Labour Day celebrates the achievements of workers and the labor movement. It honors their contributions to society and advocates for workers' rights and fair labor practices.

While the outside world is sometimes beyond your control, the inside world is always under your control! Happy International Yoga Day. Secured Engineers Pvt. Ltd. | Seoz Fire Call Now: 070099 87817 📩 Email: sales@securedengineers.com 👉 Website: https://securedengineers.com/

Happy Women's Month. One of the most fundamental issues that still need attention, especially in third-world countries is education for women as an empowering tool to uplift themselves. There are still voices of dissent and people who scoff at women who rise in their ranks and claim their places as leaders of an industry, or masters of their chosen profession. Here I would like to share a little bit about Education in Women.  Shobana's Musings (https://shobanasmusings.blogspot.com/2023/03/education-for-women.html) I have incorporated a spotlight on my daughter who has just completed her Master's in LLB. A proud moment for us indeed. I have started a Weekly Newsletter and I hope that you will consider following the blog where I share my views on all and sundry. I have a new book published which has garnered great reviews so far on Amazon. You can read the first 2 chapters and the reviews at https://www.amazon.com/Where-Rain-Falls-Shobana-Gomes-ebook/dp/B0BWK6YBH6, Or read it on Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/my/en/ebook/where-the-rain-falls Have a great week. Best wishes, Shobana Gomes https://alittletimewithshobana.blogspot.com

I'm that person who plans the next trip before the current one is over. Not the most budget-friendly habit. Or the healthiest. I started asking, “Is that kind of wanderlust sustainable? Can it really make me happy?” I started looking for another way to treat my travel bug, another way to travel, another way to find what I've been looking for. Wanderlust is never satisfied. New places are like new clothes, one more never makes the collection complete. So I haven't stopped traveling, I've just decided to travel more ...at home. I've had the adventure of making my home in several “touristy” places like New York City, Miami Beach, and Anchorage, Alaska – places that shout “I'm supposed to be explored!” But I've also lived in some quite non-touristy places, like Jundiai, Brazil and Tallahassee, Florida, and found that those places were inviting me to explore too. One habit I've adapted is taking pictures of my own city. Documenting my home and gathering stories makes me feel like I'm on a treasure hunt. Gathering stories can mean journaling a conversation overheard at a coffee shop, snapping street art, adding my neighbors to my novel, or vowing to never forget the inspiring art lady who gave me a free painting at the farmers market. I don't need another continent to do this. Once I get the pictures (and the occasional free painting) from my current home city, I like framing them on the wall next to waterfalls in Iceland or hot air balloons in Myanmar. It's a way of saying “this experience is just as cool, just as formative, just as special.” Exploring at home doesn't make my world smaller, but bigger. Exploring requires a kind of mindset, not a kind of destination. Destinations can sometimes limit what you find, which reminds me of an important part of traveling at home – getting lost. When I lived in New York City and needed “an escape,” my favorite thing to do was let my phone die. Then I was forced to really wander. I found some of my favorite coffee shops that way. Sometimes I charged my phone there, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I just pretended my phone was dead. I wouldn't listen to a podcast if I was taking the tube in London for the first time, so why not take out my earbuds on my daily commute now and then? Earbuds out turned into conversations with other fellow travelers on their way to work. I love asking questions about why people live in my home cities. “What brought you to New York?” is a classic with some surprisingly un-cliché answers. And I also liked, “Is it different than you expected?” “How are you and New York getting along?” One time my friend answered, “Living in New York is like being in a relationship – you're either in an argument or you're at peace.” These questions led to stories of disenchantment, reconciliation, falling in and out of love with the place we called home. Breaking up or making it work. A few years later I was replacing New York with Miami and found the answers just as interesting, answers like: “It's the rawest place I've ever lived.” “It feels like another country to me.” “People always told me I'd stop getting excited about seeing the ocean but it hasn't happened.” “It's breaking my heart.” These were more fulfilling conversations than talking about all the places I hadn't been because I resonated with something shared. Part of the reason I love traveling is coming back with stories. There's something so human about telling stories. It's a way of saying we are alive, we are making a presence on this earth and this is how. I love bringing stories home, and I also love when they bring me closer to home. Stories can come from locals or tourists. As a mostly-pedestrian in New York and South Beach, I found this energizing joy in engaging with tourists. Some of my favorite stories are from helping tourists find their way. It reminds me of how sometimes I still get lost. I imagined I was a link between them and their bucket lists, their high hopes. “Which way is the beach?” just reminded me that we're all just looking for the beach. I reoriented their sense of direction, but they did the same for me. I'll never forget a boy who was about eight emerging from the 34th street subway station and shouting “Look, it's the Empire State Building! We're in New YORK!” It was about 30 degrees and I was carrying about 31 pounds of Trader Joe's, but I stopped being grumpy. Yeah, we were in New York. I want to challenge the idea that adventure is “out there.” Home doesn't have to mean standing still. Home doesn't have to be an interim between adventures. Home can be the biggest trip you'll ever take. And one you can always go back to. Adventure is right here. I'm still almost always planning (or at least dreaming about) the next time I will hop in a plane with my passport. But what I've realized is that traveling and exploring can be a lifestyle, not a series of events. It can be a way of thinking. Home can be a place where wanderlust and contentment meet.

“Oye, choca, que lindos tus ojos,” a middle-aged man called out to me from his small, beaten up car on the small dirt road I dread walking on so much. This was not the first superficial comment I had gotten that day. Most cat calls directed towards me came from large, unkempt men whose appearance alone caused me to feel fear and unease. I hurried without giving him a glance for fear of fueling the fire that was his acute need for attention that he may go to desperate measures to quench. All my life, I had never been allowed to play out on the street with my friends. I had never been allowed to do something as simple as walk to the little corner store half a block away to buy a few eggs alone. I always needed an adult by my side, and even that was not a guarantee of my safety. As a young child, I had been taught to divert as much attention as I could away from who I truly was. This was done by simple things such as never speaking English in public, never looking people on the street I did not know in the eye, never going out without an adult - preferably a Bolivian man, and by dressing in an attempt to hide some of my snowy skin. Even my best efforts at blending in could not keep all the attention away; cat calls were a common experience to me for as long as I can remember, and this put an inevitable fear in my mind of men. For this reason, getting as far away from that man on the street as possible was my only concern in that moment. As soon as I got far enough away for me to feel comfortable, I remembered the reason I was walking; my mom was waiting for me at the other end of the street to catch a “micro” - a public transportation bus. My mind settled instantly at the sight of my strong, beautiful, Bolivian mother, and all the fearful thoughts that seem to short circuit my brain disappeared for a split second that did not last anywhere near long enough. As soon as I reached my mom's side, she spotted the micro heading towards us. She reminded me to keep my bag in front of me since the risk of either getting something stolen or getting inappropriately touched were high if I did nothing to prevent it. Consequently, I stayed by my mom's side as she paid the bitter, overweight driver who had already stepped on the gas pedal again. No seats were available, so we stood in the overcrowded bus until we reached the “abasto” - a vast market in which one can buy fresh food; cheap materials; and agricultural goods. Immediately after stepping off the bus, I was hit with the seemingly origin-less, inescapable stench. I mindlessly followed my mom through the weaving market that seemed to never be the same as she searched for the perfect bunch of bananas for her banana bread. On the side of one of the endless numbers of small fruit stands, there was a little girl sitting under a truck in an attempt to escape the powerful sun that so violently beat on everyone who dared stand directly under its rays. She looked up from the corn husks she was playing with to observe the unusual sight of a white girl with green eyes. A teenage girl sat in the bed of the truck with one leg carelessly hanging off the side. Contrary to the child's simple way of achieving entertainment, her fingers vigorously flew across the glossy screen of her small cellphone. Unlike the child, the teenager barely glanced at me, and as soon as she saw that I was just another girl, her phone retook her attention. The little girl, however, was still mesmerized by my appearance, so I smiled which seemed to satisfy her as she immediately smiled back and returned to playing with anything she could find. Meanwhile, my mom had decided that she had found the bananas that she wanted, so she asked the middle-aged woman standing behind them how much they costed. The woman, dressed in faded clothes and a threadbare apron in which she kept the money she had earned, readily recognized my fair colored skin and naturally assumed that I was not Bolivian and, therefore, ignorant. She chose to take a chance at gaining more money by charging us extra; however, we were used to being charged extra a countless amount of times due to the fact that I was different. My mom convinced the woman to charge us the honest amount of how much the bananas were worth, and we kept walking through the abyss. After an hour, we got on a micro and returned home - one of the few places I felt safe. This short trip had not brought about any terrible events; however, the possibility of being taken advantage of due to irrelevant and superficial things was a constant likelihood in my life. I have grown up trying to hide who I am because of a fear of those who I do not know, but I have never seen it as a fully negative thing because being different means that I am special; the unwanted attention is simply due to everyone around me recognizing that. Maybe, just maybe, someday I will be free to be whoever I want to be without a threat. For now, I live as a minority in what I consider to be my own culture.