This year, the 23rd Leaders Convention will be held at the Grand Park City Hall in Singapore. School Leaders from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao will converge at Singapore for another momentous occasion. Majority of the School Leaders took the Cebu Pacific flight early Wednesday morning braving the threat of the typhoon Basyang and flew to Singapore. I was on that flight too, probably the first international flight of the day as most of the airline companies cancelled their flights earlier in the day.
We arrive at the Changi Airport minutes past eleven. We had to go through the standard immigration process before we were allowed to “enter” Singapore. The picture I took and have posted below needs to pass the rigid security review and prohibitions of the airport officials. I was the last person on the line, after my passport has been checked and validated by the Singapore Immigration, I proceeded to the baggage rotating conveyor to get my untagged baggage and catch up with the “yellow team” to wait for our bus that would take us to Hotel Peninsula Exelsior, our official residence in Singapore.
The Indian Tour guide set the tone of our arrival on a lighter note as he gave an introduction of Singapore and our itinerary for the day. His comic rendition of tips on how to save and spend money in Singapore made everyone smile if not laugh as we travel the busy highway of Singapore. In his words, the Indian guy said Singapore is a fine city simply because we will get fined if we break any of their rules. He added that in Singapore, if you break the rules they don’t just throw the books, but they throw the entire library at the offender. True enough, Singapore is a country of disciplined people; in here they follow the rules even if no one is watching. I have to write about it in my next blog.
It’s noontime when we got to the hotel, the next thing we did was to look for a place to quench our hunger. Good thing there’s an affordable food court right at the side of the hotel. One can get a very nice meal for $2.50, not bad compared to a Mc Donald’s Value Meal of $7.00++. I took the “chicken rice” for lunch. According to the Indian guy, this is one of Singapore’s “to-die-for” menus and I found out that it indeed is.
After lunch we proceeded to the Grand Park City Hall for the Convention proper. The speaker for this year’s convention was Atty. Ulpiano Sarmiento, an icon in the crafting and interpretation of school policies. His topic zeroed in on the Manual of Regulation for Private Higher Education (MORPHE) which is the backbone of today’s Higher Education Institution policies. Atty. Sarmiento is really one of the few speakers who know how to catch the attention of his audience. His timely injections of humor to his presentation kept the audience at the edge of their seats. Coming from a very lengthy travel, I wondered how I lasted listening to him talk for about 2 hours and a half and never felt the normal sleepiness behavior of an audience to an extensive talk.
After Atty. Sarmiento, consultations on various plans for the organization were discussed on the plenary. A report on the Academic thrust was likewise presented followed by the discussion of our collective key result areas as an organization whose goal is have a sustainable growth while providing quality education to our students. The discussions on various issued lasted until dinner time.
After dinner, the Annual Awarding Ceremonies followed.
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