If you so happened to be walking around SMU at 9pm on Sep 15th and was wondering why on earth were these fierce looking Gurkhas lurking around, let me offer an explanation: Make up BGS class.

Ok fine, so I happened to be one of the priveleged 20 or so people from my BGS class that got to go for this Global Dialogue classroom. Basically it was a discussion on a case drawn up by World Bank and participated by 5 universities across the globe (South Africa, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Wharton & SMU) via video conference. There were even these 2 delegates from World Bank who came to our SOA classroom to facilitate the discussion. Quite cool to be honest; and you actually have to greet everyone good morning, good afternoon & good evening at the same time.

So the discussion got underway at 9pm (to cater to Wharton of course) on this case about corruption and went on till almost 11pm. I was sitting there rather underdressed in my shorts & slippers (I figured it would be something like that Starhub commercial where the other side can’t really see your bottom half) furiously trying to type & follow the rather intellectual discussion. I gave up after an hour or so and resorted to just listening. Another 15min later and I gave up doing that as well.

During the discussion before the part where I surrendered, I was particularly impressed with the way the Wharton students just freely and openly gave it to their government by calling it corrupt and such in response to a question by World Bank. I also was impressed by the way they all just happily walked out of class when one of the World Bank guys was giving his closing speech. I guess that’s American freedom of speech for you.

Anyway for a make up class it was a good eye opening experience. I must comment that looking at the other 4 universities, we definitely have the best looking classroom. With our plush seats, conducive circular arrangement, a city view behind us and not to mention our 4 projector & plasma screens, seriously, privileged we are.