Conference in Jakarta

So here I am blogging from a university town called Depok, about an hour's drive from Jakarta. The traffic chaos I had experienced on my last trip into this city is still fresh on my mind, and of course, nothing has changed.

I am here on an official trip this time, attending a conference with other delegates from South East Asian countries. There are 4 of us in the Singapore delegation. Mostly we feel like frauds because we don't have even a fraction of the problems that the other countries face. The focus of this seminar is on how marginalised minorities in some SEAsian countries can be helped to access mainstream education. These marginalised minorities usually speak a different language from that used in the schools and therefore the children who do not speak the mainstream language find it difficult to cope in school and drop out early. This leads to succeeding generations being trapped in the same economic state and unable to progress because their mother tongue isn't the language of education.

Anyway, I must say that, thankfully, the colleagues I am travelling with are a crazy bunch, so we have kept each other in stitches. We raced off to shop and eat the first day we got here before the conference started and booked our massages ;)



The conference started yesterday and I must say we were taken aback by the way the room was set up. I felt like I was a UN delegate, what with the Singapore flag on my table and all.



That look on my face is nervousness - in case we were asked to share our country's experiences with Multi Lingual education ;)

Here we are with the delegation from Malaysia...



And flying our national colours... We almost ended up posing with the Indonesian flag though because they are so similar!