36th Annual General Meeting 2007-08

Nabeel Khalid | Year 2 NUS | Year 2 AIESEC | NUS Branding & Communications Coordinator

AIESEC in NUS has been alive since 36 years? What!?

You know, some faculty members dropped by GV and they said they remembered AIESEC from when they were students at NUS - and these faculty members were quite advanced.

Okay coming back to AGM (Annual General Meeting) - what was it about?

In a nutshell, it is a formal event (everyone wears coats and ties!) where the successes of the past year are celebrated in the presence of all the stakeholders of AIESEC in NUS. People such as Dr William Koh, a professor in the NUS School of Business, who is our teacher advisor was also present there, along with people from the MC team. There is always a speech from the incoming and outgoing president. The outgoing executive board (EBs) are bid farewell and the incoming EBs are welcomed.

This year, after Imran's introduction, it started with Mayas Singh's speech introducing AIESEC Singapore.(FYI, Imran was last year's President of AIESEC in NUS and Mayas is the incoming president of AIESEC Singapore). LCP Shubhangi Faujdar talked about some of the major accomplishments that were made by members in the past year, followed by department updates from the Incoming Exchange and Outgoing Exchange LCVPs Ashwin and Song Jie, respectively.

Jiuyu who had recently returned from a conference in Japan called APXLDS had a lot of things to share, as she made her brilliant speech. It was followed by Adrian's brief on the Finance Workshop where he clearly identified the reasons why "Strategic Investment: A Practitioner's Approach" was such a cool name for the Finance Workshop. He went on to further introduce the prominent figures of Singapore that were involved in the workshop by showing some pictures from the events.

Snigdha then spoke about the PBoX (Project Based on Exchange) that she and Vasudha have been working on and shared some of the things each and everyone of us can do to save the environment. It was followed by my slideshow presentation about GV and I suppose you can read the previous post to know more about it and see more pictures too.

Henri came on stage as Honorary General Secretary to announce awards for the members. Dr William Koh, our guest of honour, was invited to give them out. Adrian (our incoming Finance VP for 2008-09) bagged two awards, while ICX bagged the best department award. There were no nominations for the best dancer award among new members so no award was given out (I think Shubhangi's superior dancing skills overshadow potentially good dancers).

Here are the details of the Rewards and Recognition (R&R) 2007/2008:

LC Best Department Award
Incoming Exchange

LC Leadership Award
Chang Siew Yik

LC Member Excellence Award
Justine Lim Shi Wan

LC Best New Member Award
Zhou Jiuyu

LC Best Team Player Award
Adrian Ong Liang Kiat

OGX Department Excellence Award
Teo Kah Ming

ICX Department Excellence Award
Meet Shroff

ER Department Excellence Award
Tan Yanling

Finance Department Excellence Award
Adrian Ong Liang Kiat

PD Department Excellence Award
Hanna Khalid

Service Department Excellence Award
Tye Mei Peng

LC Mr. Candor Award
Nabeel Khalid

LC Best Dancer (Seniors) Award
Shubhangi Faujdar

LC Most Enthu (Seniors) Award
Cathy Chan

LC Most Enthu (New Members) Award
Wenny Natalia

The outgoing EBs held a special introduction ceremony for the new EBs who are a crazy bunch of people (myself included - in both categories!). It must have been quite a sight for the audience to see the entire leadership of AIESEC in NUS for two years on stage.

Siew Yik had some words to share about what his focus as next year's LCP would be. Imran did the closing after which everyone ran headed out to eat and drink (and be merry). Some people were surprised there were no curry puffs, which is like, tradition for such events because of budget constraints, but the food was really expensive tasting (that means it was good). Most members didn't bother coming, which is okay because we had a lot to eat that way. Haha!

Unfortunately, we didn't take many pictures but you can see the pictures that we did take by clicking here.

First Global Village by @ NUS

Nabeel Khalid | Year 2 NUS | Year 2 AIESEC | NUS Branding & Communications Coordinator

GV (Global Village) was a first-of-its-kind event for AIESEC Singapore and let me explain why before you say anything. I mean sure, we always have a GV at every AIESEC conference and it is always more spectacular than before. But AIESEC conferences are attended by AIESECers only, and people outside of AIESEC never get a chance to witness GV. So the GV event at NUS was an attempt to try to give that same feeling to non-AIESECers (and perhaps, draw them towards AIESEC).

It was held at the Central Forum at NUS (right below the Central Library) which is one of the busiest spots in NUS, enjoying a traffic of thousands of students. I was the project's director and I had an amazing Organizing Committee (OCP and OCVPs - all brilliant). We had a good idea of what we wanted to do and what we wanted to see happen at the Central Forum. Unfortunately we could only do so much in 1.5 months. Nevertheless, the event can be best described as having mixed success.

We had Indian, Malaysian, Pakistani, Sikh and Thai cultural stalls, apart from the stalls put up by AIESECers, which included a display of different hats from around the world and AIESEC T-shirts from different countries and conferences. I may have some bias when I say it was a fascinating display that was put up by all the stalls.

While some stalls gave out brochures and other published materials about their countries, others displayed teachings or items depicting their culture. My favourite stall was the Pakistani stall put up by PakNUS (bias alert! bias alert!). They had free bangles to give away and they were also applying henna (mehndi, a.k.a. temporary tattoo) for FREE! (I got the star and moon from the Pakistani flag on one hand and the Ashoka Chakra (wheel) from the Indian flag on the other, as you can see in the first picture above.)

But I think the most popular stall was the one with the hats from around the world - it was empty most of the time - because everyone would steal the hats to camera whore! It was quite a sight, really, as you can judge from some of the pictures.

Coincidently BTMICE (sector of Business Travel, Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions) and the Services Communications department of the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) were organizing an overseas media familiarization trip for international journalists in conjunction with the upcoming Singapore Education (SE) Awards 2008.

The 5 media finalists nominated for "SE Awards Best Media Coverage" [Print and Broadcast] were to visit NUS on the 27th of March - the same day as GV, and one of the highlights was a campus tour - so how could they miss the Central Forum! (Especially since one of the reasons for NUS to invite them over was: "The NUS student community comprises a cosmopolitan mix of over 32,000 students from 88 countries, contributing to a vibrant and thriving campus life." How much more relevant could GV be?)

For your information, by the way, NUS is a nominee for ‘Best Host for International Students Studying in Singapore (Schools)' for SE Awards 2008, so NUS surely must have benefitted from GV. When they came over, they had an entire camera crew that took pictures of the people present, as well as videos of a couple of AIESEC dances ("It's the time to disco!").

Some scandalous pictures:

Public displays of affection girls? Get a room!

Moochie moochie

Domestic violence!

Uh-oh! Here we go again...

To view the entire album, please click here.

The Longest Post Ever!

News News News!
Nabeel Khalid | Year 2 NUS | Year 2 AIESEC | NUS Branding & Communications Coordinator

More pictures below!

As dead as this blog may be, for your kind information, a lot goes on in @ in NUS. For starters, we already have some of our EB elects and LCP elect. Presenting the @ in NUS Executive Board for 2008-09:

LCP: Chang Siew Yik
LC VP Finance: Adrian Ong Lian Kiat
LC VP In-coming Exchange: Vasudha Ram
LC In-coming Exchange Executive: Audrey Wong
LC VP Business Development: Shonit Suri
LC Business Developement Executive: Wenny Natalia Tango
LC VP Talent Management: Muhammad Usman Aslam Mahar
LC VP Information Management: Nabeel Khalid
LC Honorary General Secretary: Yap Hui Ying

We're having another round of applications for the remaining positions available and the deadline to apply is 25th March, 2008! So hurry here (Right-click and open in new window/tab):
LC VP Out-going Exchange
LC VP Communications
LC Out-going Exchange Executive

Maybe I should share with you my personal experience in going through the unique evaluation process our LCPe Siew Yik made us all go through. But first, let me *warn* you guys about what's coming up next in AIESEC in NUS...

If you like free lunches, and if any of your answers to the following questions is 'yes', then you should come to the "Living with HIV" CSR programme by Standard Chartered Bank:

• Do you want to know about Standard Chartered Bank's CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) strategy?
• Do you want to hear about the live story from the regional director of Standard Chartered Bank?
• Do you want to have networking launch with the professionals from Standard Chartered Bank?

Click here for more on this.
(Right-click to open in new window/tab.)

Or maybe these corporate events aren't your thing, or there's a clash with a class or date or something? What if you have a thing for six-course dinners? Not to mention delicious coffee, food and learning! Answer 'yes' to any of these questions and then click the link below:

• Wondering what to do on a Saturday evening with the one you love?
• Do you want to have a hesitant-free conversation about safe sex with your loved one?

Click here to learn more about "Coffee with Love @ Geek Terminal".
(Right-click to open in new window/tab.)

Or fine. You don't have sex and you're saving yourself for marriage or whatever! What if finance is your thing? You know, Strategic Investing and what not. This event builds on the success of last year's Finance Workshop that received very positive feedback.
Take a look at this event by clicking here.
(Right-click to open in new window/tab.)

Too many blocks of text have been starting with 'Or' in this post. I wanna try something new here now. Have you heard about the "Global Village" event held at most AIESEC conferences? Some of us decided to share that event with the ENTIRE NUS community! For real!

AIESEC in NUS is holding Global Village on the 27th of March and the entire OC has been working really hard to make this event possible. All an AIESECer needs to do is to show up at the Central Forum (the big area below Central Library in NUS), wear an AIESEC t-shirt that we have designed and check out all the different cultures NUS has to offer and see them merge under AIESEC! (Psst, there would be cultural performances between 1 pm and 2 pm so you better leave early or the traffic could be really bad then - since so many people will be on their way to the event!)

Oh, did I mention it's on the 27th of March? I guess I did, but did I say it's a Thursday? From 10 am to 6 pm! (We need volunteers for the day and we have our eye on you... tee hee. You will, come, yes?)

About 0.0005% of you who are still reading this and wondering why I still haven't talked about what I promised long ago - here is the story of how we got selected for EB!:

First of all there was this annoyingly long form we filled out that was full of personal questions. Well, it wasn't a bad form but I'm sure you've been through times when you try to think about your future or your past and it gives you headaches - you know what I mean?! (Okay maybe it's just me who gets headaches when I do self-reflections.)

We submitted our forms right before the witching-hour ( deadline 11:59 pm) on a Tuesday night (19th February) - smack in the middle of the week when I had another assignment due at the SAME time. Tsk tsk... Shouldn't leave out stuff to do at the last minute!

Submission on time was one challenge but next up we had to go through the first round of assessment. All the EB applicants were given a task that they would complete and as they would make progress, they would be judged! What a sad world we live in - a brother judging another brother eh, Siew Yik? Just kidding...

Our assessment task was to plan and execute an event involving the whole LC (about 100 odd members). We had a budget of $100 and four days to do it. The goal of the event was to get the members to interact with each other.

Did I mention there were 17 applicants applying for 8 positions in the executive board? Talk about stressful situations!

But it wasn't so stressful really. I mean, sure, we did have a 2.5 hour discussion (17 people trying to agree on one thing) to finalize exactly WHAT we would do on that fine Sunday evening. We decided on a costume party of some sort, which changed into a theme party over extended email conversations later on. We split ourselves into departments like Programs, Logistics, Publicity and Finance. Finance was also given the charge to overlook the progress of all the 'departments' in the 'OC'.

The theme we decided upon (at an "emergency meeting" held on the following Friday) was Retro/'60s/'70s. Bow ties, baggy trousers, tight shirts and the like (I think!). Despite booking limitations on Sundays in NUS, we managed to book a function room in PGPR and we managed to prepare food for 50+ people within a $100 bucks.

Feat? Yes.

Turnout?

Not so good. It turned out that despite literally CALLING EACH MEMBER we still weren't able to get members down for our spectacular event on such short notice.

But the event itself was quite a success if I may pass my own (biased) judgment. Because we got people to have fun, eat good food (bias - it was South Asian-ish food), and interact with each other (bias again - I was emceeing =P).

Later that night, the evil LCPe sent out the results of the first round of evaluation. We had to see 4 of our team members be removed from our team, despite all the hard work they had put in and despite all the amazing things they were able to offer by being part of our team. It was sad and also a tad bit demotivating for the rest of us who progressed on to the second round.

I would like to call the second round the "grilling" round. No, they didn't test our barbecue skills. Quite the contrary. They barbecued us! They cooked us! They baked us! They fried our brains!

They were members from the current MC team, the MC elects, the current LCP and the LCPe. They asked us questions that challenged us to the extent that we started doubting ourselves. It was intense to say the least. What were our plans? How were we going to measure our success? What numbers can we predict? Questions asked with past performance in mind and questions about future performance...

But as we understood later, it was because there was a difference in their expectations of us and our expectations of ourselves. They wanted us to be more pro-active than we could imagine; to step out of our comfort zones more than we thought we could; to create a difference and create more positive impact on our society than we thought we could.

Out of the 13 remaining applicants wanting to fill in 8 VP positions, (plus some Executive positions) only those listed in the beginning of this post were able to make it.

It has been an intense yet fun experience that most of us found strangely stimulating and motivating.

Now we return to our mid-terms and normal school life for a while before we start assuming our new positions in AIESEC and start a new phase in the LR stage (leadership role). Do wish us luck for our term!

Food station - cooks and helpers!

Random scene from the event.

Posers!

And more posers!

Check out ALL the pictures by clicking here.
Or click here to view the Facebook album.