How wonderful is this! -the following quoted from http://www.cambodiaout.com/calendar/cambodia-asean-pride-2012/

What is Cambodia ASEAN Pride Week 2012?

Cambodia Pride Week has become a regular event in the Kingdom since 2009. ….

…..This year, 2012, Cambodia chairs ASEAN. For this reason, Cambodia Pride Week aims to have a strong ASEAN dimension and participation. The Cambodia LGBT community has much to learn from and to share with their ASEAN LGBT communities. ASEAN Chairship by Cambodia provides a great opportunity to harness the best lessons learned from the region to support LGBT community-building and advocacy in Cambodia and throughout those ASEAN countries where they have yet to achieve the breakthroughs which LGBT activists have achieved here in recent years.

Cambodia ASEAN Pride Week builds on the first LGBTIQ caucus held in ASEAN in Jakarta ACSC/APF 2011 and will aim to strengthen the future collaboration of LGBTIQ communities in their engagement with ASEAN and the rest of the world. ….

Organisers of this event, Cambodia ASEAN Pride Week, are commendable as they in this blogger’s view live up to the ASEAN’s motto of “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”.  If one cares to read the whole page of the above link, one could even appreciate that attempts have been made to connect with the Chinese counterparts as well. Indeed, above and beyond the ASEAN’s motto. Who says ASEAN Community, and subsequently a (bigger) Asia-Pacific Community cannot be realised? - In face of such grassroots community building efforts as this one.

Let me begin by explaining (to non-Kiwi readers) what Waitangi Day, a New Zealand Public Holiday, is. The day commemorates the beginning of New Zealand’s nationhood, remembering the treaty signed between the (British) Crown and Maori on 6 Feb 1840 at Waitangi, Northland.

The day symbolised by supporters of the New Zealand coat of arms: a Pakeha (Caucasian) woman on the viewer’s left and a Maori man on the left, each representing the two ethnic groups at the time of signing of the Waitangi Treaty.

Aptly, on this day Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand shared this status on their Facebook™ page.

While not identical to my interpretation of the day, in this quote I see a sense of an ongoing common journey that began as a single nation (by those represented in New Zealand’s coat of arms) on 6 Feb 1840, the journey which I became part of about six years ago upon my arrival to New Zealand.

Finally, I wish my readers especially those who are Kiwi or New Zealand-based a Happy Waitangi day. And here’s the flagpole on Waitangi treaty grounds with flags representing New Zealand (the topmost flag), the Maori (the flag on viewer’s left) and the British/European/the (British) Crown (the Union Jack on the viewer’s right).

The flagpole on Waitangi Treaty Ground (Source:http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/19684138.jpg)

bluesingreens:

Is this a hedge hog or some mutated version of a rat? I suck at identifying animals. I’m glad I don’t do zoology. I wish animals carried with themselves a name badge so that others could identify what they are.

Like this tree here. Well, it doesn’t have a name but at least I know that it is frail and I must not attempt to climb it.

A couple of pictures taken by author of bluesingreen at Botanic Gardens in Dunedin, New Zealand. As the author of bluesingreen noted in that blog’s about, it’s a small city in South Island of New Zealand. For purposes of local governance, it belongs to the Otago Region and is the region’s largest urban centre.

Here’s the official flag of the Otago Region:

(Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Flag_of_Otago,_ORC_Regional_House.JPG

(Source: hayandsortofthings)