Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Don’t close this window just yet - this post has nothing to do with Microsoft. On the contrary even…

For a few years now I am nursing the idea of working for a humanitarian or environmental organization. I haven’t yet researched the subject, but just try to imagine how good or bad that would be for me personally. So far, I can imagine all the good things, except maybe for the salary.

Lately I was trying to figure out what organization would I choose to work for if I had the free choice. Would it be Greenpeace? Green cross? Red Cross? UNHCR? DHA? There are so many choices that it’s really hard to pick one. All of them seem to have good intentions and all of them have a list of good deeds under their belts.

If you were the one to choose, which organization would you choose and why?

In case you know only Greenpeace, here are a few lists for you:

• ReliefWeb » Directory of Organizations
• Humanitarian Organizations
• Environment Web Directory
• List of environmental organizations at Wikipedia

Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) was a Soviet physicist who became, in the words of the Nobel Peace Committee, a spokesman for the conscience of mankind. He was fascinated by fundamental physics and cosmology, but he had to spent two decades designing nuclear weapons. The acknowledged father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, he contributed perhaps more than anyone else to the military might of the USSR. But it was his top secret experience as a leading nuclear expert that was instrumental in making Sakharov one of the most courageous critics of the Soviet regime, a human rights activist and the first Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He helped bring down one of history’s most powerful dictatorships.

The quote is from this site. If you are not familiar with this person, I suggest you browse through the link.

Lame title, I know, but I couldn’t think of a better one and now it’s too late.

One of the things I like about living in Cyprus is that I can meet with people of different cultures. Cypriots, Greeks, British, Russians, Eastern Europeans, Indians, Phillipinos, Pakistanis, Chinese, Lebanese - these are just a subset of people living in Cyprus. Additionally, there are a couple of millions of tourists travelling in and out of country every year.

Meeting these people and talking to them, even if briefly, greatly expands the horizons of cultural understanding. Even just watching them - how they behave on their own or in the group of their countrymen or mixed with others - triggers a lot of thinking.

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For a long time I considered myself to be a non-racist. I wasn’t judging people of other races differently. I wasn’t talking to them differently. Actually, I wasn’t minding them at all. And I’m talking about all the races now - black, white, yellow, red, whatever. All of them were the same to me. Or so I thought.

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