Cozmopolitan Sunkyoung

두 친구는 눈밭을 가로질러 집으로 돌아가는 길이었습니다.
피글렛은 푸 같은 좋은 친구가 있어 너무나 다행이라 생각하며 살며시 미소를 지었습니다.

푸는 속으로 생각했습니다.
‘이 돼지 녀석, 재채기 하기만 해봐라, 아주 뒈졌어.’

This is the picture file I got from my friend, Gillian in London, soon after the outbreak of swine flu occured. This world-wide contagious disease has influenced a lot of aspects on our current life, no matter how serious they were, and, to me, anything related to pandemic influenza is now an indispensable element, at least for my work.

My official job title is ‘Project Executive for the ASEF Network for Public Health.’ This network aims at establishing a stable and constructive working collaboration between various regional, international organisations in Asia and Europe with particular regard to preparedness planning for and rapid containment of pandemic influenza. Initially, the project mostly mentioned avian influenza as a representative example of pandemic influenza but it was only five days later since I started working when the swine flu hit the world.

Currently, project manager and I are on the status of consultation process, meeting as many relevant people and organisations as possible in order to seek for useful ideas and insights for designing the network. For this reason, we’ve been confirmed to travel to Jakarta on the last week of May and another trip to Bangkok the following week is being planned. Unfortunately, we don’t see any possible meetings or events in Europe this year but hopefully next year.

As many of you know well, what I do now is exactly what I have always wanted to do: building up or enhancing collaboration between different cultures/organisations; working in an international setting; having chances to meet people from various backgrounds. Work is not everything but something very important on how you feel about your life. And I now feel pretty good about this new chapter of my life.