Cross-Cultural Dating
Having a relationship with someone from a different cultural background is fraught with difficulty.
Can love work between couples from different language backgrounds and different cultures? If I look at the family of my older sister and of my boss, I think it can. However, it’s never easy, and making it work is far more complicated than just overcoming the issues of language and culture. For, in reality, I know that my boss and my sister have had to accept more than just their partners’ cultural traits.
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Getting around corruption anyway I can
I was the Director of an Anti-Poverty program and all of my staff were convinced I needed to pay a bribe. They all gave me my opinions on how much I needed to pay. 30% of the overall value and a bottle of Jack Daniels was the consensus.
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Myanmar to follow Cambodia’s lead in documenting recent history
Myanmar is in the process of setting up a documentation centre to reflect on decades of human rights abuses. It’s using the records of Toul Sleng prison as inspiration.
When Chit Min Lay first visited Toul Sleng last month, the cramped cells and blood-splattered walls were eerily familiar. It looked just like “his jail”: the concrete box in Myanmar where he spent 14 years as a political prisoner. He saw the photographs of victims, and turned away.
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Chinese Cambodian community: the swing of the pendulum
Contrary to what is implied by general concepts like “Overseas Chinese” or "Chinese immigration" the Chinese Cambodian community can’t be simply analysed according to a general model of Chinese expatriation or in analogy with the other Chinese communities in neighbouring countries. In fact, the distinctive features of a Chinese Khmer community have to be searched for in a three-centuries-old history. Even if it is tempting and maybe useful to refer to such concepts as “Chinese identity in Cambodia” or “Chinese Khmer identity”,
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The Rule of Law - an Example from China
Considering the many cases where there were contradicting opinions about what this wording “the Rule of Law” means, I would like to share an example from the Chinese eastern coastal Province of Zhejiang which borders on Shanghai to the north.
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Copyrights? - Nineteenth Century USA Was a Major Center of Piracy
The international Internet Society and it’s New York Chapter announced to host an Open Forum Discussion on a new Copyright Alert System aimed at warning Internet users about illegally downloaded content.
This is also an interesting topic in Cambodia, entering more and more into the age of information societies.
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Queuing in Vietnam
People queue. British people are famous for queuing. We queue just to get into another queue. We queue to ask about where we should queue. We separate queuing people with ropes and guide them with signs. We spilt queues when they get too big and start them again on somewhere else. We zig-zag queues to accommodate all the queuing people. Personally I had forgotten about this phenomena. However frustrating a queue may be, I prefer it to total and utter disorganization - i.e. Viet Nam. Not to say Vietnamese are disorganized, it is all for a reason...
New generation of Cambodian teenagers discovers telephone sex
PHNOM PENH (Cambodia Herald) - Seth Bunsath describes some of the language used when having telephone sex with his girlfriend. "Lip to lip, tongue to tongue ... rolling my tongue from her neck to her ear.”
Is it a new style? It may be for some, but Seth Bunsath said he's been engaging in telephone sex with his girlfriend for about five years already.
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International Children's Day in Cambodia – 1 June 2012
When I started to write something about this special international day which is also a national holiday in Cambodia, I assumed that this would be a simple, straightforward affair – at least as far as its history is concerned. To my surprise, it turned out to be a fairly conflicting field.
I knew that there is controversy related to another case: while the First of May is celebrated widely by the international labor movement – considered by some as “communist” - but in many countries it is just a day to remember and celebrate the achievements of labor movements and to demonstrate for further securing of rights – in the USA Labor Day is observed as a United States federal holiday on the first Monday in September.
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Three persons shot - and the rule of law
Official voices had frequently commented, saying that everybody should be patient and not worry - as things go according to the law. So I also waited, expecting thee would be a final, clarifying action by the authorities for which so many people are waiting. Instead of waiting further, I write a mid term (?) report.
On 5 March, two weeks after the shooting and almost as long as the time that had passed since the Minister of the Interior said that the suspect had been identified, the spokesperson of the Council of Ministers Phay Siphan still appealed to be patient: “We have to go with due process.”
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