Welcome to my global village!

Sharing with the readers my experiences through my travel, interaction with different cultures and my involvement through community work! Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

A week long cultural journey through the Walisean and French culture!

From Auckland to Wallis...what a contrast but if you closely look into the culture there are some striking similarities. Atul was invited by the French govt. to explore and discuss renewable energy project/ education for the country. I made use of this opportunity and took leave and accompanied Atul.

We landed in Mata-uta, Uvea (Wallis) on saturday afternoon and were welcomed in true Wallesean style, fresh tropical flower garlands!

Kini, Atul, Josepha, Joseph, Catherine (Left to right and front)


...and everything from here was just amazing five days...which will need more time than 'all in one post'!

Monday, November 05, 2012

Mixing flavours

Auckland was purely a business trip but as usual I had to mix flavours for various reasons...four keynote speakers at this conference were Khoa Do, Kevin Honeycutt, Jason Ohler and Glen Capelli - so even at a conference you would like to have a diverse range of speakers...mixing flavours! The theme for Conference dinner was Disco...and I was like...seriously, disco! Not that I do not enjoy disco or should I say everything from the disco era but it was not what I was expecting...I guess it was once again about mixing flavours. The conference was more for school teachers - an excellent initiative which also attracted a lot of techies and researchers and teacher educators...mix flavours!

Now I had to mix flavours too, so here we go...



And mark what you want to come back to...


Squeezed some time to catch up with old friends, they live in Devonport, so visited them and experienced yet another flavour of the city...


And I reach my friends' place in the quite suburb of Devonport, a nice cozy home with antique pieces. And how could I not capture this 19th century cooking range...

Behold, skewers were not grilled here though but here...

And the dessert had a mix of flavour too, here is creative Jessie's culinary masterpiece...


Coming back after visiting friends, the city view from the ferry was simply breathtaking!


Little time that I could squeeze out, went up to the Sky tower with the intention to be brave enough to walk on the glass which I did! Considering I am not comfortable with heights, it was quite a feat...mind over matter, is it! Skytower...ticked! So I not only walked over this glass but also made sure to capture the moment!!


New Zealanders are famous for their dairy. Inspite the cold, I had to have one icecream, it would far more fresh then what I would have outside NZ. Kiwis truly rule at this and they take it quite seriously too, check the signage too...


A hint of Maori culture is all I could pick. I managed to pick a 'tiki' from the shop in town, not sure how authentic it is though! I was impressed with the fact how every occasion starts with an opening/ prayer in Maori, quite a contrast with Australia...


Diwali is approaching and how could Auckland not be ready. Came across this square where they were getting ready to put up a Diwali show over the weekend, too bad I flew out that weekend!

It looked like everyone seemed to be in 'Diwali' spirit including the 'Hare Krishna disciples in Auckland! 'Hare Krishna' disciples started with just two and soon had a whole lot of others join them adding to the festive mood!

And more with Hare Krishna singing along the Queens Street in this video below...



The experience was 'a drop in the ocean' but enough to help me admire the country and its people! Will have to go back again though.