A day out...

This is a long weekend in Australia, the "land of the long weekend". Monday is Labour day, so Sunday we spent the day out with no concerns about working on Monday.

First of all we went to the opening of Brisbane's new Inner City Busway. It's been a huge two year effort to build this underground bus tunnel, and Sunday was the public open day, where Brisbane citizens are invited to walk through the tunnel.

This work started shortly after we rented the current Atma Yoga studio, and meant that the road outside was boarded off for a year. Many business went under in this time. We weathered our way through it by Krishna's grace, and 18 months later the road outside Atma had become a beautiful pedestrian mall.

The tunnel itself is a remarkable piece of engineering. It has been cut through the most dense area of infrastructure in the city, right under the CBD, with the myriad of pipes and wires under the ground. It has changed the face of the city too, with roads re-routed, widened, and the area re-landscaped. Brisbane City Council is building out the infrastructure throughout the city for the massive influx of population (1500 people per week).

We are also working on our three-year plan to build out our infrastructure to position ourselves to meet the challenges of the future, at the moment.

Brisbane provides a number of facilities for her citizens, reminiscent of the descriptions of Vedic cities, with parks, benchs, and water fountains in abundance. Maybe it's because I came here from a three year stint in Peru, but I was really impressed with the opulence of the infrastructure. However, the council is unable to supply the residents of Brisbane with rain. In this way it falls short of the Vedic standard of government.

Above ground and underground there were many activities for the whole family. Prahlad had fun on the bouncing castle.

There was a lady performing Middle Eastern dance Raqs Sharqi, aka Belly Dancing. Since I've been studying the Egyptian tabla, which is commonly used to accompany this style of dance, we stuck around to see her perform. I was hoping she would have live music, but I expected it to be canned. Such is the deterioration of culture. Today most people cannot play a musical instrument, although everyone has an mp3 player. That's called a consumer culture.

I've been interested in the music, and Param Satya has been studying the dance. Just before I shot this video the dancer pulled Param Satya out and they both danced together. Param said she would leave me if I posted the video, so sorry, if you weren't there, you missed it. :-)

In Vedic culture women would traditionally have their hair braided. Covering the hair was also done by princesses. After the Muslim invasion covering the hair became more common. Previously in Vedic culture, actually, women did not wear anything on their upper body at all in the warmer regions of India.

Interestingly, Arjuna knew how to dance, and spent a year as a dance teacher to the princesses of a royal family. Arguably the best male belly dancer in the world lives in Sydney, Australia. His name is Jamil - check out his video on youtube. One of the best female dancers is American Sadie. Check her out here.

Campak Gaura's mother is coming to visit, and she does this style of dance. It's becoming a popular way for women to stay in shape. So Param and her will have something to do together when she comes.

After this we went to Southbank for the Buddha Birthday Festival.

I realized soon after coming here that Brisbane's opulence is due to the residual piety of the citizens. However, as they increasingly turn to materialistic consumerism the facilities are being progressively withdrawn.

At the heart of the festival - prasadam distribution.

These Bolivian musicians are a favorite at this festival. Does this music remind me of Krishna? You bet it does. I spent three years as an ISKCON missionary in South America and my son was born there. Every time I hear this music it brings back so many memories of my service there.

Then we went to the Sunday feast where Jana was leading a sweet kirtan. Like the belly dancer she didn't have her hair tied back, but at least she was chanting Hare Krishna, eh? :-)

To finish the evening off we were driving home past Harem, the local Turkish restaurant (because, like, every suburb here has one, right?), and we heard the sound of darbuka and Sajj coming out. So we stopped off and hung out for a while enjoying the cultural presentation there by the owner and friends.

Watch out for a video of me playing darbuka there soon...

Pretty big day.