LEAD ASEAN Youth Summit DAY 1 - part 1(Learning the meaning of Borderless Barkada) 3/12/13

I woke up with mixed feelings. Nervous, anxious, excited, happy, ecstatic. The whole package. But I loosen up with breakfast. It's a nice feeling in your guts to see people smiling and giving you friendly greets. You gain friends over breakfast. haha! oh, I was also finally united with my  former SEAYLP partner, Pong, over breakfast. haha Breakfast has never been so fun :-)

We officially start our day at 8 am with an after breakfast ice breaking session, with all the 150 delegates on this program. Our seatings were mixed, twice. 

our hosts

Before all the talks and story telling begins, we were taught a few dance moves... so we kinda have opening dances for anything at all. I find it amusing, this is how they get us excited. Even the US ambassador for ASEAN joined in on dancing.  

and uh... I'm sorry guys I couldn't bring myself to dance, but I love both the dance and the song though :p

US ambassador of ASEAN telling us some of his experience. It was inspiring.

A few of my favourite quotes from him: 

"The world is small, we are in this together" ~Carden 

"Some one asked me, 'why are you so optimistic?'. I told him, 'because ideas win'" ~ Carden

The speech is then followed by a talk from the founder of Ayala.

One of my favourites from him is "There is no right or wrong in leadership"

Obama also sent a video message to us, which was nice... and I totally did not fangirl over it :P

Concentrating on the speakers

The day went on with talks from the Ramon Magsaysay awardees. (Ramon Magsaysay award is the equivalent of the Noble Peace Prize, but the Asian version)

mr Antonio Oposa

(Photo credit to Anthony on FB)

in relation to the above quote, I think it's very fitting to include this excerpt :)

click image to enlarge, full article please click here 

Asyraf and I united with Pong! SEAYLP 12 :-)

After the aspiring talks from the speakers, we were introduced with a theme for "photo of the day" so we could all connect. so the theme was #BorderlessBarkada , in other words, borderless friendship.

and speak of borderless barkada, here's the largest borderless barkada groupfie (group selfie) ever! 

"Borderless Barkada" ♥