Visiting the Future

SEALA 2, DAY 9

(a) An assemblage of old magazines fit for the garbage.

  (b) A treasure trove of words and images, emotional stimuli and memory triggers, connecting us with our deep-rooted dreams and goals.

Andrea's session on "Future Aspirations" mines the power of pictures, words and music to bore to the heart of the participants' personal ambitions for the next decade. Naza browses magazines to find photographs that spark responses in her.

  

Lucky Mei Ching! According to information provided by our friends in the time-travelling community, Suhel's signature is going to be worth many millions of dollars in ten years' time.             

By snipping and pasting, SEALA folks create a visual montage that stimulates their thinking about their individual goals and priorities.

Is it possible to capture all the electricity and excitement of Tita in a single syllable? "YEAH!"

Wry Ian, contemplative Top. It's no mean task to ponder the multiplicity of paths into the future. But gentlemen, remember this wise piece of advice: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Noreeta has far to go, much to do. Start today!

After a deep soul-dive, a little free body movement around the room functions like a palette-cleanser between courses. It gets us ready for the next item on the agenda.

On the sidelines of all the participants' hard work, the SEALA Board held its annual meeting. Welcome to Rahul Krishnarao and Faraz Khan who flew in specially for the discussion. Other Board Members joined by speaker phone. Saad Khan was chosen to be the new chairman.

Capstone Project. On the penultimate day of the SEALA Academy, participants are challenged to synthesize and utilize all they have learned through a team project. Their mission: to travel by time machine to the year 2020, when a global media organization is profiling SEALA, and explain through a presentation what SEALA has achieved in the intervening five years to make it worthy of such international attention.

Group 2 kicks off with a special edition of the must-see, late-late show 2Knight With Zubair. With help from Arundhati in the studio and patch-ins from around the region, master presenter Zubair – the Dark Knight himself? – weaves together the narrative of SEALA's development into the region's premier support network.

Group 3 describes an initiative to help one million underprivileged children go to school by 2025. Key to the project's success is a skills development program, leveraging SEALA's best practices and tapping into the SEALA network for coaching and counselling.

Receiving feedback from the audience.

Group 5's vision of linking hearts among the SEALA nations involves exchanges of letters and drawings between schools, followed by exchanges of gifts on religious and cultural holidays, face-to-face meetings and excursions, and web sharing platforms.

Arrows of progress.

Group 4 has elaborated a plan to improve the employment prospects of millions in Asia by matching jobs and skills. Up-skilling trainings at the school and college level draw on SEALA lessons about the right mix of soft and technical skills, cross-cultural training, and social and community awareness.

Group 1 explains how Bina's art and design business ARTEL, under SEALA's influence, has grown by 2020 into an incubator for leaders across the region, with the guiding purpose of transformative empowerment through art. The Duchess of Cambridge is ARTEL's brand ambassador, and – woo hoo! – it was endorsed by Oprah in 2017!

Following a dinner under the stars at the marina...

 ... we are treated to a beautiful night cruise on Putrajaya Lake.

The SEALA 1 contingent relives old times, including some welcome visitors for the reunion: Anthony Tan (with wife Ezati), Thushan Majid, Rabian Abdul Rahman, and Rahul Krishnarao (with wife Sabah and daughter Faiza) are in the house! – er, rather, are on the boat!

Memories of a moonlight idyll: