Technically, Day 1 is yesterday but I spend most of the day with Tommy, just chatting about things. Other then the shock we have when the hotel staff informed us that the 9 hole golf game will cost us RM1,500 (400USD), nothing else happened. :-)

So, back to topic, I spend day 1 stuck in APSTAR Retreat, listening to update from the various Asia Pacific organizations. Most interesting is the one from APNIC, where Paul Wilson inform the group that their memberships actually increases (and accelerating) in 2003 after 2 years of flat membership. Since almost all AP ISPs need to become a member of APNIC to get IP addresses, this indicates we are seeing a recovery of the ISP market in Asia Pacific.The other difficult issue is the endorsement of .ASIA Sponsored Top Level Domain proposal to ICANN. I have a lot of difficulty understanding why we need .ASIA TLD, why it will serve the user community, how it will benefit the ccTLD and worst, what damage will it cause?.

After APSTAR, Izumi organized a little outreach program to educate some folks on ICANN and more importantly WSIS. We have to scattered shortly as some of us have to run off to hear the presentations from the APRICOT 2005 bidder. And so here I am, looking pretty pictures of Kyoto Conference Hall and blogging at the same time… :-)