Short story long, hehe, there are only two occassions in my life when I meet a person so unexpectedly that puts me in awe. It's like when a photon meets an electron in the vast universe, and the electron gets excited and leaps into the higher quantum state. I was totally like that.

Okie, so the first time happened in January 2002. It was a winter here although not that cold to make it snow. It was around seven when I woke up and all of a sudden, there's a voice in my head. "Pheap, go take a shower and ride your motor to Angkor Wat." I was like, "Hoh? Who are you? Are you telling me to go there at this hour? Cuz who the heck goes to Angkor Wat this early." If you're in Phnom Penh, know this, it's like the feeling of going for a ride at the river side early in the morning. Who would do that? Nobody except alien tourists and local nutcases. So yeah a nutcase I was, 'cause I was actually driving to Angkor Wat.

There were two roads leading to the temple, the main road and the small road less taken. At the crossroad, I heard the voice again, "Pheap, take the road less taken." Then I was like, "Excuse me, Mr. Voice, are you trying to get me robbed on this quiet road?" There eventually I was driving on the small road. There's something special about that road. There were tall eerie trees that smell so good. Some leaves were falling slowly in front of me. The fallen ones were not yet trodden black. It was real cold, real quiet, three mintures driving on the road. Then I saw someone's riding a red motorbike from the other direction. "Oh! oh! At least there's another local nutcase in town," I pondered to myself, "Oh! A girl! a girl! LOL." As we're getting closer and closer I realized I knew that girly, pretty face. She was a classmate of mine that..... I had a crush on. That's when I looked at her, with awe filling in my head, so did she, I believe.

"Pheap, forget the old temple. Just go reverse and rendevous with her!" said Mr. Voice. Oh that's something I could agree on. I quickly U-turned my motorbike around and drove with her all the way. Our small talk was all about how amazed we were seeing other like this. I mean, what's the odds? 8AM + Angkor Wat + Road Less Taken + Time Window = Speechless.

The next morning after I woke up, the voice spoke to me, "Pheap, get ready to ride to Angkor Wat again." So yeah I followed. There at the crossroad, I took the road less taken. It was quiet like it was yesterday. The road was winding into the woods, and I couldn't see far but that didn't stop me from trying to see what's coming ahead. It was a red motorbike, and it was her, again! Oh man.... that's just unbelievable. Talk about meeting someone you love at this very place, TWICE. I didn't believe in fate or destiny, but this was just too weird, too accidental.

And, the next mornings, every friggin morning, Mr. Voice woke me up and urged me to drive there and look for her. I did, as always. Again, and again, I met her on this exact road. It wasn't timed at all. Some day, I went there at 8, I saw her. Some time, at 9, I still saw her. And some other times, at 10, and I still saw her. It wasn't exact timed since we didn't ask each other to meet up at X:XX AM. Not at all. Some other days, I took the main road instead, and I still saw her. Whatever roads I took, I still met her.

I gotta fast forward on this one. Many years of the bitter sweet, hopeful and happy relationship with this very girl ended with broken hearts. I asked Mr. Voice or whatever he was, "is this your fately destiny, Mr. Voice? All these moments and then a good-bye." And he replied, "I think you stalked her. It was no chance nor fate, buddy. You wanted it. You got it." I hadn't heard from him since then.

Let's fast forward to yesterday, when for the second time, I heard him again. This time he changed his name to Mr. Voicio since he erh moved to Italy all these times. He's here in Cambodia only for vacation. Mr. Voicio greeted me with this, "Pheap, go to Sovanna Shopping Center." And I was like "Wow! This is interesting. What's in store for me this time?" So I went there and parked my car neatly. I haven't been to this place for two months already.

Beep... beep... beep...

An old friend messaged me as if she knew I was close by. "Hey, come meet me at Sovanna restau." Now I was pondering if that's someone who Viocio wanted me to meet. "Huh.... so... let's go meet her then." I was also just so starving. Standing there at the crossroad, I could have just taken the elevator and just gone eating with her. But instead I went shopping. After it's all checked out, it was just a small bag I could have carried with me up to the restau. I could have gone looking for her, but then Viocio spoke to me, "Pheap, go put all the groceries in your car. Girls hate a boy carrying a white plastic bag." So I did.

As I was walking and hurrying in the parking lot--it was dead quiet--and that's when I saw this black Lexus driving very slowly toward me. "Whoa ho! a Lexus. Could it be her?" Even when it was so close, I couldn't see a thing inside the car. I just walked pass, thinking, "Oh, hehe not her." That's also when I turned my head around and to my amazement, the window was rolling down, and there! My lovely lovely internet friend, Kmouy Bondol Jet, was the driver. Weeks earlier, I had told her we would never meet, but then there she was before me in flesh and bone. Awe strucked me 'cause it was just so awesome, so unbelievable, and I'm just dumbfounded. The cyber world and the real world have collided, and I'm no longer Mr. Robot. Haha...

So what's the odds of two friends meeting by chance? Yes, a lot. Several times I have met my friends on the streets but I was just doing my usual chores, walking the same streets everyday, and it's just too sure that some day I'll meet them. But this is not the usual. Because all of a sudden, I had this voice inside my head telling me to do things I don't really want to do but I still do it anyway.

Anyway, I was just so shocked and forgot to meet up with my old pal. Or maybe I met Kmouy Bondol Jet already and that I thought I didn't need to meet anybody else.

Okie, are you saying it's fate and destiny? Well, Voicio and I don't believe in them. We are both atheists. "It was no chance nor fate, buddy. You wanted it. You got it." Maybe Kmouy Bondol Jet stalked me. :))

So yes, last month I gave my long-lost childhood dream a serious thought. It's about making my own electronics and robots.

As a young kid, I was bombarded with all the tech news. When I was like ten, Honda made a headline with "Honda Humaniod Robot Takes Its First Step," and then more headlines on robots, cool electronic gadgets, and more robots. I was awe-inspired by these kind of technological achievements. I was like, "Gee! I want to make one myself." Hehe.. and I remember I couldn't do anything else besides unscrewing my Chinese-made, remote-controlled toy car and looking at the wires. "Gee! So which wires to connect to turn this toy car into a robot?"

Color me stupid but not yet. And so, still as a little kid, I thought, "here is dad's 10kg video camera. Hmm.... how to put this huge thing on this little toy car so it records the video and send back to the TV?" Well, soon eough I discovered I couldn't make a robot out of a cheap Chinese toy, so yeah I crushed the toy and threw it against the walls to vent my anger. I admit, some smashed pieces of it sure looked like tiny plastic robots.

So I moved on, to something else. I soon fell in love with computers. I think I wrote about this back. You can check them out. Yeah so I moved on to the field of computing. After high school, I taught myself computer programming. Fast forwarding many years, I guess now I can create many different kinds of computer software. Software, yes! You can see a lot of buttons on the computer screen but you can't touch it. So this stuff is pretty much intangible. You can see, you can use, you can hear but you can't touch. (Your phone touch-screen display isn't real touch, nah!)

I want to touch my inventions. I want to move them around here in the real world, and I want them to move in real world. And I wonder what my inventions will smell like. I bet plastics and metals.

So there, my long-lost childhood dream came back. I didn't ignore the call this time. I vowed to make it a reality. Oh yes! I am gonna make some robots for real. Considering that I have zero knowledge on electronics, this is a leap of faith. You say, "confidence" is the right word? Darn right. So all these is based on my life-long motto, "You did it. I can do it too!" I always believe anything is possible if enough effort is put into it.

So now I'm buying a lot of tiny parts to begin with. My original budget was gonna be small like 500 bucks or less, but now, I've thrown in three grands, and I'm only seeing a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. Two weeks of sleepless nights by browsing for the parts, three thousand dollars spent, and it is still asking for more. If the spending goes more out of control, I might have to beg on the streets. If you do see me, just give me a lot of Benjamin Franklins, okie?

Okie...  I'm still waiting for all the parts about four thousand individual parts to arrive here. Well, stay tuned. I'll post unboxing photos when I've got it.

Yes, I want a decent e-book reader that has a large e-paper display. It will save me a lot of money if I read a lot of books, which I do. I have been buying regular paper books at Amazon.com and having them shipped to me here in Cambodia. Each typical paper book ultimately costs me about $35 to reach my hand. This is insanely more expensive than an e-book which will cost me about $10 each, not to mention that there are tons and tons of free e-books on the web. A quick calculation reveals that such device will pay for itself in no-time. Plus, it is not only money that is saved but also trees and the environment. As you know, an e-book is just a digital computer file which could be transferred electronically through the internet in bulk for less than a cent. Thousands of e-books can fit into a small flash memory. On the other hand, if you dissect the actual costs of a paper book, you will see that it costs a lot of harms. Making the papers will need trees cut down for use as raw materials. The machines used for manufacturing, printing and transporting paper books will burn fuel, emit CO2 into the atmosphere, and accelerate the global warming. Now, storing books at home will waste the precious space that you pay in square meters/feet. In all, it is really unnecessary to spend $25 more just to do more harm.More...

I'm currently giving away 14 best-selling books that I have read. These books imported from the US are apparently not sold in Cambodia. Each should costs around $30 if Monuments Book Store has it. I wished I could keep them but that would be pointless and selfish. So, I thought why not give these precious books to my friends as a gift of wisdom? It seems to be a good idea.

Email me to claim a book asap!!! I'm dropping them off at IFL canteen, so that you would be able to pick it up at your schedule. Below is the list of the books. Click on the title to see its details.More...

It was 8 years ago, in year 2000, when I got my first computer. It was a dream came true. Before that I had been watching my neighbor typing his word documents, staring at his shiny computer screen, thinking of what kind of machine it was. I don't know what country you live but here in Cambodia, having a personal computer back in year 2000 was a pride. So... I liked it so much that I was stuck in front of it for hours everyday. My private tutor taught me Word, Excel and Windows 95. It wasn't long until I learnt something useful myself. Dad bought some phone equipments from Hong Kong, and so for a while I played with it *cough* unlocking, flashing and bricking phones *cough*. In 2001 and early 2002, nobody was sending a SMS picture message, since 60% of mobile phones didn't support it. It was totally new when I designed several picture messages in Khmer, my local language. The first one "Eternal Love" ស្នេហ៍អមតៈ was a hit among Cambodian phone users. Apparently, almost every darn phone in Cambodia received it, as people quickly learned to forward to their friends and families, although many old models would see "Message cannot display here" instead of the picture. The funny thing was that I received the picture several times from my friends. Hell no! They didn't believe I was the creator. I guess I played a big role in jumping start the Picture SMS technology here. Subsequently, I created more picture messages in Khmer including "I Love You" and custom-made "My Love" sealed with "Chakrya" my then girlfriend's name, and I guess it played a role to win her heart. You can see those pictures above.

Past is past. Today, years after my first legendary picture SMS, I created a set of three pictures about the upcoming solar eclipse on Friday, August 01 2008 which is visible totally in China and partially across Asia. Will this be my new legacy in which people are mass forwarding my pics? Let's see.

I know some of you are occupied with the Preah Vihear issue, but there's one important event in the next few days you should not miss. Studied and predicted by NASA, it is a very rare Partial Solar Eclipse (So Kreas - សូគ្រាស) on 01/08/2008 from 5:55 PM to 6:30 PM in the evening. While the sun's setting into the horizon, it will be covered partially by the moon that passes in front of it. People in many Asian countries including Cambodia and Thailand will see this magnificent show of nature. It's as if the Universe, God if you're religious, is trying to ease the conflict of our countries. I do hope this is to coincide with a peaceful withdrawal of all troops both Thai and Cambodian along the border. Soldiers and civilians alike should reunion with their family and take time to enjoy this gift. Imagine how romantic it is, taking your special ones to a high ground to watch the once in a lifetime solar eclipse at sunset. Of course, to protect your eyes, you will need a pair of special viewing glasses which is easily made with a roll of undeveloped camera film. You can also look through the LCD screen of a digital camera. Please never attempt to view it with naked eyes, which could make you go blind. I've got some films left. Let me know should you need one.

By the way, we all know the consequences of war: Poverty, loss of lives, broken families, destruction everywhere it touches. Wars made us live in this state of "your horror stories here". War is endless, and there is no winner in this game. Excuse my humble request, please try not to overreact to the border issue. You may have wanted to boycott Thai products or do harm to any Thai you meet, but in doing so, it will probably further isolate Cambodia from the rest of the world. Believe me, they can make us miserable too if we make them miserable. Instead of doing all bad things, why don't we do something good? We scratch their backs. They will scratch our. It's a win-win. There are too many good deeds you can do that I can't list them all here. Make your own good judgment and make a good foreign friend, will you? Well, you might be now saying that I'm nobody to ask you to reconsider your political ideology. Hell yeah, I'm not graduated in Political Science, but I've got common senses.

Enjoy your solar eclipse viewing! On 01/08/2008 from 5:55 PM to 6:30 PM at sunset. And you should let your friends know about this solar eclipse too!

Sopheap - Your Humble Friend

Chakrya, I wish we could become friends some day. Thae rek sa kloun na... Cham besdung bang chea sen.

My mother-tongue name is Sopheap Ly [លី សុភាព]. It's probably written for French pronunciation, because it sounds like this: Sok-Peep-Lee. If you are one of the native English speakers, I guess you should just call me Neo Lee. At the time of this writing, I'm 24 by the Chinese counting standard--the Chinese counts the age since one's in the womb. So I guess, in some places, I'm only 23, or even 22. Real age asides. If you happen to see me in person or in photo, I will look as if I'm only 14. I'm not kidding. I look like a small kid. Some people would say it--my petiteness--is bad. Not true at all. I've got so many advantages being petite. One, I can sneak into buildings like a Ninja without anybody noticing me. Two, I can sit there in primary school as a pupil, flirting with pretty teachers without exposing my true identity. Last but not least, and seriously, it proves that I'm uniquely one of a kind. I don't want to be ordinarily normal. I don't want to be an average Joe ("Joe, is that you?"). I want to do things differently.

I love developing innovative computer applications, creating new concepts and optimizing ineffeciencies. Personally, I believe innovation is what propels human kind into a brighter future, and that "reinventing the wheels" is never a waste of time and effort. Had cars been equipped with same ol' bicycle wheels, you would have probably never got faster than 60 Km/h. Had transistors not replaced vacuum tubes, your phone would have been as big as a TV, and your NTSC/PAL TV would have been as big as a truck, your PC would have consumed the space of as large as a building block. The list goes on. My philosophy: One can achieve anything if s/he put enough effort, time and money on it. Before 1903, scientists and priests alike believed machines heavier than air would never fly. The ideas of creating something called "plane" alone was just utterly ridiculous. After the first propeller plane flew in 1903, the ridicule switched sides. At that time, propeller was the convention, and again people called anything different "ridiculous." Who would have thought jet engines, invented years later, would perfectly replace propellers? In a nutshell, every invention before becoming a norm is ridiculed at and stamped with 'Impossible' time and time again. You will definitely find a lot of my ideas insanely improbable. Frankly, I've thought about creating a treadmill that can be taught to play chess on its own; a tree that can talk on its own; a plane with electromagnetic engine powered by Earth's magnetic fields a.k.a. UFO; a robot that walks on the Moon; and many more. It's ok to laugh now... I'm now laughing too. Someday I will try to make them for real. You'll see me on CNN, BBC and Fox News. Heh heh heh!

I've never thought I'd create this website to blog about my private life and my creations. To be honest, I'm not keen at publicizing my life. I could just log them in diaries privately, alone for me and myself to read, but no offense to those who keep diary, I find it quite lame. Despite being socially inept, I don't see the point of not getting some publicity, not connecting with other inventors, or not bragging about my inventions. When I get famous, fingers crossed, this place will hopefully serve as a fun read to all my fans. It's cool to be inspired by, isn't it? I know, I know, it is too soon to divide the meat of a deer before I even shoot it. But that's what an extreme optimist like me usually does. I love setting some distant goals, what I should ultimately be doing in the next 70 years. Of course, if I can live up to that age. So dance with me when I'm famous.

By the way, I've just got broken up with my first love. Six years in this relationship was overally a bad experience. It was all one-sided love for her. I invested too much in it, and now when I get burnt, the pain, it makes me speechless. I will start a new chapter of my life. This website will serve the purpose of keeping the records. And my dear reader, should you have any comments, questions or feedbacks, please let me know.