Two weeks ago today, literally hours after Riza had been swapping messages with our good friend Ian Calvert, we learned of his tragic death in a car accident. Among that confusing mix of emotions that comes with the sudden passing of someone you’ve known and loved for a long time, I sat down to write the following tribute.
One of my earliest memories was when I was a page boy at my cousin Wendy’s wedding. I was 4 years old, and I clearly remember getting excited as the preparation for the wedding came together. I remember my ‘uniform’ of blue velvet trousers, white shirt, bow tie and black patent leather shoes with silver buckles.
It’s official. I’ve become more than a little obsessed with my family tree. I first tried to dig into my family’s past in the mid-1970’s, when I spent the summer holidays staying with my brothers in London.
For anyone who grew up in the UK in the 1960’s, weekly comics like ‘Beano’ and ‘Topper’ were a big part of your life. You’d wait all week for them, and then when they dropped through the letterbox on Saturday mornings, you’d read them all too quickly. My favorites were always the large format summer editions.
In 2012, I spent 3 months at Sias University in Henan Province, China. I was teaching leadership to young women, as part of the World Academy for the Future of Women. While I was there, I tried to experience as many new things as possible.
… I might be wrong, but I think that there’s a chance that could have just been my tasty treat before bedtime. If it wasn’t a crunchy frog (and knowing that it wasn’t anything that had ever had anything remotely like wings to flap), I probably don’t want to ask too many questions or make too many guesses as to what it was, just in case I don’t like the answer. How it started was that I taught class tonight from 7pm until 9pm. I was busy putting the finishing touches to my charts befoe that, and so I didn’t…
After a long and hectic week here on the Sias campus, yesterday (Sunday) really was a day of rest. I decided not to set an alarm, and so just woke naturally around 8:15 or so. I’ve been reading ‘The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared’ for the last week or so, and so I decided to stay in bed until I finished it. I had agreed to meet with the World Academy Media team at 10am, and so I picked up breakfast on the run, and headed over to the Administration team. There were too many of us…
I feel that I owe everyone an apology for taking so long to add this second part of my post. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to sit down and document my adventures. It’s just that I’ve been so incredibly busy. I’m teaching a 2 hour leadership class every evening, and as I didn’t get the curriculum outline until a few days after I arrived in China, I’m creating and delivering seminars almost in real time. At least no-one can say that my material isn’t fresh! One of the things that I’m really enjoying is that my students are just…
It seems that I’ve finally worked through the last of the flu-like symptoms (aches, chills, sore throat, cough, etc.) and although I had another bad night’s sleep, I woke up feeling much better and ready to face the world. I’d arranged to meet with Selia for breakfast at 7am, but when I got to our pre-arranged meeting spot, she wasn’t there. I checked my phone, and found a text from her saying that she’d not been feeling too well, and requesting to take a rain check on breakfast. Usually if I’m venturing off campus for breakfast, I tend to have…
After 30+ hours of travel, I arrived back in China on Saturday morning, ready to begin my 5 week stint as a Facilitator with the World Academy for the Future of Women. Leaving the US at nighttime made for a surreal travel experience (I usually take morning flights when I’m traveling to this part of the world), as it was dark outside for almost the entire journey. The day before I left I’d started coming down with one of those achy joints / sore throat / raspy voice sort of colds, so the changes in air pressure made things challenging….