Cellcard rolls out ‘Pouk Mak’ Khmer chat app
Cellcard launched “Pouk Mak” – Cambodia’s own Khmer chat app – on February 14. Available on IOS and Android platforms, Pouk Mak, which means friend, offers special features such as group chats, multiple news feeds and fun stickers – all with full encryption security and data storage.
SURROUNDED by violins hung from the ceiling and lined up on shelves, Vasile Gliga looks proudly on the fruits of his labours.
From his factory in the central Romanian city of Reghin, Gliga has been one of the city’s world-famous instrument makers for more than 30 years.
His business is one of the city’s large-scale producers in a city that also hosts master craftsmen turning out just a handful of instruments a year.
The secret to his success, he says, is simple: “Putting a little of your soul into it.”
Gliga turned out his first two violins in a box room in his flat in 1988 when was 29.
Last year however his business sold 50,000 instruments – from violins to double basses – only two percent of them going to Romanian customers.
Romania is the EU country that exports the most violins outside the bloc, according to Eurostat’s 2018 figures.
But like many in his trade, Gliga worries he may be one of a dying breed.
For Romania’s renowned luthiers – the craftsmen who specialise in making stringed instruments – face a twin challenge: cheaper competition from abroad and finding the next generation of craftsman to carry on their tradition.
‘There’s left’ no one
Virgil Bandila works at the other end of the scale.
In a city where, he says, “virtually every street” has one or two luthiers at work, his small workshop employs seven craftsman.
Last year, they produced just 25 violins, and all of them went to foreign clients – mainly in France and Germany, but but also to Japan and China.
Bandila, like Gliga, has concerns about the future.
His main worry is whether he can find apprentices to pass on the secrets of the craft.
“We were all born in the 1970s and after us there’s no-one left,” he says of the current generation of craftsmen.
Four million Romanians have left the country in recent years, mostly for Western Europe, in the hope of building a better life for themselves.
“Young people are keener on computing,” he laments – or finding less strenuous jobs abroad.
Chinese competition
Gliga agrees that the craft is an exacting one.
“A high-calibre violin takes 300 hours of work over the course of a year – and that’s after leaving the wood to dry for five years,” he explains.
That wood must be of the best quality, and Reghin’s reputation is built in part on the ancient maple trees in the surrounding forests.
“The most prized trees are the flame maples, they grow wild, shaped by the wind,” says Gliga employee Cristian Pop.
But that same wood is also much coveted by violin makers in China, the world’s premier exporter of musical instruments.
They buy their stocks via local middlemen and then sell their finished articles at a
higher price on the basis they have “European wood”.
Chinese manufacturers are turning out cheaper violins than those made in Romania, selling them for as little as $36 each.
The violins for sale on Gliga’s website range from beginner models priced at around $200 to elite instruments costing several thousand.
Factory production
Reghin’s pedigree in violin making stretches back to 1951, when the then communist regime set up a musical instrument factory there to take advantage of the local tradition of woodworking.
Hora Instruments is still in business, producing everything from panpipes and lyres to ukeleles, says Nicolae Bazgan, an engineer by training who has been running the factory for 54 years.
The number of instruments produced by the factory during every year of operation is meticulously recorded in a small notebook: 37 in 1951, 99,000 in 1980, 60,000 in 2019.
There were barely 37,000 last year, when pandemic restrictions meant the factory had to stay shut for three months.
But it has also been a training ground for some of the city’s best-known luthiers: Gliga and Bandila are among those who graduated from Hora to set up their own businesses. Others however, have simply emigrated, adding to the worries about how long Reghin’s violinmaking tradition will last.
Bandila, at least, has some cause for optimism.
“My hope is that my son, who is studying violin making in the UK, will come back to Reghin and take over the business.”
NAOMI Osaka, who swept to her fourth Grand Slam title in as many major finals with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Jennifer Brady on February 20, has made a rapid and at times uncomfortable climb to the top.
The 23-year-old’s zen-like mentality and increased gravitas on and off the court have elevated her alongside Serena Williams to being the one of the most recognisable female athletes on the planet.
But it is her unceasing politeness away from the battlefield, coupled with the on-court steel that runs through all champions, that makes her stand apart.
“Do you like to be called Jenny or Jennifer?” she almost timidly asked Brady before embarking on her winner’s speech.
It was typical of Osaka, who also gave a deferential bow to Williams after knocking out her idol and 23time Grand Slam champion in the semi-final.
New queen
Osaka will rise to number two in the world when the new rankings are released next week after a polished campaign which will reinforce the belief that she has taken over as the new queen of tennis.
It’s a far cry from a year ago when a rattled Osaka felt the strain of expectations as her Australian Open title defence fell apart with a shock loss to a 15year-old Coco Gauff in the third round.
“She looked very nervous to me, she was under pressure, and she only looked like that because she was not expressing her feelings,” her coach Wim Fissette said.
Weeks later, Osaka was embarrassed as she won just three games against Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo in a Fed Cup tie.
“There’s just a lot of stuff that happened there, surrounding that time, that it really made me think a lot about my life,” she said.
“What is the reason, I am playing tennis to prove stuff to other people or am I
playing to have fun because I enjoy it.”
But things turned during the pandemic, when Osaka gained new perspective and became a vocal leader in the fight against racial injustice in the US.
Her increased presence as a campaigner for social justice has fuelled Osaka on court and she now possesses a 21-match unbeaten streak after winning this final, a run that included winning last year’s US Open title for the second time.
“I think the thing that I’m most proud of is now mentally strong I’ve become,” she said.
“I used to be really up and down. For me, I had a lot of doubts in myself.
“I think, the quarantine process and seeing everything that’s going on in the world, for me it put a lot into perspective.”
Once painfully shy and uncomfortable in the spotlight, Osaka used her growing stature to weigh in on controversial topics at Melbourne Park, even condemning ex-Tokyo Olympics boss Yoshiro Mori for sexist comments.
Osaka has become the world’s richest female athlete, overtaking Williams, but she’s maintained a humble and respectful attitude amid her rise to stardom.
Born on October 16, 1997 in, Osaka, Japan, a year later her family moved to the US.
Her Haitian father Leonard met and married her mother Tamaki when he decamped to Japan from New York to study.
Now based in Florida, Osaka has dual Japanese-American citizenship.
Osaka developed into a big-stage player after making her Grand Slam
debut at the 2016 Australian Open.
It took a few years to find her feet before she stunned Williams with a straight-sets victory in a controversial 2018 US Open final and backed that up with a triumph at Melbourne Park just a few months later.
Osaka, at just 21, powered to world number one but she felt unfulfilled.
“I think that also put a lot of pressure on me because I just felt in a way it was me against the world,” she said.
It led to a difficult period where she felt burdened by expectations until heeding a more relaxed demeanour, but now she has the tennis world at her feet.
“I used to weigh my entire existence on if I won or lost a tennis match,” she said.
“That’s just not how I feel any more.”