Thursday, May 29, 2008

UN Day of Vesak 3

The UN Day of Vesak celebrations held in Vietnam this year provided me some interesting observations....

First and foremost is that no decisions are considered final unless approved by the government. Whatever the organising committee discussed, debated and decided upon will still need the final green light from the powers-that-be.

It seems the Vietnamese had one thing in common with our country's spirit of "Malaysia Boleh" in breaking records, they practically tried to break as many records as possible. They even had a huge "Little Buddha" balloon floating on the convention center ground. Did I missed their version of the "Vietnamese Books of Record"?

There is no problem in getting youth volunteers from the universities for the celebration but don't expect the volunteers to know much about Buddhism. Even getting local participants to fill up the 4,000 seats in the convention throughout the 3-days conference is easily done. I salute them.


Never can I imagine an ordinary chap will be given VVIP treatmet by a socialist country? A Buddhist worker from Malaysia, Goh Seng Chai (pic), was provided a chauffeur driven car with traffic police escort during the week-long event!
Does this guy sounds like or looks like a Malaysian minister? Maybe to the Vietnamese, he sounds like and looks like a minister!


Group photograph means you go to a same spot like everyone else and then take your own picture with your own camera. There is no such thing as a group photo taken by a officially appointed photographer.

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