1 January 2017 is a day forever etched in my memory. At the age of sixty-two and with thirty-six years of foreign service experience behind me, I was as excited as a wide-eyed first-year college student on her first day in school. A member state gets to become the Chair of ASEAN only once every ten years, and for a diplomat like me, a once-in-a-lifetime privilege to head ASEAN on its 50th founding anniversary. Chairmanship of ASEAN is a rare opportunity for the Chair to show leadership in the region by delivering important initiatives close to its heart and to advance an agenda which it believes should help shape the political and socio-economic landscape of the region that is facing a great number of challenges. The expectation is even heightened when the Chair is one of the founding members of ASEAN. I was excited and at the same time apprehensive. I was going to become the Chair of ASEAN, specifically the six ASEAN mechanisms based in Jakarta. The task entailed bringing together to a consensus ten disparate and diverse countries, as well as their ten dialogue and other external partners who have their own agenda and interests to push and protect as well.

Autoethnography provides me the platform to describe this unique political and socio-cultural setting that I belonged to as well as to narrate the experience I had with the people I related punctuated by my feelings, behaviour and disposition at the time of my chairmanship. I was going to assume the responsibility of bringing together to a consensus the varying, sometimes conflicting, interests of the most senior and astute diplomats from ASEAN Member States (AMS) and ASEAN’s external partners, in addition to my primary responsibility of assuring that Philippine and ASEAN interests are protected, promoted and defended. This unique cultural community of Jakarta-based diplomats is made up of representatives coming from different backgrounds and motivations. One has to intently study these backgrounds and motivations to determine whether they are allies or adversaries in advancing one’s own objectives. Behind the corny jokes and endless karaoke sessions that we jokingly referred to as prerequisites to becoming an Ambassador to ASEAN are individuals transformed into the fiercest and most tenacious combatants on the debating arena when their national interests are at stake.