37th SSEAYP 2010 - Paper Heart Making & Cambodia Night

Day 16 - 9 November 2010

Japanese word for Tuesday is "火" (fire). Today's certainly a fiery day... 

It had become a tradition for National Leaders to cheer the contingent which was showcasing their national presentation on that day. This day, the National Leaders came together on stage to send their well wishes to the Cambodia contingent. One by one, the National Leaders cheered using their native languages.

The contingents which were conducting club activities later in the afternoon took their turns on stage to publicise their activities.

Singapore Can Recycling Activity

Philippines Sinulog Dance

Vietnam

♥ Vietnam Massage ♥

Vietnam Manicure

During the Discussion Programme (Group Discussion III) for Youth Development Discussion Group (DG), we focused on media issues. First we had a debate over the topic on Media Censorship. Of the 40+ members, only about 10 felt strongly against media censorship. The debate was a free flow of ideas and constructive arguments.

I particularly liked some of the points raised by the proponents. Someone mentioned that the purpose of censorship was to protect, not to control. Another mentioned that censorship helped draw the line between morality and freedom. Could we guarantee that a responsible press? If yes, could we guarantee the same for all people?

We talked about the relation between social media and the youth today and if we saw a disadvantage using such medium.

And last but not least, we discussed the influence of Western Media on Asian youth, whether Asian Culture could survive the emerging influence of the Western lifestyle and the role of Asian media in preserving local cultures.

I vaguely remember that there were many vegetable dishes served as Cambodian cuisine over lunch...

After lunch, everyone assembled at the Pacific Hall for a briefing on the Club Activities on line-up for the day.

I made the Sky Lounge my first stop. 

Vietnamese candies

After striving hard with no results doing the ceramic wristlets, I went to have my hand massaged. Thanks to Parveen, I managed to get myself the correct maseur.

♥ Vietnamese Hand Massage ♥

After a relaxing time at the Sky Lounge, headed over to the Emerald Lounge where the Thailand Club Activity was held.

After painstakingly done up the flower necklace

Next to Singapore Club Activity at the Veranda.

Each of the 11 contingents helped collected aluminium cans and brought them on board Fuji Maru. The cans would be used to construct a Fuji Maru model during the country programme in Singapore.

At our club activity, fellow Participating Youths (PYs) would cut the aluminium cans, and pen down their messages on the inner surface. These messages would then form part of the body of the Fuji Maru model.

PYs penning their messages on the aluminium cut-out

Concurrently, there was also the Paper Heart Making activity.

After making the paper hearts, PYs wrote messages on the hearts and pinned them up.

How I wished there could be more time for Club Activity programme. Didn't manage to participate in every activity that day.

SG A Noticeboard up!

Apples inspired from our Apple-picking at Morioka

And the nurses had also found some space to put up their "noticeboard""

Had dinner before changing up for Cambodia Night:

It was a splendid coincidence that this day was also the Independence Day of Cambodia.

Monkey Dance

A humorous romantic play

The dress code for Cambodia Night was Attire B/National Costume. I exchanged mine with Bas-chan's Filipino attire.

♥ She's wearing the Vietnamese Ao Dai ♥

He's wearing the Vietnamese attire

With my gangway partner

Patrick (2nd from left) wearing Thai attire

Singapore youth attire?

37th SSEAYP 2010 - SG Flag-making & Brunei Night

Day 15 - 8 November 2010

Mortal gave me a satchet of Vietnamese coffee along with a letter. Think she might have had a clue about my identity. But isn't that the point?

Fairuz brought Qigong Shi Ba Shi (Qigong Eighteen Styles) to SSEAYP!

During morning exercise, all the Participating Youths (PYs) had a taste of Qigong along with the serene music.

We also played the money game where the male PYs were labelled 50cents & the female PYs were labelled $1. When the game master called out a certain value, we had to get into the correct groupings which reflected the correct value.

During morning assembly, there was an announcement for us to adjust our watches to +1 hour at midnight. Hurray! That translated to an additional hour of sleep time!

During our Discussion Programme (Group Discussion II), Facilitator Jay shared with us about ASEAN Community 2015, showing an animated video that showed the 3Ps - Peace, Prosperity & People.

We had a mini ice-breaker, a mimicking game, where we formed a circle and mimicked the actions of the person beside us and passed the actions to the next person in line.

At this session, we presented our pre-programme assignment on what are the pressing issues facing the youth of our countries.

For Japan, it was the decreased in motivation towards work among youth. Measures taken against this problem were trial week (1 week of work) and career design classes. Another issue was the lack of global talents, in that lesser youth were eager to work/study abroad.

For Cambodia, issues were youth & drug, youth & HIV/AIDS, youth & education. The Cambodia PYs shared about the saying, "Bamboo should grow up to be Bamboos" to state the importance of rehabilitation and opportunities for youth.

Lao P.D.R. Contingent shared on the Lao People's Revolutionary Youth Union (LPRYU).

For Lao P.D.R., the problems that youth face were Youth Health - especially on drug issues.

For Thailand, drugs and exposure to sexual media were two pertinent issues that youth face.

Malaysia PYs shared about Barisan Nasional and National Youth Day. National Youth Day is held from 15 May to 15 June annually.

For Indonesia, low social participation of youth is an issue. 30% of the youth are unemployed and there is only 6% participation of youth in political parties. Indonesia PYs also shared about the Sentani Commitment (2004) on HIV/AIDS.

At times, the Discussion gets too dry...

Vietnam PYs shared about the lack of social awareness among youth as an issue facing the nation. They also shared with us about Military Terms (classes), which are youth camps.

For Brunei, unemployment and changing mindsets among youth (lack of focus) were the top issues raised.

For Philippines, education, underemployment (due to job mismatch) and environment awareness were the issues raised.

For Myanmar, political stability (transition from military government to democracy) and gender equality were causes for concern.

For Singapore, I had the honour of presenting about my youth organisation, People's Association Youth Movement (PAYM), to the Discussion Group (DG). I talked about the recent plans to set up Residents' Committee Youth Chapter (RCYC) to engage and reach out to youth. Jed shared about Cyber Wellness initiatives in Singapore. After the presentation, we distributed the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games (SYOG) wrist band and PAYM brochures to our DG-mates.

Brunei cuisine was offered during lunch. Scooping the "chicken in tomato sauce" dish, I wished so much that it was curry instead!

After lunch, we had our first Solidarity Group (SG) Activity! 

We made our SG flags!

Flag using Yuji's left palm & my right palm

SG-A!

The second activity is to form the longest chain.

Thanks to the position of SG-A (at the left side), we could throw our clothes to our comrades at the bottom who were representing us in the game.

Without a doubt, SG-A emerged victorious!

Then there was the game that required several of us to squeeze onto the newspapers.

The last game was the Acid Game, in which we were given a few pieces of papers to use as the bridge for us to cross the river.

Thank goodness, I had the chance to hold and support my Mortal as my Mortal crosses the river with me!

Went jogging with Vania while listening to my iPod and singing out loud. Thanks Vania for being the sufferer.

Brunei National Presentation was held after dinner.

The attire for Brunei Darussalam Night was the colours of the Brunei flag - Black, White, Red, Yellow.

♥

With Buddy!

With Gangway Partner

With DG-mate

With Bruneian SG-mates

 While chatting with Korn at the lobby, got to meet Noon & Aom.

Some of the Singapore Contingent mates had a dance practice to prepare themselves for the port-of-call performance in Malaysia. To show our "support" for them, those who had already performed in Japan ate cup noodles while watching them dance.

At night, had a long conversation with cabin-mates while doing my daily ritual of letter-writing. Got to know more about the Master's research that Nom was doing.