austraLasia 1563
Fiji-Samoa animation visit: juggling with dates
SUVA: 17th May 2006 -- These days find Fr Klement, Regional Councillor for East Asia-Oceania, astride the international dateline, pretty much literally! Other than some parts of the Kamchatka Peninsula and Eastern Russia there is nowhere else on the globe that you can stand astride the dateline - except in Fiji! Fortunately they push the actual 'date' a little East on sea rather than land, so people don't have to spend their day walking backwards into the future! But tomorrow Fr Klement will have the odd experience of an hour and bit flight to Samoa where he will arrive yesterday, only to find himself in some sort of tomorrow three days later again, having lost a day out of his life - confused? Then you'll know why most international visitors to Fiji and Samoa often arrive too early or too late, including not a few important Salesian visitors.
However, with the assiduous attention of the Australian province, to which these two entities belong (only Salesianwise, they are independent nations), Fr Klement is guaranteed to be arriving on the right day, so long as Air Fiji and Air Pacific have their act together, and, well, that is another story.
In speaking with the nine brothers in formation in the community - all nine of them in preparation for priesthood at various stages - immediate postnovitiate to their final year of theology - Fr Klement has taken pains to describe the wider EAO Region to these young men, and has opened up vistas of the Congregation's missionary dimension for them. Three of those in their final year spent their practical training years in Papua New Guinea, while a fourth spent his time in Australia.
Tomorrow, Fr Klement moves on to Apia, Samoa and from there will come through Australia (Melbourne) before heading back to Rome - though in reality he will only be in Rome a few brief hours before moving out to Jerusalem with the General Council who will be making their annual Retreat in the Holy Land.
austraLasia hopes to keep up some kind of service over the next week or so, but its coordinator is in the African continent engaged in communications meetings. That means he should be 'connected' of course, but you will understand if the odd day passes without something coming your way.
And one final note - today is the Name Day of Fr Pascual. He also keeps a birthday but as he has often told people at the Casa Generalizia, his birthday falls too close to Christmas! Anyway, austraLasia offers him greetings in the name of its readers, but it's never too late to follow that up personally if you wish.
________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please
contact admin@bosconet.aust.com Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml
Fiji-Samoa animation visit: juggling with dates
SUVA: 17th May 2006 -- These days find Fr Klement, Regional Councillor for East Asia-Oceania, astride the international dateline, pretty much literally! Other than some parts of the Kamchatka Peninsula and Eastern Russia there is nowhere else on the globe that you can stand astride the dateline - except in Fiji! Fortunately they push the actual 'date' a little East on sea rather than land, so people don't have to spend their day walking backwards into the future! But tomorrow Fr Klement will have the odd experience of an hour and bit flight to Samoa where he will arrive yesterday, only to find himself in some sort of tomorrow three days later again, having lost a day out of his life - confused? Then you'll know why most international visitors to Fiji and Samoa often arrive too early or too late, including not a few important Salesian visitors.
However, with the assiduous attention of the Australian province, to which these two entities belong (only Salesianwise, they are independent nations), Fr Klement is guaranteed to be arriving on the right day, so long as Air Fiji and Air Pacific have their act together, and, well, that is another story.
In speaking with the nine brothers in formation in the community - all nine of them in preparation for priesthood at various stages - immediate postnovitiate to their final year of theology - Fr Klement has taken pains to describe the wider EAO Region to these young men, and has opened up vistas of the Congregation's missionary dimension for them. Three of those in their final year spent their practical training years in Papua New Guinea, while a fourth spent his time in Australia.
Tomorrow, Fr Klement moves on to Apia, Samoa and from there will come through Australia (Melbourne) before heading back to Rome - though in reality he will only be in Rome a few brief hours before moving out to Jerusalem with the General Council who will be making their annual Retreat in the Holy Land.
austraLasia hopes to keep up some kind of service over the next week or so, but its coordinator is in the African continent engaged in communications meetings. That means he should be 'connected' of course, but you will understand if the odd day passes without something coming your way.
And one final note - today is the Name Day of Fr Pascual. He also keeps a birthday but as he has often told people at the Casa Generalizia, his birthday falls too close to Christmas! Anyway, austraLasia offers him greetings in the name of its readers, but it's never too late to follow that up personally if you wish.
________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please
contact admin@bosconet.aust.com Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml
