Student Life

Assalamu'alaikum readers. It has been a while.

There are 2 main reasons why one does not update his blog:

1) He has no idea what to write.

2) He has a lot of ideas on what to write but he doesn't have time to do so.

And the reason I haven't been updating is because of the second reason. I just got myself involved with so much activities in my University that I really don't have the time to update my blog. And now I have the urge to write down a post since I have time. If you don't believe that I am actually busy, allow me to tell you the things that I have been done since... *checking the date of my latest post* 5th July 2012. Oh wow that's a really long time ago. Scratch that I don't think I can remember what I did since that date. the beginning of this semester, that is somewhere in middle of September.

Convest Logo

Every first semester in IIUM, there is a big annual event called Convocation Fiesta or Convest for short. The duration of this event is spread out for 2 weeks from the final week of September till the first week of October. The objective of Convest is like a symbol of appreciation and farewell to students who will be graduating from the university, but that doesn't mean that they are the only ones involved, all students (even outsiders) can participate in Convest. So what actually happen during Convest? There will be a lot of other events, performances, shows, etc (13 or 14 events i think) to make IIUM very lively during these 2 weeks.

And for each of these events to run, there must be an organizing committee for each event to organize and handle the event. Organizing committees consist of a programme manager, secretary, financial controller, head bureaus and subcommittees of each bureau. The number of bureaus in an event depends on the nature of the event itself. Can be 5, can be 7. The number of subcommittees in each bureau also depend on the nature of the bureau. Some time at the end of the second semester previous academic year I think, they were asking for volunteers for Convest. So I filled up the online form. And during short semester, they called me in for the interview. The interview was just a laid-back interview, not a stressfule one. Just asking to introduce myself and asking about event organizing experience and etc.

Event poster

After a few more days, I was at first chosen to become a subcommittee of Preparation and Technical Bureau (PrepTech) for an event called called Explorace. So the PrepTech bureau involves in the booking of venues for the event, and preparing the items needed for the event. This Explorace event that we're in charge of is basically like "The Amazing Race" reality TV show. Each team of participants will have to go to checkpoints and do tasks and proceed to other checkpoints and do other tasks and etc.. you get the picture.

Our Explorace this time has a little twist, the tasks are not really physique-based (i.e. running, jumping, cycling, lifting heavy objects), but we mix it up with some community service. One of our checkpoints is at an orphanage House called Raudhatul Faeez at Batu 11, Gombak. Some of the tasks there are painting the house, playing games with the children, cleaning, cooking and etc. Another checkpoint is at a local fire station in Gombak as well. Participants have to do tasks such as repelling, extinguishing fire and etc. The rest of the checkpoints are in UIA itself. Some of the tasks inside UIA are kayaking, papaya carving, cycling and many more. So we PrepTech have to acquire all the items needed in every checkpoints, either by buying, borrowing, producing or search for sponsors. We need to be creative because our budget is limited.

2 participants doing the cooking task at the orphanage house, Raudhatul Faeez

The day of the event was on 6th October. I was in charged of handling the kayaking checkpoint at Maryam Lake inside UIA. The participants have to ride a kayak to the centre of the lake whereby there are a lot of bottles floating there. They have to find a bottle which has a piece of paper with their team number printed on it (each team has their own distinctive number). My job was to give instructions to the participants who arrive and I also have to make sure that the bottles don't drift too far from the centre of the lake, and I do that by getting on the kayak and paddle myself to get the bottles that drift too far. It was a sunny day and I spent almost the whole morning till around 2pm in the lake, on the kayak, under the sun. I got sunburnt so bad. But it was a good experience. The closing ceremony was at around 3pm, whereby they would announce the winners and prizes will be given. Congratulations to the winning teams. Alhamdulillah overall the event went well and the committees have given their all to make this event a successful one.

Me kayaking in the lake to get the bottles that drifted too far away

I was also involved as a committee in a Convest event called ZoMAF '12, but I'm gonna talk about it in a later post. Meanwhile you can read about ZoMAF '11. Thanks for reading readers!