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ASEAN Summit + Cambodian Dragonboating Incident

Well, I shall attempt to summarize my past weeks' happenings in one post...

The previous week was absolutely crazy because I worked non stop for 12 days in a row... all thanks to the 13th ASEAN Summit. A once in a lifetime chance for me to be a part of such a large scale event, and also one of the highlights of my career here in MFA.

As part of the Gala Dinner Subcommittee, my whole of last week was dominated by trips down to the Raffles City Convention Center (RCCC) where the Gala Dinner was held, at the Raffles Ballroom. I spent all my time preparing and rehearsing for the big day on Tuesday, 20th November, when all the Heads of States / Governments, Foreign Ministers and Economic Ministers of all the ASEAN Countries + the 6 East Asian Countries would gather and have dinner hosted by PM Lee Hsien Loong. The first, and probably the only time I would get into such close proximity with the leaders of so many countries... The guestlist would include names such as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indonesian President Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, Malaysian PM Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and so on. I helped plan the guestlist and seating arrangements, so I'm pretty familiar with the spellings, titles and honorifics of these VVIPs. Anyways, it was a night to remember and I'm not likely to forget it anytime soon.

The day after that, I was involved in the exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum called "On The Nalanda Trail". This event's guestlist included the ministers and important office holders of the European Union and the European Commission. The only irritating thing of the day was that I kept picking up signals on my walkie talkie coming from a restaurant nearby... =( Korean President Mr Roh Moo-hyun wanted to leave early, but I had to stop him from leaving while my other colleagues were getting his presidential motorcade ready... Had no choice but to ask him to take a seat and wait while his motorcade was being prepared. He looked a little impatient, but there was little I could do as he wanted to leave earlier than planned. On the whole, though, the Nalanda Event went without a hitch, and everyone was happy. Managed to catch a glimpse of Indian President Dr Manmohan Singh and his spouse.

The Sunday after the ASEAN Summit was supposed to be a rest day for me, but I had to go back to do my ops duty in the morning. The moment I stepped into the ops room, I realised that it was not going to be a quiet day, because there was a crisis going on because of the National Dragonboat Team Members who drowned in the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I was busy the whole day, sending out notices to my Ministers and Senior Management because all the bodies were found during my shift. Couldn't help but feel sad for them, and dragonboating was something close to my heart because I am also in the MFA DragonBoating Team. I could also understand why life vests were not worn, because they would impede movement, and it was also a norm that they were usually not worn during international races.

Anyway that sums up the ultra busy week I had, and if u had the patience to finish reading this, you probably can understand how much I had to go through this past week.

posted by Jeremy @ 10:50 PM