Author: Charles Dittmeier

Schedule Alert

Tomorrow (Sunday) morning I have a 10:00 AM mass and after that I head for the airport for a flight to Taiwan for a Maryknoll meeting.  I don’t know what the wi-fi situation will be there when I arrive late at night so I may not be able to post on Sunday (at least not on OUR Sunday).

Notable Quotes

 

 

“Clearly, the great mystery of life is that it is lived in an always flowing stream of change.  We are one person with one set of ideas at one age, and then, when we look back years later, discover that we became another person at another age.  The only certainty about it is the fact
that we ourselves decide both what we are now and what we intend to become.  And we make that decision one choice at a time.”

Sister Joan Chittister

Changing Skyline 2

Following up on yesterday’s view of Phnom Penh’s skyline, here is a little more detail.  The red arrow on the left points out the Intercontinental Hotel that was the tallest building in Phnom Penh, at ten stories, when I arrived here in 2000.  The blue arrow on the right shows the Vattanac Capital Tower which is 39 stories tall and currently the city’s tallest although other taller buildings are under construction.

Changing Skyline

When I came to Phnom Penh in the year 2000, there was one building above five stories and it was the only building to have an elevator.  Now the Phnom Penh skyline has blossomed and 40+ floor buildings have sprung up and the prime minister has started ground work on two twin towers, the largest in Asia (the LAST thing we need in Cambodia, with all its problems!)

3-in-1 Shop

Cambodians are versatile, creative people, partly because they don’t have a lot of technical and other resources to fall back on.  They just do it themselves.  This shop could be an illustration of that.  Notice the sign says that it is a phone shop and the silver counter on the right is for phones.  But the silver counter on the left is a money changer’s counter.  And then if you’ll notice inside (the big teeth are the giveaway), the owner has a little dentist shop set up, too.  How can you go wrong here?