When I started to write this blog, I made it clear with the title: there is no subject matter to be dealt with regularly – like politics, in Cambodia or worldwide, or like the dangers for our environment. Actually, I have taken care of these fields from time to time, but the starting point was always like the title says: Thinking. I started to write this blog when I had been in Cambodia already 21 years, so I called it “Thinking 21”. When I was writing, it was always that something made me think about it, and then I tried to write about issues present “now” for me.

But I did not write regularly for a long time – not because there were no challenges which I was thinking about, but to move in 2013 from Phnom Penh to a pepper farm in the Cambodian province of Kep did not only mean that I had difficulty with regular Internet access, but I was also busy to understand and to respond to the challenges of running a pepper farm, producing the world wide famous Kampot Pepper without the use oc chemicals.

The Inteneet connection between some mountains in Kep is a bit better, but still a problem. But while talking to friends and tourit visitors to the farm, I get often the request: You should write something!

So I want to start again. Not about one or some regular subjects, but about things which made me to think. Now after already 34 years in Cambodia. I may inform some friends from time to time – but I leave to the Internet and my readers whether the number of readers increases again – hardly to the more than 10,000 per month which I had many years ago.

The beginning is made, again – and I have already some ideas about the next couple of issues. As before: I appreciate responses – positcve, neutral, or criticism – always thinking about next steps into a better future, which requires more thinking, leading to dialogue and where possible, actions.

Norbert Klein
26 October 2024