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