First feature

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.

The Cambodian Stock Exchange. Not a joke

A couple days ago, I was assigned to do a “man on the street” piece: the Cambodian Stock Exchange was launching and my task was to interview various Cambodians throughout the city to get their opinion on the stock exchange, or whether they even knew that the stock exchange happened to be launching that day.

(Sidenote: I know that the thought of a Cambodian Stock Exchange is pretty ridiculous, but it’s completely true and, actually, pretty fascinating.  We are witnessing the birth of a highly sophisticated economic device in a developing country; it’s incredible, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the dust settles)

Judicial police officials and mental health

Yesterday I covered a press conference of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) (click here for the resulting article).

Although I didn’t anticipate it at the time, this ended up being one of my most challenging assignments here yet…and it also gave me one of those quasi-emotional-breakdown moments where I questioned the sanity of moving thousands of miles from everyone and everything I know.   Fun stuff.