IBWSC 2012: Day 5

July 27th, 2012

They say time flies when you are having fun. Well indeed it was. Suddenly, it is the last day of the conference and I woke up with this sadness knowing that we will part ways in a matter of hours and for some of us we may never see each other again. This conference has brought a lot to me; knowledge, friends, life lessons and other valuable things that you cannot find anywhere else. Everyday, different IB speakers with different topics have taught me a lot, especially about sustainability that I will be able to spread their words to my peers once I get back to my school. This conference will truly be one of the most unforgettable memories where I gained precious knowledge and I am sincerely honored to be a part of. 

We started off the day by hearing Paul Nicklen, a photographer from the National Geographic, shared his journalist/photographer career and experiences in the Antartica and the Arctic. He was a quite laid-back and hilarious guy, telling his experiences through the pictures and stories that never failed to amuse us. He showed us the "supposedly-cannot-be-seen-by-the-public" stills and footage of his recent-not-yet-to-be-published expedition to the Antartica. We saw lots of amazing sea creatures photographed showing their antics to the camera like we have never seen before. I have never expected to see such creatures be able to show their peculiar and odd sides to foreign devices. Seeing these pictures made me feel really sad how the polar caps are melting away and these animals are now highly in risk of extinction as their habitat is slowly crumbling away. 

He went on to explain and show us further what he saw while in the Antartica and the sight of the next few pictures were just too disturbing for me to believe those incidents happened. Pictures of people shooting around narwhals to get their tusks were so heart-breaking in addition to hearing how so many narwhals died for only one tusk taken. His words inspired us to be more loving to the environment and it all came back to being sustainable entirely to benefit not only human race, but also the animals' and plants' population in the world as a whole.

Ultimately as a PETA activist and animal enthusiast, I got even more inspired by his seminar not only to try my hardest to spread the word, but also do the action myself just like Quinn Runkle did in UBC. The speakers here in UBC had not only taught me what's all there to know about sustainability, but also the most important elements to make the change; ourselves and our values. Without having the value and drive to make the change, it is impossible for the change to take place.

In the afternoon, all of us gathered together for Global Action Village where each GAT group presented their sustainability projects to be brought back to each of the students' school. Each of the presentation inspired and gave me ideas what to do for my CAS project this upcoming year ultimately focusing on sustainability and how to make the school and surrounding environment better. But if people can be biased without being thought as unfair, I'd choose my group project to be the best as we combined creativity and teamwork while still being coherent to the message. People seemed to agree with me when they gave us standing ovation at the end of our video :p All in all, the session has been enlightening and truly inspiring seeing all of the results from previous sessions at the conference.

Later in the evening, the soccer world cup was held and Canadiens won third place! Tho we didn't get the first place, I am still proud of my teammates and how our captain, George, fairly put every people in the team in the game! Afterwards, we headed down to the beach and had a great time BBQing by the bay and played beach games, although my asian's gen could not brace the windy and chilly weather! Later on after we got back from the beach, we had the last moments of togetherness by not sleeping and talked to each other throughout the night reminiscing the memories that have been made over the past few days. Yes, it was only less than 7 days we have been together, but our friendship will certainly last forever and would not be forgotten. 

IBWSC 2012: Day 4

July 26th, 2012

Today we had Robert Winson, an alumni from UBC Sauders Business School who now works for a film company in California. His seminar topic is about how successful comes from honesty. So from the start, he straightforwardly told us that the root to success is is honesty, as we cannot achieve something or know exactly what we want without being honest to ourselves or the people around us. What caught my attention is that, in the middle of the session, he told the story about him coming out to his parents, which is an example of an honesty from ourselves. He said that if he didn't came out like that and be true to himself he would never be the successful person that he is now. I got so inspired by him since now I realized that without being honest to ourselves and open to other people about our feelings and wants, we would never get to the top since in order to do that we have to be true with positivity in mind. In the awaited Q&A session, I asked him how does he keep yourself from being unmotivated from all the mistakes he had to make before he knew what he wanted and his purpose of life. His is answer is motivating to me, as this came from the person who is so positive and so open-minded about who we really are. He said that just keep being positive and be who you are not what people want you to be, that way you'll keep yourself on track on the process of being successful.

After this fully inspiring session, I met again with my GAT group to discuss about what we are going to do in the Global Village session on the last day of the conference. Basically, we were compiling ideas from all the members about the activities and how we are going to achieve the activities aimed to promote sustainability in our environment. Our GAT group is divided into two teams; the planning team and action team. What it basically is the planning team is the team who will present the ideas to promote sustainability that us as a whole had came up with the other day and explain about how we are going to bring the project further to each of our school in hope the activities can work well and bring sustainability to the school's community mind. The action team, on the other hand, is going to make a viral video, which was one of our ideas, that promote sustainability as an example on how we can apply the ideas to promote the cause. Being in the GAT group meeting, especially today, brought an important realization to me that us, IB students, even though we are still young and inexperience in so many things, we had already made such project like this that will not only benefit the school, but also the school's surrounding community as well.

After lunch, we finally headed out to the Vancouver Aquarium, a trip that we all anticipated for the whole week. Vancouver Aquarium, again, opened my eyes to such diversity in the world that even gave me more motivation to be sustainable and promote the cause to save the mother nature from tearing apart. When I went around in the aquarium listening to the explanation from the staff, I realized that even the Vancouver Aquarium has been sustainable for a long period of time in hope to save and conserve different kinds of animal there is. From this I realized, that Vancouver is one of the cities in the world that has been sustainable and this makes me want to bring all the ideas that we have accumulated in the past few days back to my country in hope I can make a big difference in my country's way of life, improving it to be more sustainable like Vancouver.

At 5 PM, we all headed out to an area near the Vancouver Aquarium to have a picnic and it was lots of fun seeing that this is the last moments we can be together before the conference ends. Then, we went to the ship dock where all 300 and more of us got to the cruise and had a really good time! We bonded with each other through music that was played all night long in the cruise, making me kind of sad that we are ending all of these meaningful and fun activities tomorrow! Even so, we can still get in touch with each other and hopefully all of our CAS ideas will work out in each of our school. 

IBWSC 2012: Day 3

July 25th, 2012

Moving on to day 3! As the days passed, I realized just how many things I have learned for the past few days and it has been an honor for me to receive the scholarship and attend all of the sessions here. Today, we started the day by listening to Severn Cullis-Suzuki, the famous environmentalist that gave her first speech at 12 years old at the UN Conference in Brazil in 1992. I am amazed at how she is very passionate and confident on what she believes in. We watched her legendary 1992's speech video and I was really moved that she, at an age even younger than I am now, can be very assuring and convincing even though all of her audience are important delegates from all over the world.

I actually have seen her video numerous times at my school for a speech competition just a couple of months ago, but I haven't seen even high school students that have the confident and firm voice that she had. She didn't just tell the delegates the problems faced by our earth and the population, but actually critiqued them in such a way that even many people do not have the courage to. At one point of her speech here in UBC, she said that the most powerful tool to change something is our voice, which is actually true as without voicing our opinions and fighting for the right thing, that change would never happen if we don't start it by ourselves. She said that the right future that we wanted must be measuring what matters, getting the price right and fair trade, which I agreed completely as to create balance in our life. At the end of her speech, she said that to make changes in the world, we are the ones that have to do it ourselves, not the politician or the government that are considered as "unreliable" in this world. Sure, I heard this very often, but hearing this from a strong passionate women that stands right on her belief made the words very memorable and inspiring for us to start the change by ourselves.

Just after her speech, I had a concurrent session called "Organizational DNA" in which we discussed about how organizational work ethics can arise problems for the environment. The speaker spoke about how Suncor Oil had major problems in one of its plants because of their culture of not practicing the right procedures and protocols. It is funny that to think of it, Suncor is a very large company that is so open about its imperfections and negative impacts on the environment, so what are the smaller oil companies like then? Do they have a much bigger problem and a much bigger negative impact to the environment? That scares me out since now what all that people think about is getting money with the least money, so don't you think that all the irresponsible oil companies are destructing the world even more with its vicious operations?

In this session, we came up with solutions for Suncor to be more ethical as to not damage the environment furthermore by dividing the solutions into formal and informal. Basically, the formal solutions are to train, innovate, develop and integrate all of its resources to be efficient yet ethically and environmentally friendly and informal solutions are to appraise and communicate with the workers more to create a value change between them to work on a more healthier, more ethical way. I think this session is very useful for my future as it does not only work for big companies, but it can also certainly be useful in smaller organizations that I may work in or with in the future.

In related topic, we had Quinn Runkle, a 4th year student at UBC that is active in promoting sustainability throughout the campus and all of her entire life, as a speaker right after our lunch. Just from the start of her session, I got the impression that she really stands out for the cause that she believes in, even since she is little which is a very brave thing to do knowing that just 10 years ago, no one even the adults really care or give attention to such cause that she believes in. What motivate me to be just like her the most is when she said that don't be scared to take the first step to make the change, even children ages 8, 9 and 10 can make a difference no matter how small or big it is. This makes me think to myself that at the age of 17, I haven't accomplished anything as big as she had and I am motivated by hearing how she organized many campaigns around UBC about sustainability when no one else dared to do such thing.

Later on in the evening, we enjoyed the performance from Kutapira, a local band with such a unique kind of music that we even danced along to them the entire time! Sadly they are not famous enough worldwide, which I think is a big shame seeing how they can incorporate many rare music instruments and get people to dance along with their songs. But having seen and enjoyed their performance, I believed that they will make it one day and bring people closer together by playing their music.

IBWSC 2012: Day 2

July 24th, 2012

It is the 2nd day of the conference already! I made even more friends today that came from all parts of the world with a common IB connection, which I have never imagined would happen before! So today, we started off the day by listening to John McCall MacBain where he talked about sustainability and climate change happening in the world. He talked a lot about the common problems that we are facing right now such as inadequate solution to non-renewable resources (nuclear power not being the ultimate solution since it still produces pollution), increasing methane from natural processes that harm the atmosphere more and more each day and also the things that can help to tackle the problems such as solar power, green investment on brown industries and carbon cycle improvement.

However, what was really intriguing from his session was that he mentioned about Sweden and how they are being so sustainable in the infrastructure. Sweden has been reducing carbon emission by reducing excess heat and producing biogas to be used as vehicles fuel. So basically, Sweden has been significantly successful in being an excellent example for other countries around the world regarding sustainability. The first ever train that runs on biogas is in Sweden and most Sweden's buses run on biogas too! This inspires me a lot since Sweden makes it seems that there is a hope for sustainability in a country and there is still a chance for a country to reduce its carbon footprints quite significantly. However, when I heard about how Sweden had made improvements like that, I became somewhat skeptical about the possibility of my country becoming like Sweden seeing the corruptions and all. I realized, if you would like to be sustainable, it comes from yourself not from other people's opinions or perspectives. Sustainability starts on each individual in the country.

Although at first skeptical, I finally saw hope in making Indonesia a more sustainable country as MacBain followed up his information with tips to make sustainability achieved in a smaller community, such as the school. I guess starting from small community such as the school, still gives a large hope for the country as everything starts from zero and there is nothing impossible to make Indonesia a sustainable country. His solutions varied from starting to install solar power, changing the value of the people in the community to making a system to help the community makes the environment greener. Hearing this, I am confident that even small changes starting from my own school can make a positive difference in the community and hopefully expand to a larger community such as the whole town.

Afterwards, I had a session called "Defining the Global Engagement Standard" in which I learned that to be sustainable there are different barriers to be faced in each area such as culture clash, the decision making system and rivalries in the area. The speaker told us that, as I mentioned above, even plans for sustainability that have been carefully moderated are not going to succeed without having the culture of the people changed to be more positively acceptance of the plans and the plans need to be done by the community themselves. Decisions, especially regarding sustainability, also must consider all factors (as mentioned above) and elements in the community for them to be accurate. Learning this, I came to realization that there are so many challenges to be faced to make sustainability happen everywhere and that is why I am trying so hard to find the best solution via the CAS project to help achieve our common goal to make sustainability happen. The GAT meeting was a big help for this as it encourages us to think outside the box what is the problem faced, how to tackle that and what is the more advance idea to promote sustainability in our local area. 

For the concurrent session a bit later in the evening, I had a session called "You've Done Your Homework" where we discussed about how to implement the sustainability idea to the community using social marketing. This session really enlightens me a lot since I now know that to promote the cause, you can do it in many different ways possible to make the task easier and quicker to be achieved. The good thing about it is that, I feel like if I failed in one method to promote the cause, there are still many ways to do it thus preventing us from being unmotivated thinking that there will be no chances for sustainability to happen in the targeted area.

Later at night, we had an activity called "Singing in Choral Harmony" in which Hussein Mohammed (if I am not mistaken), a singing enthusiast that got inspirations from the culture of Kenya, taught us to sing different melodies from many different religions and cultures in unison. I was completely impressed by his way of thinking on how different cultures and religions can stick together without any discriminations toward each other, and I was really amazed how he could incorporated it using group singing especially when we came from different parts of the world with different set of cultures and religions. And his method seemed to be working well seeing how beautiful we sung the melodies together! Hussein made me believe that even though we are seen as 'different' by each other in terms of cultures and religions, if no discriminations are involved and only positive attitudes are adopted by people, any goals could be achieve easily just like how Hussein successfully led us, who each has different practices from another, to sing pieces of each other's beliefs without having to doubt which one is wrong or right.

IBWSC 2012: Day 1

July 23rd, 2012

So day 1 it is! Today, I met a lot of people from different countries at breakfast and I am relieved that I am starting to make some new friends here because I came here all by myself! We started off the day with a welcome from the UBC at the CIRS building and who knows that is one of the greenest buildings in the world! One of the green facts is that the windows in CIRS building are censor-operated which means that if the natural winds can be used as the building's source of air, the windows will automatically open to allow the air to come! How cool is that?! 

After the opening ceremony, we did the ice breaker in each of our GAT group, where mine is named Bob & Doug McKenzie, legendary comedians of Canada. We did a discussion about socratic seminar based on the speaker that talked about sustainability in UBC campus earlier and we came up with 5 categorized questions such as "Can everywhere be as sustainable as UBC?" and "Is it feasible to reduce carbon emission by 100%?". I think this session gave me a lot about questioning again about this whole sustainability thing, like how do we understand it as a whole in the world, not just regarding the sustainability in the green environment. We also did a group debate where my group debated about technical fix vs value change in the community regarding the sustainability. This opened my eyes to a completely different side of sustainability because now I am faced with problems such as how the value in people about sustainability can be changed throughout the time and such. We also made the stool model about sustainability and things that makes out the sustainability such as economical, social and political factors to name a few. 

Later on the day, I attended the concurrent session titled "Biogas Technology" by Graeme Millen, where we learned about how people and especially farmers are actually trying to make biogas using something that is considered "not important" by the majority of the population, which is cow's poop. I was really inspired how even farmers that live in the suburban areas contributed to making the world a better place by reducing the carbon emission. If they can, why don't us IB students contribute too to make the earth a better place as a duty/responsibility from us to the mother nature. Overall, today is such a good day to start such a conference and I am waiting for more interesting days to come! 

Finally Here!

I just got here to UBC at 8PM and haven't even registered yet since the registration desk is closed for the day and have to wait until tomorrow to register. The first thing I felt after arriving to UBC was that it is COLD in Vancouver even though it is summer. I am now in my own dorm room, browsing some things up before going to sleep and prepare for tomorrow. Hope tomorrow is gonna be great!

Making Things Better, Not Just 'Less Bad'

The theme for the UBC IB WSC this year is "Making things better, not just 'less bad'", which I think is a very interesting topic to talk about. Why? In this century, we have used countless appliances and devices that impact negatively on the surroundings, in other words the earth. Looking at the earth's current condition, we can see that there is pollution everywhere that causes global warming thus the earth is getting warmer each day and extreme climate changes happening in every inch of the earth. Many organizations campaign about how we have to stop polluting the earth, recycle things and all other things that contribute to helping making things better. However sometimes, these things only make things 'less bad' as they do not change or improve anything negative that has happened in earlier years such as depleting natural resources, thinning of atmosphere, decreasing various animals populations and also not to forget abandoned un-recycled wastes around the world. That's why we need to think of ways and solutions to make things to actually get better, not only making it seems less bad. For example, rapid developments and research on sustainable things such as daily appliances and transportations can actually make things better as it helps people to improve their lifestyle and actually reduce their carbon emissions. 

Of course that's not enough, in my opinion, we also need to think of the solutions to 'fix' the negative things derived from our earlier conducts, such as the massive wastes across the world, endangered species and polluted environments. One of the example, I suppose, would be to research and develop equipments and devices to convert the wastes that are viewed as useless to something that can be used over and over again thus bringing benefits not only to the environment (less pollution) but also to humanity as we may get relatively cheap products (recycled) from things that we do not want anymore. 

In this conference, I am looking forward to talk about things like those I mentioned above to get a clearer understanding on what's happening in the world and how we, as the young generation, can help to tackle the problems.