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