This felt good, I landed my first feature in Friday’s paper. Click here to see the story.
During my first couple weeks on the job, because I was so new to the issues and the scene here, much of my day was basically spent cruising various websites finding whatever interested me that was somehow related to Cambodia. I came across a story in the Boston Globe that tangentially mentioned the fact that only one person of Cambodian descent (Rithy Uong) had ever held public office in the U.S. Rithy served on the city council of Lowell, MA from 1999 to 2005.
In a crazy twist of fate, Rithy ended up being the father of a summer intern at the Post, Ravi. Ravi is from Lowell and currently goes to school at Wesleyan (or is it Wellesley? I always get those two mixed up).
And, what’s more, Rithy just so happened to be visiting Phnom Penh, so I was able to interview him for this story and craft it into a feature about Cambodian-American politics in the U.S. After several weeks of working through translators and speaking to native Khmers who have less-than-perfect English, it was a refreshing change of pace to have the luxury of interviewing native English speakers – much less challenging!
KristinLynch 