Sarong Party People of MENA returns.

our overweight luggages...... how did that happen?!

and so, we boarded the plane ambivalently (well, at least i did). a part of me wanted to stay while the other yearned to be back. Anyway, back we are.

apologies for the disrupt in updates for MENAXLDS.

it's a hectic week ahead-and i'll try to get back to blogging on MENA as soon as i can.

gee... i miss (and i think i'm safe to say that, WE MISS) MENA, the climate, the view and above all, the PEOPLE of MENAXLDS '09.

meanwhile, people in the land of Dim Sums and Shopping, go on and have a blast!

APXLDS & AP Symposium in HONG KONG! (Day 0 and Day 1)

21st March 2009

Hi AIESEC in NUS!

Right now we are in APXLDS in Hong Kong and it is now 2 am. But sadly there is no internet here so I might have to wait for a few more days before I can upload this blog.

So far the journey in Hong Kong has been awesome! Kang Rui and I arrived here on Friday morning and we went straight to the Symposium from the airport. We were scared that we would be late but luckily they haven’t really starter yet. So yeah.. good for us. The Symposium was great! Especially the 2nd part of it. They had very good speakers with good advice on how to become a good talent in this economic crisis time. And they had great sponsors in food, venue, and wine! Yes they served wine for cocktails! Sadly we were sooooo tired by the end of the Symposium and we didn’t mingle around long at the cocktails and went straight back to our hostel and dropped dead on the bed. Dropped dead here I mean practically dead on the bed with my business formal shirts still on :p

The next morning we went to have dumpling noodles for breakfast and it’s hard to order breakfast with both of us not knowing any single Cantonese. Cos they all thought we are Hong Kongers.. sigh… I think the aunties’ English is not that good too apparently.

The Global Village was great!! It’s actually held together with the opening ceremony of APXLDS and it was held in this public place called Avenue of Stars. So the public can basically come to our booths too. The place is actually very similar to Esplanade area where you can see sea and Hong Kong Island across. Sadly the weather is so foggy/hazy, dunno because of the pollution or cos it’s the end os spring, so we cant see anything.



And our booth (perhaps for the 1st time) is quite popular! Cos of the henna that we are promoting. So now Singapore is famous for its henna hahhaa.. Many queues for the henna and we actually anyhow draw for them. Hope they are not complaining hahhaa..Will upload the video soon. Then Adrian showed them Singlish during the opening plenary. And oh ya! We have a new Singapore cheer! Adapted from VJ cheer. The response wasn’t that great, but at least we have something else other than the Singapore kiss haha..

At night we are supposed to have a “pajamas party” but apparently we only had one hour to party in the venue then we get kicked out. And the atmosphere wasn’t really there so we left and joined the Australian room party. BUTT we all don’t have mixers to mix with the cheap liquor that they bought!! (10 HKD for disgusting rice wine. Ugghh)

SO yeah the 1st day has been quite good so far, but let’s hope the atmosphere will be getting better and better for the next 6 days and we have to wake up tmr at 6.45 am!! I don’t think I can wake up that early haha..

OH YA! One interesting fact is. I think the people in my house (Vasudha and I stayed in the same house with 6 other girls). We all are sort of “the gossip girls” hahha.. Especially with this nice Australian girl. We loved to watch Gossip Girls and we were gossiping about the “scandals” that we started to see in the conference. and they have gossip box! Hmm. So adrian is on action soon haha..

Alright then. Going to sleep soon after my hair gets dry. Will update you again soon about what’s happening tomorrow on the 2nd day!

Stay tuned with us and HI BERNICE AND ELROY! Back from Egypt yet? :p

Day 3

Well, gotten into the groove of things, ie, not to eat before it's time. Now now, meal times are a very interesting concept here, think: Speed dating / Musical Chairs. Not a bad idea at all actually. Anyway, after breakie was morning plenary all over again...which means, SH*T! another round of roll calls!!!! Garh... "Algeria (uh-oh.. what are we gonna do?)... Bahrain (OK.. hmmm...) ... France (shit, our turn soon!) ...Japan (Arhh!!)... Morocco (ARHHHH!!) ... Oman (let's just stand on chairs and shout.. SINGAPORE ("Singapore loves you....")" Thank god, that did the trick!

Anyway, we were split into groups for "Treasure Hunting" (ie, games and group solving stuff) where the treasure, tacky as it sounds, really is just yourself. Pretty fun stuff actually (with learning point of course!) Let's see, the first game saw our hands being entangled, the second with us sitting down and chatting (which wasn't exactly supposed to happen), at the end of the third saw a Dutch being dunked into the swimming pool. the 4th saw us dunking paper into a box (such a waste of paper though). 5th game produced a stadium and some laughs but left Bernice and i with a cultural surprise? Well, more on that when we see you guys in person!












Night came and it was MENA Idol night!
once again, sorry guys, we were simply too tired/schweepy! Do bear in mind the 6 hours of difference! (Plus, our ageing -ok, fine, just mine (ie, not Bernice's) is taking a toll on me). So once again, truly sorry for not having any updates on this.

Day 2

Really, Day 2 commenced 5 hours after breakfast at 12pm, when we had the morning plenary. It was all fine and dandy and vaguely exciting until we had to do a ROLL CALL. Can we recall any roll calls? No. What did we do? Reprise the fond memories of our sarong day sand sang Dayong Sampan to the entire delegation (complete with rowing actions!). hahahah which they totally digged (dug) so thank god for that. At this rate we could well boil blue glutinous rice balls and convince everyone that it's our national dish.






After lunch we proceeded to MENA CAFE, which was a larger scale version of our Connection Time at NLDS - we signed up for Social Development and Economic Crisis in the MENA Region. Discussion was rather stilted. with overtly pertinent issues like religious intolerance and religious-political amalgamation not brought up at all, and we figured it's probably due to the self censorship suggested by the CC earlier in the day - apparently there's secret police deployed at the conference to check on the proceedings, and we were all discouraged from speaking privately with any strangers about our perspectives on controversial issues altogether. A few days later we learnt from the Bahrainis over dinner that Qatar banned all Aiesec related conferences within the region after discovering facebook pictures of foreigners consuming alcoholic beverages at the earlier MENAXLDS sessions, and Bahrain helped revive their aiesec culture by organizing a Gulf Conference, which was later permitted. Pretty damn impressive, I must say. To that, we say, Yay! Bahrain!


There was a party in the night but we wound up tumbling back to our room after dinner and collapsed, at all of 10pm (4am Singapore time). Anyway, lucky for us, especially since the party was a supposed flop with many other Aiesecers dancing/grooving with senior citizens (and i mean it)!

and it continues...

7 HOUR COACH RIDE TO SHARM EL SHEIKH

torturous, freezing cold and arabic chart toppers without shisha alongside woeful fatigue is not a good state to be in. Nevertheless, that didn't stop us both from falling asleep in all glamour we can muster only to wake up to a small pack of stuffed pita bread left on elroy's tummy courtesy of one mysterious delegate.

SEA CLUB, SHARM EL SHEIKH



Words cannot describe this. Except well, we got into a little trouble for infiltrating the breakfast buffet at 6.30am instead of the stipulated time of 7am. =(

Global Village

this explains our blog's sarong theme...

I swear we were superstars - random egyptians and international delegates were so taken by our childhood game of gel balloons that we would hate to have hurt their feelings to acknowledge that they are indeed manufactured in Indonesia so we claimed all credit for our very own nation - yes, even when a Kuwaiti came up to us and pronounced that she's played with the same thingum when young, which we quickly explained away with theories of nascent globalization and international trade and imported children games from where? Singapore. hahaha














and even more...

Day 1

So we've finally touched down after a good 12 hours 40 minutes being stuck on the plane (had a transit in Dubai but we couldn't get off as we were docked away from the terminal...NO!!!! to think i've been trapped for 7hours craving for McArabia!).

At an earthly 0530, we go off the plane with our royal wave down the stairs (no, not really) while the magic school bus picked us up to the terminal. Met dear Tina from Aiesec Poland, one of the CCs for MENAXLDS. As it still way too early, we bummed in in Ceasar's Hotel where most of the other delegates put up (because they flew in earlier). Rotted around the lobby but there wasn't much life going on. Our tomb raider instincts kicked in and off we went exploring the area actually, we were really really hungry and were trying to find breakfast).

Guess what we found!



nothing else seemed to be open yet though.

Stuffed ourselves with those freshly made pita and back we went.

Took a little bus with some of the other AP delegates and headed off for another hotel for the opening ceremony. People started streaming in and off we went face hunting...








So anyway we got our asses to this other 4 star Triumph Hotel, which was pretty much swarming with press - there's an up and coming arabic young star clad in a suit replete with shades - very bollywood, very anil kapoor (host of who wants to be a millionaire from SlumDog Millionaire) 20 years ago. Good stuff. So we met our dearest Essa! Who promptly introduced us to the rest of his 6 Bahraini homies at the conference - followed by talks, speeches, etc and we paid our respects to Nadia (MCP of Egypt) as instructed by Mayas so all is good yaarl. Until of course it was time to prepare for Global Village, which saw us escaping from the hotel grounds to across the street to Egyptian Carl's Jr (pictures enclosed) for a quick bite (thank god because the next proper meal was at some pit stop en route on our 7 hour coach ride to the 5 star beach resort at Sharm El Sheikh at an ungodly 2am in the morning later that night) and changed into our sarongs - trudged daintily back in name of decency - sarongs riding down or altogether off is not quite a pleasant sight for egyptians i am sure! Also in archetypal randomness, I wound up offering two egyptian guards cigarettes to stop them from laughing at us. Give me a G for Glamourous honey ("Gee", she's deluded).