Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Every year (when there’s no Covid!), our project coordinator from the Finnish Association of the Deaf comes for a week of meetings to review the past year and plan and budget for the coming year. Today Katarina, from FAD, arrived in Phnom Penh–minus her luggage–and within two hours was leading an opening meeting with us at the DDP office.
Lots of people die in Phnom Penh every day. The market for funeral arrangements never slows down or takes a break. Here a woman at shops at Central Market puts together floral displays that will be used that day to note someone’s death.
Valentine’s Day is a special day for me because I arrived in Cambodia to stay on Valentine’s Day, 2000! I’ve now been living here 25 years!
For practically everything in Cambodia, an ID photo is required. That’s true of ID cards, company and NGO badges, job applications, school IDs, training certificates. Everyone wants to see your face.
Recently I had to get a new passport and I decided to pay $1.25 and go to a photo shop instead of doing it myself. The U.S. Embassy now requires that passport photos be without glasses so I needed to get some made like that. There are hundreds of little photo shops all over town since everyone needs photos so it was easy to arrange. I just walk in, sit for a photo with the appropriate background, choose the final photo size, and wait ten minutes or so. Here a tech person is checking my raw photo for any problems before printing it.
Here’s where you get your fresh pineapple (husk already removed!), tamarind, and other fruits and goodies. And you can make your purchase without even getting off your motorcycle!
Some events really point out how two cultures think differently and express things differently. Notice the text says the bridge is 77.04% complete. In the U.S., an article would say the bridge is 70% or 8o% complete, or maybe that it’s 3/4 complete. But never would it say it is 77.o4% complete!
And how do you figure a bridge under construction is 77.04% finished? What are you measuring? The amount of time projected for completion? The tons of concrete used already? The length of roadway already laid? How much of the budget has been spent?
[Photo from the Khmer Times]