Tina's wanderings around the world

The departure from Sydney is quickly nearing. Less than two weeks before we are on the plane to Bangkok and this time will be gone before we know it. This part, the part right before you leave when you're saying goodbye to friends--this is the absolute hardest part. I hate goodbyes. No doubt that anyone reading this I've had to say goodbye to for a very long period, so you might be aware that when I say goodbye I try to detach. I don't really want to face the fact that I won't see you for an unspecified period of time. In fact, I really don't even want to write about this much because this is turning out to be harder than I thought and I want to zone out and watch a few episodes of New Girl to take my mind away from the fact that I'm saying goodbye to people every single day. So of course this aversion means that it's probably best for my own personal growth to just get on with it and do it anyway. It's usually the things I try to avoid or am really af...

30 th birthday. A landmark. What to do? We were in Europe until a week before my birthday and there was no time and head space to actually come up with a great idea for celebrating. I’m not a big drinker so didn’t really want to have a big night out (what fun is it being around a bunch of drunk people on your birthday? J ). Dinner? The best place I could come up with was the place we’d just celebrated Marcus’s 29 th . Bowling? No. Laser tag? Although awesome on How I Met Your Mother, I did this (along with dinner) two years ago and it took too much coordination. People aren’t on time, they flake...too much effort. Too much effort! So as Marcus and I were sitting in Versailles, having a cheesey, winey wonderful lunch in the gardens on our last day in Paris, I thought, maybe we should go to brunch. I love brunch! It’s my favorite meal. Let’s make brunch plans. There’s a hugely popular brunch place just around the corner from our place but we’ve never gone because the prices are a ...

As I sat on a train going from Geneva to Zurich, I tried to let the thoughts swarming around in my head have an outlet into written words. I'm not re-reading back through this so and I don't exactly remember what I wrote anymore. I do remember that it's raw and uncut. As my writing tends to be anyway. Here goes. Thoughts on the CRR’s 2013 Geneva Internship ·          It was an invaluable experience to be able to attend the UNHCR Annual Consultation Meetings to understand how advocacy and partnership takes place between NGOs and UNHCR, which is perhaps a reflection of how this relationship would look with other international and UN bodies. Though I knew in theory that asking questions was the predominant form of advocacy at these meetings, I was still surprised that this is the main way in which advocacy takes place. Having to form your issues into a question, decide what you’re asking for/about. Being very specific about what kind of outco...

Well, with the coming of a new year, I always like to reflect on the past year. I suppose I should really focus on the last decade as that’s the big landmark, but since I’ve only had three decades, it’s a bit too much. I’ll stick to the year. Without exaggerating, I think I can safely say that 29 has been the biggest year of my life. First let’s talk travel. This last year I have visited six of the seven continents. Sorry North America, it’s a bit of a slap in the face that you’re the one continent I didn’t visit but it also makes sense—I’m coming home to you soon. So why would I do a pre-emptive visit when I’ve still got so much of the world to see? When we made the decision to stay for another year, we decided to get as much out of Marcus’s flight benefits as possible, and we have certainly taken huge advantage of them. We were calculating the other day that including the first-class, business and premium economy flights we’ve had, we’ve probably saved well over $50,000 in fl...