Week 5: A busy halfway point
My Work
As I flew back from Bangkok to Phnom Penh on Monday morning, I received a message that I will be attending a networking/informational event in Siem Reap called Information and Communications Technology for Development. ODC hosts this every year to promote education and awareness of the digital spheres, and I would have a chance to present on some of the laws directly related to these industries. Most of the attendees would be university students studying law, communications, or IT. Even though I was very excited to go back to the much smaller and quieter province in the north, the event was on Thursday, which meant I had roughly 48 hours in Phnom Penh and 72 hours to pull together research into a presentable format. After a solid month of research, I had plenty of information, but narrowing that down what parts to share with my younger audience was difficult.
Normally, the business and academic spheres are in English, but the whole day’s worth of presentation and panels were in Khmer for students and attendees to understand the most amount of information. While I was grateful for my fellow intern to translate what was broadly happening, I felt a little unproductive sitting there for most of the day and trying to stay productive. This also meant my presentation would be translated by one of my coworkers as I went a long, which throws a wrench into the flow of the presentation. My 25-minute presentation turned into 40 minutes and compared to what I planned to say, I barely said half of it.
Luckily, the students and other participants were very engaging and asked a lot of questions after the presentation. Many of them came up to me about my research and the research process or asked me to share the slides that I created. I was grateful to explain my research more as I missed many of the points I wanted to make because of starting and stopping to make sure it was translated thoroughly. I was even able to talk to a monk who was continuing his studies in IT through college. According to one of my co-workers, it is really rare to see monks continue through higher education, and I would assume probably even more rare for those studies to be technology related.
My travels
Traveling to Siem Reap twice during my stay here in Cambodia was more than I could have asked for in a summer. Because I had already visited the temples and had no interest in spending the money to only visit them for a short amount of time in between work, I was able to explore the town a little more. This time I had coworkers to explore with me! They introduced me to a traditional Khmer BBQ experience one evening. You get to grill your own food which included beef, salmon, shrimp, octopus, vegetables, and other foods I am unaware (and will actively choose to continue to be unaware) of what they were.
The other evenings I was able to wander around the market streets and did a little shopping. Although, I did not do too much shopping since Phnom Penh allows me to haggle the prices down much more than the tourist center of Siem Reap. Many name brand items are incredibly cheap in these outdoor markets if you can find your size and style. Siem Reap markets are also more more exhausting since I am essentially bothered the whole time I shop. The northern province has many international tourists, so many more shop workers engage in English in order to try to take advantage of your poor bargaining skills. Markets in Phnom Penh allow you to just look in peace and do not try to sell you more than what you are looking to buy.
I arrived back in Phnom Penh on Friday evening and ready for the weekend. I was able to spend the morning working pool side at my hotel before catching an afternoon bus. ODC had a mid-year retreat on Saturday where I gave a mini presentation about my research and the struggles and successes I have had thus far. Considering that the retreat was held mostly in Khmer, I only came to give my presentation and eat lunch. The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying the never ending exploration of restaurants and markets in the city.