This Is Kye-Rectory

It’s not like I haven’t done any bloody presentation in my two decades of life. In fact, I’ve gotten so used of standing in front of crowd, large one, and talk - sometimes rubbish. But this time around, perhaps it was because I prepare the 12-pages report, submit it, prepare the slides and present it all within 24 hours. Quite an achievement, eh?

My presentation was at 2 pm. I decided to dress in the safest color and the most presentable wardrobe to me. So I chose to wear my black Polo T-shirt, jungle green cargo with a little dap of Dunhill For Men EDT to exudes smoothness to the people around me. So, off I went and I decided not to be the first speaker because the first one usually will be bombarded the most with question during the feedback session. I decided for the second speaker but Caroline told me she would like to go next. Being a gentleman, I let her go second and I follow suit.

Then, my turn. I observed, the crowd was starting to feel bored of the first 2 presentation and no applause was given to my previous 2 friends. Hmm, I better not screw up and make them cheering me ‘Booooring!’ (cue Homer Simpson). Then, Prof Sabitha started to make remarks on how she wasn’t so satisfied with the presentations, even the previous weeks ones. They all lacked examples which could relate the discussed issue to our country. I thought, I have some examples in context of Malaysia. She might like em…or not.

My topic was ‘Can the decline of legislature in the face of executive overwhelm advantages be reversed?’. For those in the dark [like HRHF..hehe] I should be talking about whether the reducing power of the Parliament by the overpowered Ministers/Cabinet be reversed and put everthing back on track or not. I know, I strongly believe that the answer is always YES but on how to prove it is a different issue.

Anyway, so off I started. And all the sudden, my American English so-called accent was gone and replaced by the typical way Malays sound when they speak English. Hell yeah! I didn’t know what happenned because the accent was a practised thing since I was a kid and it wasn’t an act or a rehearsed thing. While I was presenting, I thought of a contestant I saw in America’s Next Top Model the previous week, where she impromptuly blurted out Jamaican English accent during an acting challenge. Haha..boy, how I could relate to that!

Since my slides are quite organized [I put everything in order rather than jumbling it out - the definition, intro, factors causes it, ways to resolve, conclusion] and have quite a number of pictures [thanks Yahoo!, you made my life so easy], the crowd beginning to like the presentation and paid attention to me and even laughing when I did some [silly] jokes. Even Prof Sabitha was smiling, chuckling at times - appropriately, if you may.

The end. My fellow friends gave me a loud applause. I grinned from ear to ear. I felt relieved, happy, glad, thankful - a cocktail. Prof Sabitha told me she liked my presentation the best but my report [which I submitted prior to the presentation] made no judgment on that. The report was bad but the presentation topped. Hmm..how could you interpret that? Perhaps HRHF was right, I better off talking. Haha..

Being named as the example/ benchmark for others by my lecturer isn’t the most euphoric thing that day. The climax was when the presentation is over and as I was lingering out of the hall, trying to untie the tangle of my mp3 player headphone, an Indian fellow coursemate patted me from behind and as I turn to face him, he told me ‘Hey, good job! Great presentation!’. Whoa man…being recognized, being appreciated like that was the most honorable thing in the world. You got appreciated by what you did and that was pretty something, you know. It wasn’t for the grade, but the recognition. The invisible recognition - which I prefer, than the superficial ones.

Amen to that!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.