On the second day of my arrival at UNAIDS, Htin, the web manager, asked to me: “Are you on board now?”

“Am I ready?” I asked myself. To be frank, I was not sure at that time.

I came at the busiest season when UNAIDS was to launch 2008 Report on Global AIDS epidemic. It is a tradition that UNAIDS issues the global report on the eve of the biannual International AIDS Conference. This year, the XVII conference was to be held in Mexico City, Mexico, from 3 to 8 August; and the global report was scheduled to be launched at GMT 15:00, Tuesday, 29 July 2008 in New York, Geneva, Johannesburg, Mexico City and Port of Spain.

My team, Communication and Knowledge Sharing Department (CKS), were heavily loaded with preparation work. Annemarie, our chief, called for meetings twice a week to track the progress. It was like at war when everyone uses military time at the meeting.

The first few days, Mahesh, my supervisor, assigned me tons of readings. My head was full of epidemic numbers and medical terms. I learned that EPI was short for epidemic, MDG for Millennium Development Goals and ART for anti -retroviral treatment.

Media training was given to UNAIDS officials. Mahesh asked me to play an aggressive journalist asking challenging questions. We worked out a long list of sensitive political questions. Anyway, we must prepare for the worst. Fortunately, negative reports didn’t find their way. I watched the press conference for global report launch and monitored follow-up reports. The topics were within the three key messages UNAIDS intended to convey.

After short training on profiling and content management system, I started to profile global report for the launch. The profiling itself was not complicated, just to follow the procedure step by step. The question was that global report consists of several parts in four languages. It was important to make a list of all the parts in four languages indicating profiling progress. So I designed anworksheet which was proven useful and efficient for other colleagues to access.

I was also entrusted to edit the UNAIDS web calendar, Weekly Preview. This work requires much carefulness to check event details, terminologies and the format. I edit the content of weekly preview and submit it for clearance and approval. The procedure was very strict and I was impressed when colleagues spotted extra space or wrong capitalization.

Writing Olympic theme stories was most exciting. The closing of Mexico conference marks the opening of Beijing Olympics. To pay tribute to this sport gala, UNAIDS decided to publish a series of Olympic theme stories on the homepage of its official website. I wrote a retrospect of Olympic theme AIDS campaigns “When red ribbon meets Olympics” and a report on Play Safe-Help Stop HIV campaign in Olympic Villages.

I love the open and friendly working atmosphere at UNAIDS. UNAIDS provide staff and interns with a wide range of trainings from IT skills to management principles. Everyone can register for and drop in a training in which they are interested. Colleagues are always ready to help if you have questions. We are free to go downstairs for a cup of coffee or tea as refreshment after busy work. We call each other by first names. There is no Sir or Madam, or Big Boss, just different names.

People living with HIV can enjoy the work conditions at UNAIDS just as everybody else. I know two colleagues living with HIV in CKS team. One is shy and the other is extraverted. We worked together, had coffee together and dined together. They are just not different than anyone else.

UNAIDS manages to create a more enabling workplace for its staff living with HIV, facilitating and encouraging meaningful participation in the development and delivery of strategies, policies and programmes. UNAIDS also hosts the UN-wide HIV Positive Staff Group (UN Plus) which is helping inform both changes to workplace policies and wider UN Reform.

In the past two months, I always traveled at weekends and visited almost all parts of Switzerland. Geneva was a lovely, dedicate and friendly city. Switzerland is a picture-like land of vast lake, green hills and snowy mountains. The beautiful sceneries are unforgettable. But what I miss most are the extremely nice and kindly people I met there.

Time flies. I am about to leave. It was like yesterday when I just came to Geneva and I remember I answered Htin: “I guess I am on board now.”