During the mini conference that we had in celebration of world water day the speakers talked

about the utmost importance of water, I learned the distinct difference of technology the
Rotterdam has compared to what we have in the Philippines. It is for certain that Rotterdam has
paved their way to the top in terms of modern technology especially in their water systems.
They started to develop their modern technology through the disastrous events that happened
before. Rotterdam was known to be prone of floods, which made them move on how to counter
and avoid such disaster. Rotterdam started with their windmills to pump water in and out before
anything else. The speaker stated that they started from small until they reached their most
modern technology in helping their water system, one of which is their delta works and water
squares. Although Rotterdam is a hundred steps away from the Philippines, they do still
experience floods whether small or big in every 10 years, these events is still helping them
improve more in their countermeasures. Comparing to Philippines, the country always struggle
with almost every natural disaster. Water in the Philippine context is also a huge problem. The
country suffers from loss of ground water. A speaker of the Water Resources Researcher stated
that water was never a problem. The problem how we suffer water scarcity and etc. was because
of the misusage of water. Therefore, the problem lies within the hands of the people not only in
Metro Cebu but the whole country itself. This is very much likely to be resolved if people in the
city would be more responsible on how they would use the water. Other than that, there were
also exchange engineering student speakers from Rotterdam who spoke about their studies
within the scope of civil engineering, some of which talked about the optimization of building
bridges using excel based programs, reinforcing and improving railways, etc. The students also
talked about how internship programs have supported the students in their academics from the
companies they were assigned to. I have learned that problems like safe water problems and
other environmental problems can be mitigated if government and other private institutions put
more support on students and other educational institution in research and development.