Tag Archives: Cambodia

Movies about Cambodia

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After I scanned through several entertainment posts related to Cambodia in KhmerBird blog, I’ve started to realize that I have missed something nice!

On my way back from Paris, I was put on Air France that has a direct flight from Phnom Penh to Paris with a short stop-over in Bangkok.

On the plane, they had a small audio-visual device for us passengers to watch a list of nice movies through.

I spent hours watching some Hollywood and Indian (Tamil) movies instead of this movie.
1. We can’t change the world, but we wanna build a school in Cambodia

is a 2011 Japanese film directed by Kenta Fukasaku (wikpedia) and made out of a real story about a medical student called Kota who tried to find meaning in his existence by volunteering in a poor Southeast Asian country (Cambodia).

He later wrote a book based on his personal experiences which became an Internet sensation and was later made into this beautifully hit film!

Noteworthy as it is, many tourists come to this country and fall in love with it only to find their heart broken by the harsh reality that unfolds as they spend more time here.

Later Kota finds no more meaning in collecting money so he and his friends take the matter into their own hands, travel to Cambodia and encounter a once-in-a-lifetime situation.

Japan and Cambodia are totally a far cry from each other. Children in Japan can have every meal but in Cambodia many school kids miss breakfast before school.

I dare say that this film makes a substantive point about volunteerism, education system and the fact that we are short of school buildings and above all else, good teachers.

2. The City of Angkor — 1296AD

When I first watched this on Khmerbird blog, I was in awe. That’s because I never dared to dream that somebody somewhere cared to discover the very old history of Cambodia.

The City of Angkor – 1296AD took 3 years to complete and was run by Monash University for a National Geographic magazine and website special on Cambodia.

Even though this trailer doesn’t say much about why it features Angkor in the year 1296, I am certain that this animation film is a remake of the diary of Zhou Daguan (wikipedia), a young Chinese diplomat sent to the Khmer empire in 1296.
His accounts of customs of Angkor was widely translated into English.
There were quite a few books dubbed into English from Zhou Daguan’s original diary, but I think the one very close to his accounts was this book by Peter Harris and David Chandler (an article in the Cambodia Daily).

VIA: www.khmerbird.com

Nokia popularity among my kith

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This is a guest post by Prum Seila.
Although Nokia has just opened it representative office in Cambodia last year, their phones have already been here for more than 10 years ago. I was growing up seeing my family and friends use Nokia phones most of the times. Nokia has been very popular in Cambodia. Some people switched to newer  Nokia phones almost every month. Nokia sellers could still make a profit though losing a small percentage of the first price.

Nokia exhibition which I visited in Hong Kong in August

There are a lot of expressions in Khmer language people say about how durable Nokia is. For example, we can use Nokia as an ice breaker literally or even break somebody’s head. If I am not wrong, Nokia has become such part of Cambodian daily lives, that we almost forget that it’s just a device.
Lucky enough, last week, I was sponsored by Nokia to travel to Hong Kong to be one of the first people in the world to see and experience with the latest Nokia smart phones–700, 701, and 600.
The presentation of the Mr. Colin Giles, an executive vice president of Nokia fascinated and inspired me to learn more about one paper company which later on produced the world’s most famous mobile phone that connects the globe.Back to the past, Nokia was born in Finland. It started from a paper industry.
It was in 1865 around the time that Cambodia was under the colonization of a European country, France. Nokia has such an interesting enterprise profile to learn from for Cambodia SME (small medium enterprises). Nokia has expanded into many areas such as rubber, cables, machinery, chemicals, consumer electronics and even the PC business before Nokia become a phone company. Continue reading →

A Language in Crisis

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I was sent this article into my email. It’s such a beautiful piece of writing by Ms. Theary Seng, co-founder of Centre for Cambodian Civic Education (CIVICUS), that I don’t want to miss out on publishing it on my blog. Enjoy her strong views! But then, there is another counter-response from Sambath Meas on this matter too.

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The Cambodian language is dying: the spoken language is either crude and earthy (to the point of offensiveness) or highly stylized (to the point of incomprehension); the written language is in crisis from carelessness and lack of development, mummified from antiquity, rattled by modernity.  And no one is doing anything about it.

Here, I am not speaking as a linguist, which I am not; nor am I speaking as a lawyer, which I am.  (Both professions parse language for clarity.)

I am not even speaking as someone who is fluent, but only proficient, in speaking her native tongue.

However, I am speaking as someone who has been acutely observing communication in the Khmer language for at least the past seven years, both spoken and written, and who is aghast at the state of affairs.

Here are some general observations which should cause great concern for Cambodian educators and leaders:

1.      SPOKEN KHMER: The prevailing use (by both adults and children alike) of crude, offensive language—“aign” for I/me, “haign” for you, “veer” for him/her/them (when its correct use is for “it”), “phoeum” for pregnancy (when the word is reserved for animals), and the myriad cuss words, many of sexual crassness which I cannot even write, etc.—needs to stop.  More than impolite, it’s dehumanizing.

The matter careens to the opposite extreme in formal setting where the spoken Khmer is so stylized and antiquated that comprehension is lost on the listeners.  The speaker takes more pleasure in using big words than communicating his/her message; sometimes, I wonder if the speaker him/herself understands what s/he is saying.

2.      WRITTEN GENERALLY: The current written Khmer language is a nightmare with great limitations for communicating complex ideas.  The written Khmer lacks clarity.

First, there lacks a modern, comprehensive Khmer dictionary incorporating new words and uniform spelling.  For example, “Sida, “Aids”, “Hiv”, “Untac” are used as words without understanding their background as deriving from foreign acronyms and their full meaning. Continue reading →