Australian Personality # 3 - Julia Gillard

Julia Gillard is currently the deputy leader of the Australian Labour Party. She held various positions in government and is seen as the voters’ preferred labour leader, according Ipsos Mackay’s poll.

She is strongly supporting Kevin Rudd, the Labour Party Prime Minister candidate, who is challenging the liberal policies of Howard, the Prime Minister in the last 10 years. If Rudd wins and she is still the Deputy Leader, she will be the Deputy Prime Minister, which means she will act as Prime Minister when he is overseas or otherwise unavailable, a position never before held by a woman in Australia.

Julia is single, has no children, migrated to Australia when she was 5 and appears as one of the female leaders in the country.

Carols

There’s something extremely cool happening in Australia before Christmas – the Carols. Carols are events when people get together to sing Christmas songs and enjoy each others’ company.

The first one I went to was the Victoria Park Carols, which happened in the Park in front of where I lived in my first two weeks in Australia. There were around 400 people present, pretty much everybody from the neighbourhood. I really, really liked that! The community feeling was evident and the engagement with the commerce and schools around was part of the ceremony, as well as the presence of families doing a picnic in the park while the show didn’t start.

As I liked the concept very much, I went to a second Carols, this time in the Domain. Very different from the first, it was a huge show, counting with the presence of 100.000 people, some of the best singers in the country, a big charity campaign and TV forecasting. There was a big group of us present and it was amazing, especially the final moments, when everybody gets up, lights candles and sing together for a great Christmas and a peaceful new year.

AIESEC Conference – AWESOME

In December, I chaired the AIESEC in Sydney AWESOME conference. It happened as a result of two entrepreneurial individuals – Jake and Nicky, who wanted to have an experience in running a conference as well as guarantee all members had the right training to accomplish next year’s plan.

Half way through the conference, I re-started enjoying quite a lot the AIESEC environment, especially the innovation in education and the unique team spirit.

Thanks for the invitation, guys!

Reflection: Interconnections

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about what we can really and effectively do in order to improve our world a little bit. His point was that everything was extremely intricate that all changes didn’t seem to impact the system substantially.

Last night I went to the movies to watch Babel. In the same line as Traffic and Crash, the film shows different apparently independent situations, which are amazingly interconnected and influencing each other importantly.

All the three movies talk about the schizophrenia and inequality of our society. The interesting fact is that all the situations can be understood if analysed in isolation, but can never be genuinely comprehended or accepted in the broader context.

Adding to all this the facts that many people behave properly (in terms of fairness of their relations with other people and the world around them) and that some other feel the need to do something truly meaningful and transformative, my answer to my friend was: you gotta start!

Never before were as many critical movies produced and watched, was there a big range of visionary networks and organisations in action, and especially was there an extremely democratic and disseminated platform for communication and engagement: the internet and self governed web portals.

Therefore, even not visualising the whole impact of what we’re doing, we gotta start! Start not contributing to what we think is wrong (after all, we cannot do peace through war); doing what we makes sense to us; and engaging with people who share our beliefs.

We never know what we’ll end up achieving. All we know is when we’re passionate about what we’re doing, other ideas, opportunities and allies show up. And in a very interconnected world, the movement can achieve never imagines proportions!

To finalise, here comes a quote from a fantastic book I read recently:

"I am a crowd, obeying as many laws
As it has members. Chemically impure
Are all 'my' beings. There is no single cure
For what can never have a single cause."

Aldous Huxley, in The Island

Feeling Australian #1 – Shoes

Today, for the first time, I felt quite Australian. Check what happened.

I needed to go to work, as always. But I was also giving a short speech in the AIESEC recognition night + official opening of a local conference I was chairing, which meant I needed to run from work and walk a fair bit.

As I wanted to be beautiful for the night, I decided to wear high heels. But they were definitely not comfortable for working and specially for walking. So, what did I do? Without any doubt, wore comfortable shoes during the day, changed for the event and changed back to walk home. Very Australian…

Koala Park

Time for re-unions and more exploration of the Sydney surroundings. This week I had the pleasure to host Marjana and Nina in my house, 2 Slovenian friends who took part in the Peace Project in Poland with me in 2003. Isn’t that cool?

Well, cool meetings deserve cool Australian programs. So we went to the Koala Park, a kind of open zoo, where you can see and touch some very typical Australian animals: peacocks, many kinds of birds, emus, wombats, echidnas, dingos and obviously koalas and kangaroos.

The koalas are really cute! But they are quite boring, as they sleep 19 (!!!) hours a day, eat, get high with the eucalyptus leaves and sleep again.

So, I completely fell in love with the kangaroos. They are friendly, play a lot and are extremely original. I sure they wouldn’t be as sweet in a wild environment, though.

Sydney for Christmas

Sydney is getting very beautiful for Christmas! There’s certainly less lights than in Brazil, but quite a lot of decoration in public spaces and stores. The puppets' choral is my absolute favorite!

Buddhist Temple

Last weekend, a big crew of foreigners decided to explore a little bit the spirituality around the city and went to a Buddhist temple, 2 hours south of Sydney (http://www.nantien.org.au).

The temple is impressive. Apparently, it’s the biggest in the southern hemisphere. Its architecture is beautiful; there are monks, nuns and non-religious people working there; the vegetarian food available is great; you can stay there for some days if you want; there are drums, meditation and chant sessions every day; but definitely what called my attention the most was the philosophy.

Amongst the things I’ve learnt:

Buddhists search for enlightment and don’t need to have responses for all the world’s mysteries. So, for example, they believe life is a circle, but there’s no one right response to reincarnation;

Their symbol is the lotus flower, because it is a beautiful, clean and bright flower which flourishes every year and grows from swamps. This reinforces the circle of life and encourages people to search for enlightment without ignoring the problems, but using them as a source of learning and strength.

Sydney Tower

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I finally went to the Sydney Tower! And it’s amazing!

I obviously didn’t do the tourist expensive tour, but as a good local went to the bar, entering there for free ;o)

The Tower is 309 meters high, cost AU$ 36 million and completes a rotation in 90 minutes, giving the observer a 360º fabulous view of the city, without needing to move. Fantastic!

March Against Global Warming

Hello guys! Sorry for being very late with the posts! As I have many things to tell, you can expect quite a lot of news in the next week.

I’m starting with a very old but extremely relevant one. On November 4th, I joined the March Against Global Warming. This movement (http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/) is happening all around the world and had around 20.000 people marching in Sydney, ironically in a cold and rainy day.

What impressed me the most was the common direction among people from extremely opposite political views. There were liberals, socialists, environmentalists, artists, students, famous personalities and obviously lots of anonymous citizens. Is the union against global warming the new common flag in our world?

Amongst all the participants, the ones that called my attention the most was the family below. Extremely coherent, they are being extremely conscious about their own impact and making the needed efforts to cut their emissions in every way possible: eating, clothing, living and having fun sustainably.