Kampuchea Crossings

Bump to baby on the beaten expat track

Nathalie Abejero

Cambodia Opens China-Funded Hydro-Electric Dam

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I’m remembering the floods in 2009 when the cause was hush-hush (it wasn’t the rains)… The dam in Kampot begins operations today. From the comment stream, on Chinese-style development:

seems everything China does is bad and should be criticised by the west.lol it is same in my home country(Cameroon), however most of us Africans know this is just geopolitics and the fact that china threatens the west hegemony and power. Anyway I op the U.S will see reason and accommodate the rise of China, since there is nothing much they can do about this( as the bible says: Kingdom rise, kingdom fall) no matter what u do, u cant change this fact. the earlier the U, S understand this the better. I like and respect the U.S its one of my best countries(values culture and musics etc), but in less than 15years China have built and improve my home country unlike the west(mostly France:former coloniser”) hasn’t done in centuries, and for that I have a profound respect and love for the Chinese. since they treat Africans with dignity and equally, not like the whites who think they are superior. enough said, just hope we don’t witness a second cold war.

via VOA

5 Things You Think Work, But Actually Don’t

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I always wondered about that elevator close button and the walk signal button at the crosswalk…

“The close buttons don’t close the elevator doors in most elevators built in the United States since the Americans with Disabilities Act,” explains McRaney. “The button is there for workers and emergency personnel to use, and it only works with a key.”Sure, they could put a sign on the panel explaining the situation to elevator riders, but as McRaney points out, it’s hard to justify the time and money it would take. And besides, we’d probably keep pressing it anyway, convinced that this time it will work.

via 5 Things You Think Work, But Actually Don’t | Mainstreet

My favorite iced coffee in Phnom Penh

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I’ve tweeted this iced coffee before, and I still love it today. It’s dark, strong and rich, perfect for a Monday morning start to the week after a tiring weekend with a sick little 11 month old :-(

She’s one of the vendors outside on the street, just outside a small food shop, on St 67 south of Russian Blvd / St 110 / Preah Angduong. This area, especially on St 114 / Kramuonsar between St 67 and St 51, is densely packed with food shops serving a gamut of Khmer and Vietnamese foods. Psar Thmei (New Market) is a block away, where buses leave for destinations all over the Kingdom, so it caters to the masses of travelers passing through. See a map of Phnom Penh here.

2000 Riel for a bag of iced coffee

The coffee grounds are steeped in boiling water using a muslin bag shaped like a filter. Because the coffee is strong, the grounds in the bag can be re-used. Photos above are courtesy of Doualy Xaykaothao.

… and ok, it’s one of my two favorite iced coffee vendors in Phnom Penh. Below is my other favorite place to get an iced coffee, Rising Sun Pub, on St 178 between Sisowath Quay and Sothearos. They use the Vietnamese cold-brew method using a mini drip brewer, pouring the water through the grounds about three times to get that nice strong flavor. mmmm…!

6000 Riel for a glass of iced coffee

Testing for Inter-rater reliability

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I haven’t used a stats package in a long time. I remember back in grad school how interesting my Biostats and BioInformatics courses were, especially Janet Hughes‘ classes. But in my professional life, I hardly ventured beyond the first five tasks in the function button on the standard Excel toolbar.

via http://www.effective-time-management-strategies.com

My QI (Quality Improvement) team has been pre-testing some clinical assessment questionnaires for Health Centers. The questionnaires consist of a checklist and a rating, for two assessors to fill out while observing a specific consultation eg an Antenatal Care visit. The checklist scores are weighted with qualitative ratings. For example, of the items which the midwife conducted during the Physical Examination, the assessors rate the quality in which these items were carried out.

There’s a lot of room for bias in any data collection method, but at least I want to know that my instrument is reliable. So I want to test the inter-rater agreement (eg did they see the same things? did they rate the items similarly?). You’d think this is a simple enough calculation to carry out in excel, in a neat and tidy point-and-click experience. But no. Apparently this seems to be an obscure corner of statistics that you need macros for to carry out in SAS and SPSS.

I ask for the billionth time in my short life: what did people do before internet? I’m a bit less stumped since I’ve found these handy sources below, which provide a free or low-cost stats package for content analysis. Whew!

  • kappa2 – free downloadable automated excel workbook (although I’ve had some problems using this one)
  • ReCal – free to use, online interface to enter your data
  • AgreeStat – $45 downloadable automated Excel workbook