Annyeonghaseyo Cambodian Passports!

March 2014. With a month to go before the Jeju Dirty Dozens a few questions weighed on my mind…

1) What can I do to help Cambodian ultimate frisbee continue to develop and become the center of ultimate in Asia and the world?

2) How can I increase my chances of getting some quality time with those hot Korean women?

3) Is there anything on the internet other than pornography?

 

A few answers began to pop into my head. A major hurdle for Cambodian ultimate is the fact that passports are so expensive and most Cambodians aren’t close to having enough money to buy them. USD135 is prohibitive. Without passports, Cambodian ultimate players are limited to whatever tourneys we host and the Vietnam Hat, for which they have to pay $40 each just to cross the border. That hampers their ability to play with and watch the many talented teams and player in the region. It therefore makes it harder for them to get better. They need passports.

And, generally, the opportunity to go abroad will help these young men and women grow as people. They will get to meet Thais, Laos, Vietnamese and members of many other nationalities who they have only gotten to hear and read about in the past. That’s big for Cambodia. Seriously.

Korean women. If I ever wanted to go walking down the beaches of Busan (during beach season of course), hand-in-hand with a Korean cutie wearing the exact same outfit as me, what did I need to do? I needed to learn Korean.

The internet. I looked at a thing called the Google (similar to skinsearch.com, but with more wikipedia results). I found that there were a number of resources that would help me learn Korean. A plan began to form…

The “Can Jared Learn Korean?” Cambodian Passport fundraiser. The rules were simple. I had one month to learn Korean. I could not pay for lessons. I could use youtube, phone aps, friends’ assistance, books (never could find any books in English for Korean learners in Cambodia), that kinda stuff. When I was in Korea I would ask three Koreans to speak Korean with me and they would rate my Korean proficiency from 0 to 10. I would average the three scores to come up with my final score. Before the tests I asked for pledges. Donors pledged money for every point above 0 my final average score was. Or they donated a fixed amount.

The outpouring of support was amazing. But what the final benefit was to Cambodian ultimate would depend on me. I got to studying. The alphabet came easy. That helped. But speaking Korean ain’t easy. And it’s hard to study on the beach in Boracay.

Eventually my Korean trip time arrived. Had a blast in Busan and Jeju was crazy. But I was focussed. The tests began…

So we do the math and… bam! Final score = 4!

So as I began pressing the donors for the cash, some amazing stuff started to happen. Donors started giving me more than they had pledged. And new donors started coming out of the woodwork. People were getting around Cambodian ultimate. It was amazing.

So now I would like to announce the final amount raised for the purchasing of Cambodian passports…

$1,074!!!!

 

How about that! While we are looking at ways of making the obtaining of passports cheaper for our players, this money will buy almost EIGHT passports. That’s amazing.

Thank you for all those who pledged and all those who helped me with my Korean. Though I haven’t found my same-same girlfriend yet, at least, with your help, we have made it more possible to send Cambodian teams to international tournaments.

I guess that’s cool too.

If you want to help the cause, drop me an email at jaredcahners@gmail.com. There are definitely more players who would benefit from the chance to play ultimate abroad.