February 15

Feb. 15. Went to TB and gave them pix of boy scout and Sras trip, that I had downloaded on my thumb drive. I need to have Steve do a picture of Nak and me and bring it to her.. Initiated Rattana to set up visit to Sras on March 9-10, as March 8 is Women’s Independence Holiday. It seems that the number of three day weekends rivals that of the USA. Nuong, my unsuccessful house broker who also touts herself as a fixer and nature tour guide, broke her lunch meeting with me and rescheduled for later in the day at 5:30 pm. So I did some errands. I needed to extend my visa as I was not able to get a business visa at the airport and ended up with a 20 day visa which expired on February 17th. Guess that means I have been in Cambodia for a month without Lauren, as I re-entered the day Lauren left for home on the 17th of January. I will be fined $5 a day upon leaving the Country if I do not extend. The strange part of it is to get an extension, other than paying the fee of $45, I needed to surrender my passport so it could be sent to Phnom Penh for processing which takes a week when the 3 day holiday for the Chinese New Year is accounted for. I am trusting this process !!! I have a copy of it so that when I travel to Battambang I can use the copy when checking into the hotel, which always wants to copy it. You go to a travel agent to do the extension, so while I was there I bought all of the tickets that Lyman and I need to return to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh after a week of filming there and the tickets for all three of us to leave on March 19th, with Lyman catching his flight home from Phnom Penh and us from Bangkok. I met Nuong for a beer and to hire her as a fixer to arrange for us to be able to film a traditional dance ( Aspara dance)., a shadow puppet performance and a trip to Phnom Kulan ( Mount Kulan) where there is a waterfall and a pagoda to arrange for a blessing by Monks to be filmed at the waterfall. We shall go the waterfall on Saturday and I need to figure out if we should try and film it now with Steve and save a day from our shooting schedule with L and L. I had dinner at home and ate a home made dish of pasta and Bolognese sauce that I had cooked earlier in the day. This is the first real dinner I had made for myself and I froze most of it for another night.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Human Translation Reservoir Project visit Jan. 26th




This morning slept late until 8, after partying with Sam the night before. Then worked and found the perfect combination as I am a morning person and Lauren is a night person. So if we are in time zones that are 12 hours different as we are I can work in the morning and my dear can work at night and we email and talk to each other and get much done.
This afternoon I was taken by Awren driving her truck to the Human Translation project, where they restored and built a modern reservoir in a location that had been used by the Khmer Kingdom in the 11th century. Apparently the reservoir is fed by a stream from the Kulan mountains and this stream was a dividing line in the 1990's between the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodians. Now the new reservoir and the new canal system shall provide water for drinking irrigation and fish farms. This is what water being the source of life is all about. HT has installed 60 or so bio sand water filters and now is working on turning the management of the reservoir over to the Villagers, however that can not be done until the Villagers learn some basis adult literacy to be able to record readings of the water depths and flow and learn how to operate the reservoir on their own. The turn over to the Villagers is to occur sometime in March and may be an event to worthy of filming.
The reservoir is located on Aspara land as there is the Temple Choucray Vibol there. We visited there. It is next to a closed monastery.


I learned that this is a one shot project and has taken them 7 years to get to this Phase III. It is not HT's intention to do another one; but to encourage its indigenous NGO partner Cambodian Translation to utilize the know how to do another reservoir. One of the key persons in this organization is Chai and I am excited about Chai being one of our compelling characters in our film. Lauren and I met him briefly and I now have a dinner planned with him for this Thursday.

I do hope someone is reading this blog. I have no plans tonight except to watch this wonderful tennis match between Nadal and Murray.
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  1. Helen EllisJanuary 26, 2010 at 5:45 AM

    Paul, I have been reading this blog from the beginning and am finding it fascinating! I posted several comments but now see that they didn't get recorded, I guess because there's a word verification thing to do that I never noticed before. You said awhile back that anyone that's read this far must either love you a lot or is very interested in the technicalities you're talking about. I DO love you a lot, and find the technicalities really interesting as well. Also the pix. And your having seen a sign about Greta's baby. Keep it going, I'm your faithful reader! Love to you, H.

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