“ថើបអូនមក” - Soeur Sotheara

Soursdey Chnam Thmei

"Nothing but the best of everything in life to each and everyone of us Khmer esp., loke Héng (មួយរយ) Soy(ស្ហេរ៉ូ)!!!"

[Mille bons succès à nous tous]

អក

 .........................

"Happy new year to all including "School of Vice", "Pissed Off", "Fed Up", "Jok Jap" et al...residing here at KI-Media...!!!

More power to all of you to fight online or otherwise for the freedom of all Khmers...!!!"

KI Media reader

“ថើបអូនមក” - Soeur Sotheara

NB: Thank you everyone for your kind message and New Year greetings. Likewise, my belated, but warmest wishes to you all and to Khmer people everywhere as well as non-Khmers who partake in this national festivity. OK, lest I dampen your New Year spirit, let me be brief and focus on more immediate subject matters raised by messages above:

1- Mr Héng (មួយរយ) Soy (ស្ហេរ៉ូ) -  the name is a contradiction in terms as most of us may have realised by now; an amalgam of bi-polar opposites i.e. "lucky" "unlucky", and not the sort of names most parents would give to their children, not Khmer parents and certainly not both at the same time. But, here is the crux of the matter: the "rational mind" is only as potent and powerful as temporal matters can "rationally" be accounted for, and hence the eternal schism raging within the metaphysical world between the “rational” and the “spiritual” traditions since man first learned to reflect and philosophise! Whether Mr Heng Soy himself [or his parents, by his account] in opting to name himself thus had yielded to some kind of "superstitious" impulse is a moot point, unless we feel embolden enough to drift beyond the bounds of rationality and off into the contentious terrain of "superstition"! Yet, the "superstition" I have in mind is perhaps more an intuitive knowledge or cognitive certainty that we humans possess within us rather than anything opaque or mysterious to our rational faculty. For instance, some scholars point out that those initial opening passages in the Hebrew bible, particularly, ones pertaining to the parables about the garden of Eden and the discovery by man of the Tree of Knowledge, of Good and Evil [Lucky and Unlucky] encapsulates not only the message of the entire Bible itself but represents the highest, most meaningful and astute point in man's quest to understand himself within the order of the universe or the cosmos that is in turn sustained by the law of opposites i.e. order and chaos [lucky and unlucky!]. Yet what is remarkable or surprising is how this realisation had come about, not through science laboratories, but that it had been arrived at intuitively through spiritual and mental contemplation by ascetics who perhaps dwelled in a mountain cave or in the wilderness. The point is, there are causes and consequences, actions and reactions that eventually equilibrate or balance things out in the end; a sort of 'hidden' karma or causality that governs all life forms, so maybe it's not a coincidence at all that someone has come to be called 'Heng Soy' and furthermore that to wish him sincerely "100 Lucky" and "0 Unlucky" would be to upset that delicate balance and thus expose him to more harm than good! So let us wish him 50 Heng [lucky] and 50 Soy [unlucky] instead, eh?

2- As the second quote above insinuates some of us do reside at KI Media, for good or ill [School of Vice himself has not been to a Khmer New Year event in over twenty years, and it's long before KI Media came into existence!] for which we have Mr Heng Soy to thank! According to a well sourced rumour, Mr Soy used to be a magnet to members of the opposite sex and would often find himself chased off the streets by them! Thus, the experience of being constantly harassed in this way forced him to take refuge in a more reclusive, but cerebral environment far from the clamour of his lusty female admirers, hence his decision to found KI Media, and therefore the gratitude we owe him for this blessed coincidence that has since become our place of refuge!

The video song above is dedicated to him in token reminder of his pre-KI Media days. Just picture him in that shy, handsome young man in the video, but a lot more handsome and debonair in real life, . . .

Happy New Year!

School of Vice