It's been a while since the last post I know. I also know why previous MSLS classes have called it "dark November": sun barely showing up every day, plus we're barely outside because we have so much work to do...
Since early November we had a blast none-the-less: Movember was a major highlight; this group of fine gentlemen grew a moustache for raising awareness and money for prostate cancer research:
Some of the so-called 'Mo bros' even kept their moustaches into december; mine lasted a week in that period until I rediscovered my face, which probably wasn't too bad after this:
I hope you won't have too many nightmares tonight. Anyhow, it was quite entertaining, and big up for Kristina (see the 1st photo above) for being our Mo-Sista - drawing a moustache on her face every day of the month. Crazy!
The snow arrived a few weeks back (can't believe it's mid-December now), I was going to post very shortly after taking pictures, but did get around to it. On the first day I was so stoked about it, everything was white!! Meaning more luminosity which is good. Being a tropical dude I'm currently fighting day to day with the images of blue lagoons and mango trees floating around in my head. So be it, at least the white Christmas is guaranteed!! - yes it is my first snow experience ever, obviously some people are not so excited:
Some more photos of snowed-on Karlskrona in this album:
We also had an excellent Thanks-Giving diner party, organised by our American colleagues. It was awesome to have this experience here in Sweden, with American traditional dishes, a very multicultural crowd who shared thanks, songs and the like in Hebrew, Spanish, Russian, an Indian language I need to ask the name of, Mandarin, Maurician Creol and others. Stoked!
Onto the work I was talking about, we had a Strategic Management towards Sustainability (STM) project to carry out with a company, in groups of 4 or 5. My group worked with a local ship-builder here in Karlskrona: Kockums AB: http://www.kockums.se/en/
The idea was to help the company move towards fully sustainability (which I will precisely define soon - in another post). We only had about 5 weeks for this assignment so we focused on a pilot project, a specific boat line designed for offshore wind-farm support. The environmental manager, composite department manager and project team members greatly helped us to conduct a thorough assessment of their performance and guide them towards sustainability. They were very happy with our work and will carry the strategic plan further - I might create a page about this as a case study. Here is our team before our final presentation today: from right to left: Reed Evans, Isabella Wagner and Ricardo Garcia - workoholics!!
We had other assignments within other groups, on specific topics within the field of social technology for (societal) change. They were all highly interesting so I'll try to make a post about these later).
Thesis is around the corner as well, Natalie Mebane (USA/Trinidad and Tobago), Gabriela Boscio (Puerto Rico) and I have formed a group and are refining ideas for research in sustainability in small island nations, with flexibility in application to other countries. It's quite exciting to get our minds into this new challenge right now and a few things are in motion - will keep you posted.
I'll close this post with an animation made by 3 of our colleagues: Maja Zidov (Serbia/New Zealand), fellow Mauritian: Jovin Hurry, and Andrew Campbell (UK/South Africa). It is for a competition entry to the Hub Zurich Fellowship Program, which is aimed at supporting social entrepreneurs (more details here: http://www.mladiinfo.com/2010/11/18/hub-zurich-fellowship-program-switzerland/). Really cool stuff and the results of some sleepless nights' worth of work:
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