Video game aficionados now have a new weapon in their arsenal. The World Food

Programme launched a new game called "Food Force" which can be downloaded for

free off the internet and played on both Macs and PCs.

Players can pilot

planes and helicopters delivering food to thousands of hungry people in the

fictitious island nation of Sheylan, negotiate with armed rebels trying to stop

a food convoy, figure out food delivery logistics and build long-term food

security for imaginary villages.

The game has 3D action figures and an audio

function, although it is unclear if you can hear the sounds of hungry people

crying out for food.

WFP says the game is designed for children age eight

to 13 as an educational tool to be used in schools and is a "fun and

action-packed alternative" to other videos with so much blood and gratuitous

violence.

** A reliably informed Christian source says that in honor of

recently deceased Pope John Paul II, both the Cuban and German embassies lowered

their flags to half-mast. However, the Polish embassy did not.

** Be

warned. One tourist says he was fined $40 for making an illegal left-hand turn

off of Norodom Boulevard and also for not having a driver's license.

**

Headed for Sri Lanka? Former Phnom Penh resident and owner of Dis bar, Alex

Stanich is opening a new restaurant/bar called Firefly-The Palms, in Hikkaduwa,

93 kms south of Colombo. If you stop in and mention the Phnom Penh Post, you get

a discount on drinks.

** Khmer New Years travelers returning from

holiday in Vietnam suggest that Colonel Nguyen Van Luc (ID # CK3329) at the Moc

Bai immigration post may want to be a little more discreet in managing the flow

of 100,000 Dong notes that he gratefully accepts from bus operators to jump

piles of passports up the queue.

** The English language is evolving.

Some new vocabulary:

Yellular: The loudness you adopt in response to a

bad mobile phone connection, in the misguided hope that talking louder will

improve the connection.

E-mauling: stalking someone via

e-mail.

Single woman's sports pages: any newspaper's wedding

announcements.

Mouse potato: the wired generation's answer to couch

potato.

Blamestorming: a meeting whose sole purpose is to discuss why a

deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.

Fatkins:

disciples of Atkins who have taken the "all the fat you can eat" idea to lunatic

extremes.