ICOSH 2009

I was busy attending the ICOSH 2009 Conference in UKM these past two days. ICOSH is an acronym for “International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities”, truthfully, this is the first time  i attended an academic conference and was really excited about this event. I even did not get much sleep the night before the conference, as if i were suppose to present a paper in the morning. Sigh!..imagine if i were.

Initially, I wanted to support a friend of mine who presenting a paper during the conference, but end up supporting two friends after bumping into Azrul on the morning of the first day. It was a pleasant surprise, i have not seen Azrul since February this year in London, to be exact our last meeting was at the Eye on London. He was just arrived from Lancaster University a day before the conference begin and had to endure his jetlag throughout his presentation on the topic of “Multiculturalism, Ethnicity and Nation Building in Malaysia”.

About 198 presenters, from local and overseas institutions were schedule to present their papers during the two days conference via multiple parallel sessions. By the end of the 2nd day, I found out almost half of the scheduled presenters did not turn up for the conference. The papers was presented through the medium of English and Bahasa Melayu, which are fitting as UKM was established to preserve the heritage of our national language. I found out that only one paper was really on my research subject, the rest of the papers presented was quite interesting (some of them). Well it was a learning experiences and gave me some confidence to present my papers as early as next year. Wish me luck y’all…