Hello my dear people :-)

I like to begin this yearly summary of my 2009 with "How are you?"... hopefully you reply with something similar.
(many thanks to those who have already did that)

 

A year of relationships. If I am to attribute 2009 to one of my "Life-Quadrants" Home-Business-Relationships-Spirit, it was in the sign of Relationships, although I expected at the beginning of the year a different balance. In one of Couchsurfing lines of activities, I met Jelena, a person with a greatest sense for the Life I ever personally met:

English sense - Dutch zin - palindrome zinniz - www.couchsurfing.org/people/zinniz

 

She influenced also substantially all other Quadrants of mine, 2010 will undoubtedly show more major results :-))

Couchsurfing brought me this year also several other warm hearts; regrettably I had to sacrifice my greater involvement in the Groningen chapter of this community in the second half of 2009 for the benefit of the next topic of this message, but it thrives nonetheless. Special greetings to my CS friends ( www.couchsurfing.org/people/groninger), and the selected website of a CS-friend in 2009 is

http://auroniranjani.wordpress.com/over-de-geleide-meditatie/.

And in 2009 my family got a new member, Milan, born in Ottawa Canada

 

Residence. In Parkweg@Groningen a long dreamed dream has been becoming true: to arrange a place for living according to some yearslong fantasies. That was the item that consumed the most of free time, money and energy in 2009, although the effort covered maybe only a third of all what is wanted to be changed soon; it seems now it was only a kick-off what me (and Jelena) would like to try in 2010 and 2011. If only Groningen will keep us longer...

 

Business. It is as 2009 was meant to bring me maturation in understanding the contemporary western world economy and material wealth flows; definitely a year of business insights maturity. In Neopost I discovered new exciting crossroads of research and business. My greatest wish for 2010 is to realise some of these visions.

 

Spirituality. As this year was so hectic in the light of mentioned developments, I felt urge for oases of rest more than ever before, and ways to it opened up! Largely thanks to the good example of Jelena. In all this precious experience, in September we went to see a film in the finest Groningen art cinema "Images", to which I attribute My best film of 2009: Argentinean "La ventana" of Carlos Sorin, that reminded (again) me of the value of every morning, afternoon and evening - with the message not to wait to realise this only in one's last day.

 

Sustainability of the living environment. Have I seen in 2009 the face of this civilisation's future? I sincerely hope I have. In contrary to all outcries for the economic recover, I hope that the flow will never reverse, by seeing this crisis as a precious opportunity to avert the fatal trend of exhausting the bearing capacity of the Earth. This is a great opportunity to understand where the limit of the consumption growth is, and what the state of the global wellbeing balance lays, and... to prepare the XXI century human renaissance! 2010 will be in awaiting for the follow-up of the Copenhagen summit, with a hope for concrete binding global decisions. If it fails to reach them, I see an inevitable collapse of the globalisation, resulting in division in isolated, mutually poisoning regions... at the cost of the civilisation's survival. And if it succeeds, that can be the first step towards a united Earth, where every newborn can have equal opportunities; an ideal served as the context of the fantasy of "Star Trek", a fair society. (This ideal does not include the space travel of course - there is so much to learn at the Earth before reaching for outthere).

 

Dance. Therefore, rather dance than travelling the Space. One so great thing to learn is for instance Argentinean tango - my chosen development field for the rest of this life.

 

Health. But tango moves are not enough, a real sport is necessary! The 2010 opportunity: team building activities!

 

Cooking. This year I performed less than my standard "output": only one new cake recipe mastered: Groeninger notenkoek, presented for the first time for my birthday in May.

www.ah.nl/allerhande/kookschrift/recept_ks.jsp?id=115431&userid=256437

 

Travel. Let 2009 set the trend also for 2010: not longing for distant destination before discovering beauties of the immediate surrounding. Although I made two trips to Serbia and one to Atlantic France, these were short, and I got better acquainted with Dutch North See "Wadden" islands and Friesland. 2010: more of Friesland!

 

Serbia. I realised more than ever how much Serbia is an undiscovered jewel, for relaxing and enjoying nature, invigorating landscapes and pure food; and to keep the impression in balance, a country of such an unmanaged economy where people organise themselves in the old-fashioned, quite naturalistic manner, the low of the stronger.

 

Netherlands. Only added to my picture a proof of the enormous capital wealth of the nation. (Largely pumped in the confused economy).

 

Europe. The EU got the constitution and president. I am following with the great interest how the lessons learned from the system of the US will be implemented for the benefit of EU citizens.

Serbia applied for the EU membership by the end of 2009. A few days before that, Serbian citizens started travelling to the Schengen countries without needing visas.

 

World. No, not the "credit crisis" was the impression of 2009, although we saw also the Nobel prize granted as a credit in advance, before the result was there to be rewarded; the Thing of the year to me was the finish of the Copenhagen climate change summit, the first time in the worlds history the leaders of the most influential countries constructively sought for a consensus, feeling the common responsibility (i.e. realising inability for a partial leadership) to reach and present to the whole world population a first step to the first global agreement not to be ignored by any of the greatest powers.

Let us only hope that limiting the human impact on the climate change will not be the only seriously taken global challenge getting such a proper attention. There are so many more connected to this one: worlds population exceeding the Earths bearing capacity, shrinking ecosystems, global pollution, sustainable energy supply...

Here a reminder that already in 1971 there were enough knowledge and technology to propose a salvational scenario, which only now, after 40 years, seems to be getting taken seriously:

I can only hope that this model guessed properly the possibility to reach the moment of the world population's peak in 2020, if it already missed the figure by not less than 1/3; however this 2-page Economist leader shifts this only to 2050 (with the logical consequence on the natural resources depletion and pollution thus), but with pointing out alo some encouriging trends.

If I am not hoping (and not wanting) that economic growth recovers, I am sincerely hoping this be compensated allowing all the world people having more time for individual development in a less burdened nature.

 

Social activity and responsibility. I started up two alumni societies this year: of my high school class (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=156302212790, and of Serbian academics studied at the University of Twente after 2000 - TUT-si (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=195776576603).

As my personal income has increased also in 2009, I extended my financial support to one more fund, the educational programme of the Terre des Hommes (www.terredeshommes.org, www.terredeshommes.nl).

Within the UTwente alumni group TUT-si, I took part in an one-time financial support to the brave struggle of a selfsupporting mother Sladjana for health recovery of her paralysed son Mitar, in Serbia; please visit their webpage: http://sites.google.com/site/mitarjojiccomic/home/kontakt---contact. Should you wish to join me in this support, at the bottom of this page you will see the way how to help. I kindly suggest doing that before 7th of January, the Julian calendar Christmas.

I was happy to se that also the Dutch (part of the) ING bank offered an option to helping build houses in Bangladesh and India at the cost of provisions for a real estate mortgage - http://www.ing.nl/particulier/hypotheken/huis-voor-een-huis/index.aspx?bid=5427_HPP_Hypotheken_Huis_voor_een_huis_Advies. Last year I wrote about http://www.wereldhypotheek.nl/, still my preferred model, hopefully followed more closely.

Finally, I ended up with a recipe for a simple, logical and highly solidaristic way for sharing a part of the global wealth, but I am keeping it uncovered until more people get used to the new (more moderate) economic state of the art...
 

Photos of the year.

Le Mont-Saint-Michel (France) Before enrolling the University, I considered also the option of becoming a farmer... never say never... (Baljevac) With represenatives of the Canadian part of the family (Baljevac)