The streets are flooded!

Around 6:30 pm this evening, it started raining. Normally, the rainy season is over and the next one should arrive only in early June, but "there are no seasons anymore".

So now there are 15 cm of water in the streets. How am I going to get home is a good question. Especially since I had the bright idea of breaking my glasses this afternoon, and my spare pair is at home.

Lida asks me how one translates "Après la pluie, le beau temps" in English... "Behind every cloud, there is a silver lining." Am I not right?

How I got married in Cambodia

Everything went very fast: she said "J'ai fait HEC" (i.e. she graduated from a very good business school), I said "J'ai fait les Mines" (i.e. I graduated from the mining engineering school). She said "My parents want me to get married". I said "Mine also".

And so, just before sunset on Thursday, February 23, 2006 (Yom Hamichi, 25th of Shevat, 5766) we were married in front of the witnesses.


When we went as newly-wed to a fancy shop to buy some perfume, something extraordinary happened, I'll have to tell you about it!

Cambodge, version rurale

Dimanche dernier, j'ai eu la chance de faire une première excursion à l'extérieur de Phnom Penh.

Nous sommes partis à quatre : Lida, jeune documentaliste cambodgienne qui travaille sur le projet, Lakanah, sa colocataire qui travaille pour le SIPAR (association qui lutte contre l'illettrisme au Cambodge), Sarah, jeune française attachée de presse à l'Ambassade de France et moi. Nous avons constaté une fois sur la route que nous avions tous les quatre 25 ans... C'est l'âge de la première génération après Pol Pot.

Nous sommes allés distribuer un petit livre publié par le SIPAR dans trois pagodes. Un ancien pensionnaire de ces trois pagodes relate dans ce livre son passage il y a 50 ou 60 ans dans ces lieux et les actuels pensionnaires ont beaucoup apprécié la lecture ! Ces trois pagodes sont situées dans la région où Lida est née et nous sommes allés rencontrer sa famille : ses deux grand-mères ont plus de 80 ans et sont pleines d'énergie ! C'était vraiment agréable d'être accueillis à bras ouverts dans un village traditionnel. Nous avons même participé à une cérémonie religieuse boudhiste en l'honneur des ancêtres...

Avant de reprendre la route, nous avons fait deux heures de vélo dans les plantations d'hévéa. Au bout de la route, nous sommes arrivés dans une pagode méconnue où, comme dans toutes les pagodes, les moines étaient partciulièrement intéressés de discuter avec moi en
anglais... C'était une expérience magique.

Architecture of the 1960s

Today, I had the chance to tour three Universities which were built in the 1960s: the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC), the Institute of Foreign Languages, and the Royal University of Phnom Penh.

See http://www.ka-tours.org/ for more detail on the tour.

I should have my own pictures tomorrow or Tuesday.

Et pour finir...

Avant de vous quitter jusqu'à dimanche, et comme je sais que mon fan club est friand de photos de son idole, une photo pas comme les autres : un autoportrait !

Photo prise sur la terrasse du Centre de Ressources Audiovisuelles, lundi 20 février 2006, 7h30.

Kampong Cham (more seriously)

Dear all,

Last Sunday, I had a great time in Kampong Cham. Here are a few pictures (apart from "The Cow" which will nevertheless stay in my memory as "The Cow" of Kampong Cham, grazing around in a pagoda...)

Lida's elementary school, now abandoned.


"Keep yourself from immoral deeds!"


The car rests in front of the bungalow.


The Temple in Kampong Cham.

I have more pictures, but I need authorizations before I can publish them.

À tous les francophones : désolé d'être resté sur l'anglais. Je vais prendre en compte vos commentaires et faire des articles bilingues ou alterner entre français et anglais pour satisfaire tout le monde (ou plutôt personne...)

J'envisageais l'hébreu pour mettre tout le monde d'accord, mais ce serait un peu laborieux.

À dimanche !

Joseph

Kampong Cham

Knowing how eager you were to know about my trip last Sunday in Kampong Cham, I thought I should post the most fascinating picture of my trip.Does it need a legend? I guess it could be called: "A cow in Cambodia".

Joseph and the Monks

At left, Sarah, my personal interpreter, in the middle a monk who is also an English teacher and with whom I had the interesting discussion I was mentioning in my last post.

Joseph the tourist

Joseph acts as a tourist in the pagodas...
It's amazing how the monks are eager to talk with foreigners in English. I was explained the various steps to becoming a good budhist.

What do I do in Cambodia?

Many among you don't actually know what I do in Cambodia. I receive questions like "But what is this Center you are talking about?" So let's explain from the beginning.

The Audiovisual Resource Center, a.k.a . Hanuman Center will be a place where anyone can come and view audio, video and photographic material related to Cambodian history, artistic and cultural traditions. The Center will also host a school specialized in documentary film-making.

The building belongs to the Office of Cinema of the Cambodian Ministry of Culture. It dates from the 1960s and is being renovated and furnished with money from the Cultural Action Cooperation Service of the French Embassy. The building is lent by the Office of Cinema to house the Center and will be returned to them after about 8 years.

The associations supporting the Center (AADAC and ARPAA) have started and will continue collecting archives relevant to the mission of the Center from all places. The French National Audiovisual Center has given its archives on Cambodia -- together with a lot of logistical help and the software which is used to index and view the archived material.

The initiative came originally from a French-Cambodian film-maker named Rithy Panh, author of many documentaries on Cambodia.

It's an important project in Cambodia which was cut off its history by the Khmer Rouge regime : archive videos are unknown here, history is scarcely taught in school, artistic traditions are all but lost.

My role in the project is everything related to computer engineering:

1. Network infrastructure
2. Hiring of a local computer engineer
3. Buying the computer equipment
4. Setting up the software on the servers
5. Buying the audiovisual equipment needed to digitalize videos
6. Setting up the web site
7. Helping in the decision-taking process with technical information

The first task took up most of my time until know because electricity was added to my assignments and the plans needed to be completed. I will know concentrate on tasks 2, 3, 5 and 6. But task 3 requires knowing precisely what I aim to do for task 4 so I have start tackling it also. And task 7 is filling up all the holes in my schedule.

Conclusion: no holidays yet! "Il y a du pain sur la planche."

My good friends from Carrefour

Accusing them of Islamism would be too kind: they don't have any other ideology than Money. But for money they are ready to do anything.

Les accuser d'islamisme reviendrait à les croire capables d'une autre idéologie que de celle du fric... mais pour le fric ils sont prêts à baisser leur froc et bien plus.
(Excusez-moi pour le vocabulaire peu châtié.)

A photography lesson

This neighbor of the Center seems so close she could easily reach inside.
Old and new tilings are reconciled by a ray of light.

Varied grids, sometimes subtly different, ornate the many windows.

On Sunday I had the opportunity to take pictures with a professional photographer in the building which will become the Audiovisual Resource Center soon. The goal was to illustrate the various aspects of the building which dates from the 1960s. The building has a variety of volumes, tilings, window grids and perspectives which is impressive.

The renovation of the building is meant to set a record on how to make a new usage of such a building while retaining the original spirit of the place.

Actually, the lesson was not so much during the photography session as when analyzing the pictures after processing. Thank you Jean.

Now your turn to work a little

Dear All,

I'm looking for a good project management software to which everyone in the team can connect to view and update common documents, view and update contacts, tasks, etc.

The software should manage documents and their versions well, especially have a flexible access policy to the documents.

Here are the free products I found so far and I would be considering to choose between.

PHProjekt

PHProjekt est une application modulaire permettant de gérer un groupe d'activités et de partager des informations et documents. Modules : calendrier, gestion de projet, gestionnaire de fichiers, contacts, client mail... Disponible dans 25 langues (dont le français). En démo http://www.phprojekt.com/demo.php.

Moregroupware par Team Moregroupware

Moregroupware est un logiciel de travail collaboratif. Il peut se connecter à différents types de base de données (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, ...), chaque module( news, webmail, calendrier, taches, partenariat, ...) est entièrement indépendant. Il supporte plusieurs langues (dont le francais). En démo sur :

http://mgwdemo.stunti.net/ test/invite
http://demo.opensourcecms.com/moregroupware/ admin/demo
http://www.servtec.eti.br/demos/mgw/

GTaches par Eulert , Riboux , Weiss

Gestion des tâches est une application permettant de gérer les tâches d'un service. Il comprend également un diagramme de Gantt.

PHPGroupware.org

PHProject

phpGroupWare

MyDMS

MRBS

dotProject

Any advice welcome!

Many thanks in advance.

Joseph

Eating by the riverside

Dear all,

Poverty is almost everywhere in Phnom Penh as you may have guessed: from modest people who have a hard life to penniless children begging and collecting garbage. The feeling is not overwhelming though as fortunately you see many more people with a job like mototaxi, waiter or waitress in restaurants, small shopkeepers selling cold drinks, gas, telephone cards, etc. than you see people having to beg for food.

I earn $500 a month which does make me wealthy by the local standards. But overall I don't have too bad conscience since I don't have such a high living standard and since I work for Cambodia and redistribute the money I earn here (as well as investing money from foreign donors on the project).

Nevertheless, eating on a terrasse on Saturday night by the riverside did give me bad feelings: I ordered a pizza and a lemon juice for $5 but the riverside is a tourist place and beggars know that foreigners come there to eat. Three children under 10 came to our table to try to sell us books about Cambodia (travel guides, books on the Khmer Rouge), two handicapped beggars came by as well. I felt it was undecent to eat a $5-meal in front of them when their families live on less than a dollar a day. "Bli neder", I will not do it again.

We were with a volunteer of the United Nations who works for the HCR. I was impressed by how she could talk to the children, when I would not have thought that some chat and playing could do them some good, I had thought the only choice was to buy a book or not to buy one. She let them play with her moto helmet and they enjoyed it, feeling like grown-ups. She has been interviewing for several months refugees coming to Cambodia from Vietnam on behalf of the HCR to check their refugee status and it's a hard job for anyone, let alone for a young woman. She's off for an African country tomorrow and I must say she has a lot of courage.

All the best,

Joseph

Film programme planning at the CCF

For those who wish to visit me, there is good news: the film programme planning at the French Cultural Center is greatly improving.

This month, Chris Marker's "La jetée" and "Level Five", the Nemo (experimental films) and Clermont-Ferrand (shorts) festivals, three movies by Andreï Tarkovski ("Stalker", "Andreï Roublev", "Nostalghia").

For the children, three of Charlie Chaplin's most provocative movies: "The Dictator", "Gold Rush" and "Monsieur Verdoux".

Also, three French movies "Clean", "Mon idole" and "Sous le sable".

I don't know what I will have the time to see, but thank you Nicolas.

My name will be...

To the question "What is my name?", it has been decider after long discussions that I will be in Khmer "Sosso". It's easy to pronounce and it resembles Jojo which is the way many loved ones call or called me.

Other propositions included Pepe, Pepito and Pepelino, but they were obviously less serious and sprung in the mind of crazy Spaniards or Austrians.

The iceman

Dear all,

Many among you asked for descriptions. I thought initially to spare my readers boring descriptions but since I am out of inspiration for anecdotes which might amuse you, I will try the difficult tekhnê (greek for art) of desciption.

Means of transportation inside the city.

- Walking: very rare, only the penniless children who collect cans, plastic bottles and other rubbish, or crazy expats like your humble servant when he feels like it.

- Walking, carrying two baskets at both ends of a stick on the shoulder: I've seen poor women who sell a small breakfast walking like that.

- Walking while pushing a bicycle or a cart on bicycle wheels: various peddlers like the iceman, (who has a special bell and passes by the office at 9am and 3pm, for your information), those selling small meals which they prepare in the cart, those selling fruit or many other things I cannot identify yet.

- Bicycle: those who cannot afford a motorcycle, children and teenagers to go to school, some expats.

- Small motorcycles: most used means of transportation because they are affordable and fast. Moto-taxis are everywhere and cost usually between 1,000 and 2,000 riels ($0.25 to $0.50) depending on the distance and the time of the day (at least that's what I pay, locals pay less). Many have their own scooter. There are no rules: drive past red lights, turn left against traffic, drive on the sidewalk if necessary, wear a helmet if you feel like it, carry one or two people behind you, a baby standing between your legs, a television, a wahing machine or bananas.

- Regular motorcycles: mainly expats who need the unnecessary acceleration from 0 to 20 km/h...

- Small car: very rare, I think they are used by a few working women who have some money and want to be modern.

- Family car: for the moderately rich who want to be modern, have the air-conditioning and be stuck in traffic (there aren't many traffic jams, yet, but expect them soon).

- 4x4 and pickups: from the rich to the very rich. Like elsewhere in the world, when you have money, you want to show it and you don't care the least bit about the others, driving a large 4x4 is a good way of doing so. I saw once a Porsche Cayenne which costs over $100,000. Expats like to drive them also when they have a family.

Sorry, I couldn't stick to the art of description. I fell into the trap and interpreted reality.

Have a good weekend!

Joseph


That's it: no buses except those which

What is my name?

What is my name in Khmer? Of the three consonants in my first name none exists in Khmer... Fortunately the two vowels do exist.
The closest they can do would be Sossè...
Or I have to chose something else myself. Yossi would be good.

I apologize for not writing more these past days. I want to study the Internation Phonetic Alphabet and explain you more in detail about the Khmer language.

All the best,

Joseph

As long as you look

"After all, I guess it doesn't matter whether you look down (through a microscope) or up (through a telescope) - as long as you look."

-- Doc in John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday

Many thanks to Fleur ! Keep looking.

Un peu, beaucoup, passionnément...

Les geckos ont un cri reconnaissable entre tous. Prenez l'habitude lorsqu'ils jettent leurs cris au milieu de la nuit de les compter ainsi :

Un peu
Beaucoup
Passionnément
À la folie
Pas du tout

À deux heures zéro quatre ce matin, c'était "Pas du tout". Je n'ai pas pu me rendormir.

Ping-pong

Dear All,

I don't really now what to say today except that Lida beat me in ping-pong yesterday night. Fascinating, isn't it?

I had plans to go the Russian market but I decided to rest mostly this week-end as the work is hard during the week.

I took the opportunity to read and finished John Steinbeck's "Sweet Thursday". I loved the end: Doc receives an telescope from his friends instead of the microscope he needed but "Looking here at the infinitely small or over there to the infinitely distant, what's the difference?"

(Well, that's only what I remember in French and translate back to English. Can someone please check the exact quotation? Fleur, maybe, if I may ask?)

More soon if inspiration comes.

Joseph

Today's Khmer proverb

Lida sends us the Khmer proverb of the day:

In Frech: "Ne te fie point au ciel, ne te fie point aux étoiles, ne te fie point à ta fille qui prétend n'avoir pas d'amoureux, ni à ta mère qui prétend n'avoir pas de dettes."

In English: "Don't trust the heavens, don't trust the stars, don't trust your daughter who claims to have no lover, nor your mother who claims to have no debts."

In Khmer: "កុំទុកចិត្តមេឃ កុំទុកចិត្តផ្កាយ​កុំទុកចិត្តកូនថាគ្មានសាហាយ​កុំទុកចិត្តម្តាយថាគ្មានបំណុល"

Good question...

The question a Cambodian colleague asked me is: Why did these people
educated in France become criminal Khmer Rouge autocrats?

According to Wikipedia, Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea, and Son Sen
were all educated in Paris.

All I could answer is that ideology can bring people, intelligent or
not, to do anything.

Do you have a better answer?