The colours of the map are running

Tonight was cultural exchange night, where we got to mix and meet with attendees from all over the world. It was colourful, chaotic bedlam rounded off with international tasting stations from India, China, USA, Australia, and various other nations. We ate our BBQ prawns under the stars in the hotel courtyard with strings of fairy lights to see by and all sorts of background music playing from Italian opera to Zorba the Greek.

Earlier in the day we'd heard from the best speakers yet - Gordon telling his own story of the impact of mental illness; a young semi-paralyzed victim of a gunshot wound to his head at age 13, and the impact on his life; a John Hopkins doctor speaking on the treatments available and how advanced they are; a young woman working to provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine with the full support of her Indian parents (her father could remember the trauma of partition in 1947); and Heather talking about being Gordon's Rotary partner.

The image that will stay with me was the partially-repaired young man Freddie talking about Kintsukuroi - the Japanese art of sealing breaks and cracks in their ceramics with powered gold to make the "broken" object more valuable and beautiful than before.Read more