2 easter rainbows...

new life at easter

this easter triinu and i decided to breath new life into a pre-loved bookshelf by painting it crazily vibrant colours...and the result was "happy shelves" :D

my current visual ID

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ice cream...cravings

on a hot sunday afternoon, carol had a craving for ice-cream, and after much convincing ;) i went with her to get myself a milkshake....

on the walk home we were accosted by three young kids who also had cravings for ice cream and demanded some of ours....physically by surrounding us and grabbing for our ice creams...

the kids were quite young so it was not so much physically frightening, except for the possibility that they had a knife or another weapon...but i was more shocked by the way that children so young had learnt to use physical force to get what they want....to demand...

i didnt share my milkshake with any of them...partly because i was a bit scared and wanted to move on as quickly as possible, but also because i wanted to teach them that violence is a way to get what you want...but unfortunately i think they have many senseis who have already taught them that violence is their only option

i met a couple of aussies here who are volunteering for an NGO who uses aikido to teach kids in poor areas another, peaceful option, to channel their energies and frustrations...and also read about a woman who uses capoeira for the same purpose...

one question i have been asking myself a lot recently is what can I do to help improve the situation for the many many people that i see everyday living in misery on the streets and struggling to survive...i have been trying to get involved with the volunteering programme at work but it seems a bit bureaucratic...does anyone know any cool organisations to volunteer with here in sao paulo?

and how do you feel, how do deal with the inequalities surrounding you as an educated person, earning many many times the average income? living in a nice apartment? never REALLY craving food?

babies: black and white

about a month ago in the ladies' toilets at work i got a sobering glimpse into some of the social inequities here in brasil...as i left the toilet stall to wash my hands at the basin, i saw two very pregnant women...one white manager....one black cleaner....and i was struck by how different the life opportunities of those two unborn children were going to be, based on the colours of their skin and solemn statistics...

white, black, yellow and red are the categories used to distinguish races in brazil...quite different from the more ethnic approach used in australia...but there is more than just skin pigment separating the two major racial groups in brazil - "the blacks" and "the whites"...

the black baby, his mother´s sixth, is twice as likely to be illiterate, nearly three times more likely to be homeless and on average (based on per capita income) will earn less than half as much income as the white baby...the Afro-descendant population of Brazil represent approximately 45% of the total population, but approximately 70% of them are living in poverty...and the gap between the rich and poor in this country is widening and even with loving parents, determination and talent it is still very difficult for poor black people to work their way up to higher, more stable income categories...(fortunately at least both babies were boys, so the odds of success for both are better than if they had been girls!)

it is disturbing to imagine these statistics applying to these innocent unborn children...but they do...even though both of them obviously deserve the same opportunities and chances for livelihoods, health and security...some my colleagues and i donated some gifts and necessities to our cleaner and her son, which was a nice gesture, but at the same time feels some what insignificant when one thinks of the massive sistemic and societal changes that are needed to change this picture and see two babies with different skin colours, but the same chances...but in the end, i guess it is always a battle which is won, one-by-one

* statistics based on IBGE data
** here is a link to an article in The Australian about how the average life expectancy for Aboriginal people in Australia has been improving, but is still 17 years less non-Aboriginal Australians

(dis)abilities

one of the great programs that my team runs is to facilitate employment opportunities for people with disabilities...who represent about 14.5% of the Brazilian population...

unfortunately my role does not involve working directly with these employees but my colleagues´efforts and the presence of my disabled colleagues is quite an eye opener...as i mentioned earlier, i got a new sense of perspective on my language barriers when i considered my deaf and mute colleagues and how much courage and perseverance they must have to overcome their communication barriers everyday...

and about once a week i pass a guy on the street begging for money...he always pulls down his shirt sleeve to expose the place where his arm used to be....highlighting his disability to help get more money begging on the street....(i have even heard stories of children being deliberately maimed for the same purpose)....and it makes me think of other people who desperately try to hide their disabilities in order to get jobs and income...and now due to the employment quotas in brasil people with disabilities are in more demand in medium-big workplaces...of course needing medical certificates to prove their "status"...

i also had a meeting during the week which showed different way banks can deal with disabled clients....there is another bank which offers special rates for people with disabilities..but they have to come to the bank, prove their disabilities and dependencies....but then there is the approach of our bank which provides more dignity to people with disabilities and their families and offers credit packages to purchase items that improve people´s mobility (EX wheelchairs, braille programmes etc)....items that people with disabilities and their families need without having to keep reminding and reinforcing their disability

every day i am truly inspired my colleague, who walks with a lot of difficulty because of his degenerative condition and uses a wheelchair for medium and long distances...yet he works full time and studies at night...he never makes a fuss when he accidentally falls to the floor because his body is too tired...and his eyes are always sparkling, especially when he shares with me his goal for the future of being a psychology lecturer at university and meeting a woman who respects others and diversity with her small actions, makes him laugh and can deal with changes

i often reflect that we all have different abilities and disabilities that we bring to the workplace...the challenge is always to see our common humanity with "the other"...recognising how your own habits, behaviours, paradigms act as disabilities for you to work better....and recognising the talents and contributions of others with more obvious physical disabilities.

still alive and kicking, boxing, dancing, studying....

Wowsers...one and a half months since my last posting...oops! Well guess in a way it is a good sign that lots of things have been happening :)

* I celebrated my birthday with thousands of my closest friends on the beaches and streets of Rio de Janeiro...could also possibly have had something to do with the Carnaval celebrations, but not sure ;) Had a great time there with friends from São Paulo and Rio as well and while we didnt get a close up look at the spectacular costumes and floats of the desfile (parade), I was so impressed by the costumes of the people at the block parties....a bit like Queens Day in Amsterdam but with much less orange and more originality and diversity.

* After some tough personal moments here, I reflected on the types of activities that make me happy and what personal development I want to explore right now...and so I got myself into a lot of different activities because I know I am happier when I am busier and meeting different people and learning new things and I decided to a personal development course about chakras and bio-psychology.

I also reflected how language barriers were causing me a lot of frustration. I still have a lot of improving to do in my Portuguese, there is no doubt, but I can really feel an improvement and now I feel much more confident expressing myself in Portuguese in professional and personal situations. So what changed...my boss´ advice to "let go of my fear" helped a lot and also thinking about some of my deaf colleagues and the deaf Japanese character on the movie "Babel" and their challenges to communicate...I realised I had so little to be afraid of...so I started to talk more and most of the time it works :)

* Getting into a weekly routine:

- Monday nights are boxing class at the gym (no people, just boxing bags)

- Tuesday night is a course about democratic education (learning a lot of new vocab and also theories and principles about how to run schools and treat children)

- Wednesday night is giving English classes to some of my colleagues and belly dancing class
- Thursday night is gym

- Try to go to gym once more during the week (but as Denise and I have discussed it is quite a struggle to defeat the "third time in a week" phenomenon!)

* Started an amazing course in bio-psychology at an eco-village about 2 hours out of São Paulo. It is a wonderful mixture of ancient Indian science of Tantra and chakras and modern science about the connections between our thoughts, emotions and physical health. There is one module per month and each module goes for a whole weekend, staying at the beautiful eco village, whose serenity and beauty renews your spirit. For our first module there was a wonderfully rich mix of about 70 people...grandmas, grandpas, mothers and teenage daughters, young singles, young couples and everything in between...we had a great energy and supported each other through out the intensive programme, which included lectures, drama, music, dancing, yoga and meditation.

There were many special moments during the weekend and I had a headache at the end of it because of all of the thoughts running through my head. Here are some examples:

- Being reminded of the power of our thoughts to create our reality and how our brains physiologically cannot tell the difference between visualising an experience and actually experiencing it. I realised how I could use positive visualisations to help improve a negative work situation and I heard more loudly how negatively I talk to myself, which gives me a chance to become a better friend to myself.

- In the middle of a simple dance I realised the importance of celebrating and embracing my past and future and focusing on the present. I think I am too harsh on myself and my past mistakes, instead of acknowledging them as part of my journey to arrive here and how I am now.

- I realised how short my attention span is, but also I felt myself improving in the second rounds of meditation and yoga. (Unfortunately the first time I tried to do some yoga at home after the course I strained a muscle in my neck and spent the whole day in pain, but I am not giving up ;)

- During one of the visualisations about the first chakra (associated with instinct, security and survival) I realised how often we might feel unhappy because we dont have the things we want in life...but then when I was trying to visualise my desires in the different petals of the first chakra, it was quite tough to visualise and describe them in detail...but once I could it was quite powerful.

- To be honest, during the course I found the regular singing of mantras (baba nam, kevalam = everything is love) to be quite torturous...but then I accidentally bought a CD with 13 different versions of this mantra and started to play it at home...and now I LOVE it...these mantras were designed in Sanskrit to send positive energy to the "happy" parts of our brains and now I find myself humming this mantra in the shower or on my way to work.

- One of my outstanding questions from the weekend is how to combine visualisations and holograms with not having expectations, which almost always seem damaging.

* Our personal sustainability network is also progressing here in São Paulo and we just had our third meeting last weekend. After sharing our personal experiences, questions and practices around personal sustainability we started to explore the issue of food - everything from how to be a healthy vegetarian, what is organic and biodynamic food and where we can find it in SP, to how to avoid packaging and what can be recycled.

So hope I have started to make up for weeks of non-blogging...looking forward to sharing more regular, smaller observations and thoughts soon...