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National Conference 1

Over the last week alot of things have happened, we have had 3 earthquakes over 5 on Richter Scale, we have had a Tsunami which killed over 600 people, we had another violent outbreak in Timor. We had new cases of bird flu but what I´ll talk about is the really important stuff, that´s National Conference 1 in Surabaya. We arrivet to this amazingly hot city on Tuesday after 12 hours of a cold, cold train ride (I caught a cold there, seriously). Then we were driven right to a food place, I will not call it a restaurant because that would degrade that beautifull word. It was just couple of tables by the road, an open fire and some pots and pans (and they are surprised that the bird flu spreads??) when I was offered a chicken brain soup, I, for the first time, drew the line and decided to swallow my pride and just order some regular food.
In the night we stayed at Fadils place which is a guy I know from a conference in India last year. His house was inhabited by his family but more importantly thousands upon thousands of blood thirsty mosquitos, I got 13 bites just in the evening before I went to sleep. I had seen a mosquito poison and had been defending my self bravely against the swarm of incoming troops, when Fadil told me, "ahhh... while I remember, be carefull with that spray, it has been banned from the stores because it is also poisonous to humans." Great to know after you sprayed all your surroundings for an hour.
The next day the conference started, and what a conference, I will not even try to describe the athmosphere at the conference here because those who have not been to an AIESEC conference can never understand the feeling by reading some shallow words. But I had an amazing time and all the delegates inspired me greatly.
I held trainings on Leadership, Team Management, Project management, for my people (company people) on negotiations, and then 2 functional sessions with my vice presidents, all in all a huge success and after the conference when reading the messages we write each others on these conferences I became so touched (not in a Michael Jackson way) by how inspired many people were by my trainings, it makes all the hard work worth while, so thank you guys!
So now it is back to work, coming back to Jakarta was nice, finally getting back into the traffic jams and endless pollution, it is starting to feel like home.
That´s it for now.

posted by Tomas @ Monday, July 24, 2006