Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Conference season... in India!

After a few days of seva in the ashram, a couple of regenerating darshans and I am now on tour, an Indian tour of conferences on SI, on SWM...



Kochi for 3 days of Social Innovation festival...

where I was coaching the organizing team and assessing all SI competing student projects...


 Lighting the lamp, a great honour, as much as sharing the room with Biju who overcame a car accident leaving him in a wheel chair by creating his activity, transforming cars for people like him, suffering from similar impairments...

What an inspiration...
And then little Charly created in Australia, full of technology like D2R2 in Star Wars taking care of people at home...

 Beautiful... moments!

Can't say it is always tough to get tokens of ... appreciation!





From Kochin to Hyderabad where I am presenting my 1st paper to an Intl SWM conference

http://www.iswmaw.com/




Amme, such a lovely lady, one of the most prominent expert in Waste Management in India, Mrs Almirta H. Patel, who is the sweetest lady I have met in this field of waste!

I will try and meet her again in Bangalore!
Presenting my article: Social Innovation (SI): A study to analyse the factors that impact implementation in the context of waste management in India


Bangalore next week where I will teach a sustainability class over 3 weeks...




No here we go for 3 weeks of full teaching: EMSD: Environmental Management and Sustainable Development to MBA ASB students in Bangalore

I love this field and those topics but I took quite a lot of work from my side to present something interacting, informative, new...
And seeing yet another beautiful wedding!
A beautiful church, beautiful bride and groom...
families, friends from the whole Uni, especially ASB itself...




and of course the lovely students...
MBA first years... asking me in such a nice way if I would teach them next year...
And the 2nd year ones that I am starting to know and have a trusting relationship with!

. then Auroville for a workshop and hopefully some surfing

. 1 month teaching in Telecom Paris
a few weeks in Brazil to check up WM opportunities... and more

well I know... plans are only there to make the Gods laugh! so lets smile about this frantic beginning of 2014!


Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Leaving 2013 with a smile... and welcoming 2014 with lots of love

.... it really takes a lot of compassion to look at a year that passed by and try honestly, without shame, guilt or self punishment to love every part of it, all experiences that occurred, just like experiences, detached from its major emotions.

And it takes a lot of faith to empty your heart from all these emotions and projections to look at 2014, to start fresh, full of hope, praying only to get the strength, serenity and discernment to fill it with love.

2013 has surely been such a year with so much pain that it knocked me down, blinded me for some time...but where going through these important, tough and unusual experiences...
in the end made me a lot stronger...  hopefully more humble and more careful too.
A roller-coaster of emotions took me in all parts of the world, India, south, north, Europe, France Germany, Finland, Spain...going from building a family to the solitude of a PhD research, going from feeling strong and busted by those dreams of sharing a life, a healthy honest relationship, settling down, to the fears and disappointments of facing mostly lies, shortcomings and self-centered behaviors...
digesting all disappointments alone...
accepting yet in all these circumstances to carry on going... trying...

I realized along this path of betrayals, lies… that the number of liars, cowards, cheats... I have met were absolutely irrelevant...
but the number of honest, caring, trustworthy people that I have been blessed to have by my side this year where the people, the moments that really mattered.

If I cannot trust blind-fully like I cannot believe blindly yet my faith comes from trying, experimenting and acting from my side as much as I can righteously.
If things fail, if others need to lie, to escape, it is in the end... their problem, their notion of respect of themselves, of others. Their idea, dimension of love.

It is not the number of times I fell on my knees, I lost hope that matters, but the number of times I raised and tried again.

I do not want to measure myself to what others think of me, nor what they do to me, but the way I can act myself, I can try and have a positive impact in the way I am, the way I position myself.

And more importantly today not to keep any bad feelings, resentments, hate in my stomach... in order to appreciate more of the beautiful meals coming in... from Karnataka, from Helsinki, from Madrid... just building that assurance that it is all fine, just like it is.

Self assurance through first articles to struggle to present to prominent conference for the first time, article to finalize on topics I properly dislike, that take huge tolls on me like Advanced Quantitative Methods, huge lists of datas to crunch, when all I would like to do is to slash waves with my new board!
Maybe that is simply that becoming adult, independent!!


So yes my dear friends, that is all I can wish you:  to leave 2013 with a smile, take a deep breath, a leap of faith and make your heart ready to be filled with love in 2014!