Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

Some people think that because I do a lot of various activities in my life, that I must be a very busy bee. That’s not really true, as I try to do only one fun thing at a time. However I have decided to make one big change in this current life.

I am going to move.

I currently live in this palace style free-standing villa with three floors, four bedrooms with four bathrooms, a giant living room, a big western styled kitchen, a garage, a balcony and a rooftop which includes a bamboo hut and an open air shower (which is a piece of heaven, by the way). And it costs me $550 per month. On my own.

But I also took over The Flicks Community Movie House in April, which is running pretty great. There I am paying rent for the building too and my idea was to create and renovate a total of three bedrooms which could be rented out. Including a shared bathroom and kitchen. Since these construction works came to an end last week and my own housekeeper made everything shine again, I realized: I love this space!

Why am I keeping on to a palace, while I am at the movie house about 85% of my time anyway? It doesn’t enable me to fully use and enjoy the palace, right?

And by deciding to give up the palace, I’ll be moving in into The Flicks building pretty soon. There I can continue to give my massage therapy sessions in one of the downstairs rooms, without always having to commute home every day. And it’s not really that I will be living at my work place, I can easily close up shop at the movie house and walk downstairs to my own apartment.

And by moving in down the movie house, I can be there more, as I am slowly transforming it from a movie house to a community house. I hope to add morning hour yoga classes to the schedule too, as there is a high demand for affordable yoga classes (with air conditioning!) (Therefore wanted: yoga teacher(s)). I also would like to facilitate the movie room for conversational Khmer language classes for expats in the afternoons.

The open area of The Flicks front ‘yard’ will become my ‘root top’ area that I will still need on a daily basis and the community house will get its own side entrance to its first floor.

It’s better to spend a few hundred dollars a month on making The Flicks place a really cool place, than to spend rent on both places without really being able to enjoy one of them, right?

Today I noticed my landlord (of the palace) about this. He wanted me to keep paying rent for the remaining three months of my lease, however I had to explain him that my 3-months deposit actually covers my last three months. “No that is not true.” Well, that’s what the contract says, hehe. Oops for him. Great for me.

Instead of decoration the ground floor apartment of the movie house as a guest house apartment, I can now slowly take my time to move stuff from the enormous palace and make that apartment totally my apartment. I am already loving it.

If you possibly know people that would love to live in my current palace, feel free to contact me. It’s up for rent!

And yes, The Flicks apartment will get an outside open air shower. I just can’t live without a piece of heaven.

From today, April 14, 2010, I am the new owner and manager of The Flicks Community Movie House in Phnom Penh. It’s a little dream that came true, as I never thought I’d be able to get the necessary funding for the takeover. And I never thought I would ever run a local movie house, either!

It was thanks to my online fund raising event to collect enough micro-credits (as in loans or donations) that I got over US$7.426 in from supporters all over the world. And thanks to some international media-support too!

It was in this last week when I signed the rental lease for the building and paid the last deposits for the full purchase of the company. I worked behind the curtains on my marketing plans: almost every hotel/guesthouse/B&B in Phnom Penh will now have a poster for the movie house hanging around at their reception and over 2,000 copies of next week movie schedule are spread around highly populated places in town.

Earlier today the brand new (and first ever) website of The Flicks was launched too. Have a look at it and tell me what you think. I am very happy that everybody can now see the full weekly movie schedule online, download the PDF-flyer, watch all the trailers online and even make reservations for a certain movie via this website!

In the coming days the Khmer New Year will be celebrated by all the local Cambodians. That means that most bars, restaurants and even all banks will be closed for three days. If I believe all the stories, Phnom Penh will look like a ghost town. That’s why I had already planned a special event at The Flicks for this weekend. From April 15 to 17 I am screening a non-stop marathon of Seinfeld episodes from noon to 6pm.

And tomorrow, Friday April 15, I’ll be playing a FREE screening at 7pm of the absolutely must-see and best-ever documentary on backpacking and traveling the world: A Map for Saturday.

What’s next? Well, I have little plans to change things big time at the movie house, however I do think that the current bar has to be enlarged to accommodate more people with a place to seat, to hang around before or after the movies and create a social hub for all local expats that enjoy going to the movies.

The local media also ran a little story on me taking over The Flicks this week. It’s not the Phnom Penh Post, of which you (look at the title) would expect some local news (but they barely focus on the city at all!), it was on the popular Expat Advisory Services website.

This week I had the honour to ‘do’ the opening slate of his enormously popular podcast “The Stuph File” , episode #0084 (mp3), which airs weekly on the internet (but also available at Airchecker Canada, CyberStationUSA.com, KDXradio.com, streaming on PCJmedia.com and over the air at World FM 88.2fm in New Zealand, Media Corp in Singapore and WSTJ, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, USA, plus in the air on China Airlines in-flight entertainment system for long haul Dynasty flights).

The opening slate, I started this blog about, is the spoken introduction of the show, which is weekly done by another figure who gets a bit of attention from the show host Peter Anthony Holder. And of course it was to support my fund raising event to Save The Flicks in Phnom Penh. And so you know, this podcast has over 200,000 listeners per week!

In this latest edition he also talks with the following people:

• Tea Krulos is a blogger who writes about the phenomenon of people who dress up as superheroes, who have sprung up in many cities. His blog is entitled Heroes Of The Night, which is also the title of his upcoming book.
• Chez Pazienza is a veteran network news producer and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. He’s also a new media consultant.
• Darren Taylor is best known as Professor Splash. He’s broken his own world record by diving from a 36-foot platform into a kiddie pool with just 12 inches of water. He is the world’s greatest and most decorated shallow water diver.

You can listen to the show online, subscribe to it through his blog or even in iTunes. Or just click play below (after the Opening Peter Anthony talks about me at 2min40secs):

In case you don’t want to listen to an entire hour, because you are way too busy, here is what Peter Anthony Holder said about me:

“I had Ramon on the program a little while ago talking about his other entrepreneurial business which is cooking tours through Europe. He’s a very interesting guy indeed, so if he puts his mind to doing this and saving this theater, I know it will work out.”

Thanks for having me on the show, Peter Anthony!

Next to that, the Dutch regional newspaper De Stentor published a little story about my latest online adventure to Save The Flicks. It was journalist Sander Lindenburg who did this little write-up which also mentioned on the historic fact that I started Letmestayforaday.com exactly ten years ago.

And a side note to this: Sander and De Stentor were both the first to give attention to Letmestayforaday in March 2001, and eventually kicked off a global buzz on the internet.

Have you already made your small contribution to save the cinema theater in Phnom Penh? It can be a loan or a onetime donation, check out http://www.timetohelp.me for all the info.

So far this amount has been contributed:

One of the most beautiful experiences in Phnom Penh is actually also a quite simple experience. It is the cinema. Just don’t expect one of these concrete multiplex bunkers in a shopping mall, but imagine a small house.

The only cinema in town which targets the local expats with western-orientated blockbusters, art house, kids movies, animations and the classics, is The Flicks.

When you arrive there you take the stairs to the second floor, walk through a hallway and end at a bar where there is always somebody to greet you. That’s where you pay your admission to the movie ($3.50) and of course a drink and a bucket of hot buttered popcorn. The bar is in a small lobby and connects to the movie room. Well, here you can see it:

Also here: no cinema seats. No, everything is more relaxed than that. You can lie down on two rows of comfortable soft cushions or two rows of rattan couches with pillows, and watch that 5-meter (16 feet) wide screen with an amazing sound.

Since my first visit to The Flicks I was in love. The simplicity, the fact that it was all created and organized for the love of movies and for the movie lovers even made me get the crazy idea of starting a similar cinema myself.

And then suddenly, early this March, the message came out saying that The Flicks was going to close.

Sadly we are moving from The Flicks and will be closing our cinema. It was great fun and we got to meet an amazing bunch of people from all walks of life, and we will miss it very much.

The couple that are currently running the movie house, Martin and Jeanette, can’t keep up with the cinema as they got real requirements during the day (real jobs). And that’s when it all stops.

And something like that starts nibbing on me. Very simple. This can’t be true. It shouldn’t happen. Et cetera. And after a long conversation with Martin and Jeanette it wasn’t even such a weird idea to take over The Flicks in Phnom Penh.

But come up with that large bag filled up with money that is necessary. Especially when you imagine all the equipment. And the deposit for the rent. I could never just put that bag of money on the table! And that’s when I came up with the idea of starting a little online micro-credit fundraising event. If all my Facebook-friends and Twitter-followers could lend me $10 I’d be ready to go! And it’s a loan, so after 6 months everybody gets it back.

And now you can even choose to change that loan into a donation. After 6 months that will become a micro-credit on Kiva.org, a worldwide active micro-credit organization that helps small businesses with micro-credits. A perfect good cause, don’t you agree?

So (if I haven’t spammed you about it yet in any online-personal way) check that wallet of yours and see if you can miss ten bucks. Or a bit more. Then surf to http://www.timetohelp.me, the site I have created for this purpose. Thank you very much!

The counter is currently at:

Update: I am going to buy the cinema. That’s for sure. And I am going to love it!