Since Cambodia is agrarian country and practice buddhism in general, they celebrate buddha related holidays such as new year or “Bon ancestor festival” as same as my country Japan. We can tell that a culture or a religion has been together with an action of eating because the timing of such religious events are matched absolutely with some time schedule of agriculture activities. Cambodia celebrate their new year in April and this is the beginning of rainy season. And September, which they celebrate Bon ancestor festival, is the time they have most rain falls. And beginning of November has water festival. This let people know the end of rainy season. I always have a headache in Cambodia because nothing can be on time and always delaying on schedule. But such religious events are perfectly linked to the season and never delays. It is just amazing to see our ancestors’ knowledge and practice.

Well, anyway. From the end of September, Cambodia has Bon ancestor festival with 3 days holiday then rash of another holidays coming in, which is a nightmare for the people who do business you know. We are forced to work only half of a week every week in October since there are holidays in the middle of each week. And then we have a finale of holidays by having 3 days off of water festival + weekend + independence day + make up holiday (You know because independence day is on weekend). Do a math. Well, but “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. I just have to follow what our ancestors set up.

And then, I need to hurry up to prepare some documents for Mr. Kato’s speech at Tokyo Daigaku University which will be coming in next week. So, I called to our manager Socheat during his “holidays” and went to our farm to do some video shoot. It seems like he was happy to come out. Probably even Cambodian get boring during that looong holiday, huh?

This time I asked funky and cool Takamatsu who owns his private movie company called Studio Zarusova to do this. Well, as soon as we got off from our truck, I could feel the sun sting my head. And sure, the shooting was so damn hot and hard. Takamatsu said “Even if it is not Cambodian labour, no one want to work under this sun, you know.” Sure. I totally agree. Before I was complaining like “You know what, When I am not looking, they just trying to rest and not work but demand pay raise!”. But now I respect and almost worship them and in my heart saying “I am sorry I was being an immature and stupid authority to complain how you work. I just can not do what you do. Never.”

To be honest and serious, I think we will never find any human who can enjoy and find a joy or satisfaction to work under that sun living in a less than house like with such cheap pay.

So, what is the solution then?