For a few nights last week, I let the mouse run free around the room. I just couldn’t be bothered to catch it. Once past midnight when the corridors were silent, it would come sneaking from the kitchen and slip under my door and start teasing me. I’d be sitting at my desk and it would make scampering noises from behind my desk, or when it was feeling brave, bolt across the room. It would exit my room as silently as it entered, the only thing signalling its departure being a brown dashing thing out of the corner of my eye. And then I’d stuff the gap under the door with old newspapers (always wondering why I didn’t do so sooner).

I decided I was being lenient enough. Last night, I laid the last of our sticky traps in my room, along one of its routes. It was having its fun playing around in my room when I went over to the guys’ rooms to sing Xiao happy birthday. I came back to a bunch of fur lying on the trap; it was stuck sideways, its tail tucked under the body, legs scrambling madly in the air, breathing heavily.

It’s times like that that I do not know what I should do… how to dispose of it… as humanely as possible. Well, in the end we did the necessary evil.

Xiao reported holes and nibbles in the loaf of bread on the dining room table. Unless my room mouse (christened Jeff[rina] for various reasons) has single-handedly colonised the entire flat, there might be more of its comrades lurking about…

So far in the Mus series:

Furry brown aliens (November 28th 2006)
Mus domesticus (November 24th 2006)
Two more caught (June 6th 2006)
Of mice and men (Sunday, June 4th 2006)

Thursday’s policy seminar was not the normal environmental policy- or social responsibility- type speak. It was on something a lot deeper… something more fundamental to the human mind and spirit. It was on “Cultivating Wisdom: a Christian response to climate change”:

Traditional Christian philosophical teaching has separated matter and spirit and privileged the spiritual perspective over the material. Is Christianity just the problem, or can it be part of the solution? Canon Lucy Winkett will reflect on the difference between knowledge and wisdom in the Christian tradition and suggest ways in which religion offers inspiration and the suggestion of a new paradigm.

At the risk of sounding disjointed, these were the main points she raised in her talk…

• In the pre-science world, religions dominated
• It was up to the religions to define the indefinable - love, life, grief, justice, and faith
• With the popularity of philosophical concepts… with Plato and Aristotle – there began a discovery of logic and the power of the human mind
• But it was still up to the religions to address the issues of life and death, to help us address the questions revolving around those matters, or to help us live with the questions themselves
• Wisdom is collective, and cannot be guarded or owned
• Where is the wisdom we’ve lost in knowledge, and where’s the knowledge we’ve lost in information?
• Our engagement with the heavens and the earth is different from before
• The power of human beings to destroy other human beings is a recent phenomena… who is the master?
• Fast progress and growth is all that matters in the modern world – has growth has no purpose other than growth itself?
• In times of great dangers and unknowns, we turned to religions for comfort, for in religions was knowledge and wisdom to be found
• Christians seek the wisdom to heal and be healed
• The Church now saying that pollution of the environment is a sin against God?
• Environmental disasters and changing times
• The concept of the covenant… the covenant made between God, and us, and every living creature that is with us, for all future generations – we are connected to every other living thing
• There lies a bond between the Creator and His creations (Genesis 9:12)… and now we are increasingly being reminded of that bond and the covenant
• A complacent view… that climate change is signalling the end times… if that is what we think, we are ignoring the bond
• Thus environmental protection and good stewardship is tasked upon every good Christian

It had its beginnings in a wager, when Vincent first jumped off the sinking ship that is Microsoft Windows. He landed on a little Ubuntu dinghy, and it was so comfortable there that the rest of us soon followed suit…

My battle-scarred veteran Fujitsu S2020 has been recommissioned in the form of a Linux OS. The tagline “Linux for human beings” does make it sound less intimidating… perhaps even attractive? Or it could be a marketing ploy, which I’m trusting enough to doubt. We’ll see.

I’m not feeling as confident as to go 100% (or 200%, now that I’m working with two laptops) Linux. Windows has its quirks and annoyances - my notebook has been suffering from lots of bugs and malicious software lately - but there’s something about it that makes you hang on. Like I remarked over the dinner table last night, the post-Linux operating efficiency of my computer will increase, but my individual productivity would most definitely decrease. It’s a short-term negative correlation, one that I don’t have the liberty of welcoming in the coming months.

Having been advised to read up a little on Sun Tzu’s Art of War beforehand, we knew full well to prepare for the challenges that Zen would be throwing at us this week in strategic law.

In negotiation skills training today, we took on the roles of traditional wives and husbands and tried to come to an agreement on how to divide up the household chores. My partner and I had nearly filed for a divorce towards the end! Whereas some couples preferred going all lovey-dovey and creative (I wasn’t being sneaky – they knew I was recording them in class!) and came to extremely inventive solutions. In another scenario we were to sell a truck – with many strings and conditions attached, so not so easy.

The final scenario was rather complicated. The brief was simple, too simple in fact, and I had to weave up fictional tales as I went along. I was a lawyer from an EC law firm, meeting a minister from ‘Holvenia’ to offer our legal services and negotiate a retainer fee. I didn’t have the information to come up with answers to the minister’s questions and so I had to create my own, all impromptu. Wasn’t helped by the fact that one of our colleagues sat in with a scoresheet in hand to observe and evaluate our performance in the negotiation process! That was by far one of the most uncomfortable situations I’ve found myself in since the course started when I was completely at a loss of what to say and how to proceed. Called for an adjournment – will continue tomorrow, and I’m not really looking forward to that.

Oh, there was a big fire near our building, in one of the apartments next to the Royal Albert Hall. Many firetrucks and ‘choppers came round… hope no-one’s hurt.

Took some time off LIMUN earlier on in the day to shoot the Chinese New Year celebrations in Leicester Square together with the PhotoSoc guys. A bit of an anti-climax… this year’s parade. It was over in a few minutes - Huh? What? That’s it?! and the crowd lining the parade route dispersed and joined the other crowds in Chinatown and Trafalgar Square. Man, it’s so packed that at some corners you’d be drifting (or be drifted off your feet?) along in the general direction where everyone else’s heading. The norm… lion and dragon dances, cultural dances, musical performances, and mostly non-Chinese participants and viewers. Many, many little kiddies. *vulture-eyed grin*

Lunched at Misato before which a great deal of time went into greeting my family and relatives with the traditional CNY well-wishings o’er the phone… all rather conveniently done with as they’re all gathered in Hong Kong now. Just wished I was back there too.

A crappy day for photography it was. Just a few negligible street shots. CNY gallery here.

Rushed back to South Ken to cover the LIMUN closing ceremony. Speeches, speeches and more speeches. Endless streams of words of thanks and appreciation to all involved. Prize and certificate presentations. Clap, clap, clap. And me… about to go zzz-ing. Dunno why I’m so tired and drained out… but exhausted I am. And no, like Yoda I do not intend to speak. I’m just in that spacing-out mode right now.

Dinner at Bayswater… again… CNY dinners never end?

Tomorrow, back to work and the project. I’m way behind my team-mates in terms of contributions and research done. Urgh, buck up, buck up!

Thank goodness I’m in the secretariat (or rather, half-arsed official photographer and pseudo-usher). I don’t know how the delegates manage. Three full days of debating, resolution-drafting, intellectual and political debates, and round-the-clock socialising. LIMUN’ll make real diplomats out of them yet.

As expected, there was the politicking. There were the power plays, the puppet plays, the pointing of fingers and all that. The grievances, negotiations, the little victories and displays of prowess. There was the fun, the uniqueness and the honour to be a part of the hosting team. The opening ceremony at Westminster, the dinner and boat party on the naval museum the HMS Belfast (they usually have erm, a boat… not a ship, and definitely not one of this calibre!), and the rest of everything else at Imperial.

Most photos are done; gallery version here.

Sir Kieran Prendergast, former UN Under-Secretary-General (Political Affairs) addresses the international delegation in the opening ceremony at Westminster Central Hall:

A question - how does one make a conference look exciting and dynamic? There’s not much room for creativity here… and when one of the challenges is to get as many faces as possible without making the shots all look too alike.

And I think I need to re-learn how to be less generous and stay away from tying myself down with obligations. Start being aggressive, and dictate terms.

First day, and I’m already tired. Maybe there’s another legitimate non-technical reason why guys still dominate the photography field, since trotting about with a dSLR and full kit does require a bit of physical stamina!

UN committees in session tomorrow, followed by a boat party on the HMS Belfast.

Again. Imperial is hosting. But 我冇眼睇…

LIMUN is here…

As is the Year of the Pig.

This’ll be a packed weekend.