After a thrilling 9-week internship in London last summer, I took my last day in the office off as leave and caught an early flight. I still had the peak of my summer to look forward to.
In fact, my upcoming journey was one of many flights and the first was a spontaneous one to Qatar, which was not in my original LEAP itinerary. And whilst I only spent 3 days there, I still managed to take away a lot more than I imagined. This included visiting the Souq Waqif, an old Bedouin trading bazar which has been architecturally restored by the State to remarkable detail. I also fit in the Qatar National Bank, an emblematic glass cube and most interestingly, the Museum of Islamic Art. It was here I soaked in exquisite exhibitions which spanned as broadly as currency at the establishment of Islam to mercantile prosperity in the Age of Andalus. I now better understood the important context in which to my dissertation on Islamic finance sat upon.
My experience in Kuala Lumpur was almost as humid, but equally rewarding. The locals were both curious about tourists and happily revealing about their own country. It was interesting to hear a taxi driver complain at the scale of the deforestation for an expansion of the airport, about 15 minutes away from the Sepang Formula 1 track, whilst I was on my way to work with the Malaysian government on Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). It was equally confusing to attempt to compare the city with London, where everything seemed for some reason, much, much smaller – the Petronas Towers, for example, is taller than the Shard – and there are two of them. In two instances, once in Doha and once in Kuala Lumpur, I managed to walk to my destination save for a crossroad – they’re both definitely not pedestrianised cities and so I had to call an Uber for the last 100m, costing about £1 each. I appreciated the climate, skyline and natural beauty of both the country and the people every day with every spare moment, though I was kept busy with my internship.
I was very fortunate to have worked for a GreenTech fund within a Venture Capital fund, one of the few funds compliant with Islamic finance standards even within a majority-Muslim country. My SAF project was completely foreign to me, but still hugely appealing. Not only was I fascinated by the crossover in the sustainability and aviation industries, as well as real world impact where I could see this technology have a substantive impact on aviation emissions, but I was encouraged to study the chemistry behind it. I also had the opportunity to sit in my first live Investment Committee meeting – this is the holy grail for finance geeks as we get to see how and why an investment is approved or rejected. In this case, there were 2/3 approvals.
Before I left for Indonesia, I and a friend toured the tourist sites including many mosques, which have a distinct architecture. The numerous courtyards and outdoor fountains were features also traceable to as far back as the Umayyad Dynasty, over 1300 years ago. The food was incredible, and you could tell as soon as you tried the Nasi Lemak for the first time – the national dish. They’re quite lucky to be able to have authentic Chinese, Korean, Malay and South Asian food all one place, a supreme example of a multicultural success story. The language though was difficult to pick up and within a week, I could only manage to cobble together broken English sentences peppered with a Malay place or phrase.
By now, I was off to the island of Lombok, Indonesia where I continued to work virtually. However, I was creative with my time and so much more able to experience the natural environment, unlike in Doha where I was unable to delve into the desert and unlike in Kuala Lumpur, where mixed weather stopped me from beating my previous tallest hike at Mount Snowdon. Here, I was free to explore the coastline, hop to the Gili Islands via a 10-minute speedboat and explore a 200 feet waterfall. The island itself is a physical miracle, home to a ~3,700 metre active volcano. It was sadly struck by a pair of earthquakes 6 years ago and, though fortunately they’ve recovered, you could still observe cracks in their stunning Mataram Islamic Centre.
There’s so little you can pack into a few hundred words, relative to the sheer scale and diversity of my experience. Travelling alone for most of my journey, coming across several different languages, one of which I am now learning, and undertaking an internship in a completely different part of the world in a different culture are just a fraction of my adventure. I definitely recommend the LEAP Adventure program, especially to those who are generally risk-averse or not very open-minded. And whatever your Adventure is, please make the most of it!
