Your Best

Eric Moussambani swam for Equatorial Guinea at the 2000 Olympics. He didn't win.

Eric had never seen a big swimming pool before. At home he trains in a 20 metre hotel pool.

The two other entrants in his heat - from Niger and Tajikistan - were both disqualified for false starts, so Eric had to swim by himself.

Also, Eric had never swum a 100 metre race before - something the crowd soon suspected. He swam with his head out of the water and he barely kicked his legs.

In the first lap he was really struggling.
In the second lap he was nearly drowning.

But Eric gave it everything he had. Thirty metres from the finish, 17,000 spectators began to cheer him home, and with each stroke the roar got louder. Ten metres out, he was bobbing like a cork but the crowd was going bananas.

When Moussambani finally hit the wall, the cheering and stamping all but lifted the roof off the stadium.

His time of 1 minute 52 seconds was about a minute slower than all the other competitors. Who cared? Eric Moussambani had given his all.

In a Nutshell

When people know you have given your very best, they usually support you.

heartfelt thank-you!

i must say a very heartfelt thank you to all of you who ran alongside me in the whole application process. i daresay i grew to know myself much better through these last couple of weeks and i learnt more about myself during that period than the whole year combined.

thank you for saying i was an inspiration to you. the most important thing, and best gift for me (if you have been inspired) is to translate that inspiration into actuality for yourself.

i hope you can identify why you were inspired. then take the courage, step up and demonstrate that you are committed to put yourself forth in what you aspire to achieve.

say "yes" to yourself, give yourself the opportunity to learn, and every single step you take in life is an experience.

from previous experiences, i realized that failures hurt the ego. and that makes everything hurt so much. so when i chose to put myself forth this time, i recognized that ego is a stumbling block.

choose to recognize and acknowledge that Ego blocks every learning possible. once you choose to let Ego go, even when others say "no" to you, the world has not crumbled; it still holds a plethora of never-ending opportunities for you.

i once came across this short story by andrew matthews. Here is an excerpt:

"Once we change our thoughts about "a bad situation",
we can take advantage of it.
You already know this!

Life's great opportunities mostly arrive
disguised as misfortune and disaster.

EXAMPLE:
Imagine two women, Mary and Jane.
Both get divorced.
Mary says, "I've failed. My life is over."
Jane says, "My life has just begun!"
Who will blossom?

IN A NUTSHELL

Every "disaster" in your life is not so much a disaster,
as a situation waiting for you to change your mind about it."

what's next for me?

the destination's not fixed...

but i am going for exchange. i am keeping an eye out for the openings every single day, and the uncertainty of where i'm headed to makes me excited about the future. if you do know of an opportunity for me, do keep me in mind ;)

one thing's for certain, i've definitely mustered strong determination to keep scaling greater heights! i choose my own attitude, and this will accompany me in my journey for life. :)

part 2 from previous chapter..

so continuing on from my story of being in an ASEAN Summit..

On thursday, we spent approximately the whole afternoon and evening discussing the options and brainstorming.

about 3-4 presidents were allocated to one project to focus on, based on the vision that we had on connecting youths (volunteers and non-volunteers alike) and getting them to activate their leadership to make a needed change in society.

so we broke that into 3 projects - facilitation of exchange within SEA, a conference project, and expansion into new universities.

since there are no clear-cut answers to these projects, we were a little stumped by these ideas at first. my group of four worked on the conference idea.

initially all of us had a different idea of what the conference should be, or we didn't have a single clue. we wondered, how grand should this conference be, what is its purpose, who should be involved.. there were so many unanswered questions.

Phuong, the president of the chapter in Vietnam suggested that the conference should center around leadership. Then we delve deeper into the social issues faced in the region, such as the high incidence of HIV/Aids in certain SEA countries, malnutrition and poverty.

Then I commenced to build on this idea - the conference, in my opinion, should have an entirely external focus. we want to know what is happening around the world, what does society think of this? to make this happen, we need to engage stakeholders - both university students within and without the organization, companies, non-profits. we have to pay attention and listen to the world around us, collect that feedback and absorb the ideas. by connecting all these groups, the companies, non-profits can present what projects they are conducting on the ground - i.e. how is food being distributed, how is poverty being tackled through microfinance etc and which regions are most affected by HIV/Aids?

Then youths can give their feedback on the world they would like to see, a world they would like to live in. By facilitating such a dialogue, perhaps there can be more young people who get connected with organizations to act on the issue.

As an organization, AIESEC may well benefit from this. Companies, students, etc give their feedback, we can generate the knowledge and suggestions and tweak our Projects accordingly (innovation and input from the wider society). Developmental traineeships' job descriptions can be better enhanced, based on the kind of expectations non-profits and youths have.

So with these ideas getting kickstarted by 5pm or so, we had time slipping out of our hands since we needed to complete a framework by the time dusk set in. Next, we proceeded to think of a brief timeline, how much investment would be required from each SEA entity to make the conference happen.

That means, we need a coordinator for all 7 countries to handle this project. A full timer will be required. Where should this person be located/living? (The higher the costs of living in a country, the more investment flows out from each country). We ruled out the possibility of Singapore. So taking the salary from Indonesia, we calculated a cost of 200USD per month for the full timer. Collecting that data took some time as well...

And on friday, we spoke to every single group and worked out a more specific timeline for the projects, worked out budget and what kind of milestone should be achieved under each.

By the end of the summit, we made a commitment to follow up with the project in 2 weeks' time. Now i'm on to find 10 companies that are situated / working across at least 3 SEA countries, and would have potential to sponsor the conference which is slated to happen in mar 2011.

a week in the life of an MCP

some people wondered what I am doing as MCP, and what i was up to in the past week for the ASEAN summit..

Just a brief overview of the summit: We have 7 countries in Southeast Asia, and we are considering the idea of grouping countries in order to grow, based on external and internal trends.

Mon - I spent the entire day preparing for the conference, entirely to note about the external trends. Research on ASEAN in the context of Singapore, such as government, education and corporate. Analyze the way Singapore wants to capitalize on ASEAN, free trade agreements..

Tue - finalize my presentation slides. fly in to KL.

Wed - official start of the summit. each country representative presents on the external trends, reality of countries. all the presidents start to piece each country's view to form a bigger picture of SEA.

Thu - how each of the countries are faring internally, such as number of members, exchanges, and identifying the months when we are delivering tip-top performance. once we understood the trends in our external reality, we matched it against how we are performing as an organization.

Fri - finalizing plans and confirming the monetary and hr investment we would make towards SEA.

Overall, we gained a strong overview of the social issues happening in 7 countries. Most of the events happening right now by other organizations are based on getting youths heard, or to write academic papers - people are encouraged to voice out their opinions, but where is the action?

That's where we see we can step into the picture with our Projects. :) Dig deeper on our social issues, and move into the rural areas of countries like the Philippines. Drive a stronger impact through our developmental internships!

We also furthered our ambition for SEA to grow at an exponential rate; and that rides on the waves of ASEAN to engage more youths! We want to give all youths, regardless of their membership with us, the opportunity to connect and exchange their ideas to make a difference to happen.

Stay tuned to part 2 for an elaboration on our plans!