Like Xinyuan, I love LJ week, not just because I get to wake up at 7 in the morning but also because I can't take the schoolbus and thus get to walk through my estate every morning to get to the MRT station :D

It's so odd how the smallest things can bring us so much joy. But if you walked through the area, you'd gush too. It feels like a utopian town.

Monday was EU-ASEAN talk; I reached the hall at 9.02 am and rushed upstairs to the control room, happily forgetting to tell the secretaries to mark my attendance as present. Got hauled up by Mr Ng later in the afternoon via email to the class YG to explain my supposed absence, sigh.

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SS LJ today; I was actually going to say that I thought facilitation went fine, but I'm not so sure anymore. Either way, I'm glad we didn't have to wear blazers + court shoes, with all the running around Xinyuan and I did today.

Mr Jalleh came and told us later that as chairpersons of the dialogue, we could've done more to steer it in a certain direction. I suppose there's a difference between directing traffic and making it go in the right direction? I always thought we were there to (quite literally) only facilitate and make sure everything went fine, but I guess on an intellectual level we really could've tried to - well, not influence - but prod people to think beyond Pedra Branca and the water issue. Either way, I think the guest speakers did a great job. I know some think that one of them was...restricted, but even the restrictedness says something about the way things are done here. Self-constructed OB markers, yeah. The two contrasting focuses were refreshing.