UBD Dresscodes

I was reading Maurina's blog at wordpress about the posters on dress codes at UBD. That reminded me of my short UBD days. I was at UBD last year being one of the senior government officials forced to undertake a four month executive development program at UBD. The program is organised by the Public Service Department and carried out by FBEPS. Normally about 15 senior government officials (those hoping to be appointed as Heads of Government Departments) attend the annual EDP course. Failure to attend or complete the course will mean failure to be appointed to a Superscale (minimum $6,800 salary) position.

During that four month period at UBD, I must admit I enjoyed it tremendously. The course itself was humdrum and run of the mill kind of thing. I was better qualified (a Chartered Fellowship, 2 master degrees from an Ivy League) and have more experience than some of the lecturers, so I was not that terribly impressed by some of them. More than 2/3 of us have post graduate qualifications and some of us have more than 20 years working experience. Some of the younger lecturers looked terrified too by the look of apprehension on their faces. I guess you would be too if you are surrounded by 11 acting heads of large government departments or soon to be heads of departments, 4 army colonels, 1 police superintendent and the soon to be deputy head of the internal security. At that point I was taking time off from running a $1 billion retirement fund agency.

What I enjoyed most was not the courses but the going back to student life. The essay writings, the assignments, the readings were hectic but was not overly taxing. I completed all my assignments early as they were not particularly tough and spent practically all my time designing my website which is up and running now as the world famous (a bit of self promotion there) www.bruneiresources.com. The website started as a portal for the course lecturers' powerpoints. So instead of everyone asking for a copy of the powerpoint at the end of every lecture, I thought I will do a service by providing a portal so that everyone can download it. I even put up all the groups' projects and papers there. It still is available if anybody wants to get hold of them.

What gets me is the reaction of the students to our presence. UBD students obviously know who we were. They also know our schedule which is normally 8 to 10 am classes, 10 to 11 break and the rest of the day classes. During the 10 to 11 am break, we have a room at the ground floor in FBEPS. Next to the room is an empty foyer facing the chancellor's hall. That foyer can sometimes be full of students and some lady students deliberately took advantage of the fact that these senior people are around having their cigarettes etc. I don't really know what they do as about half of us (the more model students) stay inside our break room whereas the other half, the more sociable ones go out and chat with some of the students. There was one time when one of the students in full compliance of the dresscode was able to be positioned in such a way and showed off more than she should (whether intentionally or otherwise) and that caused a bit of an uproar in the breakroom. There is a way to go round the dresscodes. Maybe I should leave it there for the time being.
(to be continued?)