February 16th, 2009
I don’t do things by halves, so when I’m going to fail at something, I’m going to do it properly. The goal had been to take a year off, travel the world without the bondage of a job, without the certainty of employment.
I lasted a stunning one… week.
January 30th, 2009
The main event for bringing me to India at this particular time was a Training of Trainers which was organized by RedR (Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief) India. I has attended another on of their training in Humanitarian Logistics 3 years ago. For the past couple of years training had occupied a significant (and the most enjoyable) component of my work, as in order to successfully implement a database, staff had to be trained to use it, so I thought that it was time for me to learn how it was done. I felt that I’d got pretty good at delivering trainings, but this course was a welcome eye opener!
The lead trainer was Stephen Blakemore from the UK, who had a long history in human resources and staff development in the humanitarian sector. He was a brilliant trainer, and held our attention over the 5 days without resting on the crutch of PowerPoint slides, but with an innovative use of other props, such as a bicycle horn (great for getting attention), Post-It notes (helpful for collecting ideas and feedback), Ipod and speakers (what’s a training without a soundtrack?), and cartoons:
He also has this website, which provides a newsletter on training: http://www.nomorefruitsalad.co.uk/
January 28th, 2009
I left New Zealand with very similar baggage as I had left with for the first time back in 2005. It has been a while since I have been able approach a check in counter without having to worry about how overweight my check in will be, able to carry, rather than wheel, my luggage. I wasn’t going somewhere to live or to work: I was travelling again.
Gateway to India
Taj Mahal Palace Hotel
To India. I have always regarded India as a rather challenging travel destination, and I have had friends tell me how it will be a mind blowing experience. I haven’t spent a huge amount of time here yet, however I’m finding it all very… easy. Perhaps it is all relative, and after living in Indonesia, there is just a certain degree of inconveniences, communication difficulties and cultural misunderstandings which I take for granted. Sometimes you’ve got to squat and there usually isn’t toilet paper. Get used to it… and carry hand sanitizer.
High Court
January 26th, 2009
Summer (southern hemisphere, so this means December – February) is a good time to be home in New Zealand. The weather is war, it’s the holiday season and things generally slow down. Yet, I should know by now that a visit back home is not a holiday. In the three and a half years I’ve been away, I’ve been fortune to have been home 5 times, which has helped me keep in close contact with friends at home. However each time there is a rush to catch up with as many people as possible, and take care of all the little things that need to be taken care of at home: dental appointment, new passport, buying shoes which fit me…
November 13th, 2008
The strangest thing I could find in the fish market.
October 23rd, 2008
On a rare occasion I was let out of the office to visit a construction site near Lhokseumawe in Aceh, where they were building the pre-fabricated houses which had been shipped from Canada. It was satisfying seeing the houses built, and the community already living in some of them, rather than just as a part on the ledger in the warehouse.
October 15th, 2008
Arriving back to oppression in Indonesia…
Airport Restrictions in Indonesia:
Animals, Guns and Cooking - Understandable
Cooking - Inconvenient
Wheels on Heel - IS NOTHING SACRED!!!
October 10th, 2008
And try to take a bite out of the Big Apple…
Lady Lib
Rockefeller Center
Grand Central
From Central Park
Sarcophagus in the Met
Giant Balloon Animals
Police Line around Wall Street (during the stockmarket crash!)
New York Stock Exchange
Times Square
Durians in New York
Ground Zero
Irony
For some reason an article titled “Charities struggle to spend cash for tsunami”, with a few chunks cut out of it became an art piece in the Museum of Modern Art. I appreciated a certian irony, given that my trip to North America was partially funded by my Rest and Relaxation (R&R) allowance from the charity I work for, using money donated for the tsunami.
Inscription from the foyer of the American Museum of Natural History
A suitable epilogue to my North American Expedition.
October 7th, 2008
Visit a friend in Boston, and touch on an childhood dream…
Me at MIT
(I don’t think that I’ll ever do that PhD in Robotics anymore)
