Yangon and the MFE

I can’t believe that May has already arrived. I was planning a lot of posts from Yangon, but time truly slipped away. APLPers will have the chance to read all about the content of my project, the Myanmar Futures Exchange (MFE) in the APLP Navigator newsletter, so I will focus on the more adventurous parts of the journey.

My first impression of the city was that it was extremely dark. Usually when you fly into a place at night you see the electrical grid spread out beneath you like a blanket. In Yangon there must have been a power outage because it just wasn’t there. There was a sea of darkness with a few lights here and there.

People seem to find a way to communicate outside of telephones. The first person I met was a Thai expat who was a friend of a friend. She simply came to my hotel and we talked. Indeed that was how most communication happened – messages left at hotels – calls left on friend’s cellphones – and a sporadic email when there was connectivity.

Yangon is both a large city and a small town. Compared to China and India, people are smiling, gracious, and willing to help. Almost everyone wears the longyi and one visitor told me it took a lot to get used to seeing so many men in skirts. The expat community is still small and people congregate in a couple of bars and big hotels. I started running into the same people after a couple of weeks.

I started my trip sightseeing the city for a couple of days with a friend from Singapore who was visiting. I went to the Shwe Dagon pagoda, rode the ferry to Daleh on the other side of the Yangon river, saw the giant reclining Buddha, did some shopping, and went to some nice places for drinks.

However, very quickly, work started piling up. It is the first time I’ve had to plan an event of this magnitude and lots of logistical snags started occurring. The MFE was initially supposed to be a 3 hour workshop that was part of the GIST conference happening in Yangon. It spun out into a 200 person event over two days.

Megan and I spent many sleepless nights agonizing about our attendance lists – first we had not enough, then we had too many. There were a lot of little details that needed to get ironed out and I would say that for the last 10 days I’ve thought, breathed, and dreamed about the MFE. Even when we went out to socialize, we took MFE brochures with us and got people to sign up.

The event itself was tremendous. The amount of people we were able to get together to participate in risk and scenario modeling was truly remarkable. Even more remarkable was how well the APLP team worked together. From G12 we had Taku, Nancy, Megan, Gretchen, Duan, Michelle, Yuan, Nancy, Nam, Mon Mon, Nan Seng, and myself. In addition to those folks, we had Saw, Nina, and Scott working hard to make the event a success as well as APLP alumni like Nok and Ramy.

For all of you who weren’t there, rest assured that the amazing teamwork we demonstrated in APLP, through learning labs, the December 6 event, and other projects, continues after APLP is over. Everyone worked really hard and the event came together as a unified whole.

As the saying goes however, there is no rest for the weary, Megan and I will be working hard when we get back to Hawaii to make sure that this event happens next year and that we improve upon it as much as possible. I’m really excited and invigorated from the success of it and want to make sure that we keep moving forward with it.

I’ve learned a lot about the kind of leader I am and what I need to work on. I think back to the news presentations and the learning labs and the comments I got from people. I get extremely focused when I am working on a project and need to make sure that other people feel appreciated and well utilized. I also learned that I really do thrive in high pressure situations. I like working on deadline – it makes me more efficient. I’ve grown a lot since I started APLP and this project, I feel very optimistic and positive, not just about myself but also about the amazing work that my colleagues are up to. I can’t wait to read other people’s adventures!