Natural Solutions Foundation

November 25 and 26 were work days, pure and simple. Lacey Banks, General Stubblebine and I did not go sightseeing, did not go shopping, and did not go wandering the streets of Delhi. We spent the weekend closeted in the hotel working on a Power Point presentation for the Secretary of the Ministry of Food Production Industries and his staff. The presentation will be mounted on the website shortly. It focuses on several related items:

1. The degraded food supply (a big problem in the US, India, EU, etc. Create food using too much farming on exhausted land with too many synthetic fertilizers to compensate for its exhaustion followed by too much processing with too many toxins and damaging treatments and the result is inevitable: food with less and less nutrition and more and more toxicity built in. Sick food equals sick people. Here in India there is the additional problem of large numbers of people who are just plain hungry or very hungry)

2. Codex’ impact on degrading and damaging the food supply including its history and origin. If you have not already watched the video clip on this at http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Nutricide please do so now and email it to everyone you know. The importance of this issue is hard to overstate. Just life and death, that’s all.

3. The power and potential of the new Indian Food Safety and Standards Law which is the second food law in the world which classifies nutrients as foods! The first, DSHEA, our US law, is under attack and has been targeted by the drug-only folks inside and outside the FDA. This law, modeled on DSHEA is a powerful step in the right direction and represents India’s having decided to take the second step in our Codex two step process: they have passed the law which makes nutrients foods. Now they need to articulate a science-based position on why their nutrient strategy is superior to Codex’ nutrient strategy.

4. How their new law could be used by India to support high density nutrient feeding consistent with the International Decade of Nutrition to use what the new law allows — and what we already know about disease and nutrition — to lift India’s desperately undernourished population from cellular hunger through a 5 year high potency nutrient feeding program. This would place India in a position of leadership in the developed world which would be of great service both to India’s trade and to the people whose nutritional status would be improved on the basis of the data generated, to say nothing of those nourished during the 5 year program!

5. How the Natural Solutions Foundation could be of service in assisting with the process of generating the regulations which can allow this potentially outstanding law to become a regulatory reality serving health and nutrition here in this country of 1.2 billion people.

Once we finished, we did go to dinner on Sunday night at a Korean restaurant at the State-run Ashok Hotel. It was really good and quite different than the Indian food which is our daily fare. Now don’t get me wrong: the Indian food is marvelous, but we were really intrigued to know what Korean food in India would taste like. It was delicious and pretty similar to the Korean food we have had in the US.

Of course, that was a great improvement over the Russian restaurant we tried a while back in the same hotel. Take my advice: skip the Russian on and go with the Korean place at the Ashok next time you are in Delhi!

November 27, 2006

Our presentation was scheduled for 3 PM but we needed to meet a friend for some administrative business there at 2. (We were guests of the Minister at a State Guest House for the first 3 days we were in Delhi but we had been charged for the stay. There was no way, given our non-existent Hindi and the proprietor’s similar English) that we could get it across to him that we were guests of the minister. It was just easier to pay him. However, our friends here were upset when we told them that and arranged for the payment to be returned to us which, of course, we really appreciated.)

Then we went up to the nicely appointed conference room and discovered that our laptop would not mate with their projector. Not to worry: I had a flash drive. Nope. They preferred copying our Power Point onto their computer and showing it that way.

Success!

When the Secretary of the Ministry (the man who runs things) came in and I was about to begin he asked very directly why an American doctor, General and lawyer had come half way around the world to concern themselves with the things that our preliminary material said we were going to talk about. We explained that what happens in India is important to us because we are committed to global health and health freedom and were committed to making a difference at a global level. He seemed to like that and we went on.

I was partway into my talk about Codex when the Secretary interrupted me and said that they understood this well, that I was preaching to the converted and asked me what we could bring to India that would help her. This was, essentially, the same thing the Minister said last Thursday! These folks have no blinders on about Codex and want to know what they can do to fix the situation. We, of course, were happy to share our views on the topic and did so.

At the end, we were invited to participate in the development of regulations for this new law! And so we shall.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for health freedom advocates and we will certainly take it, and take it very seriously. We regard this as a real forward movement: India is now the second country in the world with a nutrients-are-foods law allowing for high potency nutrients. Properly put into regulation, this means that India has decided to deviate from Codex and, given India’s size and economic power (current and potential), and given her ability to develop programs and protocols which will also serve countries which are also burdened by gross under-nutrition, she could become a shining beacon of ways to end world hunger and promote world health through nutrition.

And the relevant ministry has asked us to help. “Yes, sir, thank you sir, we would be glad to, sir!”

Thursday, November 23 was a fascinating day.  At home it was Thanksgiving.  Here we had a great deal to be thankful for by the end of the day but there was nothing like an American Thanksgiving going on.  You may remember that we had been asked to make contact with the President of the association we addressed on Monday who is the Minister for Food Processing Industries and is also the Codex Contact Point here in India.  And you may remember that at that meeting he said that he wanted us to meet with his people to discuss our information.  But the phone fates were not on our side. All during the day yesterday we were telephonically finding and loosing him.  He would call us, we would call him, he would call us, and we would call him.  The phone would not connect or, if it did, we would loose each other after a minute or two.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, November 22 we were in a day-long meeting with some of the organizer of the meeting and his friends planning our next stages.  Clearly, the phone thing was not working!  We were advised by our friends here to go to the Minister’s house early the next day (today) and just hang out in his living room to make the appointment.  Now, that is a little unusual for us, but we were advised that it was the best way to do things and that his living room was going to be full of people like us trying to make appointments with his secretary.

Not.

We showed up at his house and obviously caused some significant scurrying back and forth.  We were ushered into an anteroom for a while and offered some water.  We waited.  Then we were shown into, yes, the Minister’s house and into his living room where were offered tea and we waited.  There were no other people there and, in fact, the secretaries and so on who interacted with us were quite surprised that we were there.  We were, however, treated very courteously indeed while it was explained to us that today was a very busy day for the Minister since every Minister had to answer questions in Parliament on a particular day and today was his day.  Bad day to see us.  Yet, when we explained that we were there to make an appointment for the Minister’s convenience and what our mission was, the very busy Minister came out to see us himself.

He is a direct man and asked us what we wanted.  We explained and he cut me off saying (well, yelling, really) that America had ruined its own health with its food and now it wanted to ruin the health of the world.  “Now you are concerned?” he roared at me.  I firmly (not roaringly) said that I was not content with ruining America’s health or the rest of the world’s and that I had been fighting it my entire career.  In fact, that was why I was here now.  Let me tell you, I have never appreciated being yelled at so much in my life.

The Minister’s outrage and anger is absolutely appropriate and welcome!  Yes, that is what we have done and yes, it is time to stop it at home and abroad!  And, yes, that is part of the message we are carrying to the countries of the world that have an interest in listening.  India appears to be one of them.

The Minister said that his people were busy but that we would fix an appointment for the next day.  And so we did.

And, oh, by the way, we ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant (sort of a fast food place) which specialized in steamed momo or dim sum.  Cheap, tasty, wholesome, and, at least for one variety, HOT! HOT! HOT! Take the warning, “This one is hot.” very seriously here.  We are talking HOT!

November 24, 2006

Today we had breakfast and made our way to the Ministry of the Minister.  We met as planned with his Private Secretary.  I could not imagine a more receptive audience than he and the Codex specialist with whom we met. They listened, they questioned and then they asked us if we would be available to meet with more members of their staff.  You bet!

So instead of heading to Mumbai (Bombay) on Sunday (which is where we expected to be heading) we will be staying here for a meeting on Monday to discuss optimal health and nutrition through a variety of pathways, all of which are impacted directly by Codex.  What a perfect opportunity to make our points and bring health and health freedom some new strength from this remarkable and potent source of positive policy and change.  At the same time, we will be bringing information and options to India which could help lift the burden of ill health through the application of nutrition in some ways which are consistent with high potency nutritional strategies.  After all, India has just passed into law the world’s second nutrients-are-food law and that offers her a spectacular opportunity to use nutrients.

Safe, efficient and low cost, nutrients are of immense importance in promoting and creating health.  Now India has the law to allow it.  We are pleased to offer the help that we can.

If you remember the two step process we advocate for countries, a guideline or strategy must be adopted to replace the one promulgated by Codex and a law must be passed making it the law of the land to implement that strategy.  India has passed such a law.

We will be spending the weekend working on the presentation, you may be sure.  I had wanted to attend a performance of traditional dance and music and was disappointed that we would be working tonight (Friday).  However, that is what we are here for.

When we packed, it was in great haste and I left all of my barrettes home so I wanted to go out to a cart on the street near our hotel to buy some.  Lacey Banks, one of the attorneys on our team, was with us and she and I walked out to look at them.  As we were wandering down the street, we stopped for a procession of about 120 people dancing in the street behind a shrine being transported on the shoulders of worshippers.  Singing, dancing, beating cymbals, they filled the street until they were right in front of us.  I looked across the street and was facing the open first floor of a lavishly decorated 3 storey building.  The first floor had about 7 statues of Krishna with garlands of orange marigolds draped around them. Priests welcomed the devotees who danced and sang, draped the shrine with a fine red and gold cloth, swayed and prayed to the chanting of the priests and then, after about 20 minutes, calmly moved on.

They filled the street with no concern for the traffic.  A few policemen showed up and created some sort of traffic flow while they worshipped in the street and then, with the speakers in a Pedi cab in the middle of the crowd, when they were finished with their devotions at this temple, the mass of worshippers moved on.

So I got my wish after all!  We are working on the presentation and I did get to some traditional dancing and singing, too.  I did not get a barrette, but who cares!

“Recognition is everything”

Before we got to day 25, we had to finish day 24. Leaving Bangkok on November 19 was pretty interesting. First, of course, we had another opportunity to meet with our Thai friends who are helping to put all the good stuff in place in Thailand. Another meal and another meeting to summarize what we had done during the past two weeks, how we would pursue the opportunities and then off to the airport. With bags. Lots of bags, especially a heavy one filled with books and DVDs for India.

It was very, very heavy and the Air India check in gal told us that the cost would be over $300 for excess baggage. We just looked at her and then asked if she was sure that was the cost. She said she was and then a whole flurry of excitement took place in Thai. We sort of just stood there while 3 people were very busy with our luggage and forms, phone calls and conferencing with each other and other people, too, for about 15 minutes. I finally asked what the next step was and one of the three people giggled and said that because we had been nice they had reduced the excess charge to about $125. She said that if we had been unpleasant they would not have done it, but since we did not raise our voices or get mean, they had worked with the supervisor and “solved” some of the charges. What a great way to finish our visit to Thailand, a country where living in harmony is valued greatly and making sure that no one looses face for any reason is a social obligation.

So we got on the plane feeling that the fact that we are nice people had been recognized by other people who were also nice.

Then we arrived in Mumbai (Bombay) and found that the car sent by our hotel in Mumbai (promised in our internet booking earlier that day for our hotel in which to spend the night before heading off to Delhi) was not at the airport. It is a big hotel so we located the driver who was there for another passenger, told him we were booked in the hotel and waited while he arranged our transportation.

When we got to the hotel, we found that the reason there was no car there was that it takes 24-48 hours for an online booking to get to the hotel’s front desk. There was no such notice on the website and it did accept our booking that morning. The hotel, we were told, was fully booked but the manager was working on the problem.

While we waited we noticed a poster from the hotel chain that said, “Recognition is everything”. The hotel had not recognized us electronically but, lo and behold, suddenly there was a voice saying, “Dr Laibow. How nice to see you. Hello, General Stubblebine!”

We turned around and there was a man who was at our lectures at the Yoga Institute in Mumbai last July who happened to be picking up a business associate. How nice to be recognized, if not by the hotel, then by a friendly face!

The hotel found us a room; we spent the night and were off the next morning to the domestic airport to go on to Delhi.

Day 25: November 20, 2006

Today we arrived in Delhi on Kingfisher Airlines (spectacular meal in coach class, simply spectacular!) and found that there were 3 uniformed men waiting to ask us if I was Dr. Laibow. I was. They said that there was a lady looking for me outside the arrival area and that she did not know what I looked like, nor would I recognize her so they would escort us to her.

They did. She was a perfectly lovely lady who is the wife of the organizer of the meeting I was to address the next day, Venita.

She drove us, along with part of our luggage (the rest was in another car thoughtfully provided for the occasion) to the Indian Guest House where our accommodation had been provided for us by the Minister of Food Production who is also the Codex Contact Point and the President of the All India Panchayat Parishad [AIPP] which is the apex body of elected representatives of local authorities at District, Block and Village levels in India. It represents 257,000 Village councils, over 5,500 Intermediate councils [called “Samittee”] and 575 districts [out of the 602 districts in India]. It has establishments in 23 states.

It is a simple, clean facility with an air conditioner (which we did not need at this season), a double bed and a private bathroom. It was really all we needed.

After a delightful meal in the home of the organizer, Arun Shrivastava, and Vanita. Her mother, a famous OB-GYN doctor was there, too, since she was also addressing the meeting the next day.

We went back to the Guest House knowing that Lacey Banks, our associate and friend, would be picked up by the driver assigned to take care of all of us.

Day 26: November 21, 2006

Breakfast was the first order of business so we went to the breakfast room where the choices were limited to toasted white bread and butter or untoasted white bread and butter. After some negotiation we managed to get some jam into the picture. Lacey’s Aunt Dot (baker extraordinaire) saved the day because Lacey came equipped with a loaf of raisin bread which saved the day!

Then dressing. I had decided to wear a sari as a mark of respect for the culture of the farmers of India. I have saris. I know how to wear saris. Wrapping one properly is a bit shaky, though. I asked Vanita to help me get dressed and she did. She had obviously done this sort of thing before! So off we went to the meeting.

This is a tremendously important group of people. 70% of Indians are farmers. They are being driven off the land just like subsistence farmers everywhere by the multinational corporate drive to industrialize the food supply. Codex is a huge part of that. What happens to people who cannot afford GM seeds or expensive (and dangerous) pesticides, who loose their land and have no urban skill base? Here in India they kill themselves because they have no options for themselves and their families and there are no safety nets for them. Oh, by the way, they are doing the same in Europe. Farmers are committing suicide at about 1 per week in central Europe because they are being squeeze into destruction by the same policies and have nowhere to go according to Arun.

So we got to the fairgrounds where several thousand farmers and their political representatives from the local structure to the community to the regional (Village, Block, Grahm) had gathered. Numerous Ministers and Members of Parliament, lawyers, judges, scientists and rural development specialists were present. Leis were presented, an oil lamp with many wicks was lit, traditional musicians performed and the meeting began. It was conducted totally in Hindi. General Stubblebine, Lacey and I between us speak not one word of Hindi. Politicians spoke, and spoke and spoke and spoke. In Hindi.

Finally, Arun’s mother in law said that she wanted us to go have lunch because this would go on for a long time and we would not speak until after lunch anyway.

We wandered off to a toilet area which was clean, odorless, had dozens of toilets for men and women and which I did not use. They were porcelain rims on which your feet occupy the widening on either side and you squat. In a silk sari? I think not.

Lunch was served on newly washed plates and eaten with newly washed spoons in a system designed to server thousands of meals for several days. The food was delicious. During our stand-around meal, I was introduced to the Minister of Food Production (aka Codex Point of Contact for India). We talked about Codex and I gave him our book and DVD. Waving around a crisp (and greasy) papadam which someone had stuck into my hand while I was talking, I made the points to him about the new Indian Food Safety Law and its shortcomings and our concern with Codex. He invited us to talk to him to add our perspective to the development of regulations for the law and about our perspectives on Codex. You bet! What a great opportunity!

Lunch over, we went back to the tent to address the meeting. To my horror I realized that we were supposed to take off our shoes and mount a sheet-covered set of steel stairs, sit on a sheet covered set of mattresses until (and after) it was our turn to talk, do so and sit down again. Why horror, because I know how to wear a sari, stand and sit on a chair in a sari, but I was envisioning what it would be like to get up from sitting on the floor in one and, if I stepped on the wrong part, what it would be like to come unwrapped in front of thousands of people in (or out) of one.

However, I managed the draperies and when it was time to talk, did not deliver my address called “Farmers hold up more than half the sky” (which will be available on our website shortly since that was printed in the program. Instead, using an interpreter, I held up a magazine which a beggar child had held up to sell to us on the drive to the meeting. We bought it from her. It was the Indian Sunday Times: the cover story was “The Death of the Farmer” and talked about the suicides of the Indian farmers, over a thousand of them in one particular province, since July 2005.  And in the same issue was an article about the pharmaceutical industry and their price gouging on medications, the fact that India was forbidden by its agreement with the WTO to manufacture any medication patented in India after 1995 and the need for new medications to deal with new ills in India.

I used the juxtaposition of the two articles to make it clear that food, not drugs, are the basis of health but that farmers are being driven off the land by a system called “Codex”.  After my talk, the Minister responded by thanking me for it and by saying that India was aware of the issues we were raising and that that they were committed to solving them.  He again, this time publicly, invited us to visit his office to begin the dialogue on what should be done!

Hot, tired and very, very dusty, we headed back to the Guest House where we changed clothes after showering off the dust.

We had dinner in a stunningly good kebab house and plunged into sleep.

Day 27: November 22, 2006

We had a full day of meetings with Arun and his colleagues to bring our joint vision for clean food for India into being.  We had a home made Indian breakfast and lunch during the day while people came in and out and added to our discussions.

Along the way, we made contact with the Minister mentioned above and the Health Minister and will see them tomorrow!  Not bad for two days.

Oh, by the way, I have been asked to write an article for the Delhi Medical Society journal on nutrition in medicine and Codex.  You bet

Before I tell you about today I have to tell you about yesterday.  I wrote the blog entry and posted it early in the day because I had no idea that there were going to be events of such significance during the rest of the day!  You can never tell.

After breakfast, we went to visit a member of the decision making stratum of society.  We wanted to continue our discussion of the day before and to demonstrate to her some of the capacity of advanced medicine. She is already a believer in the importance of natural medicine so we did not have to do much to convince her that clean food, detoxification, natural medicines, etc., are the foundation of a country’s health.

We showed her our technology, demonstrated its power and began talking about health at another level.  Then she invited us to go to a gallery exhibition for natural fabric dyes (with, as it turns out, natural health uses for temperature control) where we had the opportunity to see some utterly magnificent hand woven fabrics dyed in hand processed indigo (remember I mentioned that I love fabrics and weaving?  These were heavenly!)

At the gallery we met several people living in Thailand who will, as fate would have it, turn out to be especially important in the discussions that can help make Thailand another beacon in natural health and health freedom.  Who could have predicted that?

Many years ago, a beautiful woman named Bettina who shared my son’s passion for the flute (she was a grown up professional flute player, he was a budding one) said, when I asked her how she built her career as a musician, “It’s all about Vitamin C!”  I was pretty startled and more than a little unclear about what she meant.  When I looked with puzzlement at her, she explained: “Vitamin C — that’s for ‘Connections!’ “.

Well, in the lovely gallery, filled with spectacular weavings, sitting next to the Thai decision-maker, talking to a German expatriate and his American wife who “GOT” it and were quickly setting up the next steps, it clearly did have to Vitamin C!

You can bet there will be some intense follow up to those conversations!

Today we are packing to go to India (Mumbai, overnight in an airport hotel, then Delhi) for the opening of the Indian Farmers’ Festival.

My address to them is called “Farmers Hold Up More than Half the Sky” and will shortly be available on our website.  I’ll let you know when it’s up there!

Be well and be sure to get all the Vitamin C you need — both kinds!

When “We” equals “WHEE!”

We have been preparing for meetings in the most careful way: writing information material, translating it into Thai, strategizing whom to meet first, looking for the most meaningful way to make our point make sense in a different cultural, economic and historical context — you get the idea.

Two days ago we had a meeting with a man who writes grants for BIG NGOs.  We explained to him what we are about, how we are going about what we are about and what we need.  He said, half way through the meeting, “Let me know what I can do and I will do it for you for free!”  YES!  He then rang up our person here in Thailand and reiterated that he is in, totally in!  YES, YES!

Today we had 6 meetings and each one was a resounding success.

Meeting Number 1 actually started yesterday with a complete misunderstanding: we thought that the date was yesterday for the meeting and the high official who granted us the appointment thought that it was today. We got prepared for the meeting, dressed in our go-to-meeting clothes and got into a taxi cab which took us where we needed to go (we thought) and dropped us off. The soldier guarding the building said that we were in the right place and we got out, left behind by the receding cab. There we were, in a parking lot, looking for the entrance to a building with 7 floors. Nope. OK, we’ll find someone who speaks English and find our way. Nope. So there we were with only minutes to spare, a tremendously important appointment waiting for us and the only people to talk to a bunch of amiable non-English speaking guys hanging out in a parking lot. Not a relaxing moment.

The guys began gesturing to a van and ushering us towards it. No, we said. We do not need a ride (at least we did not think we did) and still they kept pointing us toward the van. Then one guy reached out and, we thought, was opening the door. But we were wrong: he was opening the window and inside was a regal and beautifully dressed woman who asked us in perfect English if she could be of help to us.

We explained our plight to her and she asked if we had a phone number. We did. She called and I got connected with the assistant to the man we had come to see who said that the Director expected us tomorrow and could not see us today.

What can you do? Nothing, just come back tomorrow. But seeing the look on my face of dismay, the lady asked what the problem was. We explained and also explained our mission. She responded with great interest and gave us her card: she was from another governmental department which has a great role to play in what we are trying to do but to which we had not yet developed lines.

She invited us to call her tomorrow (actually today, November 17) when we were finished with the first meeting (for which we got very, very good directions).

Next, back home in a taxi and more preparation meetings all day.

On November 17, 2006 we got ready and headed off to the official’s office (whom we did not see yesterday).

We got into a taxi whose driver had been instructed in Thai (and who had been given a map) because were trying to get to the high official’s office and NOT get lost. The hotel doorman instructed the driver in the cab about exactly where we needed to go and off we went. Twenty minutes? As they say in New York, “Fuhgeddaboutit!” Over an hour later we had gone miles and miles and miles out of our way in the worst of Bangkok traffic (which is more than pretty bad) and had actually driven past the building we were trying to get to: the driver had no idea in the world what he had been told we were looking for. And let me tell you, major highways (which we should never have gotten on to get where we were going) in Bangkok’s rush hour are a formidable obstacle!  A U turn, some more horrific traffic and there we were. Late.

When we got to our meeting location there were two translators outside of the [correct] building waiting for us and they greeted us warmly. Up we went in the elevators and met the Deputy Director of the department (who was wearing, by the way, a magnificent short sleeved business jacket made of stunningThai silk) along with other people who were sitting in on the meeting. When the Director of the department came in, we were able to give him our material on the International Decade of Nutrition (now in Thai and English), share our vision of what is happening to health and the world’s food supply and how we would like to help demonstrate what can be done to fix the problem.

After a bit of initial skepticism, he appeared to become fascinated and then very, very receptive. He made several suggestions about how to proceed and began using the pronoun “we” a lot. We agreed that we would stay in close touch, set up another meeting for either later this year or early 2007 and make two of our project areas a reality by creating two joint effort pilot projects here in Bangkok. What kind of joint efforts? Ones using our type of medicine — natural medicine.  Two of the people there were specialists in food safety and security so we agreed that we would have another meeting (and electronic correspondence with them specifically focused on Codex). Wonderful meeting!

Then we rang up the lovely lady of yesterday’s accidental “garage meeting” and were driven by a person who had been at the first meeting to have our meeting with her.  She is a head of section in another area of the government and, although she was very warm and gracious, she did not initially see the connection between what we were talking about at the last meeting and this one.  As we spoke, however, we made the point that natural medicine and natural agricultural techniques require new ways of doing jobs and people to disseminate information (a separate category of trained worker) and so her department had an important role to play in developing the skills and special activities of these people.  In short order she, too, was using the “We” word and the conversation turned to how she could help, suggesting connections for us, etc.

The remarkable thing is that I knew that we needed to work with her department here in Thailand to carry out our agenda BUT until our garage connection we had not yet developed any lines to that Department!  Talk about synchronicity!

At the end of meeting number 2, the lady put us in a taxi whose driver promised (in Thai) that he knew where the Conrad Hotel (the site of our next meeting) was.  Do you believe that?  I did at first.  It shortly became obvious that my faith in his geographical knowledge was sadly misplaced.  We were over an hour late for our luncheon meeting (number 3).  When we finally got there, the people we were to talk with were finished with their meal.  Non the less, we had an intense, brief, but highly productive meeting with an innovative, health-focused man who seemed to be very interested in how what we are doing fits in with his interests here in Asia.  Not long into that meeting the pronoun shift occurred.  His discourse went from “you” to “we”. So, although brief, the meeting was none the less productive, a preparation for more of same.

And the food in the Japanese restaurant in the Conrad Hotel is extraordinary!  If you get there, order the set lunch.  Mmmmmmm!  Delicious.

Next, we met with the woman who has been organizing all of this for us (meeting 4).  She has been a “We” person from the very first moments of our discussion.  Her understanding of how things work here and whom to approach are amazing.  Our first two meetings today came from our connections, but fit in very well with her approach.  Our next meetings were because of her contacts and were also filled with potential for success.  Thailand is, we believe, a pivotal country in our strategy because His Majesty, the King has committed himself, and therefore the people of Thailand, to health, organic farming and natural medicine.  Therefore, the momentum for these values and activities is tremendous here.

Our 5th meeting was held in the offices of a highly revered, and highly placed senior lady who understands clearly, very clearly, the vital importance of what we are trying to do.  Once we were introduced and began to talk, that wonderful word was very much in evidence: “We”.  “How do we begin?” “What is the best place we can start?” “How do we bring this to so and so?”

And, best of all, we have been asked to this lady’s home this morning for further talks.

Meeting number 6 was a dinner meeting with our Thai strategist and her partner, her father, a colleague and us.  We were “we” before we even sat down.

I would say we are having a “Whee” time!