Got up at 5am this morning with my brother to go to the airport to pick up another delegate. Lucky for all of us he showed! I dropped my brother off home again after leaving the airport and then drove to Clayton and dropped off the delegate at the place he is staying. He is an academic from New Delhi, India and also super friendly. He enlightened me about the political and socio-economic situation in India and we discussed Bollywood. Did you know it is harder for a child to get into primary school than it is to get into university? This is because of their huge population and lack of schools. There is currently no system implemented to control population growth in India at the moment. As you know, India reached 1 billion people about two years ago.

It was 8am by the time I dropped him off and the conference didn't start til 9 so I had a chai latte and a cookie in the campus centre to kill some time. The conference started with a welcoming speech. I had my own name tag (name actually printed on hard plastic) along with 2 other of my fellow students and a horde of academics from around the world. A representative from the United Nations did a really good opening speech addressing the importance of natural disaster mitigation and its implication on society and the economy.

So it went from 9-5 - delegates taking turns to present their research papers. We had coffee breaks and lunch in between though so it was good. I took so many notes. A lot of what was presented is so relevant to my project next year and I now know so much more about the socio-economic effects of natural disasters. This was something that I have never really known much about... all I knew was that natural disasters happen and destroy a lot of things. But everything runs a lot deeper.

The poverty in Bangladesh is mostly contributed to the fact that it is so highly populated in an area that is very disaster prone. No one is willing to invest there or create businesses. This leads to high unemployment and poor infrastructure. Poverty and poor infrastructure are the key reasons to why there is so much damage due to a natural disaster. And so this is where my project along with my two other fellow students' projects come in. Our research into infrastructure for natural disaster mitigation will create a safer environment for places like Bangladesh and therefore decreasing or eliminating these problems. So it extends farther than just saving lifes. It helps to eliminate poverty.

The afternoon was spent discussing the dynamics of Tsunami waves. That was rather useful too because I had no idea how they looked or behaved as a physical model. I'm going to have to play around with some maths anyway so it gave me a basic idea of how you can model a wave in its many forms.

Two more days of this conference. I'm so glad I'm attending!

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