Just wanna share a fun website I’ve just found!!! Known as Photofunia, it lets you add some nice effects to your photos. The images should be not more than 500 KB in size and should be in jpeg, png or gif format.
You guys should definitely try! It’s fun and awesome. For now, let’s take a look at what I’ve done for myself.
A month after settling in Minnesota, I finally got to check out the local Khmer community for the first time. Along with a friend, I traveled down to Hampton – where North America’s most beautiful Khmer temple is located.
I was taken back by the first sight of it. I could hardly believe that a temple this impressive actually exists here but not in Long Beach or Lowell – both of which are home to the largest Cambodian population outside of Srok Khmer. In a way, it represents a strong community spirit among our people here, which I am really proud of.
The temple’s Vihara was completed last year, at a cost of almost a million dollars.
Me in front of the temple
I was told that an artisan was brought from Cambodia to specially work on the all carvings. No wonder it looks so great.
Inside the Vihara… ម៉េចដែរអ្នកស្រុកខ្មែរ? ឡូយអត់?
For more info about the temple, please visit http://wattmunisota.org/.
By Joshua Kurlantzick
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Washington Post
So much for the Asian century. The Thais are bickering with themselves, and when they’re done doing that, they’ll bicker with the Cambodians — again. China may be Japan’s biggest trading partner, but they hate each other anyway. Malaysia and Indonesia? Two countries divided by the same language.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Asia over the past decade, as an expat and a traveler. From where I stand, the place is a geopolitical mess. Hogtied by nationalism and narrow self-interest, the countries of the East won’t be banding together to replace the West as the seat of global power — at least not anytime soon.
Asia’s troubles have been on prominent display in recent weeks as anti-government demonstrations, fueled in part by anti-Cambodian nationalism, rocked Bangkok. Earlier this summer, Thailand and Cambodia moved onto war footing because of a dispute over a mountaintop temple — not exactly a living example of the Beijing Olympics’ motto: “One World, One Dream.”
Of course, an Asian version of the European Union isn’t out of reach, as many Asian leaders know. But today, the continent battles a kind of split personality. On the one hand, many cultural, economic and political trends suggest that Asian nations are becoming more integrated than ever before. But on the other, a virulent nationalism is spreading in the region, one that feeds on reinterpreted — or even imaginary — history to gin up hatred and push small-minded agendas.
Elites in Asia clearly understand the benefits of integration, and businesses and officials together are promoting the trend. In 2004, China replaced the United States as Japan’s biggest trading partner. Chinese yearly trade with the ten Southeast Asian nations will likely surpass $200 billion by 2010.With the expansion of satellite television, Asian airlines and regional hiring by Asian conglomerates, businesspeople watch the same news, cool their heels together in a slew of space-age international airports and mingle at cocktail parties and pan-Asian business summits. Fads that start in Tokyo or Seoul, such as drinking red wine or dying hair blond, sweep through the region. At summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), I’ve seen packs of diplomats gathered at bars swapping stories in fluent English about their hijinks during graduate school at Johns Hopkins University.
Despite all that love, most of the region’s multilateral institutions do little more than meet for the sake of meeting. In Cambodia and Laos, local officials and fishermen despair that dams built by China on the upper portion of the Mekong River are blocking water flow — and ravaging fishing in the southern stretch of that river that snakes through their countries. “But when we . . . try to bring this up at ASEAN meetings,” Sokhem Pech, a leading Cambodian Mekong expert, told me, “no one even wants to talk about it.” The committee officially monitoring the Mekong, which doesn’t include China, is so feeble that it rarely speaks out on the issue.
The problem: Calls to nationalism and an obsession with sovereignty are drowning out calls for cooperation. The passage of time since World War II, when nationalism led to catastrophe, has allowed politicians to wield it more freely for short-term gain. “The Chinese are ignorant, so they are overjoyed,” Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara quipped after China launched a manned spaceship in 2003. “That [spacecraft] was an outdated one. If Japan wanted to do it, we could do it in one year.”
I ran into this during my visit to an Iraq War Memorial in Santa Monica, CA a few weeks ago and thought it would be a good reminder for all the warmongers out there – esp. those belonging to the Bushes and Shrubs currently in my next-door city St. Paul. Enough human lives have been wasted. Wake up, folks! It’s time to wrap it up now.
