Poems #2 - A man needs to travel

Last week I did a presentation about the exchange experience to candidates of an AIESEC exchange program between Australia and Egypt and used this brilliant quote by Amyr Klink, a great Brazilian sailor / traveller (official site and pictures - http://www.amyrklink.com.br/). Enjoy it!

"A man needs to travel. On his own risk, not through stories, images, books or TV. Needs to travel on his own, with his eyes and feet, to understand what is his.

This way, one day he can plant his own trees and value them. Know the cold to enjoy the warm. And the other way around. Feel the distance and lack of protection in order to feel comfortable under his own roof.

A man needs to travel to places he doesn't know to break this arrogance that makes us believe in the world as we imagine it, and not as it is or as it could be; that make us professors and doctors of what we haven't seen, when we should be pupils and simply go and see...”

Amyr Klink, Brazilian explorer

Sustainability Learning Circle #2

This week, the theme of our sustainability learning circle was: “Do companies lead the global agenda?” The discussion was quite interesting! Some highlights:

- Companies definitely influence a lot the global decisions, for good (e.g. engaging SMEs and individual entrepreneurs in their distribution chain) and for bad (e.g. fighting for less health regulations or even stimulating war);

- In general, multinationals and governments are not extremely pro-active in driving change, but have a much more responsive attitude in face of public demands. In this sense, size is quite a limiting thing;

- In this sense, it’s more probable that the main paradigm changes will come from individuals, who are visionary, try beyond the others have tried and establish horizontal networks, both to design and spread the new inventions.

Coming back from such interesting conversation (around midnight), Lucy, Jem, Jhow and I played a little bit of soccer in the Centennial Park. Random, we???

Poems #1 - My Crazy and Saint Friends

A homage to all my great friends, from close and far, the serious and the crazy, the social and the introspective, the big dreamers and the daily builders, who give me the opportunity to learn every day and be what I am.


My Crazy and Saint Friends

I choose my friends not by the colour of their skin or other archetype, but by the pupil. It has to have questioning shine and unsettled tone.

I'm not interested in the good spirits or the ones with bad habits. I'll stick with the ones who make me crazy and blessed. From them, I don't want any answer, I want to be reviewed. I want them to bring me doubts and fears and to tolerate the worst of me. I want saints, so they don't doubt differences and ask for forgiveness for injustices.

I choose my friends for their bare face and their open soul. I do not only want the shoulder or the col, I also want his greatest happiness. Friends that don't laugh together don't know how to suffer together.

All my friends are like thus: half foolish, half serious. I don't want predictable laughter or cries full of pity. I want serious friends, those that make reality their fountain of knowledge, but that fight to keep fantasy alive.

I don't want adult or boring friends. I want half children and half elders. Children, so they don't forget the value of the wind blowing on their faces and elders so they're never in a hurry.

I have friends to know who I am. Then seeing them as foolish and serious, crazy and saints, young and elder, never will I forget that normality is a barren illusion.

Oscar Wilde

Koori Kitchen

Yesterday, I took part in an AIESEC in Sydney project called Koori Kitchen. It was created by a quite visionary and hard working member, Tina, with the objectives of:
- Preserving aboriginal culture and proud amongst aboriginal teenagers from Redfern, a quite marginalised suburb in Sydney nowadays;
- Improve their knowledge about nutrition and pleasure for cooking, so that they can have a healthier diet and a better life.

In the process I learnt:
- Aboriginal communities still have a strong sense of group; so we should never highlight too much individual accomplishments;
- They are generally very quiet, and just let you interact with them once they trust you;
- They face very important social problems: poverty, drugs addiction, bad nutrition, discrimination, among others. As a result, their life expectation is significantly lower than other Australians;
- In my perception, Australians don' recognise them as legitimate Australians, seeing aboriginal communities as another minority group present in the country.

This Saturday, as part of my role, I was around while the kids were cooking, giving some instructions but mainly taking pictures. It was quite a nice experience to interact with them and realise that people are at the same time very equal and very unique. Very equal in a sense that they just need a inspiration, trust and a little bit of skills to do extraordinary things; and unique in the sense that their actions, dreams and contribution will always be different, once genetics, temperament and previous experiences shape each one of us differently.

Comparing to Brazil, the Australian aboriginal communities can be translated into:
- Our indigenous communities, also extensively disrespected by the colonisers, with less legal rights until recently and facing important social problems nowadays;
- Our poor communities, quite marginalised, with fewer opportunities and not as many role-models. The difference, in this case, is that in Brazil we cannot use an ethnicity as synonymous of poverty, even if black people are statistically poorer and face heaps more discrimination.

Thanks for the opportunity, guys! See you in another Koori Kitchen Saturday!

Limes Odyssey

For my birthday, I and Jhow bought two packs of limes to do some caipirinha for my guests – by the way, the most expensive limes I've ever bought, $ 20 each pack (around R$ 40 for 1 kg!).

$20 of limes in Australia

$20 of limes in Brazil!!!

As people didn't drink much, one pack was left. It stayed a week out of the fridge, as we're planning the Global Village three weeks ago. Once it didn't happen, I decided to freeze the precious fruits.

Before being transformed into more caipirinha, they were used for juggling and went to the microwave oven. People didn't complain about the taste of heroic limes caipirinha, though…

Global Village

After some frustrated organisation efforts, our global village finally happened! And it was great! Stands for Romania, Bulgaria, Brazil, Norway, Turkey, Russia and Czech Republic, with pictures, souvenirs, food and drinks; cultural presentations; and lots of dance and fun.

Some learnings:
- Czech Republic had the biggest consumption per capita of beer in the world;
- Romania is the most important country in the world, as the pencil investor is Romanian;
- Not all Brazilians can play capoeira properly;
- Russians sing a very sad song about an orphan mamut to kids;
- Dancing is an universal gathering instrument!

Relationships

Last weekend, I watched the movie "Russian Dolls". The French guy from "Spanish Apartment" was the main character, five years after the experience in Barcelona. The main theme now is relationships, and how we always look for something else (the smaller doll) when we already have somebody great to whom we don't commit.

Talking about relationships in Australia, it seems to me that people are lighter and less complicated around here. Some things I've noticed:

- It's not a big deal to move in with a boyfriend / girlfriend. Differently from Brazil, it doesn't necessarily mean a great commitment, almost a marriage;
- Family doesn't pressurise as much for a "conventional life": get married young, have children, stay with the same person for the rest of one's life;
- As I mentioned before, people travel overseas quite a lot. So, it's also not a big deal to travel and leave the boyfriend / girlfriend. Nobody interprets that as a "I don't care about us" decision.

Other observations, maybe related to the facts above:
- People don't kiss as easily. But once they do, sex is not a very far away step;
- People are not as romantic and dedicated when they are in love. As well, they don't show much affection in public
- Sometimes a group of people go out and I don't even notice there are couples in it.

Interesting, isn't it? Lots of reflections going on here…

Russian Night

Oh yeah, babe! We had a Russian night! But before you think we got smashed, I should say that no drinks were served.

In total, there were 4 Russian, around 10 other internationals and 10 Aussies. The atmosphere was great and we had lots of fun.

Talking about the food, the cooks – Serge, Marina and lots of helpers – really did a good job. We had a cucumbers’ salad, beetroot soup (Bourscht), dumplings and sweets. Great! For the ones interested, here comes the Bourscht recipe: http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,russian_borscht,FF.html

Check some pictures:





Well, as people are quite strange, check the best faces of the night:

Thanks, guys!

Now the Brazilian colony is getting ready for a Brazilian night! News in some weeks…

Sustainability learning circle

I’ve been reading quite a lot about sustainability. As I shared some ideas with people here in Sydney, I figured out there are some fans of the topic around here. So, I invited these people – Salma, Lucy, Jeremy and Jhow – for a learning circle about the theme.

We discussed our personal connections with the issue and came to some agreements:
- We want to have periodic prepared conversations about different sub topics;
- We think coherency is essential; therefore we started having personal commitments, so that we can act more sustainably;
- We visualise a project that we can potentially run with AIESEC in Sydney.

Good start! Let’s see how it evolves! I’m particularly happy with the volunteer commitment to coherency and with the broad intuitional understanding that all the participants of the group have about sustainability.

Full moon festival

Back in Sydney, I continue learning about Asia. Last Monday, Joey invited us to play Mahjong, a very popular Chinese game which mixture some elements of dominos and poker. It was quite fun, but the first challenge was to read the pieces, as the symbols were in Mandarin. In the picture beside you can see SuSu with the symbols of good luck.

After playing, we ate full moon cakes, a very, very, very (can’t say very enough) dense cake, made of lotus seeds, with a yolk inside, not salty, not sweet. At this point of the year, Chinese people give each other this sort of cakes as part of the celebration of the full moon festival.

This festival happens because of the following legend:

“The earth once had ten suns circling over it, each taking turn to illuminate the earth. One day, however, all ten suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. Hou Yi, a strong and tyrannical archer, saved the earth by shooting down nine of the suns. He eventually became King, but grew to become a despot.

One day, Yi stole the elixir of life from a goddess. However, his beautiful wife, Chang'e, drank it in order to save the people from her husband’s tyrannical rule. After drinking it, she found herself floating, and flew to the moon. Yi loved his divinely beautiful wife so much he did not shoot down the moon.”

Sports

Sports are something quite important in Australia. People in general practice some sort of physical activity and the TV plays a lot of sports, especially on weekends.

Swimming is quite important, as well as cricket, but as far as I noticed the big thing here are the footballs. Yeah, footballs, because there are 3 (maybe 4) types of football.

Soccer: increasing its popularity since the last World Cup, it’s certainly not the most popular one.

Australian rules football (AFL): played with the non round ball, it demands agility and it’s an interesting game, with lots of players in each side (18, if I’m not mistaken). The athletes are quite handsome, as well. The grand final just happened between the Sydney Swans and the West Coast Eagles. Unfortunately Sydney didn’t win.

Rugby league and rugby union: largely played, it demands lots of physical strength and it’s a little bit violent in my opinion. The grand final for the league just happened between the Melbourne and the Brisbane team. Brisbane won (and I was there by the time), people were very happy but no huge party took place (compared to the ones we’re accustomed to see in Brazil, when a team wins an important championship).

I’m still learning the rules and might start playing in my company’s team soon. I heard our team is very crappy; so I probably can’t make it any worse…

Cultural backround & beliefs

I’ve written about this more than once, but I keep getting in touch with unique people, who certainly deserve comments.

While in Brisbane, I met these three very different people, all with strong parents and with very interesting characteristics.

Angie is Australian, grew up in the cost, daughter of professors, with a very clear sense of what’s important in life, i.e. building respectful relationships, developing herself intellectually and working in something that matters.

Anh is daughter of Vietnamese parents and developed a very nice bi-cultural identity, respecting the differences and finding her place. She founded the Engineers without Borders in Brisbane, to work with emergency situations and sustainable development, and is going to Cambodia for 1 year, from where she intends to meet her Vietnamese relatives quite often.

Alan (Anh’s boyfriend) is son of an Australian Christian missionary, who met his mother in Papua New Guinea. They moved to Australia when Alan was 4 year old, but the memories from his birth country are very present in his house, in his mother’s accent, in various pictures and in lots of stories. Alan is very glad he came to Australia, as it’s very safe and full opportunities over here, while the situation is New Guinea is concerning, because of unemployment, migration to the cities and violence.

I find it very interesting to understand people’s backgrounds, influences, beliefs and mental models…

Brisbane - green city?

On Monday, I had the chance to spend the morning around the city, which is quite interesting. The weather is great (by the way, Queensland is called “The Sunshine State”), the city is not too crowded and there is a river passing in the middle of the city. Besides, there are some signs of what could be the starting of a green city:

- I saw quite a lot of people riding their bikes;
- There are some parks in the city, including a very nice Botanic Garden, very close to the city centre;
- The new buses of the city are powered by natural gas;
- One of the public transports widely used is a ferry, powered by bio-diesel;
- And the most interesting of all: a green bridge was built just for the circulation of buses, bikes and pedestrians.




After the tour, I went to the university, where I met Angie, who went to the Peace Project with me in Poland, in 2003. Angie is finishing her PhD in Peace and Conflict, in which she studied the genocide in Rwanda. She recently got married, is going to move to Canberra in February to work for the national diplomatic department, and has an old orange kombi van, with which she travels with her husband to different places. After the description, I think I don’t need to say how much I enjoyed to meet her and how cool the conversations were!



As my time in Brisbane finished, I took the bus back to Sydney. As the photo witnesses, I was tired, with blister in my fingers (reminders of the canoeing effort), but extremely happy and inspired by the two awesome women I met there – Anh and Angie. Thanks, girls!

Brisbane - natural program

I arrived in Brisbane before 7 in the morning. And Anh and her boyfriend were waiting for me in the train station. We drove 2 hours to the north, to Cooloola National Park, just after Noosa, in the Sunshine cost.

In the middle of our way, we stopped at a local fair, completely “Small is beautiful” (reference to Schumacher’s book). Built integrated with a green area, the fair stores sell organic food, artistic objects and general goods. Lots of families with kids, live music and some tourists present. Awesome!

Once we arrived in the natural park, we rent a canoe and a kayak, paddled one hour and a half and arrived in a quite isolated place, where we camped. Tent set up, we canoed down the river for around 4 hours, taking advantage of the perfect weather, having good conversations, enjoying the contact with nature and appreciating the rich views, fauna and flora. I was especially amazed by the sight of the trees reflected in the river. If you take our pictures, you almost can’t say what side is up.

At night, we were completely exhausted! Cooked dinner, played cards, told more stories and went to sleep. I was so tired that I didn’t hear the heavy rain and thunders during the night.

I enjoyed soooo much! I think I forgot how much I like this contact with nature, especially to re-equalise my energy and check what’s really necessary to live well.

More pictures and information about the place, check http://www.cooloola.org.au/content_gallery.php?CategoryID=56.

More pictures at: http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?Uc=7hoqpfht.87o8vnrh&Uy=e3s84q&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&mode=fromshare&conn_speed=1

Brisbane - preparation and getting there

Last weekend I started my longer trips inside Australia. And it was just fantastic!

Two weeks ago, I met my Argentinean friend Cecilia in the MSN and she told me she had a friend in Australia, who was very nice. This person, Ahn, was not only nice, but extremely receptive and excited. She wrote me saying I should go and visit her, that she could organise a good outdoor program and that I should do that soon, as she was going to Cambodia in less than two months, to do some humanitarian work for 1 year.

I loved the idea! Getting to know we would have a long weekend in 1 week, I bought train tickets, wrote to my other friend Angie, and decided to go. The trip took 14 hours each way, but was 100% worth it, as you’ll see!