Quote of the Year: "In closing, let me note that our company has always been

owned and operated by Cambodian women. Our mothers and grandmothers taught us to

take care of the home - to cook, clean and sew. They taught us well! Today we take

good care of home pages, prepare our menus in HTML, clean viruses from our disks

and weave information onto the World Wide Web," said Ms. Kea Kunthea, co-founder

and partner of Khmer Independent Development Services (KIDS) at the National IT Awareness

Seminar in Phnom Penh on Sept 13, 2001.

 

Stanley Fischer, the International Monetary Fund's second-in-command, retired

last week. During a farewell speech at the IMF in Washington, DC he reflected on

times past, sharing tales from his extensive tenure at the Fund. One anecdote concerned

the late Owen Evans, his former advisor, who came to Phnom Penh after the fall of

Pol Pot to try to sort things out. During the negotiations one of his Cambodian interlocutors,

angered by the tenor of the debate, pulled out a gun and thumped it on the table.

Evans retained his composure, reached across the table, took a cigarette from his

hosts and said: "Well, if you're going to negotiate like that, I hope you don't

mind if I have a smoke."

In case you missed it, on Sept 20 by government decree, Mr. Poeu Maly was appointed

Permanent Deputy Secretary of the Joint Ministerial Committee for Solving the Right

Hand Drive Issue.

One of the questions in the knock-off Trivial Pursuits game just developed by

Krousar Thmey is: What date was the birth of democracy in the Kingdom of Cambodia?

Answer: Sept 1, 1946. Another question is: What year was democracy implemented for

the first time in the Kingdom of Cambodia? Answer: 1947.

A Comfrel survey conducted in April this year on the 1998 election campaign determined

that only 12% of respondents remembered the promises made by political parties, 26%

said they only participated in campaign activities to obtain free gifts, while 38%

said they took no part in any campaign activities at all.

One of the newest editions to the planet is the feisty Rosannara Eames, weighing

in at 3.1 kilos and welcomed by her proud parents Andy and Dina on Oct 5 at 6:20pm-an

auspicious moment, as her dad pointed out, which enabled him to head off in a timely

fashion to the pub to celebrate.