Guayaquil in Ecuador

This week I will be a few days with old academic friends and colleagues at the UEES University in the city of Guayaquil on the Pacific Ocean coast of Ecuador. I visited here the first time in 1998 just 5 years after this institution was started by Carlos Ortega. Fun fact: the first time I visited the city of Guayaquil was in 1983 when I traveled with back-pack through South America. The UEES was partner with Niagara College and College of the Rockies (BC) in a project funded by the Canadian government on tourism development and ecosystem restoration (we worked on new curriculum development, teacher training and experiential learning with a local conservation NGO). Since then UEES has done a lot of expansion and this week we will sign a cooperation agreement between UEES and Seneca. We will also deliver a workshop at a national conference of electronic engineers hosted at UEES.

The campus has a wonderful green design and now also a complete conference center (see photo above). They offer many of their courses in English which makes them a great partner for exchanges of staff and students.

A wonderful campus with some nice places to hang out such as this cool coffee shop....

Andrea is in charge of all the international partnerships at UEES. She knows what life, study and work in other countries is because she spent a few years in Germany and the USA. Andrea oversees the assistance of students from many different places in the world:

Next visit she will have Seneca in Toronto on that map as well. The Canadian flag is already there and they also have some students from Holland (Radboud Uuniversity in Nijmegen).

Many UEES students find their way to Canada which is a popular destination for them. And they have a very nice team of support staff for incoming students from around the world.

Goodbye Robben!

Goodbye to Arjen Robben who played his last game for the "men in orange"  tonight (2-0 win over Sweden which was unfortunately not enough to qualify for the World Cup 2018 in Russia). I have enjoyed your speed, your shots with the left foot and your passion for the game (a little less sometime your acting when tackled but you can be forgiven for that). I thought in 2010 during the finals hosted in South Africa that you had the goalie of Spain beat but somehow the goalie got his big toe on it (after that brilliant pass from Wesley Sneyder). That was the closest we ever got to winning the World Cup after the star studded team that left it for Germany in 1974.

Thank you Arjen and thank you Wesley. It is now up to the next generation to see if they can qualify for the 2020 European Championship and the 2022 World Cup.

Love it that Iceland qualified for Russia 2018. They w ere the sensation of the European Cup two years ago and totally deserve to be in Russia. A country with 330,000 people whose soccer team qualifies. That is even better than Uruquay already so many times with only their 3 million people!

A relaxed tournament for us to watch next summer. I am cheering for Egypt and for Iceland! And of coursse always for Brazil and Colombia. What the heck. I cheer for all the teams!!

MSF Canada starters in 1991

In late1990 I met with these three guys and we started MSF Canada in 1991. Richard Heinzl started the ball rolling in 1989 as a recently graduated medical doctor and he visited our MSF projects in Mozambique while I worked there. Jim Lane was a school friend of Richard in Hamilton and had recently finished his law studies in 1990. James Orbinski did medical school at McMasters University together with Richard. James worked in MSF projects in Peru, Somalia and Rwanda (during the 1994 genocide there) and was the International President of the MSF movement in 1999 when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to MSF. James gave the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in December 1999 in Oslo, Norway. Last week we attended the house warming reception of MSF Canada in their new offices (see the previous post).

New MSF Canada offices

Busy day at work with - among other activities - hosting the Senior Trade Commissioner from the Philippines of their Consulate in Toronto at Seneca. We are starting to do some interesting contract work in the Philippines. Late afternoon I made the hour and half trek downtown to be at the tail-end of a "house warming" of the new MSF Canada offices (Medecins sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders). The photos below are hopeless quality because I was too excited to see the nice office space and what it has grown into from what we started here in 1990....

Jim Lane, one of the founders of MSF Canada and still a Board member. I slept many nights in the house of Jim & Georgina when we started MSF Canada in 1990 on a shoestring with a small budget from MSF Holland. Now both sons of Jim and Georgina study at Seneca College; small world....

James Orbinski, also one of the founders of MSF Canada, who later went on to become the MSF International President and who gave the organization's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1999. James now works at York University; we'll catch up in November sometime for lunch...

Richard Heinzl, the man who got the idea of MSF Canada rolling. He is catching up with some MSF staff in one of the meeting rooms of the new MSF offices.....

The organization grew to more than seventy staff. So nice to see. Wanted to apply for a job especially after seeing that they even have and R & R room.....

Goodbyes, vegan meals & traffic

This week we said goodbye to Khaled who worked in the Seneca International team for more than 10 years. He will focus for a while on study, his new marriage and next career steps. Khaled has been the face of the Seneca international student recruitment team in the Middle East and Africa. In the photo he is the good looking fellow in the middle of the pack. In his twenties he was the Bruce Springsteen of Egypt; just ask him to show you photos from that period if you ever bump into him!

Mary and I are trying to go vegan (sort of). No more meat, chicken and eggs. Mary does better than I do but this was my lunch today: salad, noodles, tofu and a delicious peanut based sauce.

I attended a meeting this afternoon in downtown Toronto and left around 5 PM on my way to Niagara. This is a photo on Spadina towards the Gardiner highway. At one of the lights it was so slow that I saw the light change six times from green to red to green to red, etc.

And half an hour later almost at the Gardiner. All in all it took me more than three hours to make it to our house in Fonthill. But so be it. No rush and then slow traffic cannot upset you. Listen to "As It Happens" on CBC radio and life is a treat even in the traffic jam....

Start of a new academic year

Today at Seneca thousands of new students start their 15 week "Fall term". This is an impression of the Registrar Office which is a "one-stop-shop" for students for registration, admission, payments and financial aid. Busy, busy, busy.....

Many new students asking their way around for all the student services offered. And we also had a busy reception desk in the International Offices. On we go....

The "yes-no-yes" reply

Had lunch with Sean, one of the former colleagues at Niagara College with whom I worked from 1995 to 2014. His favorite response to a question is "yes-no-yes": yes we can do that, no we cannot really do that, but yes we will do our best. Golden way of keeping folks happy. One of his team members actually made him his saying as a gift.....; way to go Sean!