This gallery contains 32 photos.
Here’s the evolution of my living room… When I first moved in, it looked like this… And here it is with all my furniture in… I wasn’t a fan of the wallpaper… And then I got rid of all the … Continue reading
For the sake of a rug, the sofa was lost.
Recently I found myself caught in the centre of a retail vortex, utterly unable to get out.
A year or so ago, I had my floors done downstairs, and replaced all that cat-piss stinking carpet with beautiful engineered oak, making the downstairs lovely and clean and cosy and inviting. However, having not actually lived in my house much over the last two years, what with being in the Philippines and Iraq, I hadn’t realised how much I would miss the warmth of carpets in the winter!
“That’s easily fixed”, thought I….. “I shall get a nice rug for the living room”.
I began the great online rug hunt, searching for the most perfect, the most fetching, the most reasonably-priced occasional rug that the internet could provide. Continue reading
I spent a week at a Global team meeting in Oxford, at which several things happened which made me laugh. Naturally I intend to give you the full blow-by-blow account…
First off we did a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) exercise, in which you answer a series of questions and then do some very complicated scoring to find out which 4 of 8 preferences you have.
The options are:
The basic premise of the MBTI is that we all have elements of all 8 personality traits – no-one is missing anything, but we each have a natural preference that we lean towards.
So, about 2 minutes after we added up our scores, and went on a coffee break, a colleague came up to me and said “Maya, I just need to know if your score says you’re an E or not, because if you’re not, then I will immediately doubt the entire scientific premise of this exercise.” Continue reading
(I drafted this a few weeks ago, but didn’t get around to posting it….)
Prepare yourselves people, it’s Friday afternoon and I’m climbing onto my soapbox….
One of my incredible colleagues has just come back from a few months living in the war zone that is now Yemen, and he reduced me to tears while describing the horrific war crimes and unbearable suffering of the people of Yemen at the moment. The entire country is teetering on the verge of a severe famine, even the war lords are begging for aid agencies to bring food, while cities and towns are battered daily by coalition air strikes sanctioned by the UN Security Council.
The British, American and many other governments are deeply implicated in this situation, the UK for example having signed an arms treaty promising not to sell weapons that are knowingly being used for war crimes, yet continuing to sell weapons to Saudi which we know are definitely being used in Yemen in illegal manouvres.
A country which relies on imports for 90% of it’s food is being deliberately and cruelly starved in a total blockade (air, sea and road) for the last 6 months. Again, this has been sanctioned by the UN Security Council members, including the UK and US.
To give you an example of some of the flagrant breaches of international humanitarian law happening there, the entire city of Sa’Dah was declared a military target and civilians were given less than 24 hours to evacuate. They informed the people that carpet-bombings were imminent by air-dropping flyers, and they started bombing before the deadline had even expired.
Elderly, sick, and disabled civilians were largely the ones who couldn’t get out in time, and the city was flattened by coalition bombs.
As many of you will know, I spent a year working in an orphanage in Nepal back in 2007-2008, as part of a volunteer exchange with ICYE-UK. For those of you that don’t know, have a look at my Nepal posts (of which there are MANY) for a flavour of my life in Nepal.
It was an incredible, and quite frankly life-defining experience for me, as it was the most rewarding thing I have ever done, and it changed my perspective on the world quite substantially. It was also what led me to re-define my life goals and change careers, so I definitely wouldn’t be where I am today if it hadn’t been for ICYE and Aishworya. It’s also where I got my Nepali name, and pseudonym, Maya.
I wanted to write a post about it for two reasons. Firstly, because I have just spent a bank holiday weekend at the ICYE-UK On-arrival camp, and secondly because the busy bees over at Aishworya have been doing some amazing work at improving the website and it looks amazing, and brought back a lot of memories. Continue reading
Ah dear dear me.
Once again, life gets busy, and Maya forgets to blog about what’s happening!
So many things to say, and so little time to blog about them all!
Luckily I drafted a few posts a while ago, so prepare for the onslaught of updates and ramblings, some funny, some serious….
One thing you learn to accept as an aid worker is that you are never going to have a small, or especially environmentally-friendly carbon footprint. There are just too many flights involved! Not only do I travel to far-flung and exotic places for work, and then generally want to take holidays around the general area of wherever you happen to be, but I also have family in the UK and Australia that I try to visit once in a while, and a lot of friends having fabulous destination weddings at the moment in places like Canada and France! I think 2015 might turn out to be a record-breaking year for me in terms of flights and travel, as I look back at everywhere I have been this year, and am simultaneously busy planning both work trips and holidays for the coming months. I’ve decided to map it out compared to last year, which was also quite travel-heavy….
2014: I can’t remember how many internal flights I did in the Philippines, but if I had to guess I’d say
Total countries visited in 2014: 5 (Philippines, UK, Australia, Thailand, Iraq)
2015:
Total countries visited in 2015: 8 (Iraq, Jordan, UK, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, Thailand)
Phew! What a lot of travelling!
It’s annoying me that I’ve only just thought of signing up for some frequent flyer air miles! Ah well, better late than never…
In honour of returning home (and due to the fact that my local swimming pool has now been shut down, meaning I have to hike all the way to Blackbird Leys now if I want to swim), I have finally taken the plunge and bought a bicycle!
Her name is Clarissa and she’s beautiful. She was 50% off in the student back-to-school sales, and she’s very ladylike – nice low bar, and a basket and everything!
She will now be accompanying me as I wobble about on Oxford’s roads – drivers beware!
Well, the funemployment was extremely short-lived!
I think I mentioned in a previous post that I was having a bit of a job dilemma, and after thinking long and hard about it, I decided to take the short-term gig in Oxford. It will be great for my CV (it’s an extremely well-respected NGO Consortium) and it’s only 4 months, plus it will give me a chance to see a bit more of my friends and family for a little while, and remind everyone what my face looks like etc.
It’s a really interesting job, and I’ll get to travel to Nicagarua and Burkina Faso for some learning events I’m organising on cash and livelihoods, as well as going to Madrid for some project meetings, and I’ll be recruiting and managing a bunch of consultants delivering various projects.
So, it’ll be nice to be home for a little while, and spend some time with my lovely cats, and I plan to go overseas again in January.
Another interesting and fun thing is that since I took this job, I have been asked to interview for at least 3 other jobs that I applied for, so it’s a relief to know I’ve reached a place in my career where I can relax and breathe a bit, and not have to worry too much about being unemployed! One major NGO wants to put me onto their register/roster of emergency people (I’ve so far done an HR interview, technical test and technical interview….) and another NGO I applied for a job with wanted an interview, but I said that I’d already taken a job and wouldn’t be free til January. They came back and said they might have found some short-term cover for the post if I was still interested in taking the job in January? So they might hold the job for me! However that one’s in Afghanistan, so I’m still mulling….
And then today yet another NGO wants to interview me for their roster! I’ve got so many interviews lined up I barely have time for my new job! AND this one wants to fly me to Norway for a face-to-face interview! Quick mini-break to Oslo here I come!
It’s nice to be back in the office, seeing lots of friendly faces and remembering all the little ups and downs of open-plan office environments. Should be fun!
Various things I did here and there, out and about, while on my funemployment break…
Firstly, when I arrived at Heathrow, some essential M&S shopping…. Mostly wine and cheese…
Back in my beloved, messy, disorganised bedroom…
Catching up on all my POST!
A space to share adoption stories that aren't always happy
One photographer's journey...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Had we but world enough and time... 