Learning journal 2

 

Despite having difficulties or challenges adjusting to a new academic culture and environment, as a newly arrived international student I also needed to find out a number of social, political and economical situations, structures, cultures and histories of Australia in order to understand what community I will be living and studying in over the next two years. What “Community” and “Community Natural Resource Management” means in Australian context? But reading chapter 4 of ‘Collaborative Forest Management: Review’ (Petheram, J. et al, 2002) and lectures presented this week gave me an overview of Participatory Management of Natural Resources in Australia and approaches and techniques in CNRM.

The reason I selected the reading for this week is that I believe Australia as a developed and multicultural society, with an enormous amount of natural resources, (including coal) has much either success or failure stories in CNRM and can be learned by studying CNRM subject. Of course, a broad range of techniques, approaches, tools, principles and practices have been implemented or taken in both in developing and developed countries around the world was expected to be learned in this subject.

To continue

Back to blogging

Hi there, I am back to blogging after a long break.

I will try to post as regularly as possible.

Here is a new page just created, where my reflections and thoughts will be posted.
Reflections and thoughts

Cheers,

Being Twenty-Something

A friend posted this in one of her blogs.

Just wanna share this to all of you.

I can so much relate to this: "You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!"

So lets just celebrate what's right with the Being Twenty-Something
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Being Twenty-Something

They call it the "Quarter-life Crisis". It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now. You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones.

What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you. You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward. You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. One night stands and random hook-ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.

You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender! What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

For People Who Love Their Jobs More Than Their Lives

For People Who Love Their Jobs More Than Their Lives
Quotation by Dr.Bob Jones, Sr.

"BUT WHAT THEN, SENOR?"

An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna.

The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, "Only a little while, Senor."

The American then asked, "Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish?" The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs. The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my
children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, Senor."

The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution.
You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But Senor, how long will this all take?"

To which the American replied, "15-20 years."

"But what then, Senor?"

The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."

Millions, Senor? Then what?"

The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

"You mean being a Harvard MBA, you have to go through all that to finally get to where I already am, Senor?"

Mongolia's misery

The world needs to wake up to the macabre reality of poverty in Mongolia, writes DAMIEN DAWSON.

For the past six months I have been filming a documentary covering human trafficking and poverty in Mongolia.

Last month, my cameraman and I walked into the Ger districts that are scattered across the hillsides of the capital city of Ulaanbaatar and that house more than 80 per cent of the capital's inhabitants.

The districts, named for the traditional Mongolian dwellings that are built with whatever the occupants can find or afford to use, have stood on the hills for so long that shops have sprung up among them in a manner like the shanties of Brazil and Indonesia.

In winter, the temperature falls to minus 25deg. These communities do not have running water or sanitation. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people share pit toilets and wells. The infant mortality rate in this country of just over 2.6 million is 13%.

But among those struggling to live there and in many other places around the country, a terrible secret is being kept.

The hills around Ulan Bator are home to the poorest people in Mongolia and are also the sites of cemeteries, where the bodies of the young and old rest. But the dead are not at rest, nor are they being respected.

For more information: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4250766a12935.html

Mongolian milk for health and wealth

Mongolia, 14 Mar 2007 -- When a country makes the dramatic shift from a state-run economy to one driven by market forces, the transformation is often jarring. Jobs can disappear, populations become displaced and entire industries collapse.During the 1990s, Mongolia underwent such a shift. Many of the changes were painful, and one industry that was nearly destroyed was the dairy industry. That spelled disaster for two reasons. First, Mongolia is a nation of herders and farmers; 42 percent of its people earn their living in this manner, and many of the country’s 2.6 million population depend upon milk and dairy production for their livelihoods. “Milk is sacred in Mongolia,’’ says Dendev Terbishdagva, Minister of Food and Agriculture. Second, lack of dairy products, and milk in particular, contributed to under-nutrition among 25 percent of the country’s children, and a drop in nutrition among a growing population of vulnerable, low-income people.

More information at:
http://www.fao.org/world/regional/rap/highlights_detail.asp?event_id=36094

World Heritage-Mongolia

Properties inscribed on the World Heritage List

Cultural

• Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape (2004)
  

Natural

• Uvs Nuur Basin (2003)
  

Properties submitted on the Tentative List
Tsagaan salaa rock painting (1996)
Khoit tsenkher cave rock painting (1996)
Mongolia Sacred Mountains: Bogd Khan, Burkhan Khaldun, Otgon Tenger (1996)
Khovsgol lake Tsaatan Shamanistic Landscape (1996)
Gobi Gurvansaikhan Desert Fossil (1996)
Great Gobi Desert (1996)
Amarbayasgalant monastery and sacred cultural landscape (1996)

News
Apr 4, 2005Paper Series N°12 "The State of World Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region (2003)"

For more information:

http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/mn/