Category: 2017-2018

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Changing Cambodia 2017/2018 (Light the Fire)

The change goes along with passion, action lead to change, the more changes I make, the closer I will reach to my true passion.

I will not be able to find my true passion if I never “force myself” to explore and engage with new projects.

I admit that  I knew nothing about filming or any of the cameras stuff, however, I still want to give it a try. I believed in myself that I’m going to be useful in some way to create this incredible music video in Battambang province. I met Ryan, who was the filming director and he explained the overall schedule of the filming project and I was surprised when I heard that some days we needed to work up to 14 hours. On the morning I wasn’t sure what to help at the start but later on, I started to play an important role as a bridge between the designing team and the filming director. The colors slowly started to appear from the body of the performers as the designers tried their best to be creative within the painting. Each performers’ body was full of solid colors: green, blue, purple and orange. Everyone who involved in the filming project was amazed by my incredible work and the ability to solve the problem and communicate with elders throughout the whole project.   

Normally, the staff would plan and guide us throughout the whole project but for this particular experience, I was so independence. Most of the time, I traveled alone, manage my own schedule, find my own food, and solving my own problems.  

This filming was a collaboration between Human Agency and Phare Ponleu Selpak, and the film was under the theme, “Light the fire.” Fire can easily permeate from one location to another and as a change agent, we should also be the fire. I want to spread my knowledge, and my skills just like the fire, so that I could help to improve my own communities and the country. In addition, with a lot of experiences, I will spread my knowledge through my independence and confidence. I’m old enough to do it alone and to spread my word to the communities just like how the fire ignite and cause the effect.

I continued spreading out the fire through a project called Khmer Sight Foundation’s, a community service that helps to cure the villagers’ eyes for free. I was apart of the team to check the patient’s’ ability to view the E eyes chart. Another big responsibility for me was to communicate with the patients to explain to them the foundation. But also, to provide them support and instructions of what to do with each step when checking their eyes. All of these works were done independently by myself, I was really satisfying to help the patients to get their sight back.        

I could not stop pushing forward to help my community so in the fifth exploration I am currently involved in the exploration called Mosquito-Borne Diseases in Cambodia. Exploration is a project-based learning, where we not just focus on theories and discuss the problems, but also taking action to create impact. In this exploration, our final project is to do on data analysis report about dengue fever around the school community. The risk analysis was focused on two main villages, Champous Kaek and Koh Krobey and we interested to find the associations of the main three variables: knowledge, behavior, and perceived risk. For the future plan, we would like to distribute out the report to the village chief, local clinic, and the government. In addition, we decided to do an awareness campaign that could help to remind villagers to clean their surrounding environment in order to decrease the risk of getting dengue fever.

Change agent permeates the changes for the community just like the fire with a powerful movement, confidence, and independence. My other three friends and I been thinking about spending our summer break doing cycling around Cambodia two years ago. As we are now independent, we have the knowledge, and we are ready to roll the plan to create impact in this country. I want to inspire those young students, show them how STEM and project-based learning could better their lives and their community.

Aside from that, I also believed this is also another great opportunity to expand the survey and the data analysis, seen we will cycling around Cambodia we could interview the villagers along the way.

As a change agent, I believe in change, I believe in my own words, I believe in my community, I believe that what I share today will be a potential to create impact tomorrow or future. Tina Seelig said, “Passion follows engagement,” the more we are involved, the more passionate we become, I get my passion from engagements and from the journey to create change for Cambodia.

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First Time Doing Yoga and Meditation

Life requires balance, the balance between school and my own relaxing time. On 24th of May, I went to Vagabond Temple Yoga & Meditation Retreat. My first impression when I arrived the place was unbelievable, I didn’t expect this area to be like this; the whole environment was formed by nature, it was really peaceful and relaxing. My first yoga class was around 4:30 Pm, I was a bit nervous but at the same time, I was excited to do the yoga. After the first class, I learned how to prepare myself comfortable before the class start, I need to prepare the yoga mat, pillows, blocks and more. After many classes: medications, yoga, and inspirational talk, it allowed me to understand my strengths and my weakness both physically and mentally. After I heard a powerful talk about focusing on your strengths not your weakness from Pazit, a founder of Vagabond Temple, I immediately reflected myself on her story and her talk. This was one of my favorite classes of all from this trip.   

 

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First Time Working with Professional Film

It took me a while to make this decision, give up the Vagabond meditation and the whole school week to involve in the filming project in Battambang. The main purpose of the filming was to create a creative music video about the shining light. The idea of shining light was inspired by an organization called Phare Ponleu Selpak. Phare is providing a free education to the community students: designing, music, Khmer dance, circus, and animation. Throughout the whole experience working with the cruel team and all the Phare’s students I had made many connections with them through communication and working in general. Filming, in general, is very hard, particularly for this project sometimes we worked like 14 hours a day and it was exhausted. But this hard work pays it off by giving me an opportunity to understand the whole process of filming. My favorite parts of the project was to work as an assistant of the filming director and to give instructions to the performers. Because of all of this incredible experiences, it had have changed my mind to involve more with filmings.   

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How do scientists study the geography of the ocean?

Sonar is a type of technology that had been used by many scientists to navigate the geography and atmosphere in the water, but mainly in the ocean. There are two types of sonar: active sonar and passive sonar. Active sonar is able to send the signal of sound in the water, however, when the object is in the path of the sound pulse it will bounce the echo signal back to the sonar transducer. The sonar transducer signal has the ability to tell the strength of the signal, determine the distance and the orientation of the object. On another hand, passive sonar able to detect the noise in the ocean, it does not emits its own signal but instead, it uses to detect the noise that comes toward the vessels. Passive sonar doesn’t have the ability to measure the range of the object.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) uses sonar technology to study and understand the geography and the atmosphere in the ocean. Scientists primarily use sonar to map objects on the seafloor like shipwrecks and as well use to map the geography of the seafloor itself.
As can be seen, sonar technology can be so useful to the scientists that are doing geography research. Because of this technology that’s why humans are able to have a better scene of the environment underwater, as well as using that information to prevent danger or risk when traveling in the ocean.

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Woman doesn’t deserve the proper credit for theirs achievements

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was born on May 10, 1900, Wendover, England. She was one of the fewest astrologists who was successful with her career to discover what the Sun was made out of, as well as other stars in the universe. Her discovery had an immense distribution impact on our society. She had proved people wrong that the outside world isn’t the same as the Earth. With her amazing discovery, she never deserves a proper credit for her hard work to figure out this enigma.     

In 1919 Payne entered the University of Cambridge to learn science but she didn’t know what aspect of science did she wants. She made her decision to study astrology and stars after she was inspired by a lecture of a famous astronomer Arthur Eddington. She knew that England wasn’t the best place for women to explore in the science field so she moved to the US in 1923, attempted Radcliffe College (now it’s a part of Harvard), the only academic institutions that accepted women in science. It was Harvard that Payne achieved her flourished success as an astronomer.

Just in 2 years, in 1925 she was the first women who received a Ph.D. degree in astronomy. In that time, we believed that the elements that made our planet is the same as the outside world. In fact, her discovery had proved everyone wrong that our earth and the outside world is totally different. Payne had discovered that the Sun, as well as the stars, are mainly made out of two elements, hydrogen, and helium. In addition, she also found out that we can classify the stars by its temperature. As a young scientist, living in the world that was dominated by older man, she didn’t get the credit that she should deserve. Her advisor, Henry Norris Russell persuaded her that she shouldn’t publish her discovery because it was too controversial, so she took his advice. A few years later Russell took her discovery and published it by himself. Eventually, she became a technical assistant working at Harvard. In 1956, she became a Chair of the Department of Astronomy, making her the first woman with a department at Harvard.  

Source: 

1-https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cecilia-Payne-Gaposchkin

2-http://www.documentarytube.com/articles/cecilia-payne–the-woman-who-discovered-what-the-sun-was-made-of-but-never-given-credit

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Competent Holds Women Back

The author of “One Plus One Equals Three” stated, “Women are smarter than men and that is a problem.”

Men are confidence, they are overestimated their abilities.
Women are competent, they are underestimated their abilities.

Men care more about the result.
Women care more about being perfect and correct.

Females tend to be more competent, perfect with both ability and performance and that is the issue that holds their back. They underestimate themselves, lack of confidence to take the test, job interview, play sports, asking questions and they won’t take the risk unless they are assured it is perfect or 100 percent.

In fact, men tend to be more confident because they care more about the result, taking risks, not restricted, not asking for permission and not being perfect; they just want what they want.

We always stated that men are dominated the society which is true, but is it a problem because of men or is it women who are overthinking themselves. Sheryl Sandberg, a Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, said, “It wasn’t men who hold women back, it was women who are holding women back.”

Women care more about being perfect than the result. Usually, women second guess themselves before they make an attempt.
They follow the rules, they want to be as perfect as possible, despite it pulls them down instead.

According to The Atlantic, it’s stated, that women working at Hewlett-Packard, the computers and electronic company found that women applied for a promotion job when they meet 100 percent of the qualifications. In contrast, men are happy to apply when they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements.

“Women were smarter than men and that was the problem.
Women would listen more carefully to what was said.
Women would respond more thoughtfully.
Women would pay more attention, answer the question, solve the problem.
Women would underestimate their abilities.

It’s not thinking.
It’s overthinking.

Men wouldn’t do any of that.
Men aren’t listening to anyone else.
Men are just concentrating on what they wanted.
Men are overestimating their abilities.
And it worked.”

What caused the women to feel that way, care more about being perfect?

Based on Bright Network, it’s stated, the women are taught to be head down, follow the rules when they were young from high school to college. Moreover, the experiences and pressure from the society that put on women; this can contribute to a lack of confidence since they experienced the adverse of not being perfect.
Boys are making more mistakes than girls because they are confidence and that process of failure lead to an important consequence for them; it’s building their confidence to accept failure and taking the risk.

It’s now 2018, it is time for women to get out of this fear of underestimation, the fear that keeps them away from the opportunities, from success and from this world. Women should be like men, focus more on being confident, not competent.

No one will raise women up beside women, so they should stop underestimate their abilities but instead show their skills, their confidence and the capability of their work. Not only that, but women should shout for their works, fight for it, to pursue their dream.

Confident should be first and competent should be second.

Sources:

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kirirom institute of technology Visit

A lot of activities are in common with Liger and that community is called the kirirom institute of technology. The school was recently introduced to the students, it was established in 2014. The students have to take the IQ test in order to get a scholarship. It was blowing my mind, I didn’t expect the school location, curriculum and most importantly was to understand the common activities that are similar to our school. Here are some of the common activities, the students are boarding students, they are independence learning, they do a lot of projects with technology, and the school is located in the natural classroom. I recommend the Liger’s students and other Cambodian’s students who are interested in the technology field is to give it a try to the test. The students don’t need to be experiential with technology or English but they have to be really strong with logic thinking.       

Check out the link to understand more about the school: kit.edu.kh

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3 Global Alumni Convention

On Saturday, November 2017, there was a group of student who went to the 3 Global Alumni Convention scholarship workshop that located at the riverside in Sokha hotel. It was a really crucial workshop for a variety of students, from high school to university students that participated in the event. I got a chance to listen to a few topic that related to scholarships such as health, engineer, and business. And some of the speakers were Cambodian students who got a scholarship to continue study abroad in Australia, Canada, USA and more. It was really interesting in the event because I saw a lot of companies, organizations, and other projects that present their program to provide the scholarship for the students. Moreover, from all of the speakers, they all had mentioned about the English level that a student should have in order to get a scholarship to study abroad. The English is really important if we want to go study abroad. Furthermore, the English level is also really interesting because the harder the subject you want to learn, the higher the English level it will require. For an example, if we want to study in Australia for the doctor major it required about 7 for IELTS or higher to attempt a good university in Australia. Lastly, after listened to many panelists and asking them questions it gives me a broader idea of my future career and whether I want to study abroad or not. In addition to that since Cambodia is still a developing country, there are a lot of jobs that is not wisely introduced in this country especially, the job that related to the STEM.

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Model United Nations

 

My first time for the Model United Nations (MUN) at ISPP. It was what, amazing, I never expected that the even was like this but I enjoyed it so much. I could not describe my feeling until I experienced this event that always logic. There were many experiences and excitement that I can’t wait to share with you all. The processes of MUN and the extraordinary conference’s outcome was fantastic. During my expertise time, I gave up my creative technology class to join the MUN expertise. Basically, in class I just tried to understand how the MUN works, there were some delegates who had experienced with MUN before so they gave me a brief description and how I supposed to prepare for this event. It was really complex, a lot of terms that is not a regular language that I normally use but no matter what I have the source from teachers, delegates, and the internet to help me out. I learned how to give a strong confident and precise opening speech about my country position on the topics.

Moreover, I am a delegate of Mexico and I had written down two resolutions to share to the conference. It’s finally time now to show you the confidence and experiences that I gained from MUN. It was really formal, everyone attempted with a nice suit and everything was structuralize. My first time, but what, misgiving, confusion, struggle and anxious. At the same time, I tried to learn the structure and what I’m really looking for are the terms that they used for communication. I was lack of confidence at the first time due to the fact that I was confused about the term and the structure on my first day. Saturday had arrived, the hot debate closely began, the soon the time hit 10 o’clock, the ball was rolling. Questions, amendments, strike, add, amend, speak for the whole for the resolution, speak for the whole for the amendments, speak for the whole for against the amendments, voting for the amendments and last final vote to the resolution whether it passed or not. Those were some terms that they used in the conference. I’m proud of myself that for my first time attempted in this conference, I had gone up to express myself a lot, asking questions, learned how to use the amendment, understand the terms and rules in MUN. Furthermore, I enjoyed using the notes to send to other delegates asking questions and other communications manner.     

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ROV Submarine

As time keeps moving, more works required which lead to a tight schedule for the senior cohort. That was why my current project that was about the ROV submarine drone moved to the after-school extension (ASE) where I have two hours a week to work on my project with my partner. From the past 7 weeks, we were working on a simple seaperch project that was ordered from the US for our learning purpose. Since we never done this type of building and technology before it was a tough and complicated machine to build. But no matter what we managed to finish the product by the end of the term. From the past 7 weeks until we test our ROV, we do a lot of analysis so that we can use that information for our next ROV that we are currently working on. The type of ROV that we really want to build is the ROV that can go underwater and use for many purposes under the ocean like doing marine research. One of our original ideas is to use the camera which required machine learning that will track the data from the fish in the ocean. We were both inspired by an organization that called Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC). We hope that we could finish this project in one year and feasible to do a marine research that will help also help others science to use for other benefits.