Itty update

This is a training weekend for me and a bunch of other people (multicultural org staff and volunteers, Aboriginal org staff and volunteers and arts groups staff and volunteers, so we're an eclectic bunch). The reason for the mix is because the training has been organized by a federal department which funds all of the above types of groups.

We're being trained in a model for project planning and management which has been adopted by the department in question, and so it is a model which we will all be expected to apply to all our project proposals and the projects themselves.

It's a nice mix of meeting new people who do similar work, and catching up with old friends and colleagues from other communities who I've worked with for years.

For lunch a bunch of us went across the street from the hotel to Asia Beef Noodle, which serves Thai and Vietnamese food, where I had a yummy bowl of asian-style barbeque beef and chicken with lemon grass and peanuts served over rice vermicelli, sprinkled - as all Vietnamese food usually is - with nuoc mam. Yum!

More training tomorrow so no fun this weekend for me. Husband and kitties are left to their own devices while I get professionally developed.

On Monday it's back to work, and on Thursday, I leave for a four-day conference in Toronto. My calendar is packed. I've been giving an average of two presentations a week to human resource professionals and employers' groups about a cultural competency training program that we've created and which I'm now responsible for. It's taken a while, but my work life has ramped back to the level of activity and engagement that it was at before I went deaf. That is a significant achievement, I think. It's exhausting but exciting at the same time.

ronnie