A LESSON LEARNT

I had to attend a few sessions of In-house training in school on Saturday but because of miscommunication, our first speaker received a written message that his talk was at 9.00 a.m. instead of 8.30 a.m. Actually he reached the school at 8.30 a.m. and parked his car near the hall. He reached the school office at 8.40 a.m. to find Kamariah waiting for him and telling him that he was late and that the second speaker had taken over his slot.

                     

In the above picture, Kamariah is talking with a personnel from the Fire Prevention Centre to see if they could reschedule his session with another school in Sitiawan so that our speaker could give his talk at 10.30 a.m. Thankfully they managed to postpone the session with the other school and our guest speaker would be giving his talk to us.

Actually I already had the preconceived idea that this Chinese guy whose clothing resembles that of my librarians might be presenting a not very interesting session and that I would be fighting off sleepiness just to get through the two hour-slot. When he spoke with Kamariah and me, I noticed that he spoke with thick Chinese accented English and Bahasa Melayu.

Oh! Oh! I had commented to both Kamariah and the chief clerk that he would be a very monotonous speaker and also people might have problems understanding him. Why on earth did the Fire Prevention Centre find such a lecturer to educate people about such an important safety issue?

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment the speaker from the Fire Prevention Centre, Mr Kent Ng took over the microphone from the master of ceremony, he worked his magic. Believe me, he was good. Actually, he managed to convey the danger, the sadness and the frustration of what fire can do to us and ways to prevent it. According to him, the time given for his slot is actually not enough as there is so much more he wanted to share with everyone. From the second he started to speak until the end of his presentation, he had everyone in stitches and sometimes what he showed or narrated had people cringing their faces out of horror or fear. Contrary to what I had anticipated, no one was bored nor sleepy. Kent managed to get the attention of all present in the room.

My dear readers, I hang my head in shame for prejudging Kent. He turned out to be a very fine speaker. Time and again, I keep telling my students, never judge a book by its cover and I have committed the mistake today. Now I know that the Fire Prevention Centre knew what it was doing.