The 3rd
Down Under Camp (DUC) was organised by the Malaysian Students' Council of Australia
(MASCA). Its initiative was to prepare Malaysian students for the transition
from being a local student to an international student in Australia. The 3rd DUC took
place at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) on the 23rd & 24th
of January (during the weekends).
Registration of volunteers and
participants and volunteers briefing were carried out on Friday, one day prior to the official commencement of the camp. One friend of mine, whom I was
supposed to be sharing a room with, ditched me as she would only be coming on
Saturday (23rd Jan). It’s all good, I’m cool with it. I ended up
sleeping over in another room. Well yeah, they invited me over, so I can’t
possibly turn them down right? ;)
My tag throughout the camp
After
registration, there were a few ice-breaking games, followed by a briefing
session where I met up with my fellow DUC Open Day committees. DUC Open Day,
which would only take place on Sunday (24th Jan), was a segment of
DUC and there was a separate committee in charge of it. We have had a few Skype
meetings prior to the camp, but meeting everyone in person felt absolutely
different from all those virtual meetings we had.
Felisa (left, Operations Convener
UQMSA) and me, Huey Fang (right, Education Convener UQMSA) during briefing
session.
The next day, DUC kicked
start with opening speeches from representatives of sponsors, Education
Malaysia, Deputy High Commissioner to Malaysia and few others. After all the formalities,
participants were broken down into groups based on their destinations of study
(e.g. Queensland, Victoria) for “Project X”, a Meet & Greet session between
current and prospective students of the respective states. Next up was “Explore
Race - Exploring Australia”. All participants got drenched, being attacked by
water balloons from us checkpoints masters (we are so mean!).
The last
session of the day was “From Footy to Football” (for non-Muslims) and “Fiqh
Luar Negara” (for Muslims) where I attended the former. It was a free and easy
QnA session with three MASCA alumni about their experience in Australia. The
participants felt comfortable asking them questions as all three of them are
very easy going and friendly.
Ashley A. (first row left,
Social Convener UQMSA), myself, and a few UQ prospective students during the opening
ceremony.
On 24th
Jan (Sunday), being overly focused on preparing for DUC Open Day, I missed out the
morning forum “Aiming for Southern Star”. Although I only managed to participate
in the forum for about 15 minutes or so, it was a rewarding experience. We had
Johan Merican, CEO of TalentCorp, Patrick Ng, Assurance Partner of PWC, Danial
Fahmi, our MASCA Alumni, and JayDee Lok as the moderator. The forum mainly
focused on career advice (at least during that 15 minutes that I sat in for).
Then came
the highlight of DUC – DUC Open Day. Basically the objective of Open Day was to
encourage all participants to give back to the society. Our plan was to prepare
food and distribute them to the homeless. We had a series of games for
participants to play and collect points for ingredients bidding, where the
ingredients would be used for sushi making later. I would say that everything
turned out well for the Open Day, and I was just glad to see that all
participants had fun.
Well okay,
to be honest, there was a slight glitch. We estimated the ingredients for 200
participants, but only half of them turned up. Hence, after the closing
ceremony of DUC, almost half of the committee stayed back to finish making the
remaining sushi. I helped out as much as I could, but I left at 5pm that day
because I had a train to catch. The distributing team stayed till 9pm and
distributed the food around Chow Kit area.
The team that stayed back till
late to distribute the food. So thankful for their effort
My
reflections on this event would be, volunteering and giving out for something
meaningful will never be a waste of time. It feels more rewarding to give than
to accept. Not to mention, I got to meet an awesome bunch of people, which had
been a pleasure to work with. Their enthusiasm have influence me to go the
extra mile in doing anything, and never a dull moment with all the fun and
amazing people.
3rd
Down Under Camp 2016 group photo:
Shared by Huey Fang, Woo (UQMSA Education Convener 2015/16)
*To learn more about DUC, do visit their Facebook page at: