New Beginnings (with video!)

In case you're wondering, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth yet!

I've just been lazy with updating this blog. Life's been busy on many fronts - still doing a lot of thinking (about old and new things!), re-adjusting to life in London (which now includes the wanderer-turned-writer boyfriend), finding my feet in development, moving to an absolutely lovely area called Canada Water... but there's still no excuse.

Cebu II and III are coming, I just don't quite know when! In the meantime please do watch the video I've made using some video clips and photos I took in Cebu (see further below). If you're interested in helping the street children charity, please let me know or go to their website www.christforasia.info.

A quick update on where I am on this blackberryless journey:

Since mid April I've been temping at an international development consultancy in Victoria, London. Funny how I used to think temping is a really strange concept, and probably only for people who "didn't make it", but now I think it's actually quite a good thing to do, especially if you're trying a few things out or you're building what Richard Nelson Bolles (and others I'm sure) calls a "portfolio career" (where basically you set out to collect the skills you think you will need for your ultimate career). Interesting how my perspectives change as I job hunt! The international development consultancy is a firm of consultants who advise government agencies and sometimes NGOs in their development programmes / policies / projects, and are a lovely bunch of people who are trying to make a difference in their own way! I was a bit taken aback at how relaxed and chilled out everyone is here (and they actually like what they do).

Rather miraculously, at the end of May, I managed to get an interview with my top favourite NGO of all times, Tearfund (www.tearfund.org), to get registered on their temporary register. I wasn't too sure how I could get into the organisation without having quite a lot of the technical specs that they normally ask for, so I thought why not try temping first? When I went for my interview there happened to be a job going in the International HR Team so I interviewed for that and in less than 3 hours they offered me the job!! I was probably a bit in shock for a week after that, but very excited and grateful to get a chance to see how Tearfund works from the inside and also get another bit of my foot through the door of development! I think HR is not exactly my thing (what is my thing??), but I'm interested in what they do (esp because the team deals a lot with the overseas based Relief and Development Team) and this will be a really good opportunity to learn and acquire more skills / know how in the field.

The only down side (and seriously it's the ONLY down side) is Tearfund is based in a place called Teddington which I had never heard of previously and according to Transport for London it's in Zone 6!

Gone will be the days when I wake up at 8am to go to work.

Yes I know I'm very spoiled...

Anyway, so this is a new exciting chapter for me, and as a friend was asking the other day, I'm still going to be blackberryless for a while :)

Here's the video.


Cebu 2008 from Christine Liu on Vimeo.