Friday, May 28, 2010

The concept of TIME in Cambodia

Should we consider the " unthinkable " as we use to think : it is not really important, before we go to the big stuff like Patriotism, Revolution etc...and ... etc., ?
For me... I used to observe in many occasions how the Khmer majority use their time. In order to really understand their real identity I try to see their reaction towards time and their time-consuming by working with the REAL Khmer.
The reason I take this problem to the forum is to find out why TIME is a problem for the Khmer(s) ? and how we can help and correct it ?
According to my observation ( not all Khmers but the majority) TIME is not really "clear " and its application has no precision if we compare it to others, especially the Europeans.
The Khmer-time is "ELASTIC". This means that not all the Khmers are careless about time but if we try to see " how the Khmers in majority use the time in their own way " we will notice many...
This writing is divided into two parts.The first one is to show about the reality of time-using, time spending or time- consuming of the today-Khmer and at the second part, we are intended to take a close look to the Khmer concept of time(s) and their meanings.
A. PART ONE Before we go further..... try first to find the answer : "why the Khmer doesn't like to obey time ?
In many occasions.... the meeting, the ceremony, the wedding reception etc... when we put the starting time on our invitation card by 6:00 PM, the real time we can start will be at 7:00 PM or 7:30 PM.
In our schedule.... we plan for 2 hour- or- 3 hour- discussion, but we go further more to 3 or 4 hours. Our organizer(s) try very hard to obey time, but we fail and fail...

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