This evening, I’ve spent about two hours joining a conference on Cambodia’s Manuscripts. I have to say that the whole presentations and discussions are very wonderful and that’s why I’ve posted audio recording of the entire conference for those of you who haven’t joint the event. Please find the links below. Cheers,
[slideshow]
Phnom Penh, Cambodia –Nokia Cambodia announced the arrival of a latestbusiness smartphone modelNokia E7 in the Kingdom at agrand launching eventyesterday in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Held at Studio 182, above Topaz Restaurant, the event ignited excitement among some 60 participants including members of the local media and prominent corporate people from both local and international companies. They were all fascinated about how powerfulNokia E7was in meetingtheir professional and private needs.
Nokia E7 is equipped with a 4-inch AMOLED touchscreen display featuring Nokia’s ClearBlack technology. Business users will find that it is the perfect shape and size to work on documents, review spreadsheets, or read and edit slides. With Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync on board, the Nokia E7 provides direct, real-time and secure access to corporate email inboxes and other personal applications.
The device captures High-resolution photos and HD video with the its 8 megapixel camera and dual LED flash and provides a wide range of music, games and socials apps. It also supports 3G networks and Wi-Fi connections.
“People are continuing to look for solutions that suit both their work and personal life; in business circles this is known as the ‘consumerization’ of IT. The Nokia E7 gives people the confidence to bring their own smartphones to the workplace to connect securely to corporate messaging servers,” said Mesbah Uddin, Business Development for Nokia Cambodia and Laos.“On the other hand, whether you are an artist or entrepreneur, the Nokia E7 is the only smartphone you will need to handle your work, to conduct your dailypersonal lives,” he added.
During the launching event, Daniel Parkes, Country Manager for CB Richard Ellis (Cambodia) Co., Ltd, who is a user of Nokia E7,enthusiastically shared with the audience that Nokia E7 was key to having a successful day in or out of the office. “It is a perfect device for me. Having it with me, I feel that my office is where I am. Being on the move, I am still able to open and read corporate emails that I have received, make a response, edit attached office documents, etc.” “You don’t have to scrutinize screen as it is wide, giving bigger display of characters. Typing is fast with its QWERTY keyboard,” he said.
PreapSovath, Cambodia’s most well know pop star, who also runs salon and restaurant businesses in Phnom Penh laid out how useful Nokia E7 to him. “I spend most of my time singing and performing. But I have to manage my business too. I am really excited about Nokia E7 and to my view it is a small laptop. Not only does it enable me to access all my emails, but it also my home of entertainment: watching movies, listening to music, playing games, just to name a few. What I find amzing is its HD camera that you take pictures and make a video of high resolution, edit it and share it with colleagues and friends connecting it with HDMI cable.”
DanielParkes and PreapSovath, as well as the rest of the participants, were particularly impressed with Nokia E7’s high capabilities of safely keeping important work files and protecting important data with remote device management options.
Estimated retail price at US$650, Nokia E7 will be available from 19 March 2011 in two colors, black and silver andaccording to Nokia’s representative, Nokia would present a Nokia Mobile Holder, a Nokia Mobile charger and a pouch to the first 100 corporate consumers for every purchase of Nokia E7.
Original Text by NOKIA Company Issued on 12/03/2011Related Post
Road blocks aren’t just an annoyance, they are also standing in the way of developing a safer and more modern city.
The traffic in Phnom Penh city is getting heavier every day because of the growth in the population and the fact that more people now own vehicles. Traffic jams usually happen when people leave their houses for their workplace in the morning and when they return home in the evening.
You might be late for class or work and fail to withstand the stress of getting stuck on the road. Even emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire trucks, when every second counts, are sometimes caught in bad traffic because people cannot move aside easily to free up some space for these vehicles. Imagine if a seriously injured person was in an ambulance waiting to get to hospital or people were waiting for the fire brigade to help them put out a fire. There are a lot of factors that contribute to traffic congestion.
One thing that is usually unreported is roads being blocked when there is a celebration like a wedding. Sometimes they block only half the road and leave some spaces for vehicles, but there are also times when they block the whole road. Even though it’s not a main road, every road is linked. For example, when there are a lot of vehicles on a main road, people can turn off and use a smaller road, but what happen if these roads are blocked for a party? I have seen two wedding parties being celebrated on the opposite sides of a road which was completely blocked. People get struck in a traffic jam because they cannot turn to right or left.
Wedding ceremonies usually take place in front of the bride’s house. They turn the road into a dinning and cooking area. In the countryside where it is not so crowded and there are not so many vehicles this is not a problem.
Nowadays city people not only ask permission to celebrate a party, but they also ask permission to block the road. I think this should be reconsidered in a city where millions of people are living and the numbers of vehicles keep increasing. I think if people want to throw a party and there is no free space inside their house, they should consider celebrating at a restaurant or rent a building.
Putting small business of parking vehicles on the footpaths also contributes to congestion in the city. According to the law on land traffic adopted by the National Assembly on December 20, 2006, Article 5 of the law states that “sidewalks are not allowed for vehicles to park.”
However, the sidewalks are still being used as parking places when customers want to go in and buy goods from stores along a road. So far there has been some action taken by Phnom Penh police against people doing business on the sidewalks, but it has not been very effective.
In an article published on The Phnom Penh Post on January 14, 2010, police fanned out across Phsar Kandal I commune to inform shopkeepers and street venders that they could no longer block the area’s pavements and roadways with their displays, and threatened to confiscate the goods of offending merchants.
In an interview Hem Him, Phsar Kandal I commune’s chief of police, said “the commune’s new policy on sidewalks and road use is part of the Phnom Penh municipality’s plan to widen the city’s streets and avoid the congestion caused by venders using streets as their own land”.
In addition, some people who usually travel with their carts selling goods along the roads just park when they find customers and they also make the traffic worse.
There is also the issue of people using their mobile phones while driving. For motorcycle riders, they sometimes place the phone next to their ear inside their helmet so they can hide from traffic wardens, while car owners usually drive with one hand on the wheel and a phone in the other hand. Even though their activities can sometimes be hidden from the traffic police, they cause trouble to other people.
When people focus on talking on their phone, they drive their vehicles carelessly, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. This not only can cause traffic jams, but can also cause accidents and as a result, some innocent people might be injured by them.
As noted by government, NGOs and other relevant agencies, casualties from road accidents are now the second leading cause of death in Cambodia. Among the leading causes of traffic accidents, the first is human error followed by bad roads, vehicle defects and weather conditions.
Some factors mentioned above are manmade, meaning that the authorities and citizens can help eliminate these things, so why we don’t try together to improve the traffic in the city we live in.
By: Dara Saoyuth This article was publish on LIFT, Issue 62 published on March 16, 2011[slideshow] By: Dara Saoyuth 10/03/2011It’s one month already that we have started our video production course. We have learnt a lot in both theoretical and practical things. However, today is our first day to take camera to shoot outside in a class assignment. The topic is about entertaining places in Phnom Penh. We are lucky enough to have chosen Olympic Stadium as our shooting place because we know clearly where we can shoot since we all used to go there.
The location is good, but difficulties cannot be the exception. Some main challenges for us are including sound operating and sources choice.
I have posted some photos during our video shooting, but please don’t laugh at us because it’s our first experience:
Image via Wikipedia
People are sitting in a room looking at a large TV screen. They are watching a person on the screen and if they want to speak, they have to get out of their seats and go to a desk and talk in a microphone so that the person on the screen can hear and respond. This is the method employed by Sam Rainsy Party members to communicate with their leader, Sam Rainsy, who is now living in self-exile in France.
Sam Rainsy was convicted in January 2010 of destroying public property and racial incitement with Vietnam by pulling up border posts along the Vietnamese border in Svay Rieng province in 2009. On March 1, 2011, Cambodia’s Supreme Court rejected his appeal and his sentence of two years in jail still stands.
“The court is used as a political tool to shut Sam Rainsy’s mouth or eliminate him from the political arena since he is the leader of the opposition party,” said Yim Sovann, a spokesman for the Sam Rainsy Party.
On the other hand, Cheam Yeap, a senior Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker, said the ruling party did not order Sam Rainsy to remove the border posts. “Our country has law, so Sam Rainsy has to face court because of his wrongdoing, and if one day in the future I do something wrong, of course, I will face the court as well,” said Cheam Yeap.
A press release issued on February 22 by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights stated “the convictions against Sam Rainsy may leave the country’s largest opposition party without a leader at the next general election”.
Sam Rainsy fled the country in early 2009 and will serve 12 years in jail if he returns to Cambodia because in a separate case, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced him to an additional 10 years in jail on charges of forging public documents and disinformation after convicting him of disinformation and falsifying public documents.
The executive director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy (KID) in Cambodia, Hang Chhaya, said what has concerned him is that Cambodia is a democratic country, so Sam Rainsy’s case should not have reached the level of removing his parliamentary immunity and sentencing him since he had rights as a politician. “What the ruling party want is to make a good leader who people see, love and support, have to stay abroad as long as possible,” said Hang Chhaya.
While Prime Minister Hun Sen can stand and talk to CPP members and his supporters directly, Sam Rainsy needs support from technology to be able to communicate with SRP members and supporters.
However, Yim Sovann said the fact that Sam Rainsy is not in Cambodia is not a problem for the party. “If you want to meet the party leader, we can make a phone call or video conference that you can see the picture and there is no difference in communication by having or not having him present,” said Yim Sovann, adding that Sam Rainsy is still the party leader who leads meetings and keeps communicating between all levels of leaders and members.
To gain more support in the upcoming election, the HRP and SRP have been working on merging the two parties. After the 2008 national election, on January 15, 2009, Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha singed on a joined declaration officially establishing the Democratic Movement for Change. Since then the alliance has not reached 100 percent agreement and recently each party created a working group of five people to discuss the merger.
Mu Sochua, a SRP lawmaker and one of the five people in a merger group on the SRP side, said some conflict of ideas and misunderstandings from the past were the reasons for slowing the merger. However, she said she believed it would be successful soon. “We are democratic people and we have the same goal,” Mu Sochua said.
Mu Sochua said she was sure of success in the next election when the alliance reaches full agreement. She gave as an example Kampot province, where the SRP needs about 10,000 votes more to get one more parliament seat, however the HRU gets more than 14,000 votes. “Because we were not united at that time, about 14,000 votes were useless because none of us got any seats from there,” she said.
“Previously, we didn’t work well on the merger, but now we have a clear objective and we have clear steps to take,” Keat Sukun, a coordinator in merger group on the HRP side, said. He added that both sides had recently found common ground for a lasting unification of the parties.
Keat Sukun said that in Cambodia, each party cannot do everything alone and unification is very important in terms of exchanging human resources.
“It is the right decision to join as an alliance,” said Phnom Penh-based political analyst Chea Vannath, who explained that the seat allocation formula in Cambodia makes small political parties waste a lot of votes if they are not united.
However, she said she is not sure if this unification can last much longer because based on her observations, it would be easy to break up.
“To unite successfully, it’s very important to have trust building between the two parties, as wife and husband do,” said Chea Vannath. “We have to think that there will be a lot of obstacles with each step we take, and if we can trust each other, this unification will last forever.”
“While the frog tries harder, the snake also tries harder,” said Cheam Yeap, explaining that the ruling party was also working harder. Cheam Yeap said the ruling party did not fear the union of opposition parties.
However, Cheam Yeap said: “All CPP members are not advised to ride a horse with a free hand.” He added that they are not just sitting there happy with their victory, but they are working to keep it.
By: Dara Saoyuth
Additional reporting by Sok Eng This article was publish on LIFT, Issue 61 published on March 09, 2011
Preparing for a nice event / by: Dara Saoyuth
LIFT editor and 6 writers will be on a trip to Kampong Cham on Saturday, March 05 at around 6:30am to join a workshop at Speu School.
Since we have cooperated with World Education in Cambodia, we decided to choose this Saturday as the start of going to the province and facilitating high school students in producing school newsletter. Currently, there are 20 students who participate in the newsletter club that they received a basic training from Cookie, World Ed intern from the US.
We were told that we will have approximately 3 hours for the workshop. To make sure that all the important points will be addressed, yesterday afternoon, we sat up and divided responsibility for each of us. My editor cannot speak Khmer a lot, but he always has great ideas to present. He will prepare some documents in English for us, so we only need to put it into Cambodian context.
We will give them an introduction to 6 subjects such as: writing, editing, photographing, designing, interviewing, and researching. Six of us are divided into 3 pairs of two people and each pair will responsible for two subjects.
We hope to bring them the best as we can!
By: Dara Saoyuth 04/03/2011During a radio production course, we were assigned to do a lot of practical tasks like producing interview pieces, commentaries, hot news reports, and radio features.
We are happy that one of our classmates radio feature gets published on HEINRICH BOELL FOUNDATION website. You Can read a short review below or CLICK HERE to listen to the whole piece:
Radio Feature with a Cambodian artist – March 1, 2011 – The Cambodian artist Buth Chan Anochea in a Radio Feature about her paintings on the exhibition “Hey sister, where are you going?” where ten female artists present their masterpieces, which express women in society. Produced by HONG Channpheaktra and MAK Kuleka
By: Dara Saoyuth 03/03/2011It is another study tour for DMC student in batch 08. This afternoon, our TV production lecturer led us to the Cambodian Television Network (CTN) and we have learnt a lot from a presentation by Huy Vannak, CTN news editor.
[slideshow] By: Dara Saoyuth 01/03/2011“It’s irritating when I tried calling my friend several times but I couldn’t get through.”
Error message always appears each time I try calling my friend / by: Dara Saoyuth
With modern technology, your phone can function as a radio, music player, calculator, word processor, etc. at the same time. However, I don’t think it has changed its’ main function, verbal communicating.
According to figure from the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, there are 7,115,246 mobile sets and 108,882 desk phone set in use in Cambodia by March 2010 with 9 mobile operators including MobiTel, Mfone, Hello, Star Cell, qb, Excell, Metfone, Smart Mobile, and Beeline.
I have to say that some of the above mobile operators are doing quite well with their service though they charge a bit higher and don’t have plenty of promotions as the others.
To me, personally, I prefer using a better service company to a mobile operator that always has promotions but its’ service is not good.
This week, I bought a new sim from one mobile operator because this company gives a lot of promotion to its customer; however, I suffers from its service because when I call to my friend at night, I cannot get through though I have tried dialing more than 30 times.
You all can imagine if you were in trouble, saw a crime or traffic accident, and you want to call for help, but after trying more than 10 minutes, you cannot get through anyone because of your mobile operator.
I think you have to reconsider this trade-off between good promotion and good service before you decide to select your mobile number.
By: Dara Saoyuth 24/02/2011
One shot from "Lost Loves" / Source: Internet
This evening, I’ve spent my time watching a movie that I cannot wait until the following day to express some thoughts though tonight I have to review some lessons for tomorrow morning quiz.
Hearing its’ title, Lost Loves, at least some of you may imagine that the movie is about someone who lost people they love. Your guest is right!
“Lost Loves” is a feature film based on real life experience of the film producer’s wife Kauv Sotheary who is also star in a film as Amara.
The film start with an old woman standing near a pagoda recalls her past life in Khmer Rouge Regime. Then the movie take us to early April 1975 showing Amara living with her grandfather, brothers and children in a middle class family in Phnom Penh. Amara’s grandfather is a former Cambodian army general and her husband is a general in Lon Nol regime. Amara’s grandfather is asked by some high ranking officers to leave the country because they know that their soldiers cannot win against Khmer Rouge; however, he decides to stay in Phnom Penh with his family because he wants to keep his fame.
Khmer Rouge takes over Phnom Penh in 17 April, 1975, and happiness in Amara’s family starts shaking when Khmer Rouge soldiers kill government soldiers who guard her house and force her family to leave the house.
Members in her family start packing their belongings and leaving their house with a car that they cannot drive but pushing it forward since too many people leaving the city by walking on the street. They stop at a pagoda where lots of city people are told to stay there waiting for the top people to decide where they should go after being evicted. The follow day, her family departs the pagoda to a village already arranged by Angkar and on the way there, her grandfather is took to kill by Khmer Rouge soldiers because they will not let former high ranking officers alive.
Her family members are separated. Her little children have to stay with the other villagers’ children, her brother has to work and stay with men group, and her oldest daughters has to stay in youth group.
All of her family members have to struggle to survive but some of them leave her one after another because of different reasons including illness, and killing.
This movie not only shows the writer’s tragedy, but also reflects how society at that time looks like since most people in Pol Pot regime also face the same things of losing their relatives as Amara.
As a Cambodian film producer, Chhay Bora keep repeating that “we are not Hollywood” and he said the film was made on a very low budget.
“Our film crew and I didn’t stay in hotel or eat at any restaurant during the shooting because we have to think of the money we have,” said Chhay Bora at Bophana Center this evening after the film screening; adding that they cook their own foods and stay with villagers to save the budget.
Despite the fact that the movie was shot by Cambodian with a low budget, but I can say this achievement is great and deserves commendable from the audiences. You guest what! Some people including my friends burst into tears at some scenes during the screening and I think that they may feel pity for the actors.
So far, this film have been shown in some foreign film festival and Chhay Bora said he will fix some little point in the movie for an example, the song.
“Script, acting, directing, and location are very important points to consider if you want to produce a good film,” Chhay Bora told the audiences his experiences in producing Lost Loves.
By: Dara Saoyuth 22/02/2011