Bismillah.
Of course you know what that means. IMYT means I miss you too. Heh...heh. I missed you and thought of you, my dear visitors, over the weekend that has just passed.
Your friend Eza was too busy to write as she was travelling, again. This time she went to Ipoh (2 hours drive north of KL). Her schedules got crazier that she had to miss a gathering at her own house in Penang - a gathering with the wonderful and much loved tahfiz boys from Cambodia. So sweet that they noticed my absence - "where is that sister who loves flowers?" They remembered the house was filled with flowers during the last gathering we had in September. So sweeeet!
Alhamdulillahil hamdan yuwafi niámahu wa yukafi u mazidah
***
The weekends seem to fly in and fly out (FIFO) just like that. During the weekend, I noticed something interesting and worth mentioning methinks. That people have to be told exactly what to do or what you expect them to do. We cannot take things for granted or assume that people know what they should do.
Of course we all know that we are supposed to take the hotel room access card with us every time we leave the room. I didn't realize there are many people who don't do that, until I heard it from a course trainer. He must be right, otherwise the hotel where I was staying in Ipoh would not have put up specific instructions as can be seen in below picture.
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This room isn't afraid of the dark.
Carry the card when you leave.
LOL |
If they knew there are people like me who would leave the TV on all night long every time I sleep alone in the hotel, they might put a notice on the pillow: "Don't be afraid. You are not alone. The TV is not a real sleeping partner. There are hundreds of people sleeping in this hotel tonight." LOL
Anyways...oh I wanted to write some lessons for event organizers or stage managers to be specific. I wanted to write about this several weeks back but it was shelved until I received an invite to be a speaker at a forum. Ahah! They like me after all. It's got nothing to do with the religion/sufism/blogging. It's about my 9 to 5 job. It's strange because I thought I did quite bad at the forum organized by the same agency last month. I did so very bad, believe me folks.
If you are an event organizer, listen up. How could I speak when I had to sit and use one hand to hold a mic, look at a small monitor on my left, hold the slide remote on another hand and point it to my right side because the projector was on the right side. And hey, I needed to use my Surface (tablet) because my speaker notes were in there but the table in front of me was too small and too far from my seat so I could not use it. And I have got only two hands!
Thus, I had to request to use the rostrum on the floor (not the one on the stage because there was no stand mic on that rostrum). So I spoke from the emcee's rostrum on the floor and the mic kept slipping down but nobody cared to help me fix it. And I had to point the slide remote to my right, look at the audience in front of me and occasionally looked at the other panelist on the stage on my left and I had to also look at the big screen behind me, above my head, so that my speech would be in sync with my notes and at the same time manage my notes on my Surface. But the screen was too close and too big and glaring so I could not see well. OMG! All that, spells BAD presentation! Very bad!
But somehow (it must be my sweet sounding voice...ehem ehem) the organizer asked me to present again the next day to represent a sub-working group. OMG. You have no idea how [quietly] excited I was even though I tried to decline the offer the first time, pretending not to want it and to give others a chance at speaking. LOL. Allah is great, He heard my prayers! I was profusely praying for a second chance at being a speaker cos I desperately wanted to prove that I could do better and that it was not my fault that my presentation on the first day was utterly terrible. Allah is ever so kind! He listened and He answered my prayers! Subhanallah!
I did better at the second chance of course, Alhamdulillah because I had spoken from the rostrum on stage and the mic behaved well and when I openly complained that I could not see the small monitor on the left end of the stage, the organizer passed me a hardcopy to refer to and when I realized the hardcopy was not the same as what was flashed on the monitor, I pointed that out openly too so the organizer quickly handed me the correct version. The lesson there is: must be brave to speak up and don't suffer in silence. LOL.
And guess what? Last Friday, I was approached for another speaking engagement. YaHuuuu! Allah is Kareem! Pray, someday I will be able to charge RM30,000 for a 30 minute talk. LOL. The moral of the story here is that no matter how bad you [think you] do, never give up, push yourself and do it again and again! When you are thrown into an assignment or a task which you are not comfortable with, do remember this Japanese proverb below. You just have to get in there, jump in where your fears are and face it because you cannot possibly experience fear, challenge and push yourself in your comfort zone or in a place where you already feel safe. It doesn't work that way.
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| Japanese proverb |
It amazes me that our scholars, they did not attend any public speaking or presentation course yet they are all so good and natural at public speaking. They are really gifted individuals, aren't they?
May Allah increase us in knowledge and understanding. May Allah let us be a receptacle of His wisdom and intelligence. Ameen.
-E-
30 Nov 2015
p/s
BTW I remembered the toilets at Shanghai Airport (or was it Kunming) they had labels for soap dispensers on each of the sink. But everywhere else in the world, people are expected to know/guess if it was a soap dispenser. And I remembered the Shanghai Airport had a large signage for musolla (prayer room). Impressive.
