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!

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!

Back to India... writing before... surfing... sharing before isolating in 3rd phasePhD

Arriving with Sri Lankan airline made a big difference... beautiful smiles, kind people nice Sri Lankan crowd, disciplined and polite...and ... arriving in Chennai, the other side, closer to Uni...

Then a few days in Ettimadai, ASB instead of taking my board to Auroville and the buddies...
Really hard though to get back to the discipline of writing, reading everyday, coping with the academic requirements... as well as students, boy hostels partying... not easy to sleep! to concentrate!

Hard as well to watch a last time the traces in the sand...
let the waves erase the past and look forward at this unknown, unsure, insecure future... but the only...

future!


 Yet sure about it... about wanting it...

  like this YES I DO...

 of Shilpy and Marcus at the temple and renewed at the church!

Beautiful colors, sounds of this Taliwood wedding, my first!

A few days in an artist center in the middle of Chennai by the beach...


a tour by the artist themselves...
and Sajeetha heading the new trend...
what a blessing to see art from inside like this, after her daughter's wedding.


Original pieces of a creativity build by visionary artists and activists, business people moved by passion... dreams

How funny is that scooter... almost alive and running in that little park!

And off course some nice times at Delphin beach (yet always with some waste to think about... like this plastic bottle in the background!) and in Amritapuri for a Christmas surrounded by coconut trees...where...

Santa Claus is not to be seen but where Jesus is much thought of, prayed for, remembered and worshiped as the greatest prophet of unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness!

Paris all glittering, preparing Xmas... me ... running...preparing 3rd PhD phase in India

This is a time I truly love in Paris, the month of december when all the lights of Xmas are out in the major avenues, making it one of the most romantic cities I have seen.

Not the shining, blinding lights of Time Square or Oxford Circus... and their ostentatious fixtures...

but soft garlands, cascades of gold in front of famous jewelers... les Grands Magasins des Grands Boulevards...

And the most beautiful lights of all: reflects in the kids' eyes, marveled, puzzled every time like if it was their first Xmas (or do they pretend it is so we soften up at the time to make the orders for the Pine Tree...?)

children ever more enchanted by the ingenuity mechanisms giants toys ...like if it was their first Xmas (or do they pretend it is so we soften up at the time to place orders for the Pine Tree...?)

And the incomparable soft light of winter, its muted colors, as diluted.

Crossing from Les Tuileries to Le Musee du Quai D'Orsay, one of my favorite views.

This time it was to meet Masculin/Masculin... another chance to raise my senses, build knowledge from visual and intuition experiences...

from souvenirs de Paris, deep inside like this concert we sang in this very hall of Musee D'Orsay some 15 years ago with the basq Choir Anaiki, I was singing with at the time, to the feeling of rediscovering Paris...

And from the "Origin of the world" viewed by Gustave Courbet like all of us experienced it, I guess... and forgot...? to a review of male nudity, in art, over the centuries, from the 18th to today... really today! through magnifying shades... myths to almost the jokes of what looks like gay calendar pages!

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/index.php?id=649&L=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=37292