When this pandemic hits, we can see most of people affected economically and emotionally. On the first phase, we can see many people were economically impacted and it getting worse as the pandemic “lockdown” were extended.

And after (almost) two years long of lockdown, personally I can say that I am affected emotionally the most. As an extrovert, communicating through screen is not really our preference as we tend to be misinterpreted via text-based communication due to our straight-forwardness. I can be quite blunt sometimes. Hence I tend to overexplaining myself without people asking. I am becoming weirder than before (i am already weird).

This new job, expectations and KPIs to hit put me on overwhelming stage on daily basis. I find myself hard to focus since I have a lot in mind, so many box to tick, so many pending task to complete, so many talk to attend, so many things to follow up. Ah. Basically the word is – overwhelming. I reckon if we are not in pandemic, this transition will be better as we meet people face to face. I dont know. At this phase, I just hope that everything can back to normal, classes held at university – not through screens, the kids can have a social interaction at kindy, and mommy can have balance of missing the kids during working hours. We need that time out to stay sane!

So I attend this education webinar. The title of the webinar is : Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on Malaysia as an International Education Hub, organized by UTMSPACE. My expectation was – that it will be a regular educational talk. But hey, it is interesting! I learnt a lot today, one of it is about one organization called EMGS (Education Malaysia Global Service) (https://visa.educationmalaysia.gov.my/) which an authorized body in handling the transition process of foreigner who interested to pursue in higher education in Malaysia. During this pandemic, they reported that the number of enrollment is quite declining, but as the vaccine rate is increased, the enrollment trend is proportionately increasing. They also shared their many effort in promoting education in Malaysia through socmed, which apparently work even though the restriction on movement. I feel so relatable with the socmed effort since I am currently incharge of the socmed for the geomarketing taskforce – one of our dept initiative in encouraging undergraduate and postgraduate enrollment. If you are interested in enrolling to our programme, please like our facebook page at Geoinformatics UTM and Geoinformation UTM.

So, this is basically how the academia roll in pandemic. Teaching, research, taskforce, CPD points, KAIs and some other things in between.

Breattthhhhh.