Fishing

Wherever in the world I am, I sure do like the relaxing experience of fishing during time-off on weekends. Every stream, river, bay and ocean has it's own challenges.

Flowers Of Cambodia

A Visit to Myanmar

Myanmar (Burma) is a southeast Asian country of over 50,000,000 people. Like a lot of southeast Asia, sustenance agriculture is by far the staple of life.

Unique to Myanmar is it's very serious military rule. Different but similar to North Korea, Myanmar chooses to trust no outsiders. None. Just like any of us, Myanmar wishes to avoid affairs they do not understand or may lead to a more unpredictable future. Instead of reaching out to the world to learn, the military government remains quite insular. In one manner or another, every business has a military based business partner. Ranking military are paid modestly and it is expected that one advances himself by doing business deals to, 'advance the country'.

Last week I spent several days in the Myanmar capital, Yangon. The purpose of my visit was to explore the city and get a feel for the people in this very tightly managed country. Also, being Myanmar is a country difficult to explore, at will, I wanted to establish relationships to help me with future trips to more fully explore this very mysterious country.

Here is a small video including some of my experiences in and around Yangon, Myanmar.

The Phnom Penh Dump and it's Resident Entrepreneur Children

Roughly 15 government employees are employed at the Phnom Pehn Municipal Dump. There are another 3,000 that work and live inside the dump as freelance foragers separating cardboard, plastic, glass, steel, aluminum, copper, brass and wood. They in turn sell this sorted material to recyclers. Of these 3,000 freelance entrepreneurs, 1,200 are young children, most of which work outside any form of a nuclear family or parent - or any form of adult supervision.

Kids living and working in the dump tend to work in small groups. The oldest kid, often between nine and fifteen years-old, is usually the boss. The boss' charges are between five and 12-years-old. The five year-old's are often tasked with pulling apart trash-mounds to better expose opportunity only older kids can quickly identify and swiftly sort. Mind you, all this is being carried out by kids in the most minimal of clothes, void of shoes. Anyone with unmatched, ill-fitting 'flip-flops' are among the lucky.

Home on the dump consists of a fragile tarp on sticks without walls, protecting a cardboard floor. Being there is no power in the dump, everyone works until dark. Three-hours before dawn, a fire is stoked and everyone prepares for the first glint of dawn to start again.

Well, that's just wrong. Someone should do something about this!

Most folks, me included, shake our heads...and do nothing. Thank God there are people that not only care but act. I have a case in point here that I find particularly interesting.

The Center for Children to Happiness, just down the street from the dump, help the dump kids in an alluring way. The deal they make with kids is practical under the circumstances: When it gets dark, come over for two-hours a day to learn to read and write maybe clean-up, have a little meal, before going home to the dump.

On several levels, Anna Gabriel is attempting to create compelling video to help raise money to further this project, as well as tell a story inside this effort. While Anna is the daughter of the famed musician, Peter Gabriel, her mission is her own. I respect her efforts and all those folks contributing to Children to Happiness.

Here are some photographs both Chean Long and I took attempting to get our head around both the dump experience and the Children to Happiness Center.

Deep in the dump.

Much of the dump is endless mountains of ever smoldering hell with acrid smoke. One step out of the car on our arrival and I turned on my heals and was back in the car in two-seconds. Not only was the smell smoky and putrid, it smelled just dangerously - wrong. My good friend Chean Long and my driver Sok Phea both wanted to explore despite the unsettling fragrance. The above photographs are by Chean Long.

Making friends with kids at Center for Children to Happiness.

Chean Long and Anna Gabriel

A 'gas station' out front. Very common manner to 'fill-up' the gas sipping 'moto'.

Off to Yangon, Myanmar (Burma).

Particularly to the Westerner, Myanmar is an enigma. A former British Colony and from the early 1960's a military ruled country that chooses it's friends very carefully. The United States government is not considered a friend.

Quite interestingly, South East Asian countries, including Myanmar, feel now more strength and emboldened by this huge stumble capitalism has taken.

Not an uncommon refrain from leadership around this region includes, "See? You tell us little countries what monetary policy we should take or you will not help us much. Look at what your monetary policy brought upon you! And look at what your bad judgement gave to the world".

There are two sides to every story. I choose not to be involved in any political discourse on either side in this instance. Instead, I simply want to explore and document without an agenda.

Friends here in Phnom Pehn, like the head of United Nations (UN) security for Cambodia and others have suggested to me..."go".

By all accounts, Myanmar is one of the last vestiges of ancient living on this planet that is hugely historic, mesmerizing, sweet and endlessly genuine.

My trip to Yangon is short. The purpose of this visit is to line-up handlers for more extensive trips in the future. Just the same, I am likely to have some interesting stories, videos and stills to share when I get back.

Queensland Tourism Authority: I didn't Make the Final Cut.

Last month I applied for what would be a fun and challenging job. The Queensland Tourism Authority of Australia is hiring a media spokesperson for advertising tourism on the Great Barrier Reef. Blogging, videos, stills, twitter. This is a six-month employment contract. Remuneration being $100,000.00 USD.

The reef is not just underwater reefs, the Great Barrier Reef includes over 600 small islands. Expensive to get to and expensive to stay on; but build they did. Mind you, these are absolutely jaw-dropping relaxation spots. Just the same, it often takes either a great deal of time on the water or a great deal of money in the air to get to these islands from Australia. Upon arrival to many of these up-market, micro-paradise locations, one can count on $300+USD for entry-level accommodations.

Even though I am a fellow in my 50's, I thought I had a very good shot for this job. My thinking was, young folks simply can't afford room rates Queensland's government is attempting to attract. People my age and older (more likely to have money) seemed to me to be their target market. And who better to sell moneyed, middle-age folks...than me?

Well, I was wrong. Now, 35,000+ applicants later, I didn't make the short-list of 50 folks under consideration today. Those that did make the short-list appear to be 25 to 30 years-old. Take a look at the one-minute video's of short-listed finalists at http://www.islandreefjob.com/. Some of these applicants really did a good job of expressing themselves. I commend them for their creativity and spirit. The one chosen is likely to have an experience of a lifetime. Not only that, once they successfully complete the contract, they are very likely to be exposed to yet further interesting career opportunities never before fathomed.

State of Affairs: Khmer-American and Massnick & Co.

In Cambodia, my construction sites have been turned into bare-ground, temporary, annual lease sites. I am lucky under the circumstances. My property values here, in quality locations, remain strong. However, a very humbling 2% ROI looks to be my income on these parcels for the foreseeable future.

As for Washington State, in the United States; neither Wolf Creek Ranch nor Lookout Mountain Ranch will go on the market as planned, Spring 2009. Instead, emphasis will be landscape development. In better days, I would have left this to a new owner, but in these tough times, I can improve, relatively inexpensively, compared to a year ago, provide jobs and make these properties more profitable and appealing in the year(s) ahead.

In good times and bad, real-estate development has been inherently delicate and risky business. I have kept this fact forefront in my mind from day-one. It has been my personal mantra not to invest (besides U.S. Muni-Bonds & T-Bills) in anything that would lessen my lifestyle if all my real-estate developments were to fail. And failed they haven't. Instead, they are, 'on-hold', debt-free and stable.

Times appear to becoming tougher and by all appearances are likely to get worse before getting better. The Obama resolve appears to me to be the United States diving head-long into European socialism models. Socialism kills innovation and innovation has been Americas bread and butter. Innovation has made the United States the strongest country in the world to date.

Global recession/depression is a first for humanity. We have never encountered this before. Like a very bad traffic accident, we didn't fully see it coming and injuries were far greater than expected.

What to do now?

Governments have taken the stance, 'well, we don't know what to do, but we need to do something'. Along came government, 'helping-hands' to bridge the gap.

There is not enough government money (individually or collectively) to make life on earth suddenly pretty.

Free enterprise got us into this mess, a better healed private enterprise will lead us out.