Global Brains for the Poor

Only last week I was watching a UK talk show with Andrew Lloyd Weber and some stars from the new Superstar show.They performed the song with the lines 
"Surely you're not saying we have the resources to save the poor from their lot". 
I was a bit sceptical about the theme for Saturday which was "Global brains for the poor" The idea was that 100 Mensa members from about 20 different countries would try to create a road map to help the poor lift themselves out of poverty. It was a lot better than I expected.

The first speaker was the government special envoy for the alleviation of poverty who set the scene. About 17% of Indonesians are in extreme poverty. However if you raise the bar and include those who live on less than $2 a day the number goes to nearly 49%.  20 million can't meet daily needs and 70% of these are in rural areas.

the next speaker talked about health problems,  biological effects of malnutrition and disease.

the third speaker was an educator who developed a method for training children for the physics and maths Olympics with great success. He also took poor students from Papua and trained them and proved that any child could perform well given opportunity, good teachers, methods and enough time.

The last speaker was from Singapore and talked on the brain drain issue.

It turned out to be a very interesting morning.

After lunch we broke into 3 work groups and discussed the 3 issues and the results will be summarised and published. There was a press conference at the end and some doves were  released to symbolise peace.
During lunch, I managed to organise a group of us who are staying on. Trying to fit in the one who had to share because of cost with one who would only share with someone he knew, 4 girls, 2 guys and a couple was the proverbial herding cats exercise. In the end we found a 3 bedroom villa for the 6 singles and the couple on their own. all these villas have their own private pool so it should be a great holiday.
In the evening, we had buses organised to take us to the Bali collection,  a tourist area with lots of restaurants and shops. Unfortunately the second bus left straight after the first despite `the fact that it was only 1/4 full and there were 20 of us still waiting. eventually we got there 45 minutes later than planned and ate in a seafood restaurant. I shared the most expensive Seafood platter for 2 which was a bit disappointing. it averaged out at about $25 each or a tad over 3 million for12 of us. w
We thought we had enough to cover this with a decent tip, till they rejected a 100,000 note as being out of date. We made up the amount but the tip disappeared.

back at the hotel, quite a few of us headed for the roof pool for some drinks, swimming and general partying. the Koreans got into a drinking game . i left about 1-30.