It's time to celebrate Mashramani! First of all, soundtrack to this post can be found here. Open another tab and have a listen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTQEBSNlyro Mashramani - 'the celebration after hard work' - quite literally the 'work hard - play hard' festival. It is Guyana's Republic day, and much like other countries in central and South America, it is celebrated with parades, floats, dancing, costume and calypso competitions which end with the crowning of a king or queen for a year. And so I've been listening to Guyanese music, which has been really cool. My favourite is the like above - which just sings about the beauty of Guyana... and makes me really want to visit. Guyana you have been added to the list - there isn't a top of the list, but if there were, you'd ... read more

International Mother Language Day (towards sustainable futures through multilingual education) .... is a bit of a mouthful, but I like the idea of UNESCOs day. The idea for Mother language day is for all people to access education in their mother tongue and other languages, that local languages transmit cultures, values and traditional knowledge, and are important in sustainable futures... though I'm not sure what 'sustainable futures' are. I do know from studying other languages that there are words that are untranslatable, and concepts that don't exist in English. On the other hand, English has considerably more words than other languages and has incredible detail in almost insignificant differences. The difference between freedom and liberty, for example. In many languages there is only one word, yet lacks words for concepts such as Spanish 'ganas' or Russian ... read more

Sunday was Turmenistan's Flag Day. The Turkmen flag is a pretty cool flag (see photo). I like the red bit down the side - somewhat more detailed than the majority of flags. The Turkmen flag was created in 1991 after the fall of communism (prior to this the flag had looked more or less like every other Soviet flag - albeit with a blue line across it). The Turkmen have definitely gone in the world with regards to their flag. The white cresent represents Islam, the five regions have a star each and the red patterns represent the carpet industry and each of the patterns represents one of the major tribes (Tekke, Yomud, Saryq, Choudur and Ersary). In Ashgabat, the captial city of Turkmenistan, there stands the 5th (possibly 6th) tallest flag pole in the world. ... read more

I was finding it very difficult to find a celebration that falls today. There are a couple - Random Act of Kindness Day and Kosovan Independence Day to name a few. I wasn't sure how to celebrate either of those. I like to think that I am kind every day, and will do kind things because that's what I do, I'm not sure how I could 'randomise' that. But, at lunch time today as I was about to google Kosovan culture and independence, a colleague of mine placed this pineapple on my desk. I haven't worked at this place long, in fact I've been doing this Resolution longer, but today marked the end of my formal training and to celebrate this and welcome me into my new team I was given this pineapple, a tradition at ... read more

Sorry for the week or so of not blogging, rest assured I have been celebrating in the mean time and now that I've got internet, I shall get back to daily blogging from today (and also be typing up notes from the missing days). But for now, today. Starting with the death of Buddha. Parinirvana is celebrated by Buddhists who remember the death of Buddha and think about their own mortality. I attempted meditation - I am not good at it. For starters, the guided meditations I tried annoyed me almost instantly - the soft voices speaking very, very slowly. So I learnt to breathe from a Buddhist monk's youtube video (proof the internet has everything). I read the rest of 'Introduction to Buddhism' that I began on Friday. Describing the life and death of Buddha. ... read more