This is a collection of different notes taken from my trip. The only time I had to write was before and after the conference since it was so busy. If you want to read my report, it's available at http://media.knet.ca/node/3238 and pictures at http://media.knet.ca/v/UNDP/

A lot of this is pretty boring I warn you. If you want some entertainment, read my wife's page at http://angiemorris.myknet.org

Dec 10

Airplanes - Flying Home
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Anyways, I'm writing this on a jet from Kota Kinabalu to Hong Kong. I just finished meeting a group of extraordinary people with many purposes and things in common. Primarily
among them how we can benefit our own peoples using this same technology that I'm writing on.

Lots of learning happened in both ways. I learned so much from all the people here and saw many directions that our own people can take.

Agriculture
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Many of the Asian communities are very self-reliant. They have their agriculture and combine the harvests of the jungle with their agriculture to create a healthy, varied, and delicious diet. Our hosts at the Labang Longhouse was David Labang and his sister Lucy Bolan. Before our first meal, Lucy said that they can't provide a fixed menu for us, their guests during the week. They could only offer us what the land and people
can bring to us that day. Outside of the longhouse, they had fish ponds where they stocked fresh fish. There was also many farms and rice paddys/fields where many fruits, vegetables, spices where grown.

When I see and experience this I want the same for our own people in our communities. Yes we still gather from the land but not enough to sustain us on a daily basis for our growing population. We need to find new solutions that come from us as a family, community, people, and nation which doesn't entirely rely on what the outside world can shove to us.

Many of the easiest choices that are brought into our communities are unhealthy, quick fix consumptions that destroy us in the long run. If we are going to try to make ourselves healthier overall, we will have to sacrifice these "potato chip" solutions in favour of more beneficial, hard working options.

Agriculture and food options is what concerns me first since that is what we are feeding our bodies, then mind, emotions, and spirit.

Finance
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My second concern for self-reliance is our financial resources since that is what generates the material things our bodies rely on. We currently rely on the government to provide us with the funds and incomes that drive our economies. They money is pumped through our communities and then back out through the corporate system of the colonies. This money can be stored in our own financial system and be used to establish our own economic system. Just think of the millions of dollars each community passes through every day and week.

Outside banks and financial institutions take a bite out of each dollar which goes through their doors. We should establish our own Credit Union with all our Aboriginal Communities, Businesses, and Individuals as shareholders. We can take all this money being pumped into our communities and store it in a Credit Union.

When the government money eventually trickles down to nothing, we will have money to invest in worthwhile operations that benefit our communities instead of the corporate agenda of big outside companies. Already there is a void of financial services in our communities and companies like Northern are filling this void and making a profit out of our situation.

Dec 5 - Arriving in Miri, Malaysia
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Had a pleasant morning. The sun started rising at around 5:30. 6:00 I went downstairs to see if there was breakfast. Breakfast wasn't until 7 so I went for a morning walk. I picked a direction and went uphill. Nicely enough I walked straight to a local park that had lots of nice walkways and scenery. There was people out and doing their morning exercises and jogs in the park. One thing I noticed from all my travels is that people are very fashionable wherever you go. Myself I'm a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy, but it's time to bring out the khakis and polo shirts, lol. Anyways, the park was nice and there was an observation tower that I climbed up and got to see a nice view of the city. Lots of greenery everywhere. Lots of animals everywhere, birds chirping-singing, roosters cookooing in the morning and dogs barking here and there. The humidity is alot higher here and found myself sweating just from a morning walk. And this is the coldest part of the day too. I'll have to avoid going out during midday.

At 7 , the restaurant was open and I was the first one there for coffee and breakfast. It was simple, 1 egg, beans, sausage/weiner, and light toast. A couple of other guys came in and had their breakfast and started talking at the next table. I recognized their conversation on ICTs and the conference and joined them with coffee. Jianhua (Ayoe) is an Akha from China/Thailand . The Akha are indigenous to that area of Mainland Southeast Asia. Sanjay is Indian and works with and studies with the University of Hawaii . The discussions was mainly about the Akha and their language, writing system and culture. There was lots of talk about the diversity of the languages and the similarities between them all. Alot of the languages in Asia have a common core language or derivative. Sanjay says a lot of it comes from Sanskrit just as most European language are derived from Latin. He says that even Russian is very similar to Sanskrit in its grammar and some words. So it was an interesting conversation since there are so many languages in each country including the indigenous languages. The Akha have some similar problems to us in that they don't have a standardized writing system for their language and they kind of borrow the best parts of different writing systems and use it for their own. But this makes it difficult when they want to use computers and send emails and such. The same goes from syllabics in our area. Its hard to use syllabics on your computer without customizing it to work with syllabics properly. Very common language issues all around the globe.

A few other people joined us. There are 2 guys from Cambodia, Nyan and Sovann. There was one lady called Ruuka who works with UNDP and is from Indonesia. The last guy to join us was Stephanus from Indonesia. The pronunciation of names is alot harder to memorize here, even more so because it looks different from the way you spell them and read them phonetically.

So yeah, lots to grok and figure out our place here.