I think, I haven't mentioned the name of my internship program yet. So, before going further to the story of the second day, I want to tell a bit about my internship program. This internship program is called South East Asian Networking Initiative in Geo-information and Ocean Sciences (SEA I GO). Shortly, SEA I GO is the annual program (which was initiated from 2012 and held from 2013) held by Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering Department, Institute of Technology Bandung, to support their students in improving their mobility and academic standards, and giving the exposure as the establishment of the links between academic and industrial spheres in ASEAN regional. Until this time, this program has already corresponded with some higher education institutions and industries. Higher education, such as Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok, Thailand), Universiti Teknologi MARA (Shah Alam, Malaysia), Ho Chi Minh University of Technology (HCMC, Vietnam), University of Technology Malaysia (Johor Bahru, Malaysia). While, industries already include Mercator (Bangkok), Portcoast (Vietnam), and Saigon Envigreen (Vietnam). Please kindly click on the link to know more about it -->
SEA I GO.
Now, back to the story of the second-day experiences. The agenda for the day is "Attending Thesis Defense of Environmental Geology Engineering Students at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology". There were eight students that presented their final project or undergraduate thesis. Unfortunately, they presented it in Vietnamese which makes me, Gio, and Alex hard to understand their presentations. Luckily, there was a kind-hearted Huy, who translated the content of each presentation for us, so we could still catch up what's the topic about.
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| Our friend, Han, when presenting his final project about the identifying of coastline changing using satellite imagery and GIS |
The presentation was divided into two sessions and in every session, there will be presentations followed by Q&A session for each student. At 11 a.m., we had time to take a break until 2 p.m. So, we're going to canteen to had a lunch with all of the thesis students, they are Han, Dung, Dat, and others (I'm sorry, I cannot remember all of their names). And finally, we found rice there! Han told us that actually, we can find rice easily in every restaurant and kiosk because Vietnamese eat rice as their lunch and dinner while noodle is for their breakfast. After full, we took a selfie at the university garden and had a short walk until went back to the 2nd session of thesis defense at 14 p.m.
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| Huy and Hoa when explaining us the content of the presentation (credit: Gio) |
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| Let we take a selfie (credit: Gio) |
After all of the students presented their thesis, the reviewer team from the lecturers deliberated the score then announce the result. Happily, all of the students passed it and graduated.
After the announcement. we're all going to a restaurant to have a dinner as a celebration. I was fascinated by the culture of the department that after thesis defense, they will always celebrate it, not only the students but together with the lecturers and the dean. The atmosphere was really warm and friendly. We had a dinner at Hoa Binh restaurant, around 500m from my hotel.
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| Having a celebration with the lecturer and dean |
The custom in kind of the celebration here is drinking beer. Since I don't drink beer, I only ask for mineral water, haha. While, Alex and Gio drank for the first time. This is my first time surrounded by real drunk people, hoho. But, I didn't feel insecure at all since all of them really appreciate and tolerate me and I'm so touched when knowing that they specially requested for not serving any food which contains pork because I am prohibited to eat it. It means that even I am a minority, they still respect the diversities lie within us.
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| Mineral water is much healthier anyway, haha |
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| See you in the next post! |
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