Please note: this blog has been moved to sylwiapresley.com!
Thank you!
Please note: this blog has been moved to sylwiapresley.com!
Thank you!
Posted in FROM MY JOURNAL | 2 Comments »
Posted in ACTIVISM, GLOBAL VOICES | Tagged Amnesty International, GLOBAL VOICES, Iran, Sting | Leave a Comment »
Posted in COFFEE, PHOTOGRAPHY | Tagged photo of the day | Leave a Comment »
So, I started Twixtmas path and I must say I like the first bit. It actually matches the idea of re-thinking life towards the end of the year and does put me in the right mood. So today I:
-watched tv – enjoyed late night watching comedy shows;
-started meditating and planned my meditation area in the new flat;
-planned furniture for work from home (well, and some other cool stuff:));
-bought webhosting and spent rest of the evening browsing through WP themes to find one matching my ideas for next level of this blog (chatting to a friend, whos opinion on web design I really cherish).
Uff, first bit was easy, and pleasant, I must say!:)
Posted in FROM MY JOURNAL | Tagged twixtmas, twixtmas day 1 | Leave a Comment »
And to all my Global Voices friends:
Posted in EVENTS, FROM MY JOURNAL | Tagged animoto, Christmas, wishes | Leave a Comment »
Global Voices is celebrating its 5th year and I really cannot describe how much it means to me…
I think I managed to describe quite well the feeling of community Global Voices is when I got back from Cairo – maybe because while sitting on the plane I had time to think it over, I was inspired by people I just met and I had plenty of time to put it down on paper.
It’s December, it’s almost Christmas time here, in the UK and I am spending my time off work meditating last year in preparations for new one, which will bring new commitments and rather conscious shift in my career, as well as private life. I am spending my evenings with family, sipping hot tea, glancing at cold winder nights through the windows of my little flat all the time thinking: what has changed me so much!
No matter how hard I try to deny it, all my recent small, but crucial successes resulted from the shift in my perception of reality and my own self, and majority of those positive changes comes from working for and with Global Voices. You see we all have jobs, and if we are lucky our jobs not only provide us with means to live but also with satisfaction and development of our skills. Sometimes we tend to think that our free time should be committed to less serious actions, but I belong to those, who prefer to invest in their free time to learn more and to contribute to the communities. Hence why Global Voices has been a great learning curve for me – maybe not as such in writing or social media, but in values and in networking with people who share those values. By working together for no money at all, we build a community of dedicated, self-motivated individuals. None of us expects magic, however now and then something nice happens: one of us has a baby, gets married, travels to our part of the world and we get to meet! We share those moments and I am sure that others will agree: we cherish them as great memories!
For me personally all GV meet ups this year (Cairo, Amsterdam, London, Oxford, Skopje) reinforced in me pursuit of happiness. It’s exactly what I wrote: the inner need to achieve happier life, find my place in the world, with the type of people I respect and learn from – every single day!
Some of this years stories grabbed my attention and stayed at the back of my head: Gaza and Iranian election were great stories to see from a completely different angle – not only from the on-line coverage, but also from discussions and great support of the team on the mailing list. Recent Climate Change conference in Copenhagen took up majority of my attention in the fourth quarter of the year, as I strongly feel about this issue myself, and I am glad GVers were present there. Violence against women remains an issue I feel strongly about, not only due to my own experiences, but simply because of the scale of the problem globally and in the UK.
There is more work to come. There will be more intense, interesting, in depth reports on all current issues but also interesting articles about parts of the world I am not familiar with, and maybe do not hear about in the mainstream media. I am sure Global Voices will open my eyes to many more challenges, but for now I am trying to think back and measure how it affected my own life so far. And I must admit that one thing, something entirely unexpected has happened: it changed the way I see myself today! I clarified many questions about my own life and pushed me to act and improve the way I live.
You see, I am a geekette, but I do have few very traditional habits – like writing a journal. I have also two notebooks: one dedicated to write down all my ideas – regardless of the fact, that some of those might be crazy and unrealistic, another one is my dream book where I put dates against things I want to do in my life – at least once;)) This year many of my ideas and one of main dreams (my childhood dream actually!) became reality! I am not sure if I would be able to achieve it all without the inspiration of voices from Global Voices team.
One of my dreams for next year is for this project to grow in number and strength of the voice! And me, with my little life in full bloom of its renaissance, I hope I can contribute to the fulfilment of this dream myself;)
Hugs to all GVers on our 5th Birthday!
(btw, here and here you can find out what other GVers think of this anniversary;))
Posted in ACTIVISM, FROM MY JOURNAL, GLOBAL VOICES | Tagged ACTIVISM, Add new tag, Cairo, Climate change, Copenhagen, Environment, Global Voices Online, globalvoices, Mass media | 5 Comments »

Image by Tulio Bertorini, taken from Wikipedia.
Last Friday morning the sign ‘Arbeit Macht Frei‘ (‘Work Sets You Free’) was stolen from the gate of former Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, near Krakow. It was originally made [PL] by Polish prisoners of the camp led by Jan Liwacz and is considered one of the most significant symbols of the camp and artifacts of the museum. Its disappearance caused many speculations [PL], but also serious reactions from the Polish government, museum authorities, Jewish organisations and the public online.
On a forum thread dedicated to this issue, user Lestat is saying [PL]:
Now they will have an image of a Pole. They got caught by winter, so they are ready, for a bottle of wine, to sell for scrap the sign which is not only their cultural heritage, but also a symbol of suffering and horrible death.
Mishel is responding, stressing the seriousness of this act [PL]:
Who would have thought that one could steal from such a horrid place, where so many have been murdered. When I see Auschwitz camp, it gives me shivers… Those who stole it must be insane.
Kazimierz Maciejewski, on his blog, links this act to the recent discussions around Catholic crosses in public spaces, comparing the amount of conversations on both topics [PL]:
As we speak, we are witnessing the discussion about banning of symbols from places where the young generation of citizens is educated. Only a few expressed their opinions in favor of banning the cross.
MarkD, whose grandmother was murdered in Auschwitz, in his blog post presents a different opinion [PL]:
This sign is for me 1,000 times less important than the train track stolen by the poor, who this way wanted to secure their basic existence and caused pneumonia of the old man who got a cold while sitting and waiting for the tracks to be fixed.
Today the police informed the public that five people have been arrested as the result of an investigation. The sign has been recovered, but it was found cut into three pieces. The police spokesman, when referring to the motives of the theft, mentioned this:
All leads are being examined, and we are also checking whether the motive was anti-Semitic […]
Later on, it was implied that financial gains from possession of the artifact were more likely to be a possible cause of the theft.
It is unclear how exactly the money would have been made, however. Two days ago, the Polish equivalent of Digg published a link to a site featuring copies of the sign available for sale to support the museum :
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum is under financial crisis and needs support. We’ve come up with the idea of producing replicas of the sign that was stolen from the main entrance gates in order to help aid long-term preservation of the historical site.
Twenty percent of all proceeds will be donated to Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oświęcim, Poland.
Kajetan8 is commenting on this link [PL]:
It’s strange how quickly they prepared those copies. They say that if the one to blame is unknown, in 90% of the cases it is the person who gains the most, that’s the one who did it.
This post has been originally written for and posted at Global Voices Online, here.
Posted in GLOBAL VOICES ONLINE POST | Tagged Add new tag, Arbeit macht frei, Auschwitz concentration camp, Extermination camp, Krakow, Oswiecim, Poland | 2 Comments »
Slowly finishing my first week of work in London I finally regain my inner balance.
It has been a very eventful two weeks promising event more eventful year 2010. As @ProActivePaul yesterday, I am making my plans all the time, my brain cannot stop…work, college, my son’s school, new home, new challenges related to social media, Global Voices Summit, old friends back in my life…
And in the meantime the world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen to decide about the future of the place we live in. I had a nightmare today: I was only in my 40’s, watching TV with my teenager son. They were showing European continent increasingly vanishing from the map of the world and I was just waiting for my son to question me: was there a time when this could have been prevented?
I find it difficult to be happy about a new mini can of Lucosade/Red Bull, and I find it rather foolish that the locals actually find it cute. Even though I work in marketing and my job is to create demand, I wish I had means to create demand for drink in a glass bottle – which could be equally ‘cute’.
Please do not get me wrong – I am to be blamed, as the closer I look at my life the more I see that there are few minor changes in my lifestyle I’m not willing to make due to pure laziness or ignorance.
All this, including my recent dreams, comes together with the final stage of re-evaluation of my standards. I have spent 6 months on searching for cracks in my own system and I have managed to find the gaps but also to achieve the point when while I speak foolish, I actually feel bad;)
It is easy to judge others, but do we actually see out own incoherences? OK, I had quite shocking experiences in my close environment on the level of ethics and morality, however this is not an excuse to get off our own track.
As one of my colleagues put it the other day: ‘It was down, then up, then really down and now it will smoothly increasingly grow upwards.’ Life.
I am able to go back to my proper spiritual state too. I started meditating again, practising AIKIDO. Going back to Japanese zen stories helps me to see things objectively.
I have decided to become vegetarian, partially from philosophical, partially from dietary reasons. I appreciate proper food, sleep, move and nature.
(Mind you, I bet it’s all a backlash of working in the capital)
I see clearly people who support me. I see clearly people who misjudge me. I see clearly people who are insecure and lack integrity, and I decide to keep them as far away from my life as possible (funny how we actually do build little walls of glass for some, just to protect what we believe in…)
I see clearly the paths I sometimes wrongly take – people I should not surround myself with; productions I should not waste my time on, crucial answers my friends are still waiting for but where required decisions became hard to take.
It’s my last weekend for myself, last one to justify the word ‘resting’. Next week I am switching to the mood of woman fully aware of what needs doing, where and when.
For last 6 months I was very serious. Now I only smile, ready to focus on those who need my skills to improve on their lives. Just on time, as I am back in London and can see some of good old friends again, more often. Do join some of us at Media Camp London 3 next Thursday!;) Really hope to see you there!
Posted in FROM MY JOURNAL | Tagged Copenhagen, ETHICS, Global Voices Online, London, Morality | Leave a Comment »