Very worried about my beloved Ecuador!

The last couple of days made me realise once more how little information we get on countries other than US or Europe in Swiss newspapers...

If you really read a newspaper you might have picked up that there were some heavy rainfalls in Ecuador but more than a few lines? I hardly doubt it. But there is more to that actually. Over 23 people died and damages reach up to 1 million USD. Pictures and German story
http://www.n-tv.de/927005.html

Due to these rainfalls, a pipe burst and a lot of oil entered a swamp in the Amazonas region and finally reached a river people used to drink from and fish in. Also other rivers robbed several families of their houses and therefore their whole existence. Like this family with 6 children, the father earning USD 40 (!) every week to feed 8 people (I would like seeing us all living on that amount of money..I know Ecuador is cheap, I have lived there, but that, believe me, is little money especially for 8 mouths
http://www2.elcomercio.com/noticiaEC.asp?id_noticia=174554&id_seccion=10

But most of all I am scared because of the recent incident with Colombia. Colombian forces shot 16 members of the Farc rebels, including number 2 (senior commander) Raul Reyes. Even though some people claim that his death is a drawback for the liberation of the hostages, including the former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, this is not the big problem. The Colombian forces however had to shoot those Farc members on Ecuadorian ground and that is where all the trouble originates. Here is a small BBC video about it http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7270000/newsid_7276200/7276291.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&asb=1&news=1&ms3=54&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=2

The Ecuadorian president ordered already some 6000 men to the Columbian border, with a back up of Chavez, sending his troops to the Colombian border on the North of the country. Although the other Southamerican nations like Brazil, Peru, Argentina and Chile as well as Mexico and the UN are trying to step in and find a peaceful solution, this is a highly dangerous situation. The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said that South-America is not prepared for such a conflict and that no one wants a war because the region needs peace in order to develop further. http://www.lahora.com.ec/frontEnd/main.php?idSeccion=689884

Well I really hope that there will be no fighting and that they can get back to being neighbours again. I really believe that Ecuador has other problems and does not need to follow some crazy ideas of the northern neighbour of Colombia...

With that little research I just wanted to point out that even if we claim our newspapers to be covering every part of the world, they hardly really do it. Just bits and pieces but not all.

Soundtrack of my last weekend: I'll be there for you

So no one told you life was gonna be this way
Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A.
It's like you're always stuck in second gear
When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even
your year, but

{Chorus}

I'll be there for you
When the rain starts to pour
I'll be there for you
Like I've been there before
I'll be there for you
'Cause you're there for me too

You're still in bed at ten and work began at eight
You've burned your breakfast so far, things are going great
Your mama warned you there'd be days like these
But she didn't tell you when the world has brought you down to your knees, and

{Chorus}

No one could ever know me
No one could ever see me
Since you're the only one who knows what it's like to be me
Someone to face the day with
Make it through all the best with
Someone who always laughs at
Even when I'm at my worst, I'm best with you
Yeah!

{Chorus}

I'll be there for you
I'll be there for you
I'll be there for you
'Cause you're there for me too

LOVE YOU ALL; MY FRIENDS!!!!!

Zendagi migzara (Life goes on)

Zendagi migzara is a saying from Afghanistan which means life goes on. I took it from the book "The Kite Runner" which I read a couple of weeks ago and which is now shown in the cinema (if you have the chance to read it, do so. No matter how good the movie is-it is supposed to be not bad- the book is better!). But the reason I chose this saying for the title is that it fits so very well. Life goes on. Life went on, but I didn’t blog about it. I am really sorry for that. I am trying to make it up a little with this post but I won’t be able to cover everything that happened or no one would make it to the end of the post before they fell asleep.

So to fill you in on what you missed out in my life:

I went back to Dublin in November to meet up with some of the girls. It was an hilarious trip although we kind of got off to a bad start by missing our plane due to the delayed Deutsche Bahn (yes you are right, we were really pleased about that…) but once we got there it was well worth all the trouble, time and money spent (or in some cases: wasted). The weather was really nice and it just felt TOO good to be back. It really felt like coming home in a weird way. To illustrate this I have to remind you that they drive on the “wrong” side of the road (at least for everybody not living in the UK or any previously owned country of the Kingdom including Ireland..). Anyway, to close a long story short, you normally have to watch out in order not to get run over by a car. The very same happened to us when we first got there, at the beginning of last year. However, being back after almost 6 months and not having spent one single day since then in one of those “wrong-sided” countries, we did NOT have to watch out now. We didn’t even notice that we weren’t paying attention. There was no need too. We all turned our heads unconsciously to the right side. It felt so natural. So I am curious to see how it will be the next time I will be back in Dublin, which is going to happen soon, at the end of March :-). I am really looking forward to that already.

Christmas and New Years Eve were a quiet time so I got to spend a lot of time with family and friends and really enjoyed it. It was good to catch up with friends, to talk to friends having returned from Singapore (for sure), Germany and France (temporarily) or heading off to the wrong-side of the road country UK. Those gatherings made me realise once more that neither time nor distance can destroy a good friendship once those bonds are strong. And I feel very privileged to experience those kinds of friendships. It is so nice to have you around guys, even if it is just for our annual New Years gathering. We may get older, but some things never change and I am so happy about it, love you heaps!

The new year brought the exam period (I got my results today and I passed all of my 11 exams except one and I didn’t need that one anyway so yeah!)and the necessity to start thinking of “the time after”. The time after means what am I going to do after having finished with my Bachelor. Do I go back to work or enjoy some more time being a student while doing my Master of Law at university? What about becoming a tax-expert? Or taking off to a new part of the world for an AIESEC internship (I developed an interest in both Pakistan/Afghanistan and Colombia very much to the dislike of my mother)? And what about those international PWC possibilities, Spain sounds not too bad neither…so yes, there are many options and that makes it even more difficult because I am not 22. So the answer can’t be which one first. It will have to be “either/or”. Which I don’t mind, but it keeps you thinking. And being me, I keep on changing “decisions”. I might be sure about one option and completely dislike it the other day, which makes it even harder. I tell you, sometimes it’s not easy being myself :-).

I am getting nearer to a “final” decision but nothing is sure so I won’t spill the beans yet.

So now my last semester started and with it my Bachelor thesis. I can’t believe it. It feels like yesterday when I joined the ZHW (now know as ZHAW) and AIESEC but that was now already 2.5 years ago. Time IS running. Faster than I do sometimes. But I am still hoping that I can catch up with it I promise, I will try!

Nothing to add ;-)

You're 50% Irish

You're probably less Irish than you think you are... But you're still more Irish than most.

How Irish Are You?

The privilege of birth

Lately I have been thinking increasingly about some facts we hardly ever consider: our privilege of birth!

I know this might sound random but think about if for a minute. Don’t you think that much of how your life will be is already decided before you’re even born? I am not saying that all is god-given and that we can not influence our lives or what becomes of us, but still…

My parents celebrated their 60th birthday some weeks ago and we made this huge party. It was a great success and everybody was happy. My parents wanted to “give something back” so we collected some money for the foundation I used to work in Ecuador back in 2005. As a preparation I wrote a little report about my experience, to tell people what it was like. And that made me think. Those children at the foundation are all cerebral handicapped, which means, that during the “process of birth” the brain got no or not enough air and its function is therefore limited (this explanation is really poor, I am sorry for that but I lack deeper knowledge). All of the children at this foundation needed a wheel-chair although some were able to walk at least a little without it. The level of their handicap varies greatly and the foundation therefore “divided” the children into three groups according to their ability. I do not want to go into too much detail here but I might write another post about that later on. It was an incredible experience for me to work with those children and also very rewarding.

However, there was also one thing that made me sad. Those children don’t have a future. Any future, to be more precisely. Unlike Western Europe, Ecuador has no possibility to integrate those children into its labour force. They most probably won’t be able to live an independent life and will live with their parents for all their life. This makes it also more difficult for their parents to work because they need to take care of their child. So “just” because they were born in Ecuador, they will never be able to live an independent life whereas if they had been born here there would be some organisation for them, they could live either alone or with some other handicapped people. Don’t you think that is not fair? What have we done to deserve the luck of being born in Western Europe? And do we at least acknowledge that and are happy about it? I would say most time we don’t. We don’t even think about it. We take all those opportunities for granted. We are so used to such luxury that we do not even recognise it anymore, left alone appreciate it.

But this example is not the only one. I also read a book of a Swiss woman named Lotti Latrous, married to a manager of Nestle. She lived a nice, luxurious life wherever they lived. But one that she wanted more, a meaning for her life and so she started working with children affected by AIDS in Abidjan (Ivory Coast). Some of those children were orphans, other had a dying mother. Slowly she opened up a hospital where they can live together with their mothers, get food and also education. She also runs an information service about AIDS and HIV or other health issues like nutrition and gives out medication (very often for free if people can’t pay). Furthermore there is medical centre where everybody can get a free consultation.

This book is very touching because it’s about somebody who enjoyed luxury and gave it up on purpose in order to “do some good”. “Do some good”, but not in a “I know everything better” way like many other people. I admire her for all she does and I am not sure if I would be strong enough to live her life. It is great to have people just like her and we really need them, currently maybe more than ever. But again, there was this nagging feeling. That somehow this is not right. AIDS can not be cured. At least not today. That is sadly also true for Western Europe. People die from AIDS also in Western Europe. But the WAY the die, and HOW FAST they die, that is a completely different story. And this leads me back to my first remark. The privilege of birth. Those two (quite extreme) stories illustrated hopefully what I mean by this. We can not change our privilege. But we could at least try to live up to it. To think about it and to acknowledge it. To be happy about what we have and to think about people with less privileges. At the very least THINK about them from time to time.

100 years of scouting and more to come

I know it was very quiet lately on my blog. I am sorry for that but there is not much to tell at the moment. I was working until Friday. Now my internship is over and I can enjoy some free time before I go back to University on the 17th. But my days are rather filled up already. There seems to be little time for dolce fa niente. But I am ok with that. It's not that quantity that's important, it's the quality .-).


So today I would like to share with you some thoughts about my oldest passion: Scouting! The youth organisation is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and it still is very young at heart ;-). Honestly. Scouting was the best part of my life for years after years. I joined when I was about 8 years old and spent every Saturday with it afterwards for more than ten years. Much more actually. But scouting was always more than just a hobby. It is where I met most of my oldest friends and we still love each other. It is where I learnt to cook, to knot, to build up a tent, to light a fire, to pond streams. It is where I first spent time apart from my parents at my first camps, where I first took over responsibility (by being a leader for the girls aged 5 to 12, for the Saturdays or during the camps), where I first got abroad without my parents (for a hike with the bike), where I first “possessed” a leadership role (as well as being a role model for the young ones) and it is my first international experience (in an international camp in Interlaken, Switzerland (2001), Iceland (2002) and Belgium (2003)).


But it is also where I first spent time with 24'000 people (and so far my only time). This was at the national camp of 1994. It was an incredible experience and I still often think about it. This camp will now be „reinvented“, so to speak. Next year there will be another national camp. It might not be as big as the last one but I am sure it will make as big an impression on the participants as it did to me back in 94. So now that you get to hear more and more about that camp I am more and more tempted to take part in it. To enjoy it all for the last time. To give something back to the organisation that formed me and is, at least this is my belief, responsible to a huge amount for making me the person that I am today. I am really tempted. I have not have given in but I might…given a good opportunity I really might. After all it is not that different to being part of AIESEC. There is actually just one difference. AIESEC is run by students for students with the purpose of a career or at least a good preparation for a good career whereas scouting is run by teenagers mostly for kids. I took over my first group at Christmas 94. So I was still very young but I loved it. I just did, what I had to do. I didn’t think too much. I was not thinking of a strategy, there was no year-plan that we worked hard on but many tools which are much simpler but have the same effect. It is really amazing how well it always worked just by enjoying what you did. This is maybe the biggest difference to us doing something as adults. Sometimes we try really hard and put a lot of time in effort in something. But if we would just follow our heart we might even get a better result, without too much thinking and planning.


But maybe I get carried away here . Anyway I just like to thank all those great people out there who made it possible for me to get such a great scouting experience. Thank you B.P. (founder of scouting) for that idea! My childhood would not have been the same without it.


For those of you who have no clue what I am talking about I am sorry. I am sorry, not because you think that I must be crazy, but sorry because you really missed something. And this can not be experienced now. That is gone, forever. All the others who know what I am talking about, smile and enjoy the videos.

Amen ;-)

I just knew it :)

Some things on the internet are just too random! Like the test I just did: "Who's your inner European"?

Guess what, yes you were right, I am not Swiss, of course not, I am IRISH!!!! :-)) This is really so funny, I am still laughing ( I know, it doesn't take a lot today..)

Here the link, if you want to try as well...but watch out, you might be English and then I won't talk to you anymore ;-)

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous! You drink everyone under the table.

Who's Your Inner European?