In fact, he was also using his working hours to research QPR in his role at ESPN sports. His fondness for QPR arose in a very random fashion and whilst playing a computer game one night, he decided to play as another team and fate randomly chose QPR or as it turned out, QPR randomly chose Senor Garcia.

In October 2002, my travelling and marathon buddy Kevin McSweeney and I rolled into Buenos Aires and soon hunted down the Argie R and confirmed he was bona fide. The Argentine economy was going down the tubes and it was quite something to see the country fall deeper and deeper into the brown stuff and how people were struggling to cope. Sebby was no different and then his life took a bizarre turn.

Ever more consumed with the R’s, Sebby became known to many on internet forums to such an extent, that one day I receive and email saying that he will be at Loftus Road on Saturday! How I wondered could this be things being so tight back home. It transpired that a group of fans organized a campaign to fund Sebby’s trip to London and over he came! To cut a long story short, Sebby’s life took a decidedly upward trajectory following a period of study in the UK, an application for Italian citizenship being approved, meeting Diana in Italy and then Mr. and Mrs. Garcia being joined earlier this year by a bambino named Felipe back in Argentina.

And so the story gathers pace: I fired up the computer one Saturday morning a few weeks back to see what news there was only to find a message from that other roving QPR fan many will recall in Matt ‘the round the world cyclist’ Blake, who was having some issues with his camera in Colombia! I had managed to put him in touch with a friend in Guatemala but was struggling with this plight and so I pinged a few emails to people I thought might help and it just so happened that Sebby was on facebook at the same time and so a bizarre three-way conversation took place between the three of us.

Sebby amused that I knew no one from Colombia reminded me that one night after a QPR game, I had given floor space to him and his fellow South American student, the Colombian I somewhat unoriginally named Pablo Escobar! The next thing Matt knew, a bloke on a bike in Colombia was receiving assistance from an Italian in Argentina via the little known route provided by an Englishman in Phnom Penh.

Before we all logged off, Sebby informed that all was good and that his life had turned round and he was now enjoying working at the big sporting events in the world.

And so to our faux Irish bar where my good friend Vib Sharma and I repaired to watch some egg chasing. Upon our arrival his mate George joined us and it transpired that I used to work with his wife back in London.

Then my mate Dave Rowe (Berlin marathon vet) announced that another QPR fan was arriving. I piped up that I too had a mate coming in who would top them all whereupon George, not a QPR fan, phones a mate up and says: “Get down here quick there’s loads of you.”

Dave’s mate turned out to be former QPR and England player and possibly, one of the best defenders to wear the Hoops, Paul Parker. George’s mate randomly out shopping randomly chose to wear an old QPR top and rolled in to see three of us nattering away only to look at the svelte well dressed fellow to realize it was Mr. Parker.

My QPR mate was coming in on a London flight to work for next three weeks at the Youth Olympics taking place in Singapore. Alas, the other three lads were going to be heading off before he arrived whereupon I told them about how a random selection on a computer game and the generosity of several QPR fans had changed the fortunes of Senor Sebastian Garcia. Only for Dave to pipe up, that he has contributed £25 to Sebby’s fund.

It’s these random chances happenings and events that I love to hear about. Here was I with a lad whose wife I worked with, waiting for a QPR fan whom Dave had contributed to his air fare and who had, through a Colombian lad I had thrown the airbed down for one night after a QPR match, come to the assistance of another QPR currently peddling for his life somewhere in South America, as Duch rotted in a Cambodian prison cell.

I raised my glass and toasted Mr. Hobbs.

Of course, by the time Sebby arrived I had well and truly spent my get out of jail free card and after nigh on 12 hours in the same bar where a few other chaps had wandered in from Vib’s stag doo ten years earlier, it was as much as I could do to string a sentence together.

It was great to see Sebby after many years and looking so well. A picture was taken, but I’ll be jiggered if I know where it is.

Life these days is often predictable, dull even and when random events come to be they are often reminders of how valuable life is and yet how precarious it can be. After all, a nano second either way, and Sebby would have been stuck supporting those deadbeat hoops Reading and much of the above would never have happened!

Cheers

JHx