AMPAC 2007
This weekend we had Picnic Day up at Davis. It is the yearly open-house of the university and is generally a marathon day of revelry for most of the students. Previous to this year I've attended it every year for the past six years.
However, this weekend also happened to be the weekend of the American-Pacific (AMPAC) Model United Nations conference, of which I was the Secretary-General. As such I unfortunately missed this year's picnic day.
Anyway, as Secretary-General, I was, along with the Governor-General Sameer Kanal, in charge of running the conference, so it was a different experience than my usual chairing of committees. I definitely preferred chairing committees, and for next year's AMPAC, provided it is not the same day as Picnic Day, I will be back to chairing a committee.
I had been in charge of putting together this year's staff, so, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, many of my favourite MUN personalities were with us this weekend. Swati "Swat Team" Srivistava and Matt "Papa Smurf" Wilkerson made me proud running Security Council, and I was very glad I took Matt's recommendation on Afshin "Afro-sheen" Haghgoo.
On the subject of nicknames, we had two female Alex's that needed to be differentiated. Eventually, as they were from Ukraine and Guatamala, respectively, someone decided they should be referred to as "Ukraine-alex" and "Guatamala-alex." This of course quickly becomes Ukrainelex and Guatalex. Guatalex (pronounced Guata-lex) stuck well, but Ukrainelex sounded like a pharmaceutical company. Anyway, Ukrainelex mutated to Ukrinelex and then Ukrinex, and finally settled on Equinox.
How Sameer flustered Guatalex's Boyfriend
One of the most memorable moments from the conference was a certain prank Gov-Gen Sameer and I played on Guatalex. As usual, when it came down to administer conference evaluations to her committee, Sameer and I took over the dias and Guatalex and her vice chair Julie were sent from the room. It so happened that Alex had had a computer she was keeping track of things on, and had an internet connection, and, it turns out, was signed in to a chat program.
Shortly after we took over we got a messege from her boyfriend. Sameer and I looked at eachother and quickly knew what we absolutely had to do -- we had a moral obligation to pretend to be her and carry on a conversation with her boyfriend!!! And he certainly wasted no time bringing us hilarious results. The entire conversation went more or less like this:
Him: Hey
Alex(us): hey honey
Him: I'm so horny (!!)
Alex(us): Me too, being in committee all day makes me so flustered!
Him: When I visit you this evening do you think we can get one of the hotel rooms to ourselves for a little bit?
Alex(us): I'll see what I can do ;)
As you can see, the lulz certainly were forthcoming! Anyway, we left the conversation on the screen when Guatalex resumed control of the committee, in order to alarm her properly. Apparently as soon as she noticed she very abruptly excused herself and hunted down Sameer and punched him several times in the arm. (= Anyway, her boyfriend showed up that evening and I teased her mercilessly. She claims she didn't despoil any of our rooms.
Other than that, another highlight of the conference for me was guest-speaking. When a committee wants to get the perspective of a country or entity that is not represented in the committee, we either get someone representing said county from another committee to guest speak, or have a staff member to represent said entity.
Both the Security Council, and our Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)committee had the subject of Somalia, and I have been following events there myself, so I guest spoke in both committees on the subject. In the Security Council I spoke as a representative of Ethiopia, regarding our continued support of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and military action against the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). About an hour later I spoke to the OIC as a representative of the ICU, regarding our resistance to the Ethiopian invaders and the puppet TFG government. It was quite fun and I got a very extensive amount of positive feedback from the committee about how much they appreciated my doing that.
Crisis!
Friday night we had a middle-of-the-night Security Council crisis. For this our staff had to batten down and start preparing at 11pm, by 1:30am we were marauding the halls pounding on delegates doors, and shortly thereafter we got it going. A few delegates snuck off but most were there until it ended with a return to the status quo at around 5am I believe.
As to the crisis itself, basically Israeli special forces conducted an operation in Iran and discovered evidence of an advanced nuclear weapons programme. However some of the force was discovered. So from the delegates perspective it started with Iran parading captured Mossad agents and protesting the incident, however this was quickly followed by news of Israeli airstrikes against the discovered weapons sites. There was then military build-ups on both sides and I believe nothing but negotiations for the next several hours. I don't know, I left at 3am.
I know night SC crises are common, but I personally completely fail to see what is so exciting about being awake all night and doing committee while everyone else is either having fun or catching up on sleep. Maybe I'm just a scrooge. Anyway it left me running the conference the next morning with half my staff (and the Governor-General) still asleep until noon.
Picture of the Day
I just think this is an awesome picture. Thats the OIC Director and Chair in the background, with Somalia (TFG) front left