Q: You arrived in New Zealand in the 1970s on a Colombo Plan scholarship. What do you remember of that first year at the University of Otago?
问：您在1970年代凭科伦坡计划奖学金抵达新西兰。奥塔哥大学的第一年，您还记得些什么？
"I remember the cold most of all — Dunedin winters are nothing like Kuala Lumpur's. But what struck me more was how few of us there were. I was often the only woman, and one of only a handful of international students, in a physics lecture hall of two hundred. It taught me early that being 'the only one in the room' wasn't something to fear."
"印象最深的是冷——达尼丁的冬天和吉隆坡完全是两个世界。但更让我触动的是我们这批人有多稀少。两百人的物理课堂里，我常常是唯一的女生，也是仅有的几个国际学生之一。这段经历很早就教会我，'房间里只有你一个'并不是件需要害怕的事。"
Q: You later became New Zealand's first woman to hold a doctorate in astrophysics, and went on to lead the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs — twice. Looking back, how much of that path traces to Dunedin?
问：您后来成为新西兰首位女性天体物理学博士，并两度出任联合国外空事务厅主任。回头看，这条路有多少可以追溯到达尼丁？
"All of it, honestly. The Colombo Plan didn't just pay my fees — it placed me inside a research culture that assumed I belonged there. When I went home to build Malaysia's national planetarium, and later when the UN came calling, I was drawing on habits of mind I first built in a small physics department at the bottom of the world."
"老实说，全部都是。科伦坡计划给我的不只是学费，它把我放进了一种'理所当然地认为我属于这里'的研究文化里。后来我回国筹建马来西亚国家天文馆，再后来联合国找上门来，我用的其实都是最初在这个世界尽头的小小物理系里养成的思维习惯。"
"Being 'the only one in the room' wasn't something to fear — it taught me I belonged there."
"'房间里只有你一个'并不需要害怕——它教会我，我理所当然属于这里。"Division Ⅶ · Politics & Diplomacy — The Colombo Plan
Read the fuller institutional history of the Colombo Plan's education-diplomacy model.
阅读科伦坡计划教育外交模式的完整学术梳理。
The interview concludes with Dr. Othman's reflections on mentoring the next generation of Malaysian and Pacific scientists — a project she now considers her most enduring legacy.
访谈最后，奥斯曼博士谈到她如今最看重的事业——培养下一代马来西亚与太平洋地区的科学人才。