Category: General

Today at MACEE, there was an orientation for the outgoing Malaysian Fulbrighters who will be leaving for the US shortly.  So TP came to work with me,  and he and the other current American Fulbrighters gave some advice to the Malaysians.  It was pretty fun actually, we got to meet some of the people and talk to them about what they study and where they are going.

Many of the Fulbrighters are part of the "scholars" program, meaning that they already have PhDs and academic careers here and wish to go do some short term research in the States.  Education seems to be the real hot topic here. There is one woman going to Penn who studies sociolinguistics and how English is taught here as opposed to other countries.  We met another woman who works on multicultural education and will be a Stanford this fall.  She says she is struggling to make sense of the system here, and can’t stand the division along ethnic lines that she sees in universities in Malaysia. After ranting for a few minutes, she let slip that she got her PhD at Michigan State, and suddenly her ranting made a lot more sense to us.  We also met a couple who both got grants to Ohio State, he for geography and she for mathematics education.  They are bringing their 5 children along, and from the sound of it, the kids’ biggest worry is if they will be allowed to eat school lunches when they go to school in the States.  Seems like a funny thing to worry about to us, but I guess they haven’t heard that school food is usually not so good!  The mother went on and on (with us agreeing) about how it sucks that politicians, not educators, make up policies for education.  She said she thought it was a bit better in the states, but we had to tell her that it’s the same- things might not be "outlawed", but you sure won’t get funding if you’re not teaching the right types of things.  The funny thing was that as she was leaving, she was going to get a ride from another scholar who works for the Department of Education.  We thought it was amusing that she was buddy-buddy with him after complaining about the higher-ups two minutes before.

We also learned an interesting fact about the Fulbright program.  The first country to set up a Fulbright exchange program with the US was Burma.  We were both surprised at that fact, and that this was the first time we had heard it.  One of the US Embassy staff who has worked closely with MACEE and Fulbrighters he told us- he is actually departing for Burma to become the second-in-command there shortly, and is hoping to restart the now discontinued program there again.  Also, we learned that the money to fund the scholarships originally came from the sale of leftover WWII ships and planes.  The idea was to use the money to promote understanding between nations so that another world war would never happen.  I think that’s probably the coolest use of money I’ve heard about in a long time.

About a week ago, we got an email from the MACEE people inviting all the Fulbrighters to some kind of event.  We really had no idea what this thing was going to be, but we went last night and it turned out to be the official lauch of the Malaysian American Friendship Alumni Association.  It was in a huge ballroom at a fancy hotel, and was quite an event.  After an entire evening, we still really have no idea what this association is for.  It seems to be an alumni association for Fulbrighters, both American and Malaysian, but then there were the other 25 tables of people there, and we have no idea who they were.  Furthermore, the guest of honor was the head of the American University  Alumni Association here in Malaysia, a separate organization which sounds like kind of the same thing to me.

In addition to having lots of speeches and a professionally produced video about the association (which had no information, just pictures, and probably cost an absolute fortune), there were several "cultural" performances.  Now this was a nice idea, but it could not have been more poorly executed.  There were 35 tables, all round, and a stage at one side of the room.  This meant that at least three quarters of the audience had to turn around or crane their necks to see what was happening, not to mention the fact that the lights were in our eyes so we couldn’t actually see the stage most of the time, and that there were several tables which were around a corner and had no view of the stage at all.  The real kicker though was that they insisted on serving dinner in the most intrusive way possible while the poor people were performing.  At 8:45, after all the speeches, they finally got started with dinner, and we were all starving.  Sadly, the  Malaysian traditional dancer couldn’t compete with the food, and had to continue dancing for the backs of people’s heads.  The performers were all good, and aside from the dancer there was an American modern dance troop touring Malaysia, a well know Malaysian jazz singer, and a Navy band from Hawaii that was concluding a tour of Malaysia.  So it was fun, but really hard to concentrate on them.  As a performer myself, it really really makes me (jm in case you hadn’t got that by now) mad when events are organized like this. I mean,  really, it’s absurd.  Either have a concert, or have dinner, or have background music.  Putting all three together is a disaster. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to be performing to an audience who has something else going on at the same time.

The dinner was good, but poor tp wasn’t having the best night.  The appetizer had shrimp in it, so he tried to explain to the waiter he needed one without shrimp, and the guy got confused.  So for the next several courses he got the vegetarian dishes even though he kept trying to tell the waiter that he wanted the real chicken instead of the phony stuff.  It was funny, though, when he busted out the Malaysian to talk with the waiter, and everyone else at the table did a double take and suddenly took notice of us.  The complete look of shock on peoples’ faces when they hear their language coming out of a Westerner’s mouth still never ceases to amuse me.  The last part of the night involved a certificate ceremony for all the current Fulbrighters.  So tp went up on stage like everyone else, and they called everyone’s names, and then they got to the end and he was then only one who hadn’t been called and was standing up there without a certificate.  Apparently, someone got confused because he has a Fulbright-Hays award, which is different from a regular Fulbright, and so they forgot about him.  He’s been promised a certificate by Tuesday to make up for it.  We’re waiting with baited breath.