NO WIN SITUATION

CANADIAN Tammy Durand, the driving force behind the ABCs and Rice NGO, was hoping to provide Siem Reap’s impoverished kids with 10,416 kg of rice, or 35,000 breakfasts.

That was the plan for how she would spend a $5,000 award prize that she was in the running for in Canada.

She had been nominated by her mum Diane Renaud in the 2011 Canadian Living Me to We Awards.

According to the awards website: “The Canadian Living Me to We Awards shine the spotlight on ordinary Canadians making an extraordinary difference in the world – thinking less about me and more about we.”

Tammy made it to the finals and then had to await the results of voting, which officially closed on June 10.

Unfortunately, this week Tammy announced that she didn’t win. “The $5,000 prize money would have been a big help to ABCs and Rice,” she said.

But Tammy, noted for her innovative fund raising enterprises, remains a winner anyway. As a finalist, she received good media coverage in Canada and that will help keep funds rolling in.

As she told Ontario newspaper The Sudbury Star, she gets a big charge from helping Siem Reap children receive an education through her NGO.

“I feel like I have won the lottery every day,” she said.

MCDERMOTT’S BALI IDYLL

ICONIC Siem Reap photographer John McDermott’s successful exhibition at the Sundaram Gallery New York, which kicked off on June 9, ends today.

This was his first showing in New York and the exhibition featured a collection of monochromatic photographs from his series Elegy: Reflections on Angkor.

Following the New York exhibition, McDermott will now spend two months as an artist-in-residence in Bali, where he plans to begin a new photography project exploring the relationship between centuries-old holy places and the everyday Balinese practices that keep them alive.

MORE MYANMAR FLIGHTS

TOURISM between Myanmar and Siem Reap has ramped up another notch following an announcement last week that a Myanmar private airline, Air Bagan, will run a direct flight from Yangon to Siem Reap starting in October.

This adds to the two weekly flights from Yangon to Siem Reap and return which Myanmar Airways International (MAI) inaugurated in February this year.

The MAI flights are particularly hassle free as they are one of the few opportunities to enter Myanmar via visa on arrival.