Day 3 …
Posted by: Fats in: Mga Pulong atbp > Takaw at Sursur! > Edward fans clubDecember 3, 2006 - day 3 in Brisbane and the day of the MAAP Symposium. The night before I finished writing comment/notes for my presentation, and hoped to rest early but it was impossible; my mind was still running about. I guess it was nearly 5AM when I managed to doze off. Past 8AM, Hwee Koon, MAAP’s exhibition support, rang - which was really a relief since I really needed to get up despite not getting enough sleep!
It was a wonderful surprise to have Hwee Koon come over (she’d be up and about as early as 6AM!). We just talked and talked and talked. Then around 10AM I took a quick shower and asked Hwee Koon if we could go look for a supermarket (I wanted to buy some food stuffs for family 
). There was Coles along Queens Street, afterwards, we headed back to the hotel to drop off the groceries then headed off again to Queens Street foodcourt for lunch. Then we were off to Queensland State Library for the Symposium.
The Symposium was a wonderful opportunity to finally meet a number if people I’ve (virtually) known through my work from several years back. It was also the chance to meet new people who shared similar interests: there were some really good folks from Creative Commons Australia, RMIT in Melbourne, the State Library of Queensland and Brisbane Performing Arts.
My presentation for the Symposium may be accessed through the Korakora Main Website.
However, it seems that I have “forgotten” so much of my past work. I realized this after Julianne asked about my work and I started to talk about work that I have been developing for the past two years, when I could’ve talked about work that I have already done since 1999…
After the Symposium, it started to rain, a real downpour! I was told that it has been a long time since Brisbane has had such downpour (water restrictions are at level 4)… It was quite nice, the smell of rain.
Dinner was at a really good Indian restaurant - there were 16 of us, mostly people who were also at the Symposium. A really wonderful group of people …
Then hitched a ride back to the hotel with Julianne and Kath. Tomorrow, I’d have to check-out in the morning (since I was booked only for 3 nights, hotels being full because of some cricket event!) and check-in the other hotel (Sofitel) just across the street where Hwee Koon was staying.
November 16, 2006 - day 3 in General Santos City was a good rest after the Kuro and then off to Durian Garden in Polomolok with Cecile and Alma. Polomolok looked a really beautiful place although quite troubling to see so much agricultural land being used by large multinationals like Dole, DuPont and such… and the discussion over lunch about how the indigenous peoples communties were being destroyed and corrupted by foreign mining and its “benefits” like education and money.
Between Brisbane and GenSan, I felt how superficial our economic, social and cultural sovereignty was, although we do have so much richness in our communities … somehow, these were being taken away from us, commodified and perhaps we have reached a point wherein there is really not much choice anymore but to surrender our lands, our lives, our minds to the service of foreign interests ….
Ah, for the moment, I would just like to be happy to see Edward’s passport ….
