speech

I had planned with this blog to relate a few anecdotes about our recent vacation. It was an exciting and a very full trip and there are definitely lots of stories to tell but life in the kampung, as usual, has taken some interesting turns that are worth sharing. Maybe next week I’ll blog about the vacation and take advantage of my extreme distance and tell colorful lies about Jeff and Nancy.

Before I start I should point out that Casey and I are indeed “the village idiots of Kampung Kuala Mai” and any confusion or misunderstandings are probably our fault. I would argue, however, that though I readily admit to being a village idiot, Malaysians operate very differently from me and what seems strange and inappropriate to us may be totally normal to them. Regardless, these confusions and misunderstandings definitely keep life interesting, keep us on our toes, and add an element of spontaneity to our lives.

Casey was visiting a friend the other day and in the course of conversation her friend casually mentioned that she was going to have a jamuan (a feast). Casey thought, well that’s nice and asked where the feast was going to be. “At your house, tomorrow” she replied. That was it. That was all the information Casey received and it would be impossible and inappropriate to ask for more. Information you and I might consider crucial like what time, how many people, what should we prepare, etc is apparently totally irrelevant. We woke up the next day wondering if we were going to have a feast or not. Since we don’t have any form of transportation and take full advantage of our obvious idiocy we made absolutely no preparations. In fact, we spent most of the day out of the house and arrived home around 5pm having quite forgotten about the feast. At about 5:30 people started arriving. They brought all the food, we borrowed plates from our neighbor, and sure enough we had a feast. It was fantastic.

During the feast, Casey mentioned that she would like to learn how to cook some traditional Malay dishes. In the same casual and offhanded way that the feast was mentioned some woman agreed that they would be happy to teach Casey a few recipes. Well, the next day those woman and their children showed up with bundles of ingredients and kitchen tools and cooked for about 4 hours after which we had another feast. Good thing we are total degenerates with nothing to do.

This casual way of making plans often leaves us scratching our heads. Almost everyday we shift gears from totally relaxed with nothing to do into a flurry of unexpected activity. This coupled with the Malaysian tendency to only tell a fraction of the details can lead to trouble.

Last week the head of the village asked if we would like to go visit a school in the nearby town. It sounded like it might be fun and since we really have no responsibilities at the moment - “sure, yes we would like to go visit a school in the nearby town”. A few days later he told us that we could visit the school on Friday morning. Ok. So far so good – on Friday we will get to go visit a school – great.

Well it turns out that visit a school really means that on Friday morning Casey and I will be guest speakers at a very large school. We will have to stand on stage in front of over 1000 high school students and deliver a motivational speech in Malay about the benefits of education and the benefits of learning English. Oh S*#>

I was freaking out. In less than 24 hour we have to give a motivational speech to over 1000 kids in a foreign language – not cool – especially since we were “tricked/told” (what’s the difference really) at the very last minute.

Casey, with a very uncharacteristic calm, was not phased at all. I was upset about being tricked/told while Casey seemed excited about the opportunity. She was excited that is until she saw that there were indeed 1000 students and she was actually expected to speak into a microphone in Malay.

It went surprisingly well. We each spoke for about 10 minutes and then answered questions. I’m sure we made a lot of mistakes but no one threw anything at us and after the assembly we had a massive photo session and were asked to sign autographs. Casey was embarrassed by the autograph requests but I thought – “finally, people are recognizing my awesomeness, and I signed away”.

I can only imagine what ridiculous thing will happen tomorrow.
Casey at the microphone motivating kids At least we got to sit during the question and answer session.


This is only half the auditorium - girls on one side/ boys on the other. There really were 1000 students

Kids leaving the auditorium. Don't they look motivated!