Asian Culture, Lifestyle and Entertainment
Korean pop singer Son Dambi in January 2011 issue of CeCi Magazine [Kr] which covers her humanitarian trip to Cambodia in November. The singer visited an underdeveloped area in the Southeast Asian country to film an episode for World Special Love, a humanitarian themed show by TvN channel.
Party turns tragedy. Some 350 people have been killed in a stampede during festival celebrations in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, on March 22.
Huge crowds gathered on a small island to see the boat race on the final day of the Water Festival, one of Cambodia’s main events of the year. The stampede took place on an overcrowded bridge. More on BBC, image via Sohu [Cn].
The sad thing is that most of these stampedes could be avoided with better planning. It’s not that the authorities couldn’t see this coming, it’s more like they were betting on chances that it won’t happen instead. Too bad it did in this case.
Khmer version of Nobody by Cambodian quartet RHM, originally sung by Korean pop group Wonder Girls. Not only did they copy (without permission) the song, the choreography and outfits are almost identical too…
JYP Entertainment has confirmed that it’s plagiarism and is now seeking legal actions against the copycats. It’s said that there are other pirated versions in Chinese and Thai… but the Khmer version is the only one I found on Youtube.
Most netizens, presumably K-pop and Wonder Girls fans are bashing the Cambodian act. Blogger Brian shared some different thoughts though, that Koreans themselves are questionable for their copycat works over the years.
Set the legal issue aside, I actually giggled watching the video… not sure why.
The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, according to Reuters.
A kilogramme of rat meat increased to around 5,000 riel (USD1.28) from 1,200 riel last year. It’s still cheaper than other meat though… beef for example costs about 20,000 riel a kilogramme.
Some communities in Asian and South American countries have long history of eating rats or other rodents, but food shortages and inflations have pushed others to try rat meat in recent years.
Earlier this month, a state government in eastern India encouraged its people to eat rats in an effort to battle soaring food prices and save grain stocks.
Sometimes it’s hard to relate to poverty around the world. Here we are, using high tech gadgets and surfing the web while at other corners on earth people are eating rats because they can’t afford other meat… and it’s far from being the worse scenario yet. It’s kinda sad actually.
A Cambodian father and mechanic learned the hard way not to inflate children when he inserted an air hose designed to fill car tires into his 5-year-old son’s anus and blew him up, local media Rasmei Kampuchea Daily reported on Thursday.
The father was ‘playing’ with his son when the incident took place. The paper said the child’s stomach became distended and his concerned mother rushed him to hospital, where he remains in a stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery.
“The father very much regrets playing like this now,” the paper quoted a family member as saying. [IOL]
The world is full of fools.