Asian Psychological Association Convention

It was a very good experience. The APsyA ... 2nd Asian convention only. All psychologists, lecturers or those who were interested from around the world gathered in KL for this convention. There were people from Malaysia of course, Singapore, HK, Australia, Iran, USA Philipines, Taiwan and possibly more. All gathered for the love of psychology and research.

It was exactly like the research colloquims that we conduct back at HELP. Exactly. People will conduct research, then present it based on the intro, method, results  and findings. Then there was the Q & A sessions. And throughout the whole convention, there were perhaps more than 80 presentations that you could choose to attend. There were key note addresses and also those break out plenary topics.... sounds so familiar. 

Oh! Thank you HELP for giving us those guidance. I actually know about the whole Psychology arena and this further enforced it!

Well some of the topics were really challenging. It makes you think. Not that you are not aware of it, but sometimes, you just have to see it in a different perspective. In a way that makes you wanna do research and prove your thought. It was an inspiration. I wanna do a research paper!

grrr ... but at times, I felt a little disgusted at this conference. Come on ... its an Asian convention after all ... could the organizers have done better? People are flying halfway across the globe and paying USD 350 for this .. and you are down grading the venue from Hilton to a scrummy faculty in University Malaya? Toilets were .....urgh ..... normal government school toilets. Food was ... worse than a factory canteen food. Drinking water had to be taken from the water cooler. Turn out was pretty low too... they could at least promote it to local students? Can you imagine presenting your research to only 20 people?  And the emcees ... couldn't even speak proper English. They didn't even know who the presenters were and didn't know how to control timing.

Can you imagine? Each presenter was by right given 20  minutes to present his research. But because the others before exceeded the time, and it was time for 'lunch', this poor chap from USA only had 5 minutes, without Q & A to have the stage? Imagine the investment of flying over and the amount of time spent doing research? And this is the returns?

University Malaya, please buck up. Malaysia, please buck up. Please don't accept hostings like this if you can't handle it. It  only makes you embarassed. If I were to pay for this my self, I would have vomitted blood, or even toxins. Fortunately I was sponsored. ... but the good thing is, I left with more motivation for research and a love for psychology. And that is what counts. Passion!