Finally seeing results with the symposium :)

The International Symposium, Yogyakarta 12 Sept 2007: Revisiting the Developing Spriritualism of Youth in Indonesiaand Australia: Towards Greater Cooperation. Big title, not such a big event... We all had to be there at 7am for a 9am start... oh it was a pain! We all sat round for ages, it was quite unorganised, but it was ok. Got all dressedup in our traditional skirts and waited... not many people showed up so we waited some more and postponed the starttil 10am. I think in the end, they sold about 40 tickets, which is a shame cos the auditorium couldve seated almost300... they did a prayer for the success of the day and i wished so had for success for them, for the student councilwho put so much in and had such high hopes for the day. The first speaker, a lecturer from Deakin or somewhere whod wwritten a paper on why australian youth werent involved in religious groups or something, and whod inspired thewhole day, started off the morning. It made me so mad! He went on about religion and basically just paintedAustralia as this god-less awful uncaring country! It was just crap, he made us sound awful, which of course were not. It might ahve been alright cos i think people know australia isnt that bad, but to present that to an audiencewho believe so strongly in religion adn the part it has to play in life, was just awful. The next speaker was a guytalking about muslim stuff, and what followed was a debate and question time about their speaches and differingpoints of view. It just annoyed me, what was supposed to be a symposium or conference on SPIRITUALISM outside of religion, turned completely into a discussion on religion and how australians have none, which pretty much meanswe have no beliefs or morals. Very frustrating, cos in the lead up to this, we discussed for hours and hours on endhow spiritualism didnt mean religion, and then we go in and it really is all about that. It was intersting sometimestho, i ended up leaving early to go to yoga. Much more productive. Tho i did get a nice sketch of the dancers costumes, and got my grammar homework done. Oh and the choir was great too. They sung Home Among the Gumtrees, andwatzing matilda in these beautiful harmonies, it was beautiful! lol.