The update I promised

Location: My room, KL
Mood: Sleeeepy.
Music: Barely Breathing - Duncan Sheik

Alright, so I've already talked about the individual projects that the students came up with, so I'll go on to talk about the final day. The final event was pegged for the 13th of June, and the students worked really hard preparing for it. We had an MP officiating the event, and representatives from the MNS talking. I got to give a brief intro to SEALNet. :)

The final day showcased the students' project proposals (they made posters for it) and the environmental activities they had done over the past two weeks (litter sorting, mangrove planting/clearing, water monitoring etc). There were also a lot of fun games with an environmental focus (e.g. the chopstick game, only you had to pick up pieces of plastic, aluminum and paper and put them in the appropriate stack. Bowling with a coconut husk was also pretty fun. The MP went around and the students presented their proposals to him. The students also sold a bunch of KSNP stuff to raise money for the park, as well as a bunch of crafts made from recyclable materials (like these amazing fish we made!). It went really well! There were speakers outside, where we blasted reggaeton at Han Hsien's request - he went crazy. We also played Maahi Ve, which I knew the dance to, courtesy of Sneha! :)



Now, about the prank. So Kraig is afraid of bugs, and throughout the project Keng had been playing pranks on him, putting beetles in his shoes, blowing ice at him at KFC to make him jump etc. I think the score was 2-0 to Keng. To get him back, Kraig decided to cling wrap his car!



Amazing project. Saying goodbye to everyone was really difficult. We exchanged string bracelets on the last night (another SEALNet tradition). The last day went really quickly. After string bracelets, we slept, had the final day, then packed up and went to KL for our final dinner and our night out - an amazing end to the project. :)

Nice job everyone! I am super proud to have been part of this team, and I am so so glad that I did this. Organizing PM09 was so much work and so many late nights, but you guys made it amazing and worth it. I learned a lot from all of you, and I have no regrets about the team we ended up with. It was a lot of fun. And all you high school students reading this, you guys were amazing too - it was a pleasure working with you. Keep in touch with us, and all the best for the future! I hope to be seeing all of you soon. :)

Love,
Jing

P.S. Keep your eyes peeled for media coverage of the final day. There should also be (fingers crossed) an article coming out in a magazine, but I'll keep you guys posted.
P.P.S. I'll put more pictures up soon, I promise!
P.P.P.S. I hate accounts.

I'm a slacker

Location: KL International Airport
Mood: Sad
Music: Jai Ho - A.R. Rahman

Hey guys,

Ahhhh so I was really really bad and didn't post for the last 3 days of the program. We were so busy; it was such a blur of work, late nights and pranks. One of the nights, I was up till 4am with Kellie and Tian, making crafts for the final day event and talking. We woke up really early every morning so we could work with the mentees, giving them the final push for their individual project presentations on Day 12 and the final event on Day 13. Many many posters and crafts were made, and many proposals were written and proofread.

Let's start with the individual project proposals. There were a total of 4 groups, and the judges were Kat, Asok, Tian, Kellie and me. There was Jia Jun, Farah and Sonia Maria (the out of towners), who proposed a project involving reusable bag campaigns in their individual hometowns, Pavitra, Rina and Kiru, who wanted to plan a fairly large scale Recycling Day in their school, Uthaya, Shan, Velan and Ahmad, who just proposed many things, ranging from a herb garden to an environmental camp at KSNP, and Hwei Yee, Jin Jing, Pei Yee and Kalai, who were going to hold a monthly recycling competition at their school between separate classes (something that my Chinese school actually did do, and did so very successfully). All in all it was really good, and I was pretty impressed with the projects.

Okay, never mind. I do not have time to finish this post, and I'm not going to be able to write for a week (thank you, China, for blocking my blog). Its going to be fun. My brother and sister are going to summer school, so the entire family is going to drop them off. :) I promise promise promise a full update when I get back, where I will tell you about the prank we played on Keng (we clingwrapped his car), the prank Keng played on Kraig (there was a beetle in his DVD case that he almost brought back to Hawaii with him), the final day, how sad leaving everyone was, and many other things. Check back in a week or so!

Banana!

Day 10: Last day of workshops!

Location: Hall, KSNP
Mood: Upbeat
Music: Kiss Me Through the Phone - Soulja Boy

Today was our last day of leadership workshops! Connie and Han Hsien taught Effective Writing, and Ha and Klarizze taught budgeting. For the budgeting workshop, we had to plan Uthaya's (one of our mentees!) birthday party with RM800. They had a variety of options for entertainment. Wei Jian's services cost RM50, Min Sern (who sings amazing a capella) was RM100, and Britney was RM200. I think they had fun. Wei Jian kept trying to up his price, insisting that he would pull crowds.

The rest of the day was spent on helping the mentees with their individual project proposals, presentations, and their planning of the final event. Chaotic. We're going to be making crafts out of recyclable goods - I made a fish out of a bottle!! It was really cute. Kat, Kraig, Klarizze and Han Hsien helped out too. Kraig gave his fish human eyes - we all agreed that he should not be allowed to paint any more fish.

We saw a 6 foot long monitor lizard in the drain today. Kellie claimed that she could outrun it, but then it started sprinting and she quickly changed her mind. We also saw it go after a chicken.

Alright, so I promised to introduce the team a while ago, and I know its reaaaaly late (3 days left!) but I'm just going to do it now. I've introduced all the project leaders and the logistics team in earlier posts, so here's the planning team.



From the left: Wei Jian and Han Hsien

Yi Xiang is a freshman at Carnegie Mellon and Wei Jian is a sophomore at MIT. They're both Malaysian, and they were both on Project Malaysia '08. The two of them were on the planning team for the project, making me the only none Project Malaysia 08-er to held out. Yi Xiang helped us with a lot of the fundraising (thanks CMU!). They're both funny people. Wei Jian is definitely the team clown. He asks the most intrusive questions on spotlight on, and keeps challenging people to sing offs (although Min Sern kicked his butt the other day).


From the left: Diego, Ha, Han Hsien, and Brynna enjoying drinks in plastic bags - Malaysian style.

On the far left is Diego, a friend of mine from Swarthmore. He's from Miami and he likes mangosteens (and all food in general) a lot. He eats like a rodent, and speaks too many languages. He's also the most polite person you'll ever meet, and he's crazy about cars. He tells the worst jokes in the world, and he has miniscule pet frogs named Robespierre and Keikuri Rasputin. He's pretty great with the kids, but horrifying to wake up.

The other boy in the picture is Han Hsien from Wesleyan. He's a Penang boy, so I am once again constantly having to remind him how much better KL is than Penang. Its really funny, but he at times reminds me of another friend of mine from Penang whom I met at Project Vietnam last year - Matteus Pan. He makes a pretty sweet gangsta face (and can do a legit blood gang sign...as seen from the pictures below), and he is just the sweetest because he is happy and smiley no matter what.

On the far right is Brynna, who is a sophomore at UC Berkeley, and second from the left is Ha from NUS High School. Brynna is half Thai, lives around the LA area, and comes to Southeast Asia every year. She is also very sweet, and really funny - the high school kids call her "water bottle" because like all Americans, she pronounces her t's as d's. She's a pretty big hit with the kids. Ha is from Vietnam, and she's the only high school student on our team. She has a camera as big as she is, which is one of the cutest things to see. She also seems like a pretty amazing artist/designer, although I must admit I haven't really seen any of her stuff. She does have a really cool tattoo on her back though, and I hear she listens to badass music.


Us chilling out after a long day

The boy in the grey is Por, and the girl in the blue next to him without glasses is Connie. They're both sophomores at Duke. I haven't told them yet, but at the beginning, whenever I said their names out loud, it always came out Cor and Ponnie (us PLs called them that before we met them). They're both pretty amazing and hardworking - I honestly don't know where the team would be without them. Connie is from DC. She's essentially the best person to be stranded on a desert island with, because she has just about everything you would ever need to survive in that orange bag of hers. She does archery (how cool is that!) and practices with her bow every day, and also makes videos. Por is from Thailand, and he is also pretty hilarious. He's in charge of the final day event organization, which has him running around lots and lots.


On the far left is Klarizze is from the Philippines. She actually just graduated, but she's going to economics grad school in Toulouse next year, which is pretty sweet. She seems like a pretty hard core academic and is crazy smart! :) She's very sweet, even if she is a little shy.


I don't think Kraig realized Brynna wasn't posing. :)

That leaves...Kraig. Hahaha. Kraig is funny. He's Kellie's brother, and just graduated WashU. He's headed to med school back home in Hawaii next year. He can be somewhat spacey, but the kids love him, he's lots of fun and he definitely adds lots to the team. He says the most ridiculous things ever.


Our professional mentors are also lots of fun. (Very briefly), Kat is 24 (younger that some of our older team members!), and just spent a year in Namibia. She is super awesome. Kevin, who was with us for a week, is a co-founder of SEALNet and really knows what's what. The two of them really helped Tian, Kellie and I out with the planning.

So that's our team. All of them, combined with our logistics team (comprised of Min Sern, who is blurred out but an awesome singer, the hilariously snarky Keng and Sam, who is just funny) make up our team. I've already introduced the PLs, too, so you can probably see how the 3 of us balance each other out. Kellie is definitely the craziest, Tian is definitely the chillest (and the most narcoleptic), and I'm probably somewhere between the two. Also, Keng insists, the pushiest. Awesome. Everyone loves being the pushy one. :-P Yeah right.

Okay this has been a super long post. Peace out.

Day 9: Progress

Location: Hall, KSNP
Mood: :)
Music: None

Today was spent on a workshop about mentoring (thanks to Brynna, Diego and Wei Jian), which concluded with the mentees writing down positive mentor-like traits on stars and sticking them on us. They were really cute, and everyone enjoyed it. It was kind of a pat on the back for all of us.

Planning has accelerated. The final day planning is a little scary, and I think we need to be providing the mentees with a little more direction in the planning process. Individual projects look really good though, and I'm really excited.

The group planted mangroves today. I was a little sad that I couldn't go, but figured that since I was just recovering I should stay back and rest.

My mother gave us lots of mangoes when we left KL, so we brought the 2 boxes to dinner and finished them all. Mmmmm so good.

Yi Xiang developed rashes and went home. Han Hsien and I still have rashes though, and they're kind of scary looking. Allergies? Calamine lotion = our best friend.

Day 7: Fun Day in KL

Location: My room, KL
Mood: Pensive
Music: Big Country - Bela Fleck and the Flecktones

So I decided to stay home for another night, just so that Yi Xiang, Han Hsien and I could get some extra rest before heading back to Kuala Selangor. What a good fun day though!

It started out with my parents taking us to a jazz club (No Black Tie) after the team got in last night. The group was pretty fantastic, and the drinks were good - I think everyone enjoyed themselves. My brother got to meet the team too, which was fun.

Then, this morning we headed over to Pavillion (one of the bigger shopping centers on Bintang Walk). For those of you who are unfamiliar with KL, Bintang Walk is a pretty touristy area with a HUGE variety of things on the same road. Sungai Wang is where you can find really cheap stuff, and lots of fake DVD, Lau Yatt Plaza, next to it, is where you get electronics, and Pavillion is all upmarket stuff, Burberry and Ferragamo and all that. At night, the place comes alive with shisha places and bars - its actually really nice.

We split the group into teams of 6 (my brother joined us) and we sent them off on a scavenger hunt. Thanks to the logistics team for coming up with such an amazing scavanger hunt! The things they had to do involved taking pictures with Chinese, Indian and Malay families, squatting next to some random stranger (and taking a picture of their surprised expression), finding the 40 thousand dollar toilet, hunting down Krispy Kreme, and taking a picure with a la la, after figuring out what the term meant (for those of you who don't know, its sort of the equivalent of a British chav). I'll be sure to put some pictures up soon, some of them were pretty fantastic. I hear Kraig was shameless.

As for the logistics team and the PLs....well, let's just say that we had a really relaxing day! Haha. Kellie, Tian and I went for foot massages, while the logistics team chilled at Starbucks. When everybody was done, we all headed back to my house for some mangoes and to get refreshed for dinner and a walk through the pasar malam (night market).

All in all, a very full and satisfying fun day. :)

Now, back to work!

Days 4/5/6: Litter pick up

Sorry I've been so bad about posting - I've been a little under the weather! After a year of being away, I'm so not used to the Malaysian heat.

Day 4 started out with an inspiration, the human knot, which ended up taking way longer than expected. Then Connie and Ha held a workshop on public speaking, with a debate competition. That was actually really well done (even if it did run an hour over the allocated time!). I think I speak for all of the mentors in saying that we were all really impressed by how the mentees rose to the challenge, even though some of them had never done debate. The final round, which pitted Sonia against Pavitra, was quite something to watch. Perhaps the only criticism I have is that the students should have been taught how to structure their speeches better. The afternoon saw the students get together as a group to discuss the best way to organize their collective efforts to host the final day event, followed by a litter pick up. That was funny, lots of people sunk in the mud!

I missed days 5 and 6 because I was resting, but from what I understand the students have been making great progress in the final day event and their individual projects. Nice! I'm back home (my parents finally got back from the US) right now, but I'll probably rejoin the group tomorrow for our fun day - I can't wait! :)