Thank you and see you later!

Let us go back to 2004, when I was in Phnom Penh and helped my sister to find a job. I was like a CV’s and Cover Letter’s clerk at that time. As I remembered, I liked to read a lot of Magazines about Technology, especially IT and CM Magazine. I did really appreciate First Cambodia and I dreamed that one day I am going to be a part of this company. At that time, one of my sister’s friends named Seka was recommended my sister to apply for some Finance/Accounting position at First Cambodia. I am becoming even more eager to go and see what First Cambodia looked like. But in the end, my sister did not pass the test and interview to work there. It is a shame but, I still had to pursuit my dream.

In the end, Bong Sunny (ex-HR Manager at First Cambodia) interviewed me and acknowledged me with Bong Erya (CEO) to be a part of First Cambodia. 18-Jun-07 was my first day of being a Project Assistant/Executive with First Cambodia. I worked very closely with Mr. Sovannrith Leang (Project Admin) and Bong Marong Horn (Project Manager). The first project that I put my hand on in the first time was Cambodiana Hotel Project (both roomMaster and Sage ACCPAC). Bong Chhoeun was the acting Project Manager at that time before me and Bong Marong joint. He was so supportive. We went to Cambodiana Hotel together and pulled our sleeves to take the desktops and Posiflex touchscreens from the delivery car to put into Cambodiana Hotel boardroom and also upstairs. That was so exciting because I used to work only in the office and go out to interview the customers. I never did all of these hard things before, but at that time I did it! It was very cool!

The good thing about me is I have 8 different direct supervisors (bosses) during the time when I have been working with First Cambodia. If I do a little bit of calculation, I started working at First Cambodia on 18-Jun-07 and I leave on 30-Sep-10, so the exact working duration without taking off Saturday and Sunday is 1,200 days with First Cambodia. If I take that number of days that I am working with First Cambodia and divided by 8 direct supervisors, then I will see 150 days. It meant in average, I am working with each and every one of my 8 bosses for 150 days or about 5 months. Good number, lolz! I do really like it!

Again, let me recall myself! Among all of my 8 bosses, I found 8 good things about them: 1) organizing and managing things, 2) executing and being very straight forward (it meant yes is yes, and no is no), 3) very dominant and result-oriented, 4) the think-tank and can resolve problems very fast, 5) always unstoppable to find the solutions by ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency in order to get the best result out of it, 6) slow but consistent to resolve the problem, 7) Inspire, motivate and always stay at the back of the subordinates in order to get the best working results from them, and last but not least 8) delegation and providing the clear direction, but never run away when we are facing any problem. I like all of them and their styles of working very, very much. I do really hope that one day; I will become at least one among all of them.

Ok, I would like to say thank you so much to all of my subordinates, colleagues and my friends who are always giving me supports and trust so that we can all move forward together as a very solid team until reaching a point that we are achieving the ISO 9001:2008 for First Cambodia. Again, thank you so, so much, every one!

By Sochheka Ong

Written on 25-Aug-10

In memory of being with First Cambodia Co., Ltd from 18-Jun-07 to 30-Sep-10

LIFE: Learning Is ForEver

There are a lot of people in this world. Of course, we cannot accurately how many people are dying or giving birth per day, per hour, per minute, or even per second. These are LIFE! Some enjoy of being good, wealthy, and happy, but some of them are poor, living without clothes and proper settlement, struggling and exposing their selves to something very bad and awful for the near future of better and better life. If you go to the dictionary, I have the Concise Oxford one (11th Edition), they define “life” as the existence of an individual human-being or animal. “Is it that? Of course, yes… This is what I see in my dictionary!” If we take a look at this phrase a little bit, you will notice a word “existence.” Existence is the fact or state of existing. So, we will ask ourselves “why do we exist in this world?” Start answering this question together we will learn something new about our lives!

Believe me! There are reasons for why we are here. We are happy when we know ourselves and others such as friends, colleagues, and our family’s members; we keep moving our lives in a very long journey towards what we want. From that, people are trying to set up their goals and objectives to move a little faster in order to get what they want. After that, they strike for competitions and new challenges whereby they can learn something new every day, every hour, every minute, and every second that they hold. I still repeat what I believe about the concept of an “Invisible Hand” from Adam Smith – Father of Economics, wrote in his book: “An inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (published in 1776). The invisible hand concept says that “through the self-interest, society is naturally guided.” The only reason for having life in this Universe because we are all believe in hope, we are all believe in something new, something better by which it can lead us to what we aim for. So, that is why there was the natural evolution from being a kind of special monkey to a human-being that make our current lives exist in this world. The unlimited ideas of non-stop actions/improvements give us today’s lives and contribute to the whole contemporary community and society.

Because of that, I write this small one-page text and give the title to it as “LIFE: Learning Is ForEver.” I my point of view, we need to split our life into a lot of learning paths. Let me raise my own example! From Kindergarten to Primary School, I learn to survive in a very tough life. Since my family had a very little money and I was also sick a lot during that time, my parents did not allow me carrying any money to school. But at the meant time, I had to deliver and show the best study result to my family. If not, my parents would make it tougher. From Secondary School to High School, I started to be a little independent because I had my own bike and friends. At that moment, I learnt to compete with other good students and started growing my own educational life. I invented my own Geometry, Number Theory, and Limit exercises. That was very exciting! However, at University, I realized something very different. One of my English professors, Robert, told me a lot about asceticism, how to describe lifestyle in society and abstaining from something bad in life. This is when I started reading fictions (Sherlock Holmes – The Hound of the Baskervilles is the first fiction that I read) and learning a lot of more about sociology and psychology. I smelt the world very different. I hated unfair competition and other bad hidden agenda. And I moved my learning path of something very new comparing to what I had learnt so far. Now, I am in another learning world as well…

In conclusion, I will say LIFE stands for Learning Is ForEver. But it is not always like that because some of you may say “no.” LIFE can stand for Love Is ForEver, Laugh Is ForEver, or maybe Liberty has only In the Factious Earth, and so on. So, I always welcome all of the comments from all of the readers about what I wrote here. Learning is helping us a lot in releasing stress, keeping our lives refresh (like pressing F5 if you use Microsoft Windows), and assist us to get rid of many, many bad things.

Sochheka Ong

Phnom Penh, March 11, 2010

YOUNG: You OUght to be Noetic and Good

This afternoon, I hung out with few friends outside. We have a very good chat about our personal and professional lives. The good thing from this conversation is I saw a lot of strong energy and enthusiasm from each of them. While we are discussing about some challenges that we faced in our current working places, I was thinking of one thing: why are we working so dump hard for the best result to the company, but we are still not able to get a better pay?

One of my old bosses reminded one thing about experience. He told me that “… it was the experience that definitely counted us for a better pay…” Oh my God! That is mistaken! 110%, I totally disagree with this idea because some young people are very good and sometimes, they are even better than some experienced people. To me, the company and organization must take this factor into consideration.

Have you watched a movie named “Ratatouille”? That is the great movie ever for me. One of the parts that I do really like from this movie is when Anton Ego (L'infexible Critique Culinaire or the Culinary Inflexible Critique) gave his critique to a food named “Ratatouille” from a little rat chef named “Remy.” I do really want to repeat all of this critique in detail. And here it is “In many ways, the work of a critique is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critique truly risks something and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, and the new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto, “Anyone can cook,” but I realize only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s who is in this critic opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more!”

A good young, is a young who can learn not to repeat the others’ mistakes. I still remember when Mr. Michael Kwatia (my current direct manager) told me. He said “It is good to learn not to repeat your own mistakes, but it is better to learn from the others’ mistakes and make sure that they are always unrepeatable.” I do hope that all of the young people that I mentioned here must be noetic and good.

However, it will not balance if we say only so because not all of the young people are like that. So, in order to be socially equal between seniority and merit, the title to this text is “You OUght to be Neotic and Good or YOUNG.” “Ought to” here is an auxiliary verb which has less weight than “must” or “have to,” so it means “Not all of the senior people are not good to get a better pay, and not all of the merit people are not bad to get a better pay as well.” But the only way to achieve it together is to get all of the companies and organizations agree on the concept of YOUNG and give them some chances to work on something new with a well-paid salary and incentives for the future growth quantitatively and qualitatively of their business.

Again, I am not good in English grammar, so comment me if you found that it is mistaken. Thank you in advance and I do really look forwards to hearing all of the comments from you!

Sochheka Ong

Phnom Penh, February 22, 2010

Big thanks to “RATATOUILLE” 2007® from Academy Award-wining director Brad Bird

harder is ALWAYS better

When I studied in secondary school at Battambang (one of provinces in Cambodia), I learned one thing about this world. I thought that this world is not fair for human-being because there are some people are smart and clever, but some are not. We say someone is intelligent, it means the person is having the ability to comprehend, understand, and profit from experience. The opposition of intelligence is stupidity. So, if we say someone is stupid, it means s/he has the poor ability to understand or to profit from experience.

Optimistically, when we talk about it, there will be a lot of more different types of intelligent people in this world. I found that from some of my bosses. One of my bosses can think of something very quickly. He is like a think-tank to me. Another one has a very great potential to get into somebody’s minds and tell his subordinates to keep doing more and more for success. And one another can make a very accurate decision and can also look at the personal characteristics of a person so that he can offer one best-fitted job to that person. I really love the ways they are working and I always dream to be one of them some days in the near future. These people that I described above are all smart and clever. But one thing that they never forget is “working hard.”

My CEO told me one time that “to be a real manager, you must work at least 8 hours per day.” Remember, it is “at least” 8 hours per day. You know, I felt really bad about this phrase because my working duration is only 8 hours per day (maximum), so there was no way that I will work more than that maximum hours. But just now I realize about what he was trying to say at that moment. He just wants us to work harder and harder because as long as we work harder, we will always find something new for ourselves at every extra hour that we sit and work. Of course, it is very, very TRUE!

You know, everyone was born with nothing. "All are the same!" Again, I always say (this is my principle) that “we cannot compare the intellectuality of humanity.” You can admire someone when s/he is smart and clever in doing something. But you never know whether this person that you are admiring, is good in some other things or not. So, if I were you, I would say it does not make any sense to admire someone with "one good thing" that s/he has done. On the other hand, I will encourage and impress a person when s/he has not done anything good, but s/he does NOT give up. I believe that if people never give up, they will work harder to get it. And when they work harder, they will get better as what they want.

There is nothing that we cannot do in this world even though we are not intelligent, smart or clever. But you must ensure yourself that you will work hard enough to get what you do really want. But please kindly remember that working hard is never “enough.” :)

Working hard is something we can see; working hard is something we can know when we are doing it; working hard is something we can feel and touch when we urge to get our achievements; and working hard is something we can really do in order to make ourselves to be better for our short lives in this world.

Sochheka Ong

Phnom Penh, January 20, 2010 (edited on 25-Jan-10)

Thank you so much to all of my previous and current bosses

FEAR and HOPE

By having any small, medium or big size of the dictionary, you are usually finding the meaning of the word “fear.” You can use it in both noun and verb to express your feeling of anxiety, being afraid or scare of somebody or something. This is the most simple word that we use in our daily life when meet any kind of situation that we cannot do it. Remember! “When we meet any kind of situation that we CANNOT do it,” I just want to emphasize this phrase because I want people to realize something about it when they start having FEAR inside their feeling.

The fluctuation of life is infinite. Again, life here, I refer to the three (3) different kinds of life: personal, academic, and professional life. Of course, this variation is too numerous to be counted. However, every single of us is trying to find the stability of our life by trying to eliminate the downtrend of this fluctuation as much as we can. And we need to ask ourselves, what are we going to do for eliminating these distracted factors? And how are we going to take as our first step to achieve that?

FEAR is the thing that you need to look into as your first starting point. In the simple meaning, “fear” is an anxious feeling, but on the other hand, FEAR stands for “Fail, Evidence, Appearance, and Real.” Of course, there may be a lot of people know about it already and I may be reinvent the wheel here, but I am quite sure that my emphasis would be a little more helpful in order to make all of you to be understandable about the real concept of this FEAR and the reasons why it is very useful for all of us to know and apply it in the correct and positive ways.

In order to let you know more about the 4 words that we are talking here, I would like to give you one example. OK, let’s say if you some kids or even some adults, you can ask them if they want to spend their one whole night alone inside or staying behind Angkor Wat Temple or not. Of course, if they do, then we will give them the biggest rewards for that. This is what my sister always asked me when we were travelling across Angkor Wat Temple in Siem Reap. I am frightened and always answer “No” to her even though she gave me anything I want. Of course, in my mind, there is only one phrase “I will never ever do that in my whole life.”

If you looked at me at that moment, you can ask 4 questions: 1. Am I failed to do it? 2. Do I have any evidence to be scared of doing it? 3. Do I know what is going to happen to me if I did that? 4. What are the real harmful things that could happen to me if I decided to do that? To answer the first question, I would say “Yes, I failed to do it. And for the second question, I will say “Of course, I have no evidence of what is going to happen.” For the third one, I will say “Yeah… Nothing happens yet, so how I can know what will appear.” And to answer the final question, I will say “There is nothing real happens to me yet because I never tried it at all.” If you quickly look at my answers (it may probably be your answers as well), you will notice that there is nothing real here. I never did anything before, but I am very afraid. Why? Because of the fearfulness.

In reality, it can apply into many situations such as fear to telling the truth to teacher about being late in class, fear to approach a beautiful girl and tell her that you love her, fear to face the truth of our mistakes or fear that other people will never forgive you, fear of being complaint by the customers, and so, so on. It meant this FEAR can cost us a lot in our lives. Some people are trying to read other people’s minds. They felt that if they tell these people the truth, these people will punish or put them in jail and blame them a lot. But in reality, do the fearful people, themselves can read these other people’s minds or not? Ok, think about it and tell me back… I think we will have the same answer here.

Therefore, in order to correct our fearfulness or stop being “Fail, Evidence, Appearance, Real,” we need to do something call “HOPE.” Let us try to change my several negative phrases above from FEAR to HOPE.

“I do hope that my teacher will accept my lateness because this is just only one time that I am for his class. Ok, I need to approach this girl because I hope that she will say something good to me even though she does not love me now. I did make mistake, but I know and accept my mistake, so I do hope that s/he will give me the second chance to correct my mistake and being a good person again. The customer is the only hope that I have for my business movement, so without customers my business is not going to grow faster, so everything that I need to do now is to face that reality of the problems with my customers and I hope they will understand it after my explanation.”

After the correction from using the word FEAR to HOPE, you will be very optimist and positive to be living in this world. You will see a lot of bright sky with the beautiful sun, moon, and stars running over your head. And you will happily with what you have and being very motivated and energized to move forwards and keep growing and growing very day.

Again, I always remember this phrase from my manager “If someone called you a “fool,” please do not be angry with him. Tomorrow, after releasing your anger, go back to meet that man and ask him why he called you like that yesterday, you will learn something new from him.” :)

Sochheka Ong

Tuesday 12th January, 2010

Big thanks to my manager – Mr. Michael Kwatia

Sense of Self – Why some people are successful and some are not?

Before getting start, let me clarify this myself that I am not the person who is going to judge and decide other's destinies by saying that "Why some people are successful and some are not?" Actually, I notice it by myself and this is just only my idea (subjective). As I remembered, last week, I was in one training about "Effective Time Management." OK, during that training, the trainer asked each and every single trainee to read one paragraph in the textbook. However, after the training started for a while, the trainer was busy and he needed to go out from some important appointment or meeting. He asked the facilitator to help in continuing this training. Mister facilitator was continuing the training by letting one person to read one paragraph out loud as the trainer did. And at that time, the person who was going to read was me. I started reading and finished it after a minute. The facilitator applied different approach from the trainer. He asked me to explain something that I read. I felt panic and embarrassed because after the reading everything seemed to be gone. "That was impossible," I said.

But of course, it is true and obvious that sometimes or even most of the times, after we read something loud to others, we do not know what it is about. Each and every person has something called "Peripheral Vision" and "Focusing Vision." What are the differences? Why is it related with our "sense of self"? And why is it affect to our future achievement?

Before going into detail or answering above 3 important questions, I would like to have take one more example which is opposite with my example above. I love my grandma so much! She is definitely the same as my mother. I love her so much and I cannot even express it here. Even now she is not with me, but her kindness, goodness, forgiveness, and everything are always with me in my entire life. My grandma always said and read something to me such as book, the traditional tales and story. But what I noticed is when she read a book to me; she can always read it again next night without book. You got me at this point? Of course, this is called "Focusing Vision." You know, at night when my grandma read the book for me, she always focused only on the story inside the book. So, after finish reading it, it was always inside her memory. The sense of self is a conscious awareness of every person. It is the most critical point that we can control it by ourselves. If you want your sense of self to be more general or "Peripheral Vision," then you will never remember anything after the reading (my first example). In the first case, I was not focusing the paragraph. My mind was thinking about how the others heard my voice, how others heard my voice, and how my intonation and pronunciation were. And in the end, I was out of control and couldn't remember what I was reading about.

Being more focus on what you want to do is very important. Learn from it, practice it, and apply it into your real professional and personal life, you will be the successful people. But if you cannot do it now, you may be able to succeed too but this successfulness may take sometimes, not straightforward like the people who are focusing on what he is doing.

Hey, correct me if I am wrong na… :)

By Sochheka Ong

Phnom Penh, December 03, 2009

LOVE and our UNDERSTANDING

In many ways, people think differently about the meaning of love. Love can be a good and long-time feeling among one and others or vice versa. We have some different ideas when we go to this point because love can also occur between two persons who have different sexual organism – i.e. between male and female. Most of people who hear the word LOVE always think to this only one way. If so, what can go wrong with our understanding?

Let me focus on the heterosexual love – i.e. love between men and women. Of course, I can share some of my personal experience to you. People are becoming discrete from what they have in first stage of their life from the day that they can find someone who they love the most. I used to be in that stage and I found that something was completely unique and unexplainable.

“Kind and generous person begins to be a little stingy, easy-going comes to be rush and bad-tempered, and tiny grows to be a little messy and unorganized.” What are these things all about? I do not even understand myself as well when I start to be in love with my girlfriend. You know, I tried to spend a lot of time to look at her activities, her way of speaking, reading and listening. I could even notice that how many times she was waving her head up and down, left and right during the class hours. I grew to be more and more stingy and jealousy because I never wanted any other men to come closely and talk with her at all. But my feeling could not express into the real action because I was just thinking alone. I knew that I did not have the right to tell her about it yet.

Everything she wanted me to do, I always tried all of my best to complete it and I did not even care about my own job because I did always put her on the top of my head. Nothing can change my laziness, I thought at that time. But she could! She could tell me to meet her at any times she wanted. I could do everything for her even it was in the rush hour that I had to complete my final exam.

I did not want to clean up my house because I needed to spare some of my free time to be with her and talked with her. I could not prepare my lessons at school well because I had to do other things for my love. That was everything I could do in order to make her say to me one phrase “I LOVE YOU.”

At last, I got her full phrase. I was very happy and excited because my effort had paid to me the most valuable thing that I wanted to have. However, when I got back to look at my past, I found out that I had missed a lot. Because the pursuit of my love could be successful until that day did not seem to be well-prepared. I felt into the wrong understanding about the meaning of this word and that is the only I wrote this text.

Firstly, I had destroyed my real habit. I could not do as what I had done for my girl friend all the time. She wanted me to arrive to her whenever she wanted. It was not possible! In the future, I must have a job, so I must respect my working time. I will not come to meet at anytime she wants like before! If so, I can make her unhappy almost every time when she wants me to see her. It may also reduce her feeling of love to me.

Secondly, I was cheating myself. When I did like that to her, I was trying to tell her that I was the only man who could do everything for her. If one day, there was an accident to me, how could her survive without me? If one day, there was someone who was better than me came to take her from me, so how could I accept that? One difficult answer have to reply and I still cannot find it out yet. Until today, I met one of my girlfriend’s colleagues and I was totally surprised because he looked really handsome and even better than me. I found myself unsteady because I do believe that there is NOT only me or one person can control and give her a better life but he can also do so instead of me. So, all I must do next, is to make her see me in another separated way rather than just seeing how good I was like before.

In conclusion, our understanding on the word – LOVE is still bounded. We must learn step-by-step in accordance with our real social experience and observation. In my case above, it is just a sign for telling you that before deciding to do something for your love, please think of something positive and eternal.

By Sochheka
To my only girlfriend and all of my friends

Expectation (Part II): Happiness

People say they want to be happy in their lives. I say ‘me too,’ I also want happiness in my life. Why’s that? Simple answer: if we don’t want to be happy, so what do we want? We want to die or cry every day? Naturally, lives can not change. We live with both happiness and sadness. It is a constraint with incontestable variables. No need to expect happiness, if you have never faced sadness. Once again, we expect to be happy for all along the way of our lives. Can we get that?

Every day, I told myself and some of people who know me that unless you sit on the normal chair; you will never ever know how comfortable the sofa is. In this world, if there is no sadness without happiness and there is also no happiness without sadness. When I was bored with my job, I also expect to do something to be more exciting afterward, for example going to have the Chinese noodle with my friend or going to see my girl friend. During the time when I was sad about my job, I can find happiness afterward. Let’s see! Do you know who pay for my happiness? My job pays for my happiness. So, it means my sadness pays for my happiness.

We have talked a lot about the happiness. However, we have not known it meaning yet. In this context, ‘happiness’ came from the word ‘happy,’ which refers to the feeling or showing pleasure, contentment, or joy. We feel ease after we have done something, it means we are happy with what we have done. Happiness can be much larger than that in accordance with the different terms of references. To the family, happiness can be the feeling of husband and wife while they are able to live with each other from the beginning until the end of life. To friend, happiness can get from having a good friend. To us, happiness is every good thing you have such as family, friends, love, and that sort of things. Therefore, if we try to break down the happiness of a person, there must be the integration of family-happiness, friend-happiness, love-happiness, self-happiness, and so forth.

The only great expectation of every body in their entire lives is happiness. We were born, we study, we work, we get married, we raise our children, and we die because of this only thing: happiness. During this Christmas, I really suggest all of you to watch one movie, named ‘Home Alone 3: Lost in New York.’ You will be able to find out the real meaning of this word. In the movie, there was a lady (I forgot her name) who looked so sad every day because there was a man who broke her promise not to come to marry her. She lost her mind after 20 years of waiting. At last, she decided not to believe any bodies else in the rest of her life. She hided herself with pigeons and she kept them as her friends. Kevin was a clever boy. He was getting lost in New York alone because of the missing fly in Paris. When he first met a woman, he was yelling and screaming of fear at her. At the moment after, he was rethinking and decided to have a chat with her. She told Kevin the story and Kevin turned to feel so sorry about her and he also hoped that one day he would be one person that she could trust. How could he make her believe in what he had said?

During the Christmas Eve, Kevin had gone into a shop that sold a lot of things for Christmas. In the shop, there had also a box of collecting money for charity. Kevin had spent some money for that and he had been offered two turtledoves. These two turtledoves were the representation of long-lasting love, belief, and trust. At the end of the movie Kevin gave one of his turtle doves to that lady to show his mind of trust, belief, and love forever. Why don’t you find the couple of turtledoves to give to someone, you love for their great expectation of happiness during this Christmas? Merry Christmas to all of you na!
By Sochheka Ong
Date: 24-Dec-07

Expectation (Part I): Study, Work, and Learn

“Right now, I expect that I will be able to pursuit my Master’s Degree abroad.” This phrase is just one of my anticipations. And I do believe that you must have your own expectation as well. What does ‘expectation’ means in this context? If you go into the Microsoft Encarta Dictionaries [DVD] 2008, you will find one definition of this word: expectation is a confident belief or strong hope that a particular event will happen. Sometimes, what we do strongly believe that it will happen can be changed and we can not even get a half of it. Let’s take one step back and think! Why can not we get what we expect? Of course, the limitation of time is the only one best answer to this question. In this world, if there is no time, age, and the boundary of our lives, we will get all of our expectation and if so, we may not create this word too. Every day, the loop of this natural wheel ties our neck and tells us that you must do this and do that to fulfill our passions and desires.

“I expect to study my degree’s abroad; you expect to learn from your working experience and we expect to work in our own companies.” There are three words in this phrase that I have decided to underline. You know why? Because I do believe that every body must need these three words to construct their happy lives. In short, I say to myself that “in my life, I expect to study, to work and to learn.” That’s it! Do you believe me?

Before believing me, I would like you to answer to my question first: do you know what the difference between ‘study’ and ‘learn’ is? If you do, it will be very easy to answer to this question. ‘To learn’ means to acquire knowledge of a subject or skill through education or experience. The strict meaning of this word is ‘to study’. It means to learn about a subject by reading or researching or to take a course at college or university. If I say I go to study English, it may probably mean that I go to a learning center with the other students and a teacher. However, if I feel to learn English today, I can learn at home individually, or discussing with my classroom as a group. Probably, I may go to library or the study hall in order to read the book. So, learning can be more general to say than studying. Studying is officially recognized as a process of learning in school or in class with a particular teacher and the other students. By the way, the word ‘work’ is completely different from the word ‘study’ and ‘learn’. ‘To work’ means to have a paid job. If I work for a company named First Cambodia Co., Ltd, this company has to pay me regularly for my performing tasks.

OK, now let’s see that in order to have money, we have to work; in order to obtain knowledge, we have to study; and in order to …, we have to learn. What is your purpose of learning? Can anyone answer me and fill in the gap above? Oh, how come? I also do not know the purpose of learning. Alright, think together now! Learning is about something that we can get all the time, no matter what, where, when, and how we do in our daily activities. We tend to learn new things in every second we hold, so we have no purpose of learning. We learn and we learn and we learn. How can we know our learning purposes?

In brief, we say we study for our basic academic life; we work for our lasting long professional career; and we learn for our never end personal and professional life. That’s a wish for all of my dearest friends in this year of Christmas. I hope you will find out these three words: ‘study’, ‘work’, and ‘learn’ in every second you hold in your life. Boom! (To be continued)

By Sochheka Ong
Date: 07-Dec-07

Protocol

Have you ever heard of “Protocol”? I hope you have. What is protocol? In accordance with the Oxford Advanced Genie Dictionary, protocol is a system of fixed rules or conventions and formal behavior used at official meetings or ceremonial occasions, usually between governments. Now, let’s take a look at a family, shall a family occupy a protocol or not? Honestly speaking, family is an informal entity which shares a very strong relationship with the each member inside. Since protocol is used in a formal purpose, so we don’t have to implement in the family. OK, it is logically correct.

Then, I asked myself: “How can I continue to finish my fifth small text?” Everything is true as I open my first paragraph above. There is no argumentation inside my text, so how can everybody spend time to read my text anymore? I walked away from my laptop and thought for a while. I claimed out “No, it isn’t gonna happen like that. However, protocol is also practical in the family.” I sat back and continued with my real text below.

Building a good and happy family is the responsibility of the family managers. Parents are playing an indispensable role to make it up and take care of it. Parents have never wanted their child to be a gangster or a burglar. They want to see their children, are able to get into society and have a good job. How can parents build such a great family? Enacting the family protocol is the only good reason. As we have seen above, protocol need to be used at the official meetings or ceremonial occasions. It means that in all of these places, we are going to use it officially and correctly, so why we don’t study this protocol since we were born in our family. From this reason, I suggest “PROTOCOL” to be officially used in the informal family. WHY? There are so many reasons.

First of all, if we use the protocol in our family, we will feel familiar with it. So, it takes us very easy to use it in formal manner. OK, let me tell you this. When I was a child, I lived with my grand mother who is now living in Australia. She taught me how to eat with respect in front of the older people. She told me that I had to wait for the first oldest person in the group ate first before I started. It is an action to show that you are the knowledgeable person and know who is who. Moreover, she also told me how to eat the fresh vegetable without making the sound of crackling while we are breaking it down inside our mouth. Until my age, I still remembered this protocol and I also used it while my boss and CEO invited me to each something outside with a very formal purpose.

Secondly, protocol in family can help us not to feel of fear while we are invited to join the formal meeting with the high rank people. If you are inside the Intercontinental Hotel of Cambodia during the lunch time, there are so many people who are entitled as His Excellency or even Prime Minister. What will you do? Close your eyes and imagine of the time when you are having lunch with them. What will you do? You may say “I eat with a lot of spoons and folks. The convention is I have to take each of them from outside-in.” It means that the spoons or the folks that are far away from you, you have to use first in accordance with the different foods on the table. Yes, then you can do it properly and perfectly without scaring.

Finally, family protocol can also make us to be an organized person. Since you are learned to follow the proper rules in our family, we are also able to create a very specific duration on what we are doing or going to do. Remember one thing that “Tight rules, tight mind.” Please don’t do like that, just make some example of protocol in some specific behaviors not all. Hey, let’s a good and flexible rules of life. Enjoy your day and every day enjoys your life!

By Sochheka Ong
15-Sep-2007

Time

When we talk about “Time,” we will immediately think of some slogans like “Time is Money”; “Time is the only thief who steals our lives legally” and so forth. We are right! Time can generate two main results: negative or positive. In effect, the only thing that we must remember is “Time is also able to generate our results.” How could it be? Can you find out the answer to such easiest question?

Let me give you one example about my life when I was a child. Since I was born, I have been considered as a poor child. I did not even have the money in my pocket, when I went to school. Money at that time was the most important thing in my life. When I obtained the first grade in class, my family always gave me some money as a gift. I kept all of my money in one wallet where I put it in a very secret place. One day, when I counted my money, I found that it was reached to 100 USD. So, I automatically asked my dad for an exchange because I really wanted to see 100 USD note. I was so happy with this amount of money. Almost everyday before I went to bed and after I got up, I always went to see my money. One day, I felt really unusual; I wanted to see my money in the afternoon. I did not know why, but when I reached my wallet and I found nothing in it. I almost fell on the ground. I did not have any ideas about it. Where should I have found it? I sought out every where in my house and still I found nothing. I was really afraid of my parents knew about this. I decided not to tell them. At last, the time came. When I was hurry to put my money into the wallet, I did not pay attention. It fell down into the bottom of my wardrobe. Accidentally, I did not realize about it.

Time could generate a good result for me. However, if I told my parents immediately at that time, I was surely blamed. There were two result of TIME: ‘if I waited, I won and if I told, I failed.’ Now, I hope all of you do understand clearly about how time can generate something. By the way, I also want to tell you about the other meaning of this word. Again, when I was young, I sat down on the floor and did my homework on a very small chair. I felt of having my own house, becoming a very popular person and traveling abroad. I really wanted time to move faster, because I want to see who exactly I am in the future. Now, I am a man who can live on my own. I feel of something different. I see that the time is moving faster and faster. One day is a blink. Sometimes, it makes me afraid of myself and sit back to relax before I start to do something. Of course, I want to see the result of my PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification and scholarship, but my expectation is limit. What I have waited to see is what I have thought of renewing.

Time can take us to a very near future, but it can also grab our hands to the deadlock. Although, could you tell me that we can live without time or not? Our response must be NO. We can not live without it but we do not want it to move forward. Do you think like what I thought? You see, “I thought” was in the past and “you think” is at the present time. The time has also passed while you are reading this small text.

Paradoxically, time is the only thing that we want to know and see every day, but it was also the thing that we do not want to see and know. From time to time, people can always have options in their lives. First, they decide to move forward quickly and directly and second, they decide to stop and wait to see what is going to happen next like what I have raised as an example in my case. Wish all of you have a good luck and great days during the Pchum Ben Festival. Oh, I forgot. Please say it quietly because Pchum Ben’s day is not coming yet. So, do not let TIME knows about it. Just kidding, please enjoy your day!

“Don’t wait for TIME, Do best to make TIME wait for us”

Big thanks to Mr. Traing Lay
By Sochheka Ong
05-Sep-2007

Encouragement

The sun is shining brightly. It was noon. I rode my motorbike home in order to have my lunch. While I was riding, my mind was flowing away from my body. I really wanted to relax. I imagined of the time when my friends and I had lunch with each other in the shad of a big tree and in a very long field. By that time, I was thinking of what I called the “shad of tree.” Shad is an area that is dark and cool under or behind something, for example a tree or building because the sun‘s light does not get into it. To me, the shad of tree is a kind of push factors that let me feel freely from job and tiredness. All of these things are referred to the “encouragement.”

For a life cycle of the human being, there are two types of encouragement: ex‐encouragement and in-encouragement. External encouragement or ex‐encouragement is denoted to the things like the shad of tree, friends, family and love. What do those things do to us? When I felt tired, I liked to sit under the tree and read some comic or fiction story. I could felt really fresh and happy. I forgot all of my difficulties and challenges that I would face in the near future. I also liked to talk with my friends at the weekends. I usually met my friends and shared some experience with them at LUCKY ANG TEK. Sometimes, we talked about our sadness and difficulties that we faced while we were working or studying. But, sometimes, we changed our subjects to discuss some happy things that we have done successfully. And, sometimes, we tell each other a funny story in order to change the atmosphere. I have a lot of energy for working tomorrow, if today I am be able to be with my friends. Additionally, I also try to work so hard while I am thinking that Phchum Ben Ceremony will be coming soon. So, I can go to my hometown and meet my family. Then, I always want to get the scholarship to study abroad and to find a well‐paid job when I am thinking of my love. These are what? I want to continue to work for the next hours; I’m happy to get my job done for tomorrow, I want to finish my work and get back to my hometown for next month, and I’m willing to get the scholarship to study abroad by next year. Of course, these are the natural medicines that encourage my life to keeping moving forward without waiting for the time to come.
On the other hand, I also have my internal encouragement or in‐encouragement. Firstly, I learn to appreciate the persons who I know well, for example, my professors. When I can see those persons, I must also learn to be as well as them or even better. Every thing has it ending point, so when I can be like them. I tick in my checklist and say to myself that I can reach one point successfully. Thus, for next time, I will keep doing so and until I have everything I want. Finally, I can get what I expected to get. This is the process of self‐encouragement that some people have already done it without notification. As a human being, this special ability is priceless. Therefore, we have to know and use it in the effective way as we can do. From the ex‐encouragement, I can also create my inencouragement. For instance, I was encouraged by my family, and then, I tried to commit this to my family. When I did it, I admired my family and at the same time I also appreciated myself as a follower. Thus, I also encouraged myself after I encouraged my family. This process keeps moving like the systematic effect of life cycle. We learn to be what we are but we also learn to be what we want to be. Our natural ability sets out our future, but we, ourselves, have to motivate, to be motivated and struggle for our brightest future too. We live in one world, so we have to find out the solution to share the same profits, advantages and benefits with care.

By Sochheka Ong
14‐Sep‐2007

Destination

Have you ever heard of a movie named “Final Destination?” In the story, there is an actor who knows about his dangerous fate in the future and he tries really hard to prevent it. But at last he can not. The author just wanted to tell us that something that is going to happen, in the end, it will occur without any contestants. The movie consists of 3 sets and each of them is built up with the same purpose. However, “Destination” in this small text is NOT the final one. Here, I just want to mention about the professional career and goal of each person before they decide to do something.

Let begin with one example: there was a man who was interested in Accounting and Finance. He determined his direction clearly. In the future, he wanted to be a Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Firstly, he decided to get into the School of Accounting. He was graduated with the title of BBA, majoring in Accounting. After graduation, he tried to find the job but unfortunately, he could not find any suitable ones. He skipped his professional life and turned back to his academic life with the Master’s Fellow Course. Because of his first decision didn’t pay well. He told this issue to his friends in order to persuade them to help him finding another major in Master’s class. You know, what did his friends said? “If you want to change your major, I suggest the Management Program. With this field, you would be able to be a General Manager or CEO of the company. It is the only highest position that pays you really well in your life.” You know what? Now, there are thousand of people in Cambodia majored in Management and have not found out the suitable jobs yet.

If you listen to such kind of guy, you may immediately think that he is right because in a company; who is more powerful than CEO? The answer is NO. CEO is the only highest position in the company. It’s really attractive because you can control and manage a lot of people with the management skills and high salary. Do you want to go for it? Of course, your answer must be YES.

Wait! Let’s think of something else. What is going to happen if in a country, there are ¼ of the total population want to be a Chief Execution Officer or CEO in the company? Will such position be available for all of them? No, need to conduct the statistical research, just close your eyes in a second and you must say NO. So, how can we make the uncontestable market for such position? To me, we don’t need to do like that. I say “Find the fittest job rather than the highest job.” What is the fittest job? If we take a look at the example above, a man who wants to be a CFO and learns so hard to get into his field of interest, doesn’t have to change his major of study. He has to pursue in the same direction of what he has expected since the beginning and upgrade his skills until he can find a suitable job. So, to him, it calls “achievement.”

In the developed countries like Europe, there are so many that come up with the different ideas and perspectives about what they want to be. Oscar Wild, my most favorite Irish author – “The Picture of Durian Grey” said that he wanted to help the poor. He was not a rich man, but he always spent all of his money for the taxi drivers, waiters and waitresses, and so on. He added that if he didn’t have in the morning, the others might not have for 3 mornings already. This was his destination and it was paid to him really well. There is one school in Ireland, named “Oscar Wild.” And his name has never been erased. How about us? Be what you want to be, than you will make it. If you are interested in something, build your way to get into that loop. Don’t take left or right, so it will make you feel happy and enjoy your life. The world and the lives have two towers, one is at the top and other is at the bottom. But what we want is only in the middle of these two towers, so please “want what you have and build up what you have to be what you want.”

By Sochheka Ong
13-Sep-2007

Rich or Poor?

If you propose a question to everybody in the world that “do you want to be rich or poor?” Most of them will probably say “I want to be rich rather than poor.” That’s normal because it is the ambitious nature of the human being. Now, let transfer your question to “do you want to be too rich or too poor?” I believe people will take a little while to think and then say that “I don’t want to be too rich or too poor but I want to be in the middle of the two and rather close to the rich one.” That’s also normal because every body want to be richer rather than poorer. But now, if you turn these two questions to the poorest and the richest people in the world, the poorest may say “I don’t want anything more than rice, bread, clothes, and accommodation” and the richest may say “I need to have more right to free myself from all of these dump properties.” What do you think of that? To you, are all of these answers possibly acceptable? I am not a researcher and I have never spent time to take the sample and evaluate the population of this hypothesis. I am not a statistician. I am not so good in sampling analysis. But I believe in what I have thought and analyzed from the fact of my society nowadays.

In my point of view, I think the best answer to these two questions is “I want to be rich within the poor condition.” It is the best answer that people should better say. Now, let me say something about the rich people. For example, if you are a rich person, you can see every thing around you is good, modern and up-to-date. It makes you feel more confident and flexible. But what happen when you meet a beggar is folding his hands and begs for your money? There are two options: one, you give him your money, two, you offer nothing to him and walk away. Normally, people do that without reflection. I tell you something, if you are in such condition (I mean rich condition), you will never ever see the difficulties of the poor. Sometimes, they use the earth as their home, the sky as their net, and the grass as their blanket. A rich person has ever heard of that? That’s why I say the only rich is meaningless. Moreover, if you get into the high class restaurant, you may have to follow some steps such as taking a little piece of cloth and put on your lap, respect the outside-in process of using spoons and folks, and so on. Do you want to live with such order in your daily life or not, if I honestly and personally ask you? This is what the poor condition is better than the rich one.

To me, judging a person who is rich or poor is useless. You will never ever find a good friend or partner as you wish. You can see an outsider, s/he is really nice and friendly, but sometimes, it happens only when s/he speaks with the rich people. Actually, s/he does completely look down on poor people. How can we know about that? So, you should take a look at his/her involvement and conditions. For instant, you can simply find out a person who has joint a lot with society, involved a lot with the poor people and finally had the kind-hearted feeling. Psychologically speaking, someone who does always put their feet into somebody’s shoes. Thus, from day to day, please try out to change your mind from wanting to be rich to needing to be rich in the poor condition.

Finally, I just want to mention again that this small text doesn’t create in purpose of blaming the rich people. However, it is created in order to encourage them to put more time in thinking about the poor condition. Of course, as humanity, we were born with nothing. So, how can we say of rich and poor? There is a man, said that his friend was born with one LEXUS car and two flats in the downtown near Phnom Penh city. And, I claimed that “Wow, how can a baby bring this stuff with him?” That’s impossible and in my life, I have never ever appreciated that. You know, we were born with the same condition, but what generate us to be poor or rich is not because of ourselves, but it is truly because of our family living condition. Therefore, what we have to do, is to build a prosper generation from our starting point with a phrase “We don’t want see the disjunction of the World as we are all the same now.”

By Sochheka Ong
06-Sept-2007

4 Years, 1 Blink

Tonight, I go to take the bath late at night, maybe around 11:00 PM. I have thought of our part on the day after tomorrow. Of course, you may laugh at me because I might think that I thought I don’t have enough money to pay for the party. Yes, may be it is one of the reason, that’s why it comes immediately into my mind. But, I have thought of something else. Something that makes me scares and writes down this small text to you. 4 years passed in a very short time. We have tried all of our best to study and to learn the new things including theories and practices. And until now, we reach the intersection point, which is the only one point that we meet each other again. Like our palms and figures, how many palm and figures do you have in your hand? Naturally, we have one palm and five figures, right? When we fold our figures into our palm, we may feel that our figures is now touching our palm but when we unfold them, we will feel that there is no attachment between our figures and our palm. Virtually speaking, palm refers to the BBA class that we have taken and each figure signifies each of us. The period of time that we are with each other is the time that we put our figures into our palm tightly. I think we have done as what to be friends pretty well. In this part of my age, I think it is a very good time and occasion that we can be altogether being with each other, sharing a cup of tea and even more having a chance to say good bye to each other.

Let me say something about us. First of all, I would like to say thank to God that gives me a chance in this life to meet and make a great friendship with all of you. I think of myself and I want to cry out since I forgot to say this phrase to my friends since I was in the Primary and Secondary Schools. This life I have met a lot of excellent friends and things. I really appreciate myself and I also want to appreciate all of you. Secondly, I want to remind you that you may remember to say that you have passed your BBA at Royal University of Law and Economics, but you may never ever say that my BBA class has taken with 34 students within all of those friends, I met Mr. A, Ms. B, etc. This is the problem! I really wish that in my life I can finish every thing with souvenir and reminiscence. If I can do it, I will win and die with happiness. Finally, you will remember this occasion for your entire life since you will have the same time as today. You know, it is not a curse, but I just want to tell you that at this moment, you may stand happily with friends because you don’t even get yourself much involved in the professional domain or put yourself so hard to be good students in MBA, but if we have another day with the same party and place, some of you may be very tired with business, job or studying and that sort of thing. With the same place, we would have the same feeling. It is a big difference that we are going to have in our life. So, please take this occasion as the most important as you imagine and we will memorize it in our heart.

By the way, this is not what I expect to happen and say, but by default it will be going to happen and we have to accept. I just want you to know what the advantages of this party are. From all of my heart, may be to apart of your heart, I’m just very happy and don’t want the time to move forward to drain this occasion out from me. Even four years at the University is a blink but one day that we celebrate this party is hundreds year of recollection in our future. I hope we do enjoy our party!

By Sochheka Ong
26-Aug-2007