The US election outcomes still reverberate. Friday morning a colleauge hugged – his hug “for all the American people.” A staff member asked if I had found it hard to vote for “Obama.” He, like others I have met, expressed disbelief that whites would vote across racial lines. The day after the election there were discussions on the floor of parliament along the lines of why can't we (Malaysians) have a non-Malay PM. A quick google found one article that addresses the issue T

I spent most of the day reading exams written in English (a colleague is reading the ones written in Malaysian). I put a lot of effort into making sure that the same answer receives the same score, which is time consuming in itself but takes longer when you are preparing an answer sheet for a colleague. The outcomes were 4 strong, 4 satisfactory, and 4 weak. The weakest written by a student who never turned in an assignment and attended a handful of classes (hope strings eternal). FYI - for the exam students in two classes were in the same lecture hall. Each had an assigned seat and submitted his/her exam by seat number. Since I was there for part of the time it was easy to link the first and last number with a specific person.

In the evening I went to St. Joseph’s Home to see the children's end of year performance. The children had organized and written the entire program. The audience had board members, volunteers, and the bishop. The children are orphans, children from difficult family situations, and street children. Many are orang asli from rural parts of Malaysia. The program started with a lion dance. Throughout the program the youngest children would introduce themselves and sing a short song. My photo doesn't show how trully tiny this 5 year old guitarist and singer is. The evening had a number of dances. Angelina, a colleague and force behind the home, told me that they rumaged through donated boxes to find the clothes/costumes.

About halfway through we had a buffet dinner. Children were every where, sitting on the laps of the many volunteers, or wandering through with huge bowls of es katchung.