On valentine’s Day, I got to go to Kuala Lipis (a small town in Malaysia) to support a training. This is kind of a last minute arrangement because the actual trainer, Len had a dislocated shoulder. And instead of supporting David, I went over to support him.
It was a nice trip up via First Coach. I arrived in Kuala Lumpur about midnight, then David came to fetch me to his place. At 6am the next day, I took a 2 hours ride in a cab to Kuala Lipis, a really small town.
Upon arrival, Zen told me most of time don’t understand English, a few are illiterate. Their primary language is Malay. Holy cow, what can be a bigger challenge than unable to converse with the participants, especially in training. Fortunately, my role is to support Zen. In fact that’s the only role I can do at that point.
The participants are actually very nice people. They are very simple people and had never attended a team building workshop in their whole life. It was so funny because whenever they spoke to me, I looked at them, smile and nodded. Until the time when we say goodbye, the group finally knew that I don’t understand Malay. Those who can speak English, starts to talk to me in English.
This group did the 4WD up to the waterfall. For one of the activities, we got to hide their food in the bushes, river and on the trees. Trying to do a spiderman there, I went under the bridge to hide the food, but I lost my balance after placing the food, fell into the deep end of the river. The first thing that came into my mind was - my phone.
I climbed out of the river as fast as I could, took out the phone, and it’s not working already. This is the biggest lost from this trip, but I won’t let it affect my mood.
I learned interesting things from this trip. And whether it’s conducted in Malay or English, I can feel the essence of fun. I guess that’s enough for this group.
