Great is Thy Faithfullness

photo credit: UK Ambassador to Indonesia, H.E Mr. Moazzam Malik Have you ever been in a city or town covered in smog? Have you ever imagined living in such a place where you wake up with a feeling of breathlessness? This is an almost everyday reality for some of my relatives in Riau Province in the central part of Sumatra Island, Indonesia. A long time ago, Riau Province was known as the source of oil. Nowadays, it is said that this has already declined because of the haze from forest and land fires. Corruption occurs in the forestry sector in Indonesia. Some companies get their mining or plantation licenses even though they weren’t able to fulfill their obligations or  failed to comply with environmental and forestry regulations. Thus, billions of dollars are lost because of corruption. According to the Global Forest Watch Report, bribery weakens the regulations related to land use; therefore, it has an enormous impact on local communities, particularly the indi...

Today is the last day of ISFIT. Can you imagine? How the time goes so fast. I feel like I’ve just arrived in Oslo, Norway, then take the train to Trondheim, but sadly said today ISFIT will be over.                          I don’t want to finish this. It’s really hard to say goodbye with them, my family, governance class. Oh, I have to leave Melhus in the morning, bring all my stuffs to workshop class because tomorrow I’ll take the bus to airport from NTNU student housing in Moholt, so it won’t be difficult for my family in Melhus to take me to airport. Thanks my beloved Norwegian family, Martin, Sofi, Luka, Ellie and Enzo. We have an early goodbye. Jeg will savner deg! I love my host family so much.   We had a farewell from morning until the closing ceremony.  It is hard to say goodbye for all these beautiful days. Their spirit, their ambition and a...

Day 9!  We had ISFIT Parliamentary today! Like ISFIT said, today is dedicated to an exhange of ideas on solutions to corruption between Norwegian and international students. The speakers and a panel of experts: Jan Gustav: ANDEP Pan Lonseth: PWC Inge Amundsen:Researcher Jeanett Bergan: KLP Gro Skaarem: TI Norway They will assist the discussion. The discussion was about what can young people do to reduce the values lost to corruption by 50% within 2030. These resolutions will be sent to UN. ISFIT Parliamentary is very interesting, seeing how each of the workshop representatives deliver his/her opinion based on his/her idea. How great the discussion is!  Today, we have had several suggestions from all workshops’ solutions. All of these suggestions are 49.  We have to discuss first in the small group of our workshop, then we have to vote (individually) 3 best suggestions based our individually opinion . After the comm...

God morgen! We have been together for almost 8 days. How time flies so fast. I don’t want to finish this. I’m happy with ISFITers, with my workshop group, with all nice people, with my family (although we rarely have time together, because they have to go working in the morning, so do I, so we have a lack of family time. I and Moses always go home very late, almost every night :) But they still always take care of us. We love Martin and Sofi, so much!   Today’s discussion started at 9 pm. The discussion is about finding 3 ways to prevent corruption by 50%. Each workshop has to decide 3 solutions and it will be presented in ISFIT Parliament for tomorrow. In the afternoon, after having lunch (ah, I forgot to tell about food in Norway). It’s totally different with Indonesia (of course it is :p) But I like it especially the dinner menu. In the morning and afternoon, we usually eat bread with chesse, chicken, and vegetables. In Indonesia, I eat rice in the morning,...