Finishing off at WMC - the last week
Well I’m now a lady of leisure. I finished at WMC on Friday and promptly slept for about 15 hours give or take some time to eat breakfast on Saturday morning and go back to bed!
It was a screaming mad rush at the end but I finished most things I wanted to and handed over the projects to the staff.
The new website went live on Thursday - very exciting. The address is:
if you want to take a look.
I had to abandon the Khmer version because we couldn’t get the characters to show properly in Dreamweaver or in Internet Explorer. I didn’t have time to investigate it properly. I had downloaded some software to create embedded object type last weekend but was still having problems with it so I had to make a quick decision on Thursday to leave that off. The NGO which hosts WMC’s website and provides them with email, OpenForum, advised me about it so the WMC staff will be able to liaise with them to get the Khmer version up and running.
The database went well too. Again I had to leave some final developments to the staff at WMC, most of the data conversion. Kanha, who I handed it over to, is very bright and confident with computers so I think she will be able to sort it out. The DB includes English and Khmer versions of the WMC video production lists with functions to add, edit and view productions and print the lists as well as tape notes for the video covers and a simple search, a function to export the lists to Excel and Word and add values for some of the fields like Subject, Production type (eg documentary, reportage etc), Year and Department.
I was working on these things right up to Friday afternoon and finally stopped at 4pm, satisfied that my job was done.
Lots of people came to see me and say good-bye and I went to some departments to take some photos on Friday. I received so many little presents from different staff - lots of kromahs, some ornaments, a wallet and some of the staff brought some “chay chian” or fried bananas for a bit of farewell party in the afternoon.
Then, at the end of the day, Sarayeth made a presentation to me of a silver, ornamental container, for keeping flower petals or nice-smelling oil I think. It is traditional Khmer, quite ornate. Everyone gathered in my office. I felt really special.
I left with a great, satisfied feeling about the friends I had made, my projects and the overall experience. Sarayeth and another one of the directors, Khemera from TV, took me out to Ponlok, a Khmer restaurant overlookng the river for dinner. The food was great and the restaurant was in typical, tacky glitzy style, a mixture of Khmer and foreign patrons.
Now it is a month of bumming around in between travelling. This weekend we’re going on a motorbike trip up to a province north of PP, Kompong Thom for 2 nights, leaving on Friday. Hean will drive me and another moto driver will take Sonia. We’re going to try to find somewhere to hang up our hammocks to sleep at night. Sonia knows a work colleague from World Vision there.
I spent lots of the weekend vertical, sleeping or napping, lovely. Went to a house-warming on Saturday night and to visit a friend’s new apartment (and her) yesterday.
Have a few chores to do this week like getting my ticket reissued at Thai Air and sorting out my luggage. I might need to air-freight some stuff back so need to see how many kgs I have. Ana gave us her bathroom scales before she left (on Friday) so we can weigh our luggage. Always important! She had 32kg to book in on Friday, the limit is around 20kg - it is unpredictable whether the airline will be strict or not on the day.
well signing off here - have to buy cat food!
Ruth e xx
Miss Phnomer in Cambodia
