My dear Kacvey,

Hope, during the last class before winter break, you had lengthily go over the main events that occurred during 2019 in the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk with your students and drawn important lessons for their future thinking.

There is only one spatial or cosmic second that separates the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. Therefore, everything will continue as it has been continuing with or without changes. Autocracy by the ex-Khmer Rouge will also continue, but with or without changes. For our part, let have a look at what had CHANGED throughout 2019:

The Mekong
The level of water in the Mekong is the the lowest ever registered since the existence of time. The Khmer lifeline has CHANGED downwards to change the Khmer living downward.

The lands
The lands of Srok Khmer have CHANGED from being a fertile rice fields to become the lands of Chinese casinos, gambling dens and condominium, and possible military base for the Chinese to freely come and settle in Srok Khmer to CHANGE the landscape of Khmer culture and history.

The forests
The forests have CHANGED from being thick to become a horizon of treeless flatland or mountains, and the corrupt trees fellers have CHANGED their tactics to pretend to burn the motorcycles or trucks that illegally transported felled trees to foreign countries.

The people
The sycophantic people around the ex-KR-turned-autocrat CHANGED so much in displaying openly their corrupt wealth inside and outside the country. Before UNTAC, they were less than worms that now CHANGED to full-fledged acanthovalva inconspicuaria.
The Chinafication of Srok Khmer CHANGES the population landscape that had already CHANGED since the military Vietnamese intervention in January 1979 and its aftermath.

The institutions
The four institutional branches have CHANGED into the Vishnu-like four-arms of the ex-KR-turned-autocrat.

The police and military
The police and military have CHANGED from having nothing of their own to become 100% consumers of Chinese and Vietnamese war machines and apparatuses to oppress Khmer people.
They CHANGED from being unable to handle a dozen of Lao soldiers at the border to become ex-KR-turned-autocrat’s mercenaries to oppress opposition members.

The economy
The economy has CHANGED to become indebted to the Chinese of more than $7 billion that has also CHANGED into a death trap for Srok Khmer’s future.
The European Union had CHANGED their policies not only with regards to import of Khmer rice to European countries but also to warning of the future withdrawal of preferential tariffs if the ex-KR-turned-autocrat continued to abuse the human rights of the Khmer people.

The opposition
The status of the opposition has CHANGED from being dissolved by the ex-KR-turned-autocrat’s kangaroo court to still being recognized by the ex-KR-turned-autocrat as the sole party that permanently threatens him.
Oppo No.1 status has CHANGED from house arrest to partially free. Foreign ambassadors have CHANGED from being met at their embassy to paying personal visit to him at his residence.
Oppo No.2 status has CHANGED to become interim president who CHANGED his strategies to try to actually enter Cambodia directly from Thailand on 9 November.
Opposition supporters have CHANGED from being 2-clans to becoming conscientious that being 2-clanists would not advance the party cause.

The ex-KR-turned-autocrat
The ex-KR-turned-autocrat CHANGED to have “shoulder pain” that needed to be medevac to a hospital in Singapore for a 2.00 am treatment.
He has CHANGED from playing golf to lonely biking in his golden lair, from being among the people to becoming lethargic, fat face and a silly soliloquist behind a bunch of yellow flowers on Koh Pich.
He has CHANGED his walking pace to becoming slower, heavier and burdensome.
His popularity has CHANGED downwards as he CHANGED his walkabout habit to being in solitary manner in front of the screen of his facebook account.
He has CHANGED from talking incessantly about oppo No.2 to becoming quiet on the subject and letting hiss chained dogs barking instead.
He has CHANGED from eating នំបញ្ចុក at the table to devouring it standing up while in Europe.
Some of his relatives and sycophants have CHANGED their status from Cambodian to becoming European (wondering why not Chinese!), others to becoming “sanctioned” by the United States.
His party, driven by massive and unqualified money, Chinese or otherwise, seems to CHANGE its revolutionary ideology from communism to becoming corrupt people party.

So, Kacvey, your students know that CHANGE is a constant phenomenon that happens to everybody from Heraclitus who said: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man” to President Barack Obama who stated: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek”.

He who doesn’t realize that CHANGE happens in every second of his live and around his live is he who will be victim of his own silent self-CHANGE. Or as Confucius, once, said: “Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.”