My IBWSC experience in UBC [Summary]

PLAY THIS SONG WHILE READING!! :D

I chose this song mainly because it starts off with a sad note, but if one will notice it grows into a somewhat sad but hopeful note, then it reaches its climax with a very hopeful note, then ends with a suspense somewhat dimming into sadness. That was how the whole IBWSC 2012 went for me. 

As the song, I started off sad or somewhat in the dark, not knowing anyone, not knowing the whole concept sustainability. As the first day flew by, more friends were added into my circle and some knowledge concerning the topic was imparted to me, but still relatively in the dark. Moving on, the hope grew, alongside stronger friendships and deeper knowledge; absorbing in the air of UBC, Vancouver, Canada, watching the seagulls flyby, watching the squirrels scatter around, a raccoon, in the night, looking for food. The variety of animals one could see was amazing, not to mention the bald headed eagles. All these gave me some sort of peace, some sort of rest in my heart. And as the song reaches it's climax, all hope is present, ties were made, ties stronger than any metal alloy, knowledge rooted deep, deeper than the roots of the cactus one might say. But the song dies slowly back to sadness, because the conference is ending, because the ties made will be stretched thin, because the ties will be tested against time and distance, because the gathering of people with the same mindset will disperse, but the song hangs in suspense. Suspense, from what I interpret, is the outcome, the true response of all who attended the conference, the final key to the whole piece lies in the hands of us and the generations to come.  My interpretations of this piece might be wrong, but this is how I view it as, and this song is still stuck in my head.

Day 5 (27/7)

Paul Nicklen was his name. A NatGeo wildlife photographer stationed at the Artic he was. To see the jaw dropping high definition pictures of the Emperor Penguins, Polar Bears, and the Narwhals wasn't what I expected to see early in the morning, but I guess that was the most memorable morning I ever had. I also found out he was very much like me. He loved being outdoors, whenever he had troubles or problems he found peace in wildlife, just by walking in nature will do good, and that was the same for me. One of the very first things he said was "you gotta love failure" and that got stuck in my mind instantly.

After that inspirational talk, was the final GAT meeting. We had final preparations for the presentations on the afternoon. We had this video idea that was already being filmed by the Singaporean students from School of The Arts. Everyone was being filmed, and only one person editing the whole video, I felt really bad for letting her do that by herself, but her reply was true, I couldn’t help much for I know nothing on editing.

Presentation time. All the GAT teams had amazing presentations to give to us and most importantly to bring back to their own countries. What we presented was a video -  a video on what we learnt and what we would do and bring back to our respective countries.

We ended the whole conference with a nice farewell party at the beach. Although we had fun, one of us was already missing from the group - she left in the morning to Hong Kong. What's even worse is that, we were already starting to miss each other even though we were standing in front of each other. To think that the conference is coming to its end was a sad enough thought for all of us. Standing by the beach, staring out to the endless horizon in silence, thinking of what is to happen to all of us was pure agony. "Conferences always end when we get very close to each other" and "if only it lasted for one whole month!" was pretty much everyone was thinking about.

We went back to Totem Park, most of us decided to have more fun and hang around. I decided to pull an all-nighter with my friends. All of us had so much fun on the last day. We had card games, a movie, even a support group all in one loooong night. The highlight of the night was the game of Dai Di or Big 2 (an awesome asian card game), bursts of laughter just came from that game as we found out our friend's weakness - past 4am his brains become jelly (you go Desmond!) 

Paul Nicklen.
"you gotta love failure"

Day 4 (26/7)

With the beats of Kutapira still ringing in my head, we went to the CIRS theater the next morning for a talk by Robert Winson. He gave us a few points that were very practical and down to earth. He also told us to follow OUR own dreams instead of dreams other people place in your mind. A few steps to follow are to Voice it, Price it, Acknowledge it, Face it, and finally Define it. All these great steps to know yourself, to know your goal, to know your true target.

After that the day unfolded into an eventful day touring the city of Vancouver! First off was the 45minute bus ride to the Vancouver National Aquarium. The scenery along the way to the aquarium was very pretty. The bridges and rivers that opened up to the seas, the houses that spanned out to the hills - just amazing. We spent the rest of the day in the aquarium hanging around and having bonding time with our friends and other conference people that we haven't met yet. It was an amazing trip, but unfortunately we didn't go to the 4D movie as we were running out of time. We spent the whole day just looking at the weird and interesting animals at the aquarium.

Buying gifts and souvenirs back from the aquarium was one of the most entertaining ones. My Japanese friend just kept on taking the maple syrup cookies from the shelf till it was wiped out, literally the whole shelf was cleared. We then headed off to Stanley Park for a picnic dinner and an awesome group photo on the hill. We then hopped into busses that took us to the beautiful harbor front of Vancouver to board the cruise Britannia. From outside, it looked too small to fit 350 people in it, but I was proven wrong, when there were extra space on the boat! The boat was in its own way, sustainable! I noticed that the taps automatically close once you release the handle.

The sunset on the boat was an amazing sight to hold! The reddish orange light that blanketed the whole sky was truly beautiful. Along with the sighting of a majestic bald eagle (special thanks to the captain for pointing that out) that knocked the evening to night.

The day ended with plenty of sweaty and dead beat people from the dancing. I myself did not dance to this clubbing culture of this generation, but merely sat there next to the snacks table. Although I did not dance, I was also beat from the day's worth of activities, knocked out the moment my head touched the bed.

The view on the way

Aquarium

The Britannia

Sunsets

Dazzling

simply Gorgeous 

Day 3 (25/7)

We started the day to the famous Severn Cullis-Suzuki's speech about sustainability. If you were wondering who she is, she was the girl, who was at the time 12 years old, silenced the world for 5 minutes during one of the UN Conferences in Rio. Her speech was equally inspiring as her speech 2 decades ago, although currently, the UN wasn’t as pro-active about sustainability as 20years ago. Disappointed, she decided to look towards the younger generation, us, to change the world, quote "...not top politicians, but you, the younger generation to change the world". Her words were of encouragement to me, she also told us that we, the young people can do things that adults can't, without money! And the fact that our voice is our most powerful tool to fight this war we are in.

Later on, in the session titled Earth. Spirit. Culture. Art. I realized that in every small thing that I do in everyday life, will have a great impact on the environment. For example, I have this really bad habit of leaving the lights, AC & heater on when I leave my hostel room and head for an 8hour long class before coming back into the room and leaving the water running while I apply shampoo and soap. These small things, I realized, affected the whole environment.

We have only 1 world, 1 life, and all we need is one community and one action plan to start the domino effect in the name of sustainability.

This was further emphasized in the talk by Quinn Runkle (a UBC student) where she said that to kick start a project all you need is to kick the first domino piece down, which will in turn, cause the rest of the domino chips to fall. Also, start small, in your own community, take the first step, take the risk, learn and challenge yourself. All these I took in, with much appreciation and encouragement to change, firstly, my lifestyle, then others.

Then came the football. This time polished slightly by the first day's events, I did so much better, I even scored a goal through a goal kick! We roared with laughter and joy when we defeated the opposing team 6-2 when they had very strong teammates. MVP of the game was Nawaraj (ibwsc2012.edublogs.org), the 4 goals coupled with the impressive footwork earned him that title.

Lastly, we gathered in the CIRS theater for a Kutapira performance. It was mainly drums, and everybody started dancing, or rather jumping up and down, to the rhythm of the music. It started to get really stuffy and warm in the Theater, ironically in a cool and dry atmosphere. It was an amazing performance, with the few instruments they had, they "rocked the building".

Today was just pure FUN. I learnt plenty of things in this multicultural gathering of brilliant minds that have the same goal - to make things better, not just less bad. But first, I have to start changing me, then grow outwards, which is to my family, then neighborhood, state, country and then world (hopefully).

CD!

Live band

Day 2 (24/7)

Day 2 of the conference, woke up with a slight headache - probably from the knee to the head, I popped in a couple of painkillers, freshened up, checked my face for visible bruises (and thankfully none) and headed to my chaperone for breakfast. After that we headed to the CIRS Theater for a talk by John McCall MacBain on Sustainability. A sentence I liked from him was "Think of CO2 as water in a bathtub, plenty of water input but one small exit - the drainage hole". So technically, he was saying that the CO2 input was so much but the output isn't enough to balance out the CO2 input. It was a very interesting point of view, and it helped a lot in the whole understanding process.

After that, we had a decision theater session whereby we chose amongst many options in the case that we were the government of the area. Apparently, the majority made the option "walkable neighborhood" as the highest priority over than "clean air" for the neighborhood. After that we adjourned for lunch and came back after for a session called Globalization 101.

Globalization 101. Room 406. I was the only one in my GAT that didn’t have the same sessions as the rest of my group. So basically, I was alone. I entered halfway through due to the short UBC Admission session during lunchtime. We talked about how producing products by a company can be a great impact to the earth.  For example, to produce a cotton shirt, the cotton wool from Texas is imported to China or India to be processed and manufactured and then shipped back to USA to be sold again, which then after 5 years or more of usage is then thrown away or given to charitable organizations to be shipped away again to be made into rugs which is shipped to the worldwide market. From here, I could see the amount of logistics needed in order to produce a product. This was a very alarming.

Next we headed off to our GAT rooms for further discussions into the topic of sustainability, and one of the questions were "Should we save people or save the world?" and I gave deep thought to it and came out with, if humans were the sole cause of the earth going down the drain, then why not just eliminate all of mankind? Earth will then be self sustainable as there will be no more wastage and the environment will be stable.  But then again, the role of ethics has a heavy role in this, and since this whole conference, in general, is about being ethical, so we can't just take the whole human population out.

Next we had a drumming session, which I believe was the MOST exciting event in the whole day! We learnt how to play African drums and also the short history behind it which was that Jazz and Rock was all based on African drums!

End of Day 2. 

Adam and I in drumming

Day 1 (23/7)

Day ONE of IBWSC! All 300 of us gathered in the CIRS Theater excited, or at least that was what I felt. We were introduced to UBC and the theme of the whole conference "The New Green : Making things better, Not just 'less bad'". The introductory talk was given first thing in the morning to kick start the whole conference. After the encouraging speech, all of us spread into our Global Action Teams (GAT). What we do in our GATs are to discuss further into the topic of sustainability and the ways to improve it. We had plenty of icebreaking games that brought the GAT people closer together. We were GAT-M.

After lunch, GAT-M headed back to room 407 to begin our session on sustainability. Two assistants and Ms Naomi Klein were in-charge of conveying the whole idea of sustainability. . My group (within the group...groupception!!) had to debate about Technical Fix vs Value Change. A brief definition of those terms, in my words, are that Technical Fix is a change that is imposed on a person, whereas Value Change is the change that is taught to the person to change his values in life to be more green. I learnt that Technical Fix and Value Change must exist hand-in hand, implemented by high authorities, to build a more sustainable environment through the citizens.

When it came to the Sustainability Core sessions, we were supposed to have a Life Cycle Assessment talk but the person giving the talk didn’t show up. I was quite disappointed as I wanted to learn about sustainability BUT, as a blessing in disguise, I met a Bangladeshi  who had a BRILLIANT idea and plan, that is already in progress in his hometown, on using 1.5L clear bottles to illuminate a house. I watched a video that he, Nafis, videoed and amazingly, the whole room lighted up as bright, or even brighter than a light bulb!! I was stunned, it was so simple and such an amazing idea!

After the whole sustainability talks, or rather, aweing over the Bottle Bulb, I signed up for the "World Cup" and as usual, played as the goalie, which landed me with a nice knee to my face, or what I saw in the blur of action, due to me diving for the ball. They said your nose will numb up in the cold, but apparently for me, it got numb because of the knee to the face. Final injuries were a cut lip and a bruised, numb face but all in all, I had fun, and guys with scars just attract more girls, no? ;-) as they say, No Pain, No Gain.

After dinner, we headed towards the botanical gardens within UBC for the canopy walk, I also found out later that the movie of the boy with the sparkling skin was filmed in the very forest we walked in.

We went back at around 2030hrs, We ended with a game of "Telephone" or "Chinese Whispers" which was hilarious! We had a big circle, and we started off with languages such as Mandarin, Hindi, Tamil, and Spanish, but instead of ending with the same language it started, it ended with either English, jibberish, or weird sounds! Laughter filled the room every time the sentence went wrong at different corners of the group and a roar came when the last person said what he/she heard. Talk about international mindedness! 

It was an amazing day! Despite the injuries that I suffered, I loved this place, and more importantly, I loved the whole conference, the people that were here, my awesome GAT and Chaperon groups, the friends that I made, and, hopefully, will never forget.

The pathway

treetop view!

Chaperone Team

ETA - 17 hours

17 hours remain between me and the flight off to Canada for the conference. But in order to actually reach Vancouver, a total of 24hours + 4 hours(transit time) will be needed - the dreaded part of the whole trip as I will be flying from Malaysia.

Having packed just the day before, I HOPE I have packed enough to sustain the trip :P (note the pun)

CAN'T WAIT :D