After a brief foray into UN-inspired governing techniques, paraphrasing the old Westerns I now say, "meanwhile, back at the oil ..."

A bunch of international companies ... Chevron, the Japanese firm Mitsui and South Korea's LG ... are coming together for a feasibility study on the building of a pipeline from Cambodia's offshore sites to Sihanoukville.

At the seminar mentioned in yesterday's post it was said that no one has yet been granted the job to build said pipeline, so you can bet there's some discussion going on. Do the words "lucrative contract" ring a bell?

A Chinese company sees the writing on the wall, recently signing two agreements with its Cambodian partner to co-develop two real estate projects, one in PP and one in Sihanoukville.

(Why, oh why, did we not buy land there a few years back?)

Pardon my cynicism, but the quote below gets a 'yeah ... right ... " and a hearty guffaw out of me:

Under the agreements, the two sides will cooperate to develop the Boeng Kak Lake area in Phnom Penh into a multi-purpose living and recreation center called the New City of East, and establish an eco-garden in Sihanoukville for tourism and other commercial uses.

There's not been a lot in the way of negative news coming on the heels of last week's commune council elections, but a report out of Somalia says that about 100,000 people out of the almost 8 million voters could not cast ballots because their names weren't on the eligible voter lists.

It also mentions 2.5 million registered voters that did not cast their ballots, meaning the turnout was about 65%. Considering what turnout is in places like the US, that's doesn't sound bad to me.

What does sound bad is another death in Cambodia from the H5N1 Avian Flu virus, the first case this year.

Although the numbers are low ... only seven in Cambodia since the beginning, all fatal ... this microscopic nasty scares the pants off me. If it ever manages to really get moving, the world could end up a very different place for a very long time. Scary!

For a bit of a Royal Watching, the sovereign parents are home again. Former King Norodom Sihanouk and his wife, former Queen Monineath, are back in Cambodia after a seven-month stay in China. You can keep track of the Royal Dad through his blog.

The Khmer Cham, the Muslims of Cambodia, are a small but significant portion of the population that constituted between 2.5 and 5% of Cambodian's killed in the Khmer Rouge years. The American Muslim Organization has a page on their site with information for anyone interesting in learning more.

And that concludes a quick rundown of the news in the week that sees the run up to Cambodian New Year. Chaul Chnam Thmey, y'all!