Let the AEC frenzy begin

And so much so that I wonder if there was ever any European country whose government was this excited prior to the start of the euro zone.

In the next few years we will see a tremendous number of exhibitions, conferences and events with the word “Asean”, and these will be paid for with a large amount of our taxes. I can predict that many of these will be one-offs. They will enjoy and play up the fact that they are the “first Asean” blah blah blah for a certain period of time. And then after the money runs out – Facebook posts and e-mails exchanged – no other country will pick up the tab for the next year. Actually, they might have already held the “first Asean” blah blah blah without our knowledge. This is because these events are not developed out of existing strong networks, which we in this region are lacking, and therefore they cannot guarantee future cooperation. 

In addition, to accommodate student and faculty exchanges, all universities will change the start date of the academic year to around mid-August, or in the middle of the rainy season. The end of the academic year will be around early May – meaning the highest levels of education will be conducted in the year’s hottest and most unbearable month of April. 

An interesting fact is that the academic calendar for primary and secondary schools will not change, and that gives many students a five-and-a-half-month break after high school. This is perhaps a piece of good news for many employment and travel agencies who can now offer longer contracts – and gain more commission profits – for students to work in hotels, Thai restaurants and amusement parks in the United States and elsewhere. 

Sorry, that’s not exactly Asean, but jobs in the service industries in Singapore – perhaps the dream Asean work destination – are already taken by mainland Chinese immigrants. And that country is one of the “Plus 3” in our Asean+3 setup. 

So, let’s just assume that after five and a half months working in these service jobs, which Americans and others shun, our students will have a slightly better command of spoken English, and that’s a good asset for becoming an Asean citizen. 

Speaking of languages, there’s now a strong in interest in promoting Bahasa Indonesia, spoken by the largest population in the region and also understood in other parts of Southeast Asia. And yet the fact is that English can still get you around the region and many other areas of the world quite comfortably. But our TOEFL scores are among the lowest in the region thanks in part to us in Thailand being “free from foreign powers”.  

I also guarantee that every university and high school in Thailand will hold something called an “Asean Week” over the next few years, when they should instead hold a “Democracy Week” to educate people about what exactly this 80-year-old baby is. Of course, if an Asean exhibition just stayed at one campus – instead of moving around from one to another – that would save a lot of our taxes and perhaps provide more solutions to the flood threat and other domestic issues. 

True, it’s about time we got to know more about neighbouring countries after centuries of favouring Europe and America as well as, more recently, Japan and Korea, which are the other two nations in the “Plus 3” equation. But after learning about them, we should also be able to digest and analyse how this new knowledge will benefit our present and future careers. Otherwise, it will just become another fad.

While our enthusiasm for the AEC – and, accordingly, our budget – is among the highest in the region, the country where this sentiment is the lowest is probably Singapore. In the island state, where the love of acronyms is obvious, you may get a blank-faced answer when you mention the AEC. Singapore is naturally an Asean country. English, Mandarin and Malay are all official languages, and their most recent problem has been the influx of migrant workers from mainland China taking over many jobs. With strong input from the government in education, their national university hires world-class professors from around the world and is ranked highest not only in the region but in Asia, and 11th in the world. Meanwhile, our universities, all rank outside the world’s top 100, and they are spending our taxes on organising the first Asean conference on blah blah blah, and daydreaming of becoming the centre for Southeast Asian Studies. With heavy subsidies for the arts and culture, Singapore’s National Performing Arts Centre is now among the world’s best. Internationally acclaimed artists, including those from Asean countries, not only perform but conduct workshops there for local audiences and artists, all of which is documented on videos.

A smart and young Filipina theatre graduate told me that her job application to a performing arts centre in Singapore was turned down, as its policy only allowed it to hire locals. And this reminds me of a great many Filipina housemaids and Thai construction workers in Singapore. It’s quite obvious that they already know how to deal with the world and the region – while we’re still learning in kindergarten. 

For now, I simply don’t have enough money or time to enrol in any Bahasa Indonesia classes. I’ll just wait for the long overdue post-flood rehabilitation money from the government and save that for a two-month apartment rental during the floods later this year. Or, should I just move to Jakarta during the floods to study Bahasa Indonesia?