What a year! Looking ahead to 2017

What a year of 2016 that was! Looking forward to 2017!

The trip to Vietnam in December 2015 got my life started moving ahead for my ambitions, career and passion. I played at Australian Deaf Games for first time in Adelaide representing for Queensland team. I earned three medals playing ten pin bowling and futsal. I wasn't expecting that I was a competitive sports player whilst being academically intelligent and career motivated person. I played ten pin bowling leagues for whole life, but my recent games in Adelaide was first time played for more than a year.

I was into last semester of my Master's degree at University of Queensland, I was completing a thesis paper on 'How does different vegetation, material and building type impacts on the surface temperatures? Case study of University of Queensland's St Lucia campus'. This paper worth a lot of efforts taking lot of empirical data around the campus allocating records for 4 months including the data from the UQ's automatic weather station. This thesis also turned my life around, academically because I achieved very high score for my maximum efforts and detailed information for the analyses on surface temperatures. This helped me to understand gathering data is important to analyse for the future issues, like 'how we reduce mirco-climate impacts on urbanisation?'.

This thesis wasn't all that happened during the final semester of my postgraduate degree. I was accepted to take another international research field trip to Hong Kong, Macau and China. It was held during the Easter long weekend and the mid-semester break. This trip has brought me to another level of analytical and problem solving experiences. This trip is all about community development and planning, public transport, place making designs and cities. It was my first time being in Chinese countries. I was shocked by the scale of development and pollution. I never thought it would be sustainable.

I finally graduated with final GPA of 6.0 in July at St Lucia's UQ Centre. Then I was given a Dean Commendation Award for Academic Excellence. This is first kind of award I achieved at high academic level in my life. I am glad I had plenty of support during my Master's degree.

In May I traveled to Melbourne for first time to attend and present at the ASPECT's Autism in Education conference. I presented about my life experiences with Autism and hearing loss with achievements and directions for positive initiatives that should improve awareness for the unprivileged community members. This conference hasn't gave me any benefits, but the networking has expanded where I have been featured in few independent news and blog websites on my life experiences and successes. I was featured with UQ's media and communications news, ICAN Network and other two Brisbane's based independent blog websites. This step has pushed me further to increase support on disability rights since my challenges and pressure in Australian society which lacks empathy for people with disabilities and mental health.

I joined two disability member based organisations, People With Disabilities Australia and Queensland Disability Network. I am currently active with QDN because of local significance and support. I am heavily engaged in many activities, workshops and campaign taskforces along with other members with disabilities. This network has expanded my knowledge, experience and opportunities for my career ambitions.

I have spent a lot of my spare time finding and applying jobs, which that have been for number of years. I finally scored a job working with Gardening A Difference in November. This small business enterprise is something to start my career on disability awareness especially for people with Autism and mental health illness. I am currently working one day a week with them making projects, build awareness initiatives and cleaning gardens.

Before the month of Christmas I got a surprise email from the Australian Greens office about my application to attend to the Global Greens Congress to Liverpool UK. They said I am fully funded delegate! This adventure is taking me to the next step of international political experience. This opportunity will expand my networks politically and internationally in areas of disability, youth and sustainable development.

Before the end of the year I finally found a secure and wonderful apartment to live in! And potentially scored a second job, contract with Brisbane City Council. The year of 2017 is starting up hot and awesome.

What's ahead in 2017?

• Raising awareness for the Great Barrier Reef
• Global Greens Congress in Liverpool UK
• World Federation for the Deaf Congress in Hungary; trip to meet deaf communities across Europe
• Two conference presentations on disability awareness and sustainable community development in Australia
• and many more! I couldn't remember nor list all of the things because there are too many things going on for me. Positive vibes.

Happy new year and hope 2017 will bring peace and sustainability with the world.

Autism: Intelligence vs social life

A good day or good week for an Autistic person means feeling normal to be part of the society. Anxiety and depression comes from bad days and bad weeks due to lack of connection, sympathetic communication from other people and strings of bad luck.

Anxiety and depression with Autistic people are not part of mental health disorder, but many cases they can become prevalent if prevention does not occur. In my own experience anxiety and depression comes from social exclusion, 'missing out', chain reaction of rejections and bigotry attitudes from mainstream sources (society influences). Being Autistic does not mean I am unable to do things such as playing sports, look after your grandmother, going to work, study at university and drive a car. Autism have strong intelligence, among those high functioning spectrum.

Social exclusion comes across from stigma and stereotype from the mainstream society where people make a lot of assumptions, negative excuses to social inclusion and pragmatic stereotypes unintentionally. Many Aspie guys are usually seen negatively chaotic, creepy and pervert. I have been told many times when going through high school and college.

A socially smart Autistic person will easily learn by socially responsible, caring, loving, respected and inclusive friends. Intelligence comes from independently, for instance I grew up reading maps, meteorological books, learning geography and sciences and photography. This is because my brain found time to learn and implement these interests and hobbies. It makes me happy, but also makes me happier to share these experiences with other people including friends.

An intelligent aspie like myself is something what the society needs. There are over 1 million intelligent aspie people around the world. They are easily missed out by 'mainstream social inclusion' influences because of different communication and social skills which are adapted in other way which that does not suit these aspie people. This becomes pressuring for these socially missed out aspies; this where anxiety and depression becomes impacts.

How you deal between a socially smart person and an intelligent person? Its so easy to teach social skills to an intelligent person rather than teaching intelligence to a socially smart person!