As I wrote here last year, again this year I’m going to report the third consecutive Conference of Indonesian Students Association at Korea (CISAK). As part of the team, I am happy and proud to say that there is indeed a leap on our achievement at CISAK 2010. We were able to prepare the show more thoroughly.
So, here we go. This time, Vira has been chosen as the chairman of the project. We then started recruiting members as early as October 2009. Little by little, the team has then found its perfect shape. The first thing we prepared was a proposal. It was planned to be in three language, Indonesian, English and Korean, though we only managed to form the Indonesian and English version. From the very beginning of this project, we tried to set an ambitious target. Being different than the previous ones, CISAK this year planned to invite several keynote speakers from various backgrounds. All the guest speakers will try to convey ideas on answering our core theme: Going Home or Staying Abroad.
The first party is a member of International Indonesian Scholars Association (IISA) or Ikatan Ilmuwan Indonesia Internasional (I-4). Fortunately, the vice-chairman of IISA, Dr. Khoirul Anwar, an assistant professor in Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technolgy (JAIST), was agree to visit Korea and give us a short lecture. The second party is a Korean professor who has deep interest in Indonesia. For this, we got ourselves to contact a professor in HUFS (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies), Prof. Yang Seung Yoon. The last party is from the Indonesian embassy. This time, there are two speakers from Indonesian embassy, the Minister of Counselor, Akhmad D. H. Irfan and Defense Attache, Col. Agus Rustandi.
Other than invited speakers, we also opened a call for paper, which is open to all Indonesian students who was currently studying in Korea. Also, we invited our Indonesian student colleagues from other countries to participate on this call for paper. From all the papers coming to the committee, we chose Harry Pamungkas from TLBU, M. Rusdi Syamsudin and Purba Purnama (both form KIST) to present their papers in the conference.
Aside from the material and the program of CISAK, there are lots of aspects that I could share in here. The most important one is, well of course, the financial problem. As non-profit organization, PERPIKA (Indonesian Students Association at Korea) does not have strong financial capability to begin with. Thus CISAK committee must struggle hard enough to run this program. The first aid was coming from Indonesian embassy. After submitting our proposal there and discussed things with the embassy staff, we agreed on Indonesian embassy supporting CISAK in the form of venue, coffee break, lunch and accommodation. This sure was quite a big help for us. After these things have been settled, we only need to think about transportation cost of Dr. Khoirul from Japan, publication, decoration, equipment and all secretariat things. Those sure will cost lots of money. Up to one point, we had no more than couple hundred thousands of won, which is from PERPIKA’s fund and some small sponsors. While in fact, we need more than a million won.
Since this story has a kind of happy ending, there came a sponsorship agreement with Hana Financial Group. With their support, finally we could settle things financially (well, at least at the accounting notes) Nevertheless, the adventure to be able to get the real money is quite far ahead. But that will be another story. Bottom line, we had no worries about financial condition anymore and was ready to rock the show.
We had several meetings to discuss and share each division’ s progress, identify the problems and clear the pebbles from our road. Ewha University’s campus, Mba Yuli’s house, Indonesian embassy, and the most frequent, Skype conference room. All leads to Friday February 19, 2010. I met Dr. Khoirul at Incheon airport (I arrived pretty late but a bunch thanks for the help from Bli Putu and Mba Vicka) and came together to the guest house of Indonesian embassy (third floor, just one floor above the venue) while the others preparing the venue. We had a dinner together that time, along with the committees and Byan, one of CISAK moderator. I remember slept quite late that time. Then in the morning, with kimbabs and breads for breakfast, we started our day.
Along with Dr. Khoirul and Byan, I went down to the venue at around 8.30. There was a quick briefing with all the position arrangement and specific task of each person. Then the venue started to be filled up with students. I would like to mention here that some Indonesian students from Japan (four of them) were attending our conference. Also, we invited some Korean students who study Indonesian language at HUFS. They’re Indonesian is awesome. The program started at 09.30 with congratulatory and welcoming remarks from the chairman of CISAK 2010, the president of PERPIKA and Indonesian Ambassador for South Korea, Mr. Nicholas T. Dammen.
Right after that, Dr. Khoirul gave an interesting lecture that relates his study in the cutting edge of telecommunication technology with Indonesian human resources dilemma and the so called brain drain phenomena as well as promoting a strategy and answer of that case. The core idea was communication between the Indonesians who strive abroad and those who stay in Indonesia. Answering the question of going home or staying abroad, he said wisely that wherever you could be more meaningful to society as a whole, there your battlefield is. He also showed a graph of optimization ratio between Indonesian scholars and experts who must build Indonesia from the inside and those who shape from the outside.
The next is a presentation from Harry Pamungkas about Brain Gain theory and China case of it. He showed that in the past there are lots of Chinese intellectuals who went abroad, such as USA and Europe, to find a better life. People said those phenomena as Brain Drain, where the smarts of China were drawn out from its homeland and served for others. Yet recently, when China experienced the economic boom and started to roar, these brains are gradually coming back to their country with knowledge, experience, technology even networking and financial support–catalyzing and accelerating the economic boom even more. He also mentioned about several policies that China utilizes to call their brains back to the main body. This is the Brain Gain.
Just before the lunch break, the Counselor Minister of Indonesian embassy shared his knowledge and experience for serving in Korea for years to us. Although focusing on double citizenship case, Mr. Irfan also shares about the passport and self report obligatory for all Indonesian who stays in Korea. Then after an Indonesian style super-delicious lunch break, Col. Agus Rustandi started his presentation about present security condition on Korean peninsula. He also presented some materials about Indonesian-Korea cooperation on military equipment. Both speakers from the embassy had given us some new points of view and relevant information for our stay in Korea.
Then we had a presentation from M. Rusdi Syamsuddin about the virtual world development. He explored the imaginary-limited possibility of this ‘second life’ program, especially for education purpose. Then we also had a presentation from Prof. Yang Seung Yoon. At the beginning he mentioned about the cultural difference in Indonesia and Korea from a very small example, the use of ‘professor’ and ‘mister’. A little note here, he was quite enthusiastic to be able to attend our conference. He was in another meeting far away from Seoul and had to finish that meeting early and go to our conference directly by the fastest train in Korea, KTX. He even scratched his presentation material on his way to CISAK. After his presentation, we had Purba Purnama who researched on a bio-polymer which is able to replace conservative plastics. This technology, he said, is quite cheap, simple and replicable while maintaining a green quality, which is can be degraded easily.
I sure have written a bit too much here. So the last part of our CISAK was a panel discussion. We had in front of all audiences, Dr. Khoirul from JAIST, Ony Jauhari, a lecturer from Woosung University, our moderator Dewi Barnas, Prof. Yang Seung Yoon, and one representative of Korean student at HUFS, Sarah. We prepared several questions to be answered and elaborated by our four guest panelists, which are related to our core topic of conference. Especially for the Korean participants, we asked about their opinion of going abroad or staying at Korea. Sarah unexpectedly answered that she prefers to strive and stay outside the country to learn and gain a lot of things for the country. The final outcome from the discussion was that it is not a matter of where you are and what you do. But it is all about where your heart belongs to. With a high nationalism, we surely will be able to contribute to our nation’s development with our own unique way.
Thus the curtain of CISAK 2010 was closed by five hits of the gong by Elvira, the chairman of CISAK 2010. Just before that, a nicely delivered review was given by Ahmad Mulia Karnida, the embassy staff of Cultural and Protocol Affair. Then we had those great songs singing by Rain and Vira collaborated with guitarist Beni. As true narcissist, all the committees and participants of CISAK 2010 took a picture (pictures actually) together before cleaning up the mess and leaving sweet memories forever.
(http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/040/5/9/one_piece_in_samurai_x__by_dragonoftheeastblue-d395kr3.jpg)
