What the pheezey, its cold as sheezey!
Ok so I awoke this morning to leave for work, only to realize that my damn car windshiled had a layer of ICE on it. Now this is California damnit! While yes some cold frost orsomething that is easily removable is fine, but not ICE! Alas, I have to go back into the garage to get a screwdriver and towel that would then enable me to remove the ice layer so I could see. What is the world coming to? I'm telling you, Global Warming is screwing up everything. We better
listen to Al Gore's advice and take care of this while we can.
Jago 2006 -- Post Game Analysis
Albeit a bit belated here is my quick review of
Jago 2006. All-in-all I had a fun time at this conference. The local Floridians did a tremendous job of reaching out to all the attendees and making them feel welcome. I rolled out with my boy
Satinder Mahli and I think we both felt that from the organizers. I think this stems in-part from the whole due-diligence of of running a successful event, but also largely just the keen excitement they have in bringing in more Sikhs South Florida.
Anyway, so the conference itself was well-planned, the accommodations were solid, food was probably the best of any of the past Sikh conferences I have been too -- sans the old Berkeley ones; what can be better than Fat Slice for lunch -- and the workshops were solid attempts to develop dialogue on topics of relevance to our generations.
Sukha Singh proved to be a great resource and tremendous personality. His life journey was very inspiring and really gave me a perspective on how to better travel the path of
Sikhi. His knowledge of
Gurbani, especially for someone so relatively young, was very impressive, and e also was an excellent
kirtani. I look forward to the next time I get to be in his
sangat and hopefully work together in the future on some
Panthic projects.
The other major part of the conference was Miami's first
Spinning Wheel Film Festival which was good -- in the sense that we got to see some cool flicks and meet some interesting and dynamic film makers. But, in the grander scale of things, I do feel that part of the conference was marginalized b dedicating such a huge chunk of time to the festival, when we could have had workshops and further discussions about Sikh Identity -- as per the theme of the conference.
While the conference did had slightly lower attendance than expected -- due to shifting of dates at the last minute -- I think the 100 or so individuals that showed up did take something out of it both from a content standpoint and as well as meeting fellow Sikhs. The activities were all organized well, and this was a very strong performance by the organizers, especially considering this was only the second time they
were having the conference.
Finally, I think special note should be made to the affection and
chardhi-
kalaa of the South Florida
sangat as a whole. The warmth they displayed during the night all the attendees went to the
Gurdwara, was beyond anything I can put into words and left a huge impression on me both about them and of what the true concept of
Sangat really is.
Labels: Jago Sikh
