Salutations!

TIG has asked me to help work on the ‘Understanding’ section of the site. I was and am still excited to work with the section, because I feel it is an important area of TIG that can help open minds and lead to answers and yet also form new questions we have not yet asked ourselves.

However, in trying to revise the summaries of ‘Understanding’, in thinking about how ‘Understanding’ can be more effective, more educational and mind opening, I realized there was a key component: I should not be trying to rewrite some of these sections by myself. I need the perspectives of people from around the world to write ideas that are trying to help people gain an understanding who are FROM other places in the world.

So I need your help. Any TIG members who are interested in any particular section of ‘Understanding’ or just enjoy researching information or sharing perspectives and history from their regions and cultures to help provide a more culture-inclusive site, please let me know!

Email me at miken@TakingITGlobal.org

Also… if I receive many responses, I will setup a TIG group so we can work more openly.

- Jedimike

Here is a statue/building in old Quebec taken at night. I opted not to read the instructions to my digital camera, so im still larning how to use features, like features at night. But this is progress over the ones i took of Berkeley a few months ago....

I'll post a couple more (maybe), and just might submit a few to the global gallery. This one's probably boring, but oh well, its a closer shot so you can actually tell its me and Lan Anh... unlike the notre dame photo. We're standing outside the hotel room...yay.

I swear once the TIG technology team figures out how to make updates by emailing them i'd actually update more. Well I say that now...

I am volunteering at the TIG office for another week, missing the first week of school - which is fun but sort of nerve racking considering i have 2 language classes and those are pretty intense at Cal... not to mention I've already missed my first quiz in a neural science class. Eh, i'll just have to work hard and there is nothing wrong with that.

So I was wandering around Toronto with Lan Anh, looking for lunch and I was thinking to myself how much of an impatient person i can be. I often dream big and then when i think about implimenting a project that seems small, I don't have the... motivation perhaps... to really work on it. Like I have this feeling 'its not 'big' or important enough'. But that just shows a lack of... patience and readiness to take small steps. That's troubling to me. But I guess I recognize it. I just want to be able to 'master' something, or feel successful at something other than organizing protests or speaking here and there. I'd like to be able to work on a project and say 'I did this, and i did it well' and have it be.. sustainable. Something i helped create. I don't feel like I've done that. And the (perhaps silly) part is that I feel like I'm 'loosing my years' - as if 21 is to old to be successful as a young person. But maybe my problem is how I define success, organize my time and find my motivation.

Well, recognizing something I want to change is important. Doing something about it is harder.

On a lighter note, I spent a wonderful week driving around Quebec in Quebec city and montreal, with Lan Anh... neither of us had been to either before so it was certianly an interesting experience. Especially because neither of us has a french vocabulary beyond 20 or so words. Parles vouz Anglais? The picture is of Lan Anh and I outside of the Notre Dame in Montreal...

-- jedimike