Day 4: you guys are stars ?

Today was an important day for us. Today was the day when we were finally going to visit Chiang Mai University (CMU) where we had lots of grand plans for our project.

My sub group had to split into two where Darren, Jinhu and Fuyang would interview the gender studies professor that we had previously liasised with while Eliza and I attended the lecture on globalization by one of the professors from the political science department.

In the afternoon, we headed back to CMU after lunch where we conducted our focus group discussion with our student attached’s friends. While the three of them were conducting the focus group discussion, Eliza and I were in charge of giving out surveys and conducting interviews with the students. It was the first time I would be the one interviewing people instead of helping out with the media technicalities and admittedly, I was definitely nervous and stumbled at the start of the interview. I guess the beauty of conducting interviews with strangers lies in the ambiguity of it all. You would never know how they would respond to your questions, what kind of answers they would provide and how they would react to you. You can only wish for them to provide you with answers that you want to hear and yet, there is never a guarantee to that. It was definitely slightly pressurising initially but the two girls who we interviewed were really friendly and nice and the four of us soon eased into easy conversation.

After a hard day’s worth of work, we made a visit down to the CMU lake. The view was captivating and mesmerizing because everything just seemed so serene and tranquil, almost like a painting made real. We were excited to take photos and immediately started snapping away on our smart phones and cameras. I always face the dilemma of living in the moment versus capturing down the moment and sadly, the latter always gets the better of me. Our eyes are the best cameras we could ever ask for and yet we always yearn for physical copies of beautiful scenes for fear that we would not be able to remember it. I am guilty of this too and am still trying to work on striking a balance between the two. This was definitely a great end to our visit to CMU. As the sun set, we left the place with a contented heart.

Our visit to CMU was a heartwarming one. The students were really friendly and helpful towards us and we can only hope that they know how grateful we are for their help. Even when we faced some technical difficulties and had to trouble them to be interviewed for a second time, they never once rejected or frowned upon our requests and I am really touched by their genuinety and willingness to help strangers.

It dawned on me how responsive and kind-hearted strangers had played such a huge part in our project so far. Without them, we would have nothing and so tonight, I am thankful for the opportunities that we had to come into contact with nice strangers who I will probably never see again in this life. I hope they know how grateful we are for their help as us saying ‘Thank You’ in Thai is a gesture only too inadequate to convey our utmost gratitude.