Modeling for a Cause

One Saturday afternoon, MAINS students were invited to participate in an event that promotes fair trade and one of the activities in the program was to "walk in the ramp" wearing the different t-shirt designs of an artist to promote social issues and raising money for their organization at the same time. It was fun doing that with the young Korean students during that one hour fashion show; as you can see activism now comes in many form.

hi

hi everyone,

the subtle light from my lampshade gives a relaxing mood to write this welcome note and the view from where i am sitting while writing is beautiful especially now that the trees are full of green leaves and big Chinese roses are asserting their existence in between those trees. though in the evening you can only just see the shapes and shadows of those trees, it is still a beautiful view.

today is the first day that i finally started to set up my blog spot. i have been thinking about setting up one in the last couple of months but i have to wait for my friend Badrul @ che'GuBard from Malaysia to walk me through in blog spot making. I must say this is too "techie" for me not withstanding the responsibility that comes with it. Will i be able to sustain it? or will it be my first and last posting!!!

anyhow, here i am trying it out and hopefully, i will be a real blogger one day.

for starters let me say that i expect a warm welcome message from you bloggers out there and a little encouragement is not difficult to make this new "project" work.

let me however share with you a poem which i think fits this welcome note. it is from a book of A Flute Player - Poems and Essays by C.D. Pi and translated to English by Lee Jae-ho

THIS MOMENT

What a splendid reality
that this moment
i am looking at the stars!

although sooner or later
my eyes will turn to dust,
what a dazzling reality,
that this moment
i am hearing the Ninth symphony!

although my friends forget me
and fade away in my memory,
what a pleasant reality,
that this moment
i am laughing and talking with them!

someday my brain will cease to function
and my hands go to decay
but even nothingness cannot destroy the reality
that this moment
i am writing as i please.

Regional Summer School

we are in a summer regional school for a week and its now our third day in this beautiful place called "Future in Us" in the country side of Gapyeong, Gyeonggi province.

our summer class is a little bizzare because it has been raining since the night we arrived here, but the whether cooperated yesterday evening during our barbeque party.

this regional school is intensive because we have 6 hours of classes everyday discussing about global democracy, resistance, human rights, alternatives and globalization.

there is simultaneous translation from english to hangul because this regional school is composed of MAINS students and other Korean activists.