Preparations: it's getting close!

From 25 September to 16 October 2016 (not quite sure about the end date, actually), the University of Twente Computer Science study association Inter-Active is organising one of their biyearly study tours to far, far away! And this time I'm priviledged to join them, rather than jealously hearing all the great stories afterwards from one of my colleagues.

MISC: it stands for Maleysia, Indonesia, Signapore (no idea what the C is, I'm sure someone will tell me sometime), which are indeed the combined destinations - though not precisely in that order, or more to the point, not at all in that order: it will be Signapore, Maleysia, Indonesia instead. I guess that SMI did not spark any brainwaves, even with auxiliary letters thrown in. No matter, we can all agree that the locations themselves are exotic enough to get any student's heart beating faster, even the nerdy hearts of our dear CS students. And yes, the theme "Intelligent Cities" fits well: I can hardly wait to see how Signapore (the city), Kuala Lumpur, Bandung and Jakarte live up to that denominator.

Organising committee

The study tour is organised exclusively by students: they've put together the programme, contacted the hosts that are receiving us over there; they're paying for it themselves. So why would they even want me, one of their professors, to join? Why ask for supervision when you're actually doing it all by yourself, and doing just fine? Two reasons I can think of: (1) they are earning credits for participating, so it does make sense to have someone there in a position to confirm that this is well-earned; and (2) no matter how well-organised and independent the students are, there will surely be expectations from our hosts involving senior representation. We're talking Asia after all: culturally they are bound to put more weight on seniority. Thus, the plan is that we, the teachers (there will be two of us at any given point) formally (re)present the university, whereas they, the students (about 35 of them) do the real work. Not bad, eh?

Signapore, here we come!

Departure is under two weeks from now. Before that, there will be some preparatory meetings. Tomorrow (Wednesday 14 September) there are final presentations of the research projects that the student participants did in preparation to the tour. Next Friday (16 September), the official program will be officially presented. That same Friday afternoon, there will be an early Bachelor graduation ceremony for those study tour participants that happened to finish their BSc (the "real" ceremony is a few weeks later, during MISC time). The Friday after that (23 September), there will be farewell drinks. Lots of small events to look forward to before we undertake the gruelling flight, going to a place unimaginably far away where we'll arrive with brains totally scrambled by jet lag.