Category Archives: Camboida

Wanted! Khmer – Japanese real time translation system

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I saw a news today. “Most recent AI (Artificial Intelligence) make simultaneous interpretation possible on Skype”

http://wired.jp/2014/12/20/skype-used-ai/

This is really amazing. As the world of Sci-Fi movie becoming a reality, I have mixed feeling with an excitement and bit of a fear. Well, but it seems like they try with English and Spanish which have some affinity in each other at first. But this kind of function still generate very unnatural translation when it comes to, for example, English and Japanese that have quite different structures. Maybe this will be cleared by AI one day soon?

How about what I have been wanting? I have been wanting Khmer and Japanese translation system. Will my dream come true while I’m still alive? Someone say that Khmer might disappear before it will be able to translated to any language…well, it might be so.

The foundation of this real time interpretation service is that the function to be able to listen language correctly. And such function is quite accurate already with IPhone’s Siri or “OK Google” of Android. For example, English version of Siri can distinct British english and Aussie English, American English. And if my American friend talks to British English version of Siri, she doesn’t understand any. She is nonsensically accurate. haha! Of course when I talk to Siri, she ignores me to the point that I feel I will never speak any English word ever in my life.

If it is real human conversation, such situation that American talks with British and not able to understand at all won’t happen. Even my English with strong accent, most people can hear and understand. By the way, I speak English with accent but my Japanese as well with accent from Kansai, it is like a southern accent of Japanese. I was living in Tokyo for 2 years before I come to Cambodia but I could not speak Kanto accent Japanese because I was embarrassed somehow. Speaking in Kanto accent (Regular Japanese) is higher wall for me than singing a song in soprano or something. However, very unfortunately I have to master Kanto accent for the computer interpreter to understand what I want to say.

So, it means that Kanto accent Japanese that I never were forced to speak, is now forced on me. And I have to do it for computer. What is this? Computer is getting closer to human or we are required to be close to computer? What do you think?

In near future, AI will take over humans and our world expect to be like Sci-fi movie. But it seems like we, humans, are doing a favor for computer already. Us, humans can live in Cambodia, where is my current residence with frequent power outage but computer server room must be air conditioned I guess. Even though, most of place on earth do not even have air conditioner.

Masayoshi Son of Soft Bank said that computer will catch up with our brain in 2018. Number of transistors in one computer chip will be 30 billion. It is the same amount with brain cells of human.  I think this will be real one day. At that time can we distinguish someone you are talking to is human or AI? Well, if I start pondering something like this, I can see our future will be just like Matrix movie. Can’t wait, can we?

The consideration of the limit of agriculture by human power

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One of my best friend “Kazu”, the CEO of Framgia, and I had a great time to discuss some issues, like we should consider what we can do by multiplying ‘developing countries’, ‘agriculture’, ‘and Information Technology’ for our future which we focus on. We started to consider deeply the issues of the agriculture with some numbers, then we finally had a conclusion, such as “it is impossible to complete the mission we should aim at for the agriculture by human power only”.

My company, HUGS Agtech, owned a cassava farm and its size is approximate 1000-hectare. Now, I have better idea how to explain how big this farm is, so let me introduce it now.

Usually, we make ridges to plant cassavas. The width of the each ridge is about 1 meter. Since 1 hectare is equal to 100 meters on four sides, there are 100 ridges in total and each ridge has 1 meter width and 100 meter length. Then, the total length of all ridges is 10 km because 100 meters times100 ridges.

Our cassava farm is 1000 ha. The total length of the ridges is 10,000 km because 10 km multiple by 1000. This number is actually equal to one-fourth of the length of the earth, which can be said that the cassava was planted from North Pole to the equator and we owned all of them by human power only!

Well, it is of course very hard to walk around on the field because it is muddy, not leveled well, other crops or weeds were there. It is kind of unbelievable that the workers were walking back and forth on the field to plant cassavas, to weed, and to fertilize. Though waking between each of the ridges about 200 meters is hard for me when the crops are growing well, I have no idea how hard for them to walk and work around with a weed injector or some baggage on his/her back. Well, I have finally and totally understood now why no one wants to do this job.

Cambodia has 400,000 ha of cassavas in total and it covers only 5% of the total farmland of Cambodia. If we calculate the total length of all the ridges with the same method I used earlier, about four million kilometers, which is equal to the length of five round trips of the earth, are used as the ridges of cassava fields!!! Then, the estimated number of the farmers in Cambodia is five million and if we estimate that 5% of them work as cassava farmers, there are 250,000 farmers in total who work for cassavas. Although it is regulated that each of them needs to manage 16-kilometer-ridge, it is obviously impossible to do that, and the reason…, you will understand it if you come to Cambodia in extremely hot summer for once.

Anyway, even with this simple calculation, we can get an idea that it is impossible to manage the increasing cassavas fields by human power. In addition, it is as clear as day that the agriculture in Cambodia, which counts on the low-cost labor fee, will meet its limit sooner or later. Well, it seems that searching a way to implement machineries and efficiency is “the royal road” we should go on, I think.

Visiting Hanoi for the first time in a long time

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Maybe not? It is not so long time, is it?

Since we develop our AGRIBUDDY in Hanoi and the fact I often see the management team of Framgia, an offshore company with the biggest drive in Hanoi, every time when they come to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, I can’t remember well when the last time I came to Hanoi was.

Although Siem Reap, a place where I live now, is basically a country town with 180,000 population, approximate four million visitors per year come here for sightseeing. Because of this fact, the downtown is packed with only the tourists and there are many restaurants owned by French or Italian people, where we can enjoy authentic French and Italian cuisines with very reasonable price (which is a little more than 20USD per person). So there is no problem to say that Siem Reap is a very convenient town to live. Moreover, the most special thing I have to mention to everyone is the closeness to the airport. You can get to the airport within 15 minutes from anywhere in Siem Reap.

In addition, once you get on an airplane, it is a little bit less than one hour to Bangkok, about one hour to Ho Chi Minh City, about one and half hour to Hanoi, and about two hours to either Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. So, they have definitely great accesses to each city in South East Asia, like we travel between Osaka and Tokyo. I think it is more convenient if the immigration was abolished and we were able to go in and out each countries in South East Asia without any paperwork, like EU countries. Well, I think this issue will be solved sooner or later (actually I want to believe it will happen).

Anyway, each city in South East Asia is not only physically but psychologically close to me as well, so I don’t have any feeling as I am in a different country from the one I live. I feel each city is so close and familiar that I even talk to Vietnamese in Cambodian. I think this is the surefire rule anyone in South East Asia cannot ignore, I guess. Uh…, I wish someone make a software, which able to translate any languages in live, sometime soon.

Excavate the muse of Asia from Cambodia!

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Takamatsu of Studio Zarusova, the coolest movies/photo studio in Cambodia, took my family photos when my son was born and sometime I ask him to make some movie or photo that I use for my work. And, his great ambition is to create Star/Muse of Asia from Cambodia.

Like Cambodia’s neighbour Thailand ladies, women in Cambodia has small face and long limbs. They has a future of Asian beauty. But, one things is that their choice of outfits are unfortunately still very lame. Haha! Well, sorry but it is true. Now I do not see it much but when I arrived here 5 years ago, lots of young girls were walking around the town with their pyjamas. Yes, really. They were. Of course there were ladies who were not so young. Well, anyway. Wearing pyjama was their trend at time. I always think that because of their physique and strong facial features, they will look well if they go for classy sexy look but, somehow they love to dress like kids. It is the concern for them but since this is extremely subjective opinion of mine, I don’t say anything to further.

Anyways, rough diamonds are everywhere in Cambodia but was lacking the person to polish. Then now, some young Japanese generations are gather around here to create Cambodian muse and grow her to be a top of Asia. I shall support them fully of course.

To be honest. No one wants to work.

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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?

Having an issue of that Cambodian employees are richer than us

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One of our employees left our office since his wife said that she wasn’t able to take the fact anymore that he had too many business trips. Anyway, he laughed and told us that he had earned 1 million dollars by selling one of his parents’ properties, which he didn’t take care of for long time. He said that he had another five properties as well, so if he sold all of them, his assets would be about five million dollars in total, I guess (lol). Just for your information, he was working for us with 300 dollars paycheck per month, and he wanted to keep working for us if his wife didn’t have any problems. Anyway, he said that he was sorry for leaving the job.

Well, when I was with Socheat, a live-in manager of our farm, in a car yesterday, he pointed at a land and said, “Our family owns this land here, but we don’t take care of it at all. But, my parents are saying that they don’t want to sell it”. The land he pointed at was an area which is close to Siem Reap and they just had a guy who wanted to buy the land with 250,000 dollars. His parents’ house is located at another area, which is closer to the city center. Then, he said, “Well, I have my own land too, its size is about 1 hectare. My parents gave it to me. But, I haven’t done any paperwork yet, like changing the ownership’s name, because I have been busy to do lots of work for the farm”.

I was like, “What? Really? Is it so? That means that the land brings you money dozens of times as much as your annual income!!!” However, he said that it was more important for him to put much efforts on his current job to succeed because he loved the agriculture a lot. I admired him a little (actually a lot) when I heard that.

Anyway, it is definitely true that lands bring you amazingly increase of assets if you own lands at appropriate areas, isn’t it? I heard that the lands, where Park Hyatt Siem Reap is currently located at, used to be rice fields and the owner wanted to sell them for a song. The current price of the land of Siem Reap district is hundred times as high as the price used to be. I think the price is still cheap since Siem Reap is a place, which is safe and close to the airport, where many foreigners living at, and where the UNESCO World Heritage site is located at.

Well, since the lands, which used to be wilderness with few value, has a million dollar value right now,   the families of our employees, who live in Siem Reap for long time, is getting ranked as the rich category (and this category is “the real rich” even from the view of the Japanese standard) within this fifteen years. However, their ordinary life is still simple and there are still many people who are willing to do hard jobs with low income, like Socheat. I think that is one of the biggest reasons why I am attracted to Siem Reap so bad.