Farncis Dae-hoon Lee promised me in the beginning of the spring to take me to mountain hiking. After eight months of stay in Seoul he had time on 2 November. It was late autumn, a bit chilly, but sunny. The blue sky had hardly any layer of white cloud. A perfect day for outing. MAINS student from Sri Lanka, Nilani, also joined.

In my last episode, I mentioned about how I got involved with the international conference of 4-5 October on Mainstreaming Human Security: The Asian Contribution, organized at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. Prof. Chantana Banpasirichote was literally the convener and the MAIDS (MA in International Development Studies), where she is the Director, was one of the co-organizers. I had hardly a couple of hours to write an abstract for a paper and a couple of days to prepare a six-page draft. After receiving comments from Chantana, I prepared a second draft. The latest ARENA book on Human Security edited by Prof. Anuradha Chenoy was a useful reference and I mailed the 'final' paper within a couple of days to meet the deadline for incorporation in the CD which she was planning for the conference participants.

Extended stay

When I landed in Seoul in early March of this year, I had a contract for six months that would end in August. There were requests from the ARENA Executive Board, as well as from SKHU, to continue till the end of the course in February 2008. There were also similar requests from the students. They have become so familiar with my style, language, behavior and attitude that they ware a bit scared of any “new experiment”. The obvious conclusion from SKHU was an extension of my contract for another six months. I knew it from SKHU verbally before I left for Bangladesh for the summer vacation. My vacation was ‘spoiled’ in one sense. I had to work a lot to prepare curriculum for the autumn, as I could not anticipate such developments in March.