The Seminar Drill in Malaysia

On Saturday morning (still in Alor Star) we headed out for the seminars on Chinese culture. All the talks were in Mandarin. Every so often Ong would drift over and give me a partial translation.

Here is what I have observed as the basic seminar drill. A welcoming speech (followed by presenting appropriate tokens of appreciation to the speaker) and then the first of the presentations. Often the seminar begins with a single speaker. The later presentations are mostly three person panels. The presentations are quite long (I didn't time them but the shortest may have been 45 minutes). In most of the seminars I have attended the presenters are given token after the presentations. Here the tokens were given to all presenters before the first presentation. After the panelists finish their presentations there is a Q & A session - usually very few Qs and wordy As. At Sunday's session there were quite a few questions. I was told that one question was how could the information on Hakka culture be turned into a business!

After the first panel there is usually tea. Morning tea is tea/coffee with snacks, such as curry puffs. Lunch occurs around 1:00. Typically rice and about 3 other dishes. Sunday was a full day of eating, both on our way to Ipoh and at the seminar. We started the day in Alor Star with roti telur. Later on the road we had nasi lemak (rice cooked in coconut milk with a sambal and a protein option). When we arrived in Ipoh we had lunch as part of the Hakka gathering. Midway in Hakka seminar we had tea (mee and sandwiches). After the seminar we had dinner with the Ipoh organizing committee!

In the photo (from the Saturday seminar) Ong is delivering my paper on NGOs in the US (or so I was told). I heard him talk about Baba and Nyonya culture (for more information wikipedia is as good a place as any http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peranakan). I know for a fact I have never written the words "Baba and Nyonya" until this very minute! I wrote two short "papers" for the weekend. The one delivered Saturday focused on legal issues. It was the easiest thing for me to pull together with short notice, besides US legal requirements and Malaysian ones that apply to nonprofits are quite different. The Sunday paper which I delivered was on collaboration.

Sunday’s presentations were on Hakka culture. Several people asked me how I got interested in Hakka culture. I tried tactfully to tell them that it was an accident. After a day of Mandarin I gave my presentation in English. Primarily I explained our (Ong’s and mine) study and laid the groundwork to encourage them to respond to the survey, whenever we get around to sending it out. The audience was small but attentive.

Ong gets back to Penang on the 26th about the same time I do. I hope that we get the survey out shortly after his return. I am eager to get some data. Ong had originally thought that we could collect data during the weekend, but he was told that it would not work out logistically. Whoever gave him that advice was right on target – people were focused on catching up with each other not answering a researcher’s survey.