A Piece on Hult Prize Regional Shanghai Competition 2015

It is just been my eight month studying in Crawford, and I am incredibly proud to represent my school to the Hult Prize Competition in Shanghai few weeks ago.

It was not an easy task juggling with assignments, extracurricular activities, and preparing business idea for the competition at the same time. In addition to an endless discussion to get contextual idea for the project ripped, I also needed to work the preparation of administration, financial, networking, publication and working with teammates who are really different in personality.

It was not that smooth, I have to admit. Yet it was worth it!

The initial reason why I wanted to join the competition is because I really enjoyed one of the courses I took last year convened by Paul D’Arcy. Passionate about the competition, Paul then delicately pursued me to join the competition which I though was worth trying. So after recruiting the team members, we submitted the application and successfully passed the regional competition phase, beating 20.000 applicants globally.

As I said earlier the preparation was not easy, especially since most of the team members was not in Canberra during December 2014- January 2015. Me myself was in Vietnam for 2 weeks and in Kathmandu for 6 weeks doing some jobs. Even until the last minutes prior to flying to Shanghai, we still needed to discuss from FB, WA, Skype and Email (thanks to modern technology).

Long short story, we did not come as the only one team who will go to New York to compete for winning $1M for project implementation with other regional competitor winners. However, the experience was worth the effort. We managed to networks with business personalities and amazing students from prestigious universities around the world, understand entrepreneurship project more contextually and of course taste a bit of Shanghai’s beautiful megalopolitan city atmosphere (as well as its well-recognized haze pollution).

The Team is featured in Crawford website

Anyway, it is not finished yet. I am still on my way expanding my wings to give the best for the rest of 1.4 months of my stay in Australia. And everyday I learn new things from classes, people who I met in different occasions and the lovely community in Toad (student accommodation where I live at the moment). 

Cheers,

Olivia

How to Survive in A Country Where You Don't Speak the Language (and They Don’t Speak Your Language Either)

I was on a field trip a week ago to places faaar away from Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. So I went to Bhairahawa (Siddharthanagar District) and Buwtol (Rupandehi District) to check the implementation of community forest. I had to take a bus for 8 hours journey by myself, slept in a (kinda) creepy hotel, travel to the border of Nepal and India and went back to Kathmandu using an overnight 12 hours long bus safe and sound all by myself. Even my colleagues who are Nepali impress that I could do a one week trip to places I am not familiar with (include visiting Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha) by myself when I don't even speak the language and don’t know anyone there. So here are the tips on how I survive:

1. Smile
Smile is a universal language. When you smile, people will notice that you open a chance for friendship through your friendly gesture.

2. Learn Basic Language

You don’t speak their language but it does not mean you should ignore the language. Learn how to speak basic words such as sleep, eat, directions. It will ease your life a lot, trust me!

3. Trust your Intuition

Need more explanation? I mean, your intuition will always be right (at least from my experience)

4. Eyes

I always believe that eyes are the windows of heart. You can always tell if a person has bad or good intention through their heart.

5. Google Maps

Well, I am not a tech savvy nor that I depend on tech a lot. Yet when I am totally lost in the middle of nowhere, I really need this app to make sure that I am still on earth.

Few steps forward, I would have been in India already

Cheers,



Olivia

The Old Man Wise Words

Some wisdom thoughts from The Old Man (which the Universe planed for me to meet):

1. Most great leaders read relentlessly throughout of their life before they came out with great thoughts.

2. Religion exists to help you throughout your difficult times not only throughout your glorious time. Even atheist has a religion. Their religion is wisdom from words that they trust.

3. It is important to balance between positive and negative thought (but personally I tend to choose to trust my positive thoughts as I am a strong believer of ‘the law of attraction’)

4. Communist, Maoist and Lenin teach about live in simplicity and avoid greedy attitude.

5. Traveling open your perspective that the world is not as small as what you think. In fact, it is incredibly vast!

6. There are many things you need to learn in your life. Never stop learning (a.k.a stay hungry, stay foolish)

7. The glorious time made by your grandfather or great grandfather is just a history of them. You should make your own history instead of hiding behind their shadows.



Ps. I met this old man during a Nepali festival by coincident. He is a father of my new friend’s friend. He happened to study in USSR (now Russia) and befriended with Indonesian students while living for 6 year there. My encountered with him in his house resembled him a lot of the memories 44 years ago. He told me stories of how his Indonesian folks (just like me) really love to eat small super hot chilly (called cabe rabit in Indonesian). He narrated stories very vividly of how one of his Indonesia friends had to be hospitalized for a year after eating that spicy chilly along with vodka as if it happened just yesterday.

The afternoon, the sunny day, the foods, the hot milk tea, the companion, the warmth feeling, as if I was in another world. If only I could freeze the time. But good thing has to end, just like bad thing. Well, that's life. 

Love,

Olivia