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Posted by: | Posted on: April 21, 2010

Solution for unemployment in Canada

Letters from abroad

Wednesday, 21 April 2010 15:00 Sophan Seng

LFA
There is a popular saying that “to live is to work”, and while life is not all about work, the saying seems to hold true in Canada, Cambodia and around the world. Most people cannot live without a job, but the approach from the governments in various countries to the problem of unemployment differs greatly. It might be interesting for you to hear about the ways in which Canada’s government and private sector have intervened in order to help more citizens get jobs and keep the ones they have.

First, there is a growing number of job search agencies who help both new and experienced workers find jobs suitable to their educational background and experiences. Enrolled students learn about networking strategies, curriculum vitae, cover letters and interviewing skills. These agencies also partner with private groups and the government to launch job fairs, which exist in Cambodia on a smaller scale, in order to bring together employers and employees. In fact, I was employed as a result of my participation in a job fair.
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Posted by: | Posted on: March 31, 2010

Hocky battling in Canada

Letters from abroad

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:00 Sophan Seng

LFAJust few weeks ago, Canadians were proudly cheering on their team as they celebrated Canada’s gold-medal hockey win over America in the 2010 Olympic winter games held in Vancouver. Days afterwards, the National Hockey League (NHL) resumed its regular season, and in April the league will begin its own championship tournament. There are 32 hockey teams in the NHL who represent 32 cities with their hockey-playing prowess.

The league is divided into 16 teams on the West Coast and 16 teams on the East Coast. Canada has six teams in the East Coast league, with the other 26 teams coming from America. The playoffs are the grand finale of the season, where eight teams from each side of the continent play each other for the Stanley Cup, a trophy that is given to the league’s best team each year.

“I am cheering for the Calgary Flames to reach the playoffs,” said Kevin Troung, who is an 18-year-old fan of the Canadian hockey team. “They are currently battling with the Red Wings of Detroit to get a chance to enter the Stanley Cup finals.”

While football is the most popular sport in Cambodia, hockey is without a doubt the most popular sport in Canada, and the two games have many differences. In football, the players run around on the green grass wearing nothing but shin pads to protect themselves from injury. Hockey players, on the other hand, are equipped with helmets, padding and a stick that they use to move the puck (like a flattened ball) around the ice while they move around on their skates like hurricanes. Each side is composed of six players: three forwards who attempt to hit the puck into the opponent’s small goal, and two defenders and a goalie who try to stop the other team from scoring. Like soccer, the winner is the team that scores the most goals.
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Posted by: | Posted on: February 21, 2010

Bridging the poverty gap

Monday, 25 January 2010 15:01 Sophan Seng

Dear Editor,

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Photo by: Rick Valenzuela

Economist and Nobel laureate Eric S Maskin speaks with the Post at the Hotel Cambodiana last week.

I agree with Professor Eric Maskin, who says that Cambodia has been at risk from a growing gap between rich and poor (“Nobel laureate to push PM on school reform”, January 20).

An unbalanced distribution of the wealth of the nation has worried many scholars besides Maskin, including David Jonathan Gross, who is also a Nobel laureate.

Cambodia can be viewed from two perspectives: progressive by comparison and progressive in actuality. If we compare the Kingdom to the past, we can see that anti-colonialism, the Cold War and globalization have played a significant role in Cambodia’s recent history.

The era of Lon Nol and Pol Pot must be evaluated in light of global cold war politics and the opposition between communism and democracy. Cambodia had no peace during this period, and the intractable conflicts led to mass killings and foreign intervention.

Though the media have focused considerable attention on this part of the Kingdom’s history, qualitative and quantitative progress since that time has sometimes been overlooked.
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Posted by: | Posted on: January 8, 2010

The delusions of the January 7 debate

Thursday, 07 January 2010 15:01 Sophan Seng

Photo Supplied
A propoganda poster from the Khmer Rouge era calling for solidarity between the citizens of Cambodia and Vietnam.

Dear Editor,

Your article “PM blasts January 7 detractors” (January 5) didn’t demonstrate anything new for Cambodian politics. Leaders have always pronounced strong political rhetoric to create a clear dichotomy of pro- and anti-groups when this day has arrived. In reality, the government has consolidated full power to exercise over everything, including whether to celebrate this day or not celebrate. The current political environment in Cambodia has not given any clue of the possible threat to the stability of government at all. But why every year, when January 7 arrives, is there a flowering of incidents and controversial public speech in Cambodia?

The answers might be diverse. But I am impressed by the Khmer proverb which states: Veay tiek bong-erl trey, or, “to stir the water to see the fish clearly”. It has been 31 years since Vietnamese troops encroached on Cambodia’s borderlands, accompanied by Khmer Rouge defectors, to topple the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot. The argument since has been endless. Vietnamese troops are presented in Cambodia as either liberators, or invaders, or both. In the past decades, the two debaters carried guns and ammunitions to fight against each other, at least between the Khmer nationalists based along the border and the Khmer troops based in Phnom Penh, and backed by a hundred thousand Vietnamese troops. But after the Paris Peace Accords of 1991 and the subsequent power consolidation of the Cambodian People’s Party, the debate remains only on lips and tongues.

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