Interestingly enough, my last post on India had me saying that if the universe provides, i’ll be back at that ashram in no time (or something similar to that). Well, whatdya know, I just spent part of November and all of December 08 at the same ashram, completed my TTC (Teacher Training Course) and then spent 2 additional weeks at Neyyar Dam, assisting the TTC there.  Funny where the journey takes you!

9 of us went from Madurai to Neyyar Dam to assist.  We spent most of our day doing Karma Yoga, and assisting, so there wasn’t lots of time to chat. But it was so lovely when we did. Everyone has since left and have gone in all sorts of directions, and its amazing to hear what they’re up to. Rachel found herself on tour with Amma through India. An amazing experience, no doubt!  I visited Amma’s Ashram in late November but she wasn’t there… alas I’ll just have to find her next time she’s in London!

Read the Green Issue

NY Times has posted an article today discussing climate change, food sourcing, reliance on cheap energy and generally the motivation for people to actually do anything about the impending doom that is climate change.

If you don’t want to read the full article, I think a good summary of what Michael Pollan is trying to say is

‘If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand. (Just look at the market for hybrid cars.) Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture. Driving an S.U.V. or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your McMansion like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience. Not having things might become cooler than having them. And those who did change the way they live would acquire the moral standing to demand changes in behavior from others — from other people, other corporations, even other countries.’

Additionally, the main out-take is:

…the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind….

This article gently supplements a number of others, where others e more severly discuss global food shortages:

Thailand’s rice

West Africa and Canadian bread

Using crops for biofuels – instead of food

Caracas, West Bengal, Mexico, Jamaica, Nepal, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa

start growing your own food now!

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interesting reading!

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Its here (and on my blog roll).

I’m hoping that the universe points me back to the ashram by the end of this year – so we will see!

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Therefore, I need to leave one set of equipment behind. But which one?

Skiing Pros: I love moguls, and i have a lot of friends that ski or are ski instructors. Sometimes I feel like i can go faster on skis and love the rush. And I don’t get stuck in flat spots or on cat tracks with poles. Catch an edge, you’ve got another one to rely on.

Boarding Pros: Only a board to carry, cruising through and above fresh pow (and not unclipping from my bindings accidentally and having to dig to find a ski), having free hands, jumps and hanging with my girlfriends that board! Ahh and the halfpipe!

Skiing Cons: My jacket is getting ripped on my right shoulder cos of my edges and walking in ski boots is a nightmare!

Boarding Cons: flat spots, having to sit down to do up my bindings. 

So help!  While you take the time to think and let me know – here’s some film to get you inspired…

Then the CEO states that “by 2010, 75 per cent of the company’s revenue would be coming from the Blu platform, which uses the portfolio companies but marginalises their roles. The companies that Webb had acquired over the past year turned on him.” 

What was the point of the network again?  Its a broad structure, so I can only guess one of their missions is to compete with the STW’s, WPP’s and isobar’s of this world, crossed with a ’Google Analytics’, so they can use their platform to suck data on global marketing activities by country and platform. Nice.

The other bit I liked – “the cost of setting up Blu, hiring sales teams around the world to flog it and a 24-hour support centre, were not producing results fast enough. Webb said two weeks ago the company was involved in 82 pitches around the world using its Blu technology platform as the centrepiece, but Daniel said yesterday the conversion process was taking longer than expected” – and then they state that “this was supposed to be a slower “evolutionary” path to integrating digital services for corporates.”

I guess only time will tell.  Having Steve Fanale and Shane Murray at the temporary helm can only be a good thing.

I like variation in life. I love working in digital, and love to travel. And while there so much to learn and so many places to go, I thought I could combine my two loves of ‘digital’ and ‘travel’ and become a ‘digitalnomad’.  Explore the world digitally and literally.

It all started in 2005, when i started assisting Agency Republic (who i worked for full-time from ’04-’05 as Media Manager (you guys rock!)) with workload overflow, and doing a small amount of work for Tangler (thanks Mick) in Sydney, all the while sitting in an apartment in Kits Beach, Vancouver. (Ah, the internet is such a wonderful tool, and Vancouver such a wonderful place.)

I then went back to Sydney and worked full-time for OneDigital. Full-time, i hear you say? Yes, it was a momentary lapse in nomadism, so after a while, I went back to London and conducted some auditing work with Advertising.com, my first stint on the publisher (or dark) side.  Freelance work followed – covering holiday leave for a friend and assisting in the build the new Sony Walkman ’Release Your Music’  site, running across 14 countries in Europe, and then I landed with Tonic, working on the Toshiba account with GreyLondon as well as assisting in the set-up of the strategic alliance between the aforementioned companies. All really good, interesting work. And a fantastic team of people.

Then India. Somewhere along the way I landed in India. And that really gets you thinking. This was followed by Nepal. And then Singapore. And now back in Sydney until mid Feb.. 

So where does this blog fit in? I guess I thought that if there’s one place people can find me (in thought and in location) it would be here…

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http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/tom-cruise-madness-the-tom-cruise-scientology-indoctrination-video/

Thanks to Disembedded for the share….