Europe has been a time for many personal landmarks - cooking meat or flying minus airport counters, for instance. Another recent first, but by far more important was an officially assigned class. In the past, it has been I who offered lectures to an audience that was captive to various degrees. Last year's class on Policy Memos was an official affair, but still entirely my idea and counts less as it was to my peers, each of whom could teach me a lot back. No, the classes I gave that week meant more. They were not my initiative, the students engineering undergraduates and it was part of their formal visit to IIIEE. Though it will not count towards their grades - that would be another landmark, but probably not more remarkable than landing a tenure teaching position.

Handling four currencies in a day in the process - one of those uniquely MESPOM experiences - I arrived in Lund on an overcast, gray afternoon. This is a bit unfair to Budapest, of-course. While equally beautiful, much bigger and hence with many more sights to behold and marvel, Budapest did not get a blog entry when Sachin first set foot there last year. But then, this website did not exist and Sachin does not write blogs on lesser websites! It will be a bit of cheating to write first time experiences having spent an year there. All I can write now of there are anecdotes dripping with tearful nostalgia. It's a slightly touchy topic since I'm still recovering from the parting. Will have to postpone it until it sinks in. No, dear old Budapest will just have to wait until a third batch MESPOMer obliges. (Take a hint, guys!)

The interaction of microorganisms with pollutants has lead to the development of an exciting field of research for environmentalists. The unprecedented interest in bioremediation and its applications stems from the failure of aggressive and invasive treatment methods that disturb ecosystems by stuffing them with unnecessary quantities of chemicals.

As Leyla and I bid farewell to Leo and Karen early this morning, the mood was nowhere near as heavy as I would have expected. Her final words before she got onto that harbinger of dorm goodbyes, the airport minibus, were the following pearls:

“We are not mountains; humans meet.”

Even as I basked inwardly in the dawn-lit glow of the wisdom of the ancients, coming from a mouth that often spouted it - punctuating many other things – I knew I would write this entry.

Weather. As we all know the English weather can change quite quickly.

Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Castleton and Mam tor.

WEEK 5: Native communities in Miri and the ‘New Concept’ scheme

In general, the ‘New Concept’ scheme promotes the development of land that belongs by customary rights to native communities into large-scale palm oil plantations.