My Photo Diary: December 2007

Monday, December 24, 2007

The Journey of the Five Travellers ('Les Cinq Voyageurs')

Now that so many people have asked me: These pictures are from the 'Tokyo International Students Summit' organised by the University of Tokyo's International Relations Institution of Students. The event was organised to mark the 130th anniversary of the university. The purpose of the whole summit was to design a proposal for the Ministry of Education in Japan. The proposal should suggest a method for educational systems to foster leadership in the future generations. 15 students from outside Japan joined 10 students from the University of Tokyo in this international brainstorming session. The 25 students were divided into groups of 5 each. Each group had to design a proposal. More about our innovative proposal later.

Photos: Rajib Ranjan Borah, Marcin Lapczynski, Shoei Kurokawa, Veronika Bordas

Les Cinq Voyageurs:
Rajib Ranjan Borah
Hideyuki Furuta
Nguyen Than Loah
Petr Matous
James McDaid

The team naming exercise

Team Building Exercise - treasure hunt to Tokyo Tower

Team trip to Roppongi Hills with Kazuma

Dear James and Petr, sorry for not being able to include you in the photograph.

This is where it all started - The Coherence Core Model

It is connectedness and not connectness - excuse the spelling mistake

We even had 'origami' to highlight the changing scenarios worldwide.

The existing notions ...

... unfolding into the current scenario.

Brainstorming and refining the model

The final presentation - 'Listening to Voices'.
Leadership from the voiceless

Leadership from the voiceless - learning from the indigenous, the local communities and from the impoverished

We had a discussion about our dresses. I just realised that there should have been no debate about the best dress at all - after all my neck-tie colors matched those of one of the background images

Awaiting questions

The winning moment - the reason for all the sleepless nights

Friday, December 21, 2007

Secret of a Healthy Nation - a Good 'Diet'

Along this road, there is one tree for each region in Japan.

For those of you who are not aware - The 'Diet' is the national Parliament of Japan

I watched 'Porn' in Bangkok

Note her name tag. I guess she is very popular with the tourists for all wrong reasons. I was taking her photograph from a distance, but despite using the 'zoom', I guess she caught me taking her snap - and obliged with a smile

Sado - The Japanese Tea Ceremony

"The tea ceremony requires years of training and practice . . . yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible." - Patrick Lafcadio Hearn