It felt like a dream, now that I think about it. Summer course has entered its 8th day, and now it’s our final week in here. 6 more days to go before the course ends and I felt like time passed by so quick. I haven’t had enough of enjoyment and fun in here, and I felt like I’ve yet accomplished anything. I wish the course extends for another week, but then I still have my final year projects that I need to settle. Such tough thing that boggled up my mind as I woke up from my bed early in the morning and it kind of ruined my mood.
After an early breakfast, I went to UGM with my fellow mates. It’s class day again, and I felt a bit indifferent in having to attend classes again, especially after 2 consecutive days of fun and enjoyment on trip. But when thinking how my precious time in here is getting shorter each day, I gathered my motivation and pushed myself to enter the class room. Indifferent or not, i still have to fulfil the course requirements.
Our first class session’s lecture was given out by Dr. Seca Gandaseca, a lecturer from my own university, Putra Malaysia University (UPM), and his lecture title was Adaptation Strategies of Disaster Risk Management on Tropical Areas, which explained about tropical areas around the world, disasters that occurred, as well as the strategies used to handle it. To summarize, tropical areas around the globe faced one major issue – nature exploitation by human. Nature exploitation always destroys our mother nature, and attracting unwanted natural disasters like forest burning, drought, storms, landslides, flood and worst climate change. This is where disaster management framework applies to, to counter natural disasters and prevents it from harming people and natures further. Such framework aims to increase society’s resilience to disaster through coordination and prioritization of action courses. I wish to say his lecture was interesting, but I used to attend his classes before back in UPM, so all in all, I felt like normal throughout his whole session.
2nd session followed afterwards, and this time we had a talk given out by Prof. Dr Katsuki Umeda from Japan. His lectures mainly focused disaster handling in Japan, as implied by his own lecture title – Disaster Risk Management in Japan. Pretty much his lecture contexts were same as the one given out by UGM lecturers last week, albeit different country. He explained how things coursed through and handled in Japan on cases basis, and gave Mt Usuzan’s volcanic activity as his case study. His lecture was pretty straightforward and right after his session, the long awaited lunch break session arrived.
The lunch for today was interesting. Sorry no picture to accompany, but it was satay with meatballs cooked with vegetables just hit my appetite real hard. It was delicious and filled my hungry stomach with satisfaction. But still, if I were to say, so far throughout the whole summer course session, the most delicious lunch was the one on Saturday, during the trip to PUCEN. How I wish I could have a taste of it again. The class resumed back again at 1 pm.
Third session was probably the most interesting session so far. The lecture was given out by Dr Evita Pangribowo, and her lecture was all round funny and interesting, as she talked about genderism context in disaster. Her lecture title was Gender Aspect of Disaster – Framework and Empirical Studies, and her talk attracted many responds and replies from the guys, and kind of making the class seemed loud and playful. She showed us a video of how women can change their poor and miserable life by having an education. She mention a lot of situation regarding the social norm of society but mostly related to Asian country.
The final session’s talk was given out by Dr Rini Rachmawati from UGM, and the title of her lecture was Spatial Planning for Disaster Risk Reduction. Spatial planning systems refer to the methods and approaches used by the public and private sector to influence the distribution of people and activities in spaces or areas of various scales. It is an essential element to reduce disaster risk, especially in rapidly urbanizing countries with high social vulnerability such as Indonesia. Because disaster is a wide area effect phenomenon, therefore it is important to shape and control the development and urbanization processes, and this was where spatial planning heavily contributes. Through studies on disaster and its pattern, people can chart their urbanization course better, and prevent heavier damage and casualties. Spatial planning helps on this, by applying effective area management that considers various factors onto it, including disasters. This helps a lot in preventing damage caused by uncontrolled urbanization processes, and casualties through controlling density of people’s distribution in various areas. Her lecture, if I were to shorten it into a single sentence, then it would probably be “space/area controlization”. It was interesting and fun-knowing session for me, and though some of her explained concepts were hard to chew, but I kind of got the whole general point that she tried to convey.
After the 4th lecture, we were given a short brief about tomorrow’s activities, which is venturing into Mount Merapi. Just hearing about the plan that they have for us pretty much had me excited all the way, even till now as I typed this journal. After that, the session for today ended, and we all happily went back to our room.
All in all, after feeling indifferent in the morning, it turned out having class session again wasn’t that bad after all. But what got me anticipated most was the plan for tomorrow. From the way they briefed, I somewhat felt like it’s going to be an entirely different journey tomorrow. Rough yes, but not that I couldn’t handle. It’s going to be another few hours before tomorrow arrives, so I better stop typing this and have my good rest on my bed now.
Thanks for reading, and have a nice day ?