The last week + has been hectic. I went to Bangkok on the overnight train on the 11th for the UNESCO/APEID conference from Dec 12-14. It was a kind of joint monster conference that for those 3 days had 2 things going on simultaneously. There was the Conference - entitled Reinventing Higher Education: Toward Participatory and Sustainable Development. Really, really interesting concepts of changing education in a world where the disparity in education is potentially larger than the disparity in income.

There was a part that was plastered on to that called the Conquiry. The title of this UNESCO conference came out of the Conquiry. This is a group of international players in the field of Participatory Development from 6 continents trying to gain real recognition for what they do and its value.

The Conquiry then teamed up with the Thai Universities for a Conference from Dec 15-16 on Sufficiency Economy, Participatory Development and Universities. This was a totally awesome conference with many non-university community development leaders telling the Universities what they need from them and what they don't need.

I met so many incredible people. I received so much support for the work planned in Tak and Uganda. I will be a week just getting the loose ends from the conference tied up sending information requested and following up on information I want and need. I also got 3 speaking invitations literally from one end of Thailand to the other. That on a schedule that has one 4 day opening between now and June.

I got the opportunity to meet one of my PhD committee members! I am very impressed with him and look forward to working with him. It means I have to get serious here about working on my formal proposal.

I made many contacts for the conference I am in charge of planning for December next year. I found out that there is a conference on Buddhism and Consumerism at Mahidol Salaya Dec 1-3 so I am working to tack this conference on to that so that it is more for the international guests to each conference. My conference is the 2nd International conference of the Buddhist Economic Research Platform and is tentatively sub-headed Theory Meets Practice. A tentative schedule and plan has been submitted to the University for funding. At the conferences last week, the mailing list for that grew to over 100.

We have accepted a new graduate student for June. Now we will have 11 International grad students: 8 from Lao PDR, me, 1 from Hungary and one from Timore Leste! How strange is it to have a grad student (me) in charge of the other international grad students?

Off to give a mid-term, work on the literature review for the research proposal, and get ready for my brother's arrival on Saturday!