Day 4- A good disconnect

We headed to CMU for a lecture in the morning. The lecture was about globalization and how it has affected Chiang Mai. The lecturer offered very insightful points that I think were helpful in some way for all of our projects. She offered interesting points about the technological advances in Chiang Mai as a result of globalisation and many other similar facts. I learnt many new things due to this lecture and I felt that it was a good opportunity for us to gain a different perspective about globalisation and its effects. My sub group then proceeded to interview the professor. She offered a different take on our interview questions and provided us with some views from the government’s perspective. For instance, she told us about some government initiatives to help ease the congestion that often takes place in Chiang Mai due to the influx of tourists.

We then proceeded to head to a restaurant to have lunch and thereafter we headed back to the hotel for a leadership briefing. We were taught about how to appear confident while approaching someone new and while I thought that this activity was rather disconnected from the entire trip, it was beneficial because it will definitely help us a great deal in our future.

After the session, we headed out for our Amazing Race. Despite it being a race, we were actually not racing as the other group doing the race was the other sub group from tourism. It was a little funny racing against no one but time however this concept is highly applicable to daily life. We are usually competing with no one but ourselves and more than that, with time.

We definitely had fun doing the race and getting lost trying to find the locations but it would have been much more fun if Jue Ying could have joined us. We got back 4 minutes later than the time limit but we managed to complete all the small tasks along the way.

After we got back from the race, we had a small reflection session where we were made to think about when our group mates showed good leadership skills. It really made me aware that my group mates are not only extremely intelligent people but also people with good teamwork and leadership skills. The seniors who followed our group pointed out that i tended to make decisions with two of my other group mates without consulting two of my other group mates. I am glad that he pointed that out as it made me realise that being a leader does not only mean making all the decisions but also ensuring everyone’s opinions has been taken into consideration. This will definitely be a good lesson for me in any future leadership roles i take up.

Day 4 was not the most fun but was most certainly a day where i learnt much about myself.