Updates from Jakarta!

I meant to update this blog regularly, every night before sleep, but it's not as easy as I thought it would be. Things have been rather hectic, so I never got the chance to update properly on the account of being too busy or too tired.

In a nutshell, we have been in Jakarta for three days already, and couple this with our amazing week in Brunei, I have to say that this exchange programme has been an awesome experience. I would elaborate more on the things we did in Brunei in the next post; just wanted to say that we've visited quite a number of places in Jakarta already! They took us to Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, where we had the opportunity to visit different museums and also the freshwater aquarium. We had the Opening Ceremony today, where we met the Director General for Information and Public Communication, Mr Freddie Tong, and also celebrated his birthday! In the afternoon, we went to the bargain market, and for we had teppanyaki or Japanese barbecue for dinner.

We're working on our newsletter at the moment, so updates on this blog will be slow!

Day 2: Module 1 & 2

Module 1:

After our morning tea, we retired back to Bilik Melor to get ready for the first module of the Campus.

Module 1: General Orientation of the Programme and Background on ASEAN

Part 1: General Information on Brunei Darussalam

Zainal spent about an hour explaining the culture and history of Brunei. This was followed by the Long Term Development Plan of Brunei, on how the country is trying to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the challenges faced by the country. Based on the questions posed by the participants, they were mostly curious about how Brunei's economy is.

Part 2: Background on ASEAN

Four representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade were the speakers for the second part of the module. We were briefed about the history and background of ASEAN, then broken down into explanation about the APSC, AEC and ASCC by each of the speakers respectively. During the question and answer session, Nopp from Thailand, asked about ASEAN's role of promoting democracy and why some countries under ASEAN still do not have a democratic government. Kamil from Malaysia then asked about foreign trade agreement and how ASEAN can achieve ASEAN Community by 2015 when there are still infant industries in the region. There was also a question on Timor Leste and why the country is not yet accepted under ASEAN.

Speakers from MOFAT

Module 2: Writing for Newsletter

Part 1:

Part 1 of the module began at 3.55pm, facilitated again my Zainal. This module focuses on newsletter production, where Zainal shared with us his experience on writing and also the ABCs of Journalism. As part of our activity, we were each asked to draw a tree, which reflects our sense of observation about what is apparent and what is hidden.

The work of ASEAN artists. :D

Part 2:

In the evening, we continued on with the second part of our module by discussing about how to overcome writer's block. Some of us gave suggestions such as 'going away', 'relating with past experience', 'look at view/nature', and the facilitator suggested that we could 'brainstorm crazy ideas'. To emphasise on the last suggestion, he showed us his marker pen and asked us to brainstorm the many ways we can use the marker pen aside from writing. We were amazed by how crazy our suggestions can be, yet creative with our ideas. 'Hunting', 'playing dart' and 'digging your nose' were some of the crazy yet fun ideas suggested by the participants.

The facilitator gave us various tips on how to improve our writing skills and told us to be careful that our words can be easily misinterpreted. We ended the session just before 10pm to allow us to catch the evening news to watch ourselves on TV.

Crowding in the lobby to record the evening news

Day 2: Opening Ceremony

[Post to be updated]

Power breakfast!

The Opening Ceremony was held at Dewan Teratai.

Guest of Honour delivering his speech.

Day 1: Dinner, Administrative Briefing and Ice-Breaking

I came down early, and there was no one else around yet so I sat in the secretariat room and talked to the committee. It was fun meeting with people behind the scene.

The superheroes in the secretariat room

Participants namelist

We had our dinner at around 7.30pm. This was followed by an administrative briefing from the Head of Secretariat, Hajah Hamsah.

Administrative briefing

The ice-breaking was conducted by Mr. Zainal Abidin Tunggal (who insisted we just call him 'Zainal') where we played a game to help memorise each others' name. It was quite fun as we see the side of people as they become excited and confused. Two rounds and fourteen names later, we played another game where we each had to write three facts about ourselves on three cards anonymously, then we each had to guess who wrote the cards. We were able to learn new things about each other this way, for example, "I want to be a diver" or "I want to be an entrepreneur". Interestingly enough, I wrote 'I like rock music', but people's first impression is that it had to be a guy's kind of music, so the guesser went on to guess the boys' name before realising it was me.

Picking out the first clue card

Sam (Vietnam), Nopp (Thailand), Phei (Thailand), Thipp (Laos) , Bich (Vietnam)

Yatt (Malaysia), Nasri (Brunei), Andhika (Indonesia), Wildan (Indonesia), Kamil (Malaysia)

Bich (Vietnam), Sreytoch (Cambodia), Dina (Cambodia), Tata (Laos), Kye (Brunei)

We retired back to our rooms around 10pm. The Malaysian delegation arrived halfway during the ice-breaking, while the Philippine delegation will only arrive around midnight.

Tomorrow we start our first module!

Day 1: Arrival

Arrived at SEAMEO VOCTECH at 5. I would be sharing with the female delegate from Malaysia but she will only be arriving in the evening. So far there are only 6 out of the 16 delegates who are here. Only met one of them, will be seeing the others later during the dinner and ice-breaking event.

SEAMEO VOCTECH

Main entrance

The secretariat welcoming us to give us our name tag and bag.

Info pack for ACJEP IV.

I can't wait for the event to start!

Pre-Campus Thoughts

Akmal and I were privileged to be selected to represent Brunei in the final phase of the ASEAN Campus Journalist/Leaders Exchange Programme, which will be held from 12th to 18th June in Brunei, and 18th to 24th June in Indonesia.

A few days ago we were called in for a briefing by the Information Department, Prime Minister's Office, where the secretariat gave us the details of the programme and also showed us the photos of the other participants from ASEAN countries (except Singapore and Myanmar). Suffice to say, we were quite excited to be joining the Campus and meeting new people.

We were informed that we would be staying at SEAMEO-VOCTECH throughout the programme. Neither of us have had experience of staying at the place, so it would be something new for us, even if the programme was conducted in our own country. We would be staying with 14 other participants, and based on the itinerary we were provided, the committee would be taking us through various modules related to journalism and magazine publication, as well as field trips and cultural demonstrations.

Opening Ceremony tomorrow; our parents are invited!

Whilst the programme in itself focuses on journalism, which neither Akmal nor I have any academic background on, it does cover a module on the power of social media, which I think a lot of us would be able to relate to. It would be a very good exposure for us to be able to explore an area that we are not accustomed to (namely professional writing), which should be quite beneficial for us in the long run.

We were also asked to write several articles as part of the programme, and personally I hope I would be able to write on an area that I feel strongly about, but have never had the drive to carry out. As Brunei is our home country, we would not be required to write on Brunei, but instead save our creative juices for after we move on to Jakarta and Bandung.

The expectations are always the same before I take on any leadership programme: the excitement of meeting new people, the thirst to learn new things, that feeling you get when you see new places. Hopefully we would not disappoint the organisers and be able to produce quality writing by the end of the programme.