Weird

1. The door bell of my house rang. My maid opened the gate and found a woman stranger who asked for the owner of the house. As my maid is not supposed to invite strangers into the house, he went in and called my mum. My mum came to the gate and the woman was telling my mum all sorts of lies and asked my mum to help her live on a neighbor's vacant land. Well, we don't know the owner but the land itself costs at least USD 200,000. She insisted that my mum knows the owner. She also said that her boss has not paid her her wage yet on that day and asked my mum for riels 5,000. We never knew her face or seen her anywhere before. Riels 5,000 is not much, but who is she to ring our doorbell and ask us for money! And for us to let her stay on other people's land! What was she thinking!! Well, anyways, did she get what she came for? You know the answer. My mum's response: she told my maid to call the dogs back into the house and close the gate, without uttering a word back to the stranger.

2. My neighbor: rich people with a nice villa. They don't help much with the renovation of our dirt road (that we share). We pay for 10 trucks and they would pay for just 1. So we've been really handling the cost alone since there are not many houses around ours. Most of the land belong to some rich people who just bought it for land speculation since the price there shot up like crazy a few years back. We paid for 10, and then another 10 trucks, then another and another. (We often need them cos the street is flooded during the rainy season). A few months back, we paid for another 7 trucks of bricks pieces etc. to place on the road so that the dirt don't soften up while it is flooded. When we are in our houses, my neighbors quickly picked up some from the road and placed them in front of their gate and along the way into their house. We thought: that's weird and rude. The past weeks, we got another 11 trucks. We also paid for the cost of hiring workers to flatten and expand the road. My maid also works hard everyday to help. Then suddenly they become so kind. They also ask their maids to work on it. My maid has worked hard to break the bricks into small pieces and place them neatly on the side of the road to expand it. Their maids however kept picking up my maid's work and placing them in front of their gate and on the way into their house. They didn't even bother to touch the undone ones. Well, they did bother, to be fair. They had another lady from their house to pick up our bricks that are still whole and usable and bring them back into their house. They kept bringing them into their house for 2 days straight. We found it weird as they didn't even bother to utter a word to us about it. Rather than saying anything to them, we just stood there and wondered where their manners went. Or perhaps they don't have any! Not even shame! They're soooo WEIRD! A brick costs like 200 riels, for god's sake! If you don't contribute to the road, just don't steal. :D Geez.

I was also wondering. If we had saved the money we had used to renovate the road, and just use it to pave it, it would already be done nicely. But well, we can't do that since the flood and the lack of proper sewage system. It's the government's job, yo!

Plastic surgery to look like Jessica Alba

This is a Chinese chick who's getting plastic surgery to look like Jessica Alba to win back her boyfriend who’s obsessed with Alba.

I adore Jessica Alba; I cherish her looks, her personality, her sense of style, her voice, her character, her devotion to her family, etc. But if I were this girl, I would rather kick this guy's (her bf) a** than to get any changes on me. She's already a pretty girl.

Yep, she's all that!

Love her!

Bokator, the Great Angkorian Martial Art

I'm looking forwards to the movie my great master is in. Hope it can help revive what was nearly lost. Our great martial art, Bokator, is father to the Khmer and Thai boxing. It is the father to the martial art shown in Tum Yum Goong, starring Tony Jaa (a Surin). Evidence of the greatness of this martial art and its history is literally written in stone.

I'm not trying to stir any conflicts or hatred here. I'm just trying to show off what Khmer had and the wondrous legacy left for the next Khmer generations and what we can make known to the world. Do not let this more than important legacy fade away. Help preserve it and spread it.

http://www.bokator.com/story.html
http://www.bokator.com/trailer.html

http://www.boxkator.net

Learn to trust your heart and feelings

When everything feels right, go with it. If you can't find it your heart to trust your heart, then how can you ever trust anything at all?

The more you think and care about justifying your feelings, about balancing the goods and the bads and the past and the future, the more you just let your head mess with you. Suddenly, if 1 thing goes wrong, you would just let it "wrong" and everything foregone. Sometimes it's not even "something wrong"; it's your subconscious mind searching for what is wrong, since you just THINK that anything is "too good to be true". Then, you stick with the "one thing wrong" and let it eliminate all other things "right". This is because all along you never trust yourself. And by the time you realize what you have done, everything might be forever gone, from reach.

Not everything can always be rational. Feelings and the heart and your passion might not have explainable rationale behind them, but they may be more real and true than any books or reasons. (The difference between the primitive brain and the rational brain, right? Balance them and know when to trust which).

Poor me, I had to go through this to learn it.

Just me

Really wish I could gain back some weight and go back to my former look. Now a bit skinny :D Well the braces caused my face to be a bit longer than it should/used to be... Took it off last month but haven't gained a single gram since then, still. :p Oh, the metabolism of mine.

Development Research Forum

The Development Research Forum took place on October, 2009 at the Cambodiana Hotel. I was one of the presenters.

Love, Money

Love and money may be complement variables. They may be substitute variables.

The love of money might lead to the end of love if without knowing your limits and having self discipline.

What were we born with? With our own physical qualities and brain. We were born crying in the need of warmth from our parents and in the need to be fed. As we grow up and older, we understand that in this contemporary world, we cannot live without money as it is the basic instrument used to get us clothes, shelter and food. And so, we seek it. We work for it (although some don't).

Why do we seek it? For reasons mentioned above. But as we earn more, we want more. We can't stand not fitting into the materialistic world. We increasingly want more luxurious lives or want to live up to the standards of life we are already in. Ok, that's fair enough.

But over the course of all those works for money, we forget that the basic reason we want money is to fulfill our needs. To let money serve us. As human beings who have quite a control over nature and invaded the earth and the moon and to an extent the galaxy, we have to control ourselves to have control over our greed and the endearing love of money.

But love is blind. And the love for money even blinds us more. Some would forget how to have control over money. They let money have control over them. They don't use money to fulfill their needs and their families' needs, but they let it become the reason for conflicts, jealousies, hatred, destructive competitions etc. They are no longer happy no matter how much they have because they just forget how to enjoy it. All that go in their minds is more, more, more and I have to have more than them. I paid for that, so they owe me. Many owes lead to vindictive thoughts which lead to hatred and hostility and to treating others as if they were inferior, looking down on them. This leads to break-ups of relationships, conflicts within families, etc. The cause of this lies actually in the conflict within oneself. They tend to forget that life is about sharing. Sharing brings happiness as there is no happiness without sharing the happiness.

So, ... let me just end this topic here.

Chak choch

Ah meh chak choch... chak choch min skoal kamm min skoal pia

Been 3 months

Been 3 months since my last post. Just wanna drop by and wish everyone a Happy, Joyous, Wondrous 2010...