Cold & Expansive......

It’s cold. Legoland is definitely cold. It even snowed as we walked out of the airport’s door. Excited to see the snow, acted like ‘orang sakai’. Well, it’s been years since I had my last encounter with snow. The cold breeze made me regretted not taking my ‘Made in Brunei Darussalam’ baju sajuk. Ah! Baju sajuk. What a contradictory term. Isn’t it suppose to be baju panas? To keep you warm?

Not surprising. We are living in a world full of contradictions. Take this Climate Change Conference we are in now. Almost everyone, every countries represented, agreed the earth is warming, heating up to a disastrous future. Warming due to human’s actions. Yet, a big number especially the major countries, the ones with their agendas and interests, is acting as if it is not so. Some people, especially from the world’s civil society who represents the public, the ordinary people, say we are playing politics with our future, our survival, our existence.

Here we are. Thousands and thousands representing the humanity. Sitting down, discussing, negotiating, trying to save the world from the predicted disastrous future courtesy of our own actions, the global warming. The civil societies from all over the world doing their bits. Lobbying to save the world in their own ways. Singing, demonstrating, dramatising. Some are so moving you can’t help having tears in your eyes. Even more so in seeing their honest convictions.

Pressure is building up here. Time is running out to come up with a meaningful outcome. An outcome that is “Fair, Ambitious, Binding and Comprehensive” that is demanded by ordinary people. As set out eloquently by a few speakers at the opening ceremony last night, “We can negotiate about the climate, but we cannot negotiate with the climate. We cannot ask the climate for more time...” Despite a lot of the pundits are not hopeful of a successful outcome, let’s hope by the end of the week a miracle will happen. After all we must have hope. Without hope, there is no point in being here.

P.S.
It is so cold. We will do anything to keep warm even having silly hats on! It’s also so expansive here. A packet of mentos which cost not even a dollar back home, caused three times more expansive!