In the Dumps...

You are probably wondering where your favourite expatriate British blogger has been for the last ten days or so. Well, he is still here, plodding through life and surviving as usual, but to be absolutely honest with you, Prof. Madder has completely lost all motivation to continue blogging.

Whether this loss of spunk is permanent, I cannot say. But one thing I can say is that for the moment, I am utterly pissed off with life, and if it wasn’t for the loving support of my wife and friends, I may have considered ending it.

The reason has a lot to do with an unfortunate incident that happened on that most ironically-named day, Good Friday. Basically, I was robbed. The circumstances of my robbery are rather embarrassing to me, though those of you who know me personally will know what happened. Needless to say, I lost a bag containing nearly everything that I find useful or helpful or pleasurable in my working life. Everything except, luckily, my passport, wallet and mobile phone.

It could have been worse, yes, but not much. I suppose that not losing my wallet, passport and mobile phone is better than losing my pen drives, my UK driving license, my calculator, my bank books, my dictionary, my tax form, my student’s draft Masters Thesis that I was checking, my Bluetooth earpiece, a couple of notebooks (paper ones), my university ID card and my spectacles. As well as a bloody good shoulder bag that must have looked like it contained a laptop but didn’t.

So It Goes.

One of the side-effects of this happy event is that I find it very painful to use a computer, or read anything because of the fact that my spectacles were among the items lost. My new spectacles won’t be ready till later this week, so it’s quite a challenge to do this blog.

One of the really funny things about the whole situation is that when I went to the police station to report the theft, they asked me, with a completely straight face, whether I wanted them to investigate it or whether I just wanted to report the loss. And the really hilarious thing is that I played their game, telling them not to bother investigating. After all, it’s a near certainty that my stuff will never be recovered. Most likely, the bag and its contents were thrown in a rubbish dump or a storm drain, when the thieves found out there was no laptop inside. Who knows....

So please forgive me for feeling a little bit disappointed with Kuching and Malaysia at the moment. And very disappointed with myself, for letting it happen to me. I hope that the ignorant stupid b******s who took my bag are happy with themselves, and that they had a great time raping its contents, and that they all die very slow and painful deaths.

Not very charitable, I know, but....

Working Class Hero

This evening, I took the family for yet another lepak session in Starbucks. Another new thing they have on sale is an ever-widening range of music CDs. I have already purchased albums by Thelonious Monk and Billie Holiday from the Starbucks collection. This is to satisfy my urge to listen to some cooling jazz while driving through the madness that is Kuching.

But this evening, they had on sale a collection of songs by John Lennon, and were playing it over the sound system. And I happened to make a comment about Lennon, and how wonderful he was, when my 18 year old nephew Boboy asked me "is he British?". I replied that he was indeed British, and that he was one of the Beatles, and that he was murdered in the prime of his life. My nephew looked a bit puzzled, but nodded his head politely anyway, as young Malaysians often do in these circumstances.

It's at times like this that I realise just what a cultural and generational gap there is between me, a middle-aged Brit living in a foreign country, and just about anyone who is younger than 30 in this country. This is especially the case with music.

For instance, I cannot stop myself from feeling pity, and a slight frisson of indignation, when young people reveal to me that they don't know anything about the Beatles. I mean, it's like not knowing who your parents are. How can you not know about the Beatles? Does not compute!!

To me, the Beatles, even though they split up when I was only 5, are one of the most important bands who ever existed. They have indeed gained legendary status, through ceaseless imitation, musical influence and death. Without the Beatles, so many modern bands would not have existed, and the city of Liverpool would be just another Northern English city with an average football team!!

So I was very happy to be listening to John Lennon's songs on the sound system in Starbucks. I went right over and bought the CD. I want to hear once again those mournful chord progressions, the echoing vocals and beautiful messages of peace that characterised much of what Lennon produced.

Lennon was by far the most gifted of the Fab Four because he spoke to a generation who wanted peace, and still speaks today, just as loudly and clearly. He was more than a gifted singer and songwriter, he was a movement, a political force who wanted to change the world.

When he was tragically gunned down in New York in 1980, the whole world stopped spinning for a moment. One of its very best had passed on. I remember feeling curious, at the time, and had a strong urge to find out more about Lennon's music, and to listen to the Beatles for the first time, which I did, and I discovered wonders.

At the time, I was fifteen, and didn't know much about music. And the Beatles were definitely uncool because everyone was into Punk and the beginnings of electronic pop, and I was listening to Stevie Wonder and the Jacksons. Yet it's true, that it often takes the death of a great artist to make people aware of his or her greatness. So around that time I purchased a boxed set of Beatles singles, and listened to every one of them.

The Beatles suddenly became cool for me. I loved the way they were able to combine perfect vocal harmonies with truly original melodies and lyrics that spoke about life, and love, and the effects of LSD. This quartet of working-class lads from Liverpool came together to produce something greater, and more profound, than themselves. And there was always Lennon's voice, marvellous yet doomed, shining out brighter than the others.

I've almost come to the end of this little ramble about four young working-class heroes who changed the world, who are now only two. I just want to say that I am sorry for my young friends and family members, and students, who do not have the same connection that I have with Lennon and the Beatles. Maybe you should download their songs as soon as they are available on the net. You will not be disappointed. Your life will change.

All things must pass, as Lennon said once, and indeed they do. But somehow, Lennon and McCartney's songs seem to last forever. I predict that a thousand years from now, there will be space ships travelling through the galaxy, and those ships will carry recordings of all the music and movies ever created by human beings, perhaps for the crew to enjoy on their long journey.

And one of the crew members will access an old file from the 20th Century marked 'Beatles'.

And the golden voice of John Lennon and his three scouse mates will echo through the long night of space, and there will be peace........

Planning Makes Perfect!?!

Back in Lancaster University where I did my PhD, there was an old professor who had the following sign outside his door:

"A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part!"

This piece of fundamentally sound wisdom has always guided my own dealings with time and deadlines. If you want to get things done on time, make sure that you plan well ahead. Don't do things at the last minute. Plan for every eventuality. Make sure you have enough toner or ink in your printer. Make sure your presentation slides work perfectly. Make sure your laptop is compatible with the projector at the venue you are teaching at. Make sure you know where your meeting is taking place before you set off, etc etc etc.

Basically, use the brains God gave you and think ahead!!

But if I had a ten ringgit note for every one of my students who heed this advice, I think I would be a very poor man indeed. I might just have enough money to eat one meal a day. Let me tell you why...

I have been teaching for some years now, and this lack of forethought on the part of my young charges never fails to raise my blood temperature. And it's not just a Malaysian thing - I have taught in other countries such as Poland and the UK, and have found the same thing happening time and time again.

Here is how it usually plays out in my context. Many of the classes I teach require the students to do some presentations. Because we are in the 21st Century now, that means using a laptop PC connected to an LCD projector, running Microsoft PowerPoint. Our students are absolute wizards with PowerPoint - they can make it sing and dance with stunning and breathtaking graphical backgrounds and sound effects downloaded from mysterious places on the Internet, highly original photos plagiarised from various websites, and of course Macromedia Flash animations and amusing little YouTube videos that have me laughing like a drain for days and days after seeing them...

I really wish I had the time and the talent for such technological prowess, but I don't. Instead, I am condemned to sit through the scenarios that arise when the creators of such marvels fail utterly to plan ahead. Here are the most common planning failures which result in class presentations taking much more time than they should:

1. The presentation group walk up to the computer, plug their thumb drive in, and find that their version of the software doesn't work with the version on the PC in the classroom. And they have, being such tech mages, used the very latest version of the software to create their presentations without saving the file in a backwardly-compatible format!

2. The group walk up to the computer, plug their thumb drive in, and find, after several minutes of feverish head movements and pulling of hair, that their file has a malicious virus which makes it totally impossible to run on the computer. And of course, they didn't check the file for viruses before they came to class....

3. One of the group comes up and informs you that they have brought the wrong file/thumb drive/CD/laptop with them. "Sir, can I go back to my room and get it?"

4. The group start to load the file from their thumb drive, only to find out that for some reason, the fancy graphics in their presentation do not work on the PC in the classroom. Hence they will ask to swap the classroom PC with their laptop, which takes at least ten minutes to carry out...

5. The group starts to present, and it becomes obvious that they are going to carry on for at least another hour, even though you have given them 15 minutes.

6. They forget to check the spelling and grammar on their slides, or ask me to do it.

7. They forget all the advice and training I gave them about maintaining eye contact, not reading from the slides, using screwed up colour combinations for slides, etc (not strictly a planning error but equally irritating!).

What can we do about this? I must say don't have a clue. But I can offer the following advice:

1. Rehearse your talk so that you know how much time you're going to take
2. Check that your file is compatible with earlier software versions than yours
3. Don't use too many fancy graphics and multimedia features. You do not get extra marks for PowerPoint wizardry. Keep it Short and Simple (KISS).
4. Check your spelling and grammar before the talk. Ask your lecturer. That's what he or she gets paid for!
5. Back up your work on two thumb drives, a CD and even email a copy of it to yourself. You never know what can happen!
6. Check your file for viruses.
7. Basically, be careful, have pride in what you do and most of all PLAN AHEAD!!

Now, let's see if I can increase the number of ten ringgit notes I can collect now.......

Where Do They Get Them From?

Being involved in the Malaysian debating scene has taught me a great deal about the way young Malaysians use the English language, or try to anyway. Now don't get me wrong - even though I teach English for a living, I'm not going to moan and groan about the appalling standard of English among my young charges. I think I'll leave that to other worthy voices, like the editors of the excellent Star Online Mind Our English page.

Now, in the debating world, you see all sorts when it comes to English usage. You get complete linguistic basket cases who can't even speak for more than a couple of minutes without raping the English language with their every utterance. Or you might get wonderfully electrifying performances from smart young orators worthy of Cicero. And most of the time, of course, you get something in between.

During my recent trip to the Borneo Cup in Kota Kinabalu, I saw examples of all three of the above categories, although I must say that the standard of English, if not always the standard of debating, was much better this year.

But English is not the only criterion for success in debating, nor is it even the most important. Debates are normally judged on three criteria - Matter, Manner and Method. Matter refers to the substance of the arguments put forward and their supporting evidence and rebuttals. Manner covers the style and delivery of the speaker and, obviously, the standard of his or her English. Finally, there is Method, which refers to the way the case is structured, and how the team work together to put the case forward effectively.

However, despite the fact that I have to pay more attention to the arguments in a debate, not the way they are worded, I can't help noticing aspects of the debaters' language. One example came after one of the quarter final sessions which I judged. The students came up to me during the coffee break for an oral adjudication. One of the boys in the team asked me for advice on his language. I said "fine, but you used a couple of words you shouldn't have used".

One of the words he used in the debate was that quaint old English parade-ground expletive 'bollocks'. I nearly fell off my chair laughing when I heard the word coming out of his mouth as if he were an English football hooligan! It was like Snow White telling one of the seven dwarfs to F*** off!!

Now the word 'bollocks', if you look it up in the dictionary, is a rather coarse word referring to a man's genitalia. It can be used to express utter disgust or disagreement, as in "bollocks to that!" or it can be used to say that something is rubbish or nonsense, as in "you're talking a load of bollocks".

So you can imagine the look on the poor boy's face when I calmly informed him in my best professorial voice that 'bollocks' is just a couple of ranks below the F word in the lexical naughtiness rankings!!

Now, it's at times like that when I realise that English language teaching courses in Malaysia just don't teach this kind of words to kids. And yet when they go out into the big wide world, get a job and hopefully interact with English-speaking people, or watch English language TV programmes, they are going to hear all sorts of swear words and slang expressions. And they won't have a clue what to do with them!

I daresay that our young Cicero had heard the word being used in the context of the English Premier League, that bastion of linguistic cleanliness and innocence which is so popular among Malaysian TV addicts. So by extension he thought he could use the word in the formal august confines of the debating chamber without giving his adjudicator a cardiac arrest!!

A similar story happened a couple of years ago when I adjudicated a debate in Shah Alam in mainland Malaysia. One of the debaters in that particular round will always stick in my mind. He was bald, built like a basketball player and wore very big and expensive looking bracelets on his wrists. When he spoke, he sounded just like one of those gangsta rappers you see on MTV - his performance liberally punctuated with the street argot and body language of a loose-limbed, happenin' homie. Basically, I hardly understood a word.

So afterward, I asked him where he learned his English. He told me he had picked up most of his English from the lyrics of rap and hip-hop songs. The scary thing was that he was a student in my own university, where the students study English up to 20 hours a week, and gangsta rap is definitely not on the syllabus! Needless to say, our homie didn't win the debate!!

This reminds me of an old joke about the king of a distant Pacific island who visited London to meet Queen Elizabeth. When he met the Queen, and she asked him if he had had a good flight, he replied: "weeee weeeee fizzzz wooo wooo didididit diditdidit crackle I had a very fine flight thank you your Majesty!"

Later on, the Queen asked him how many wives he had, to which he replied "crackle crackle fizzzzz weee woooowooooweeee I have sixteen wives your majesty" After this strange form of conversation went on for some time, the Queen took her foreign guest aside and asked him bluntly "Your majesty, just where did you learn your English?"

To which he replied "weeee weeee ooooweeeee crackle crackle fizzzzz the BBC World Service!"

See what I mean?!

City of Fire

Well, folks, I'm back from an entirely tiger-free trip to that Bornean Paradise known as Kota Kinabalu.

Kota Kinabalu, or KK as it's known to us Borneo cognoscenti, is the capital city of Sabah, the other Malaysian state in Borneo. Unlike Kuching, KK is a sea-side town, squeezed into a valley that hugs the South China Sea coastline, a god's stone's throw from South East Asia's tallest mountain, Mount Kinabalu.

KK's name is the latest in a long-running and complex saga, interestingly. In colonial times, when Sabah was known by the rather obvious name of British North Borneo, the city was known as Jesselton, named after Sir Charles Jessel, who was Vice Chairman of the North Borneo Company. There is still a Jesselton Hotel on Gaya Street, which is probably KK's last throwback to those days of pith helmets and planter shorts.

But after the British burned the city down to stop the invading Japanese from getting their hands on it during the War, Jesselton became known for a while as Api-Api, or simply Api. Api is the Malay word for 'fire'. There are many theories as to why a seaside town would be named after fire. One of the most colourful relates to the late 19^th Century rebellion by the Bajau leader Mat Salleh, in which the British administrative office on the nearby Gaya Island was burned down.

Who knows? But one thing that is certain is that Api was quickly renamed Jesselton after the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, when the British Administration was restored. And after Independence in the 1960s, when North Borneo joined Malaysia as Sabah, the city became Kota Kinabalu, literally ‘Kinabalu city’ (or fort).

So there you have it. Look it up on the Wikipedia if you don’t believe me!!

Now, one of the many things I love about KK is the view from the plane as you come in to land. If you are lucky and the weather is fine, on one side you'll see the city, and the airport buildings, but on the other side you'll see the clear turquoise ocean. I must remember to suggest to Air Asia to play the theme tune to Hawaii Five-O on the speaker system whenever they approach KK airport. Because it really feels like you are coming into Hawaii. Da da da da DAH da, da da da da DAH....

Now what was Prof Madder doing in KK, you all scream? Well, it's like this. One of my many roles is that of Debate Club Adviser in my university. And, we went to KK to take part in the rather grand-sounding Borneo Cup Debating Championship.

The competition took place on the heartbreakingly beautiful campus of the University Malaysia Sabah, which deserves a whole blog posting to itself. UMS is a relatively new university in Malaysia, and is spread around a breathtaking array of lush hills and sparkling bays some way outside KK city.

Anyway, our contingent of debaters consisted of two teams and you’ll never guess what? We won the championship!!!! It was literally a case of ‘we came, we saw, we debated, we conquered’!

Our first team, consisting of three coolly arrogant young wags who remind me of myself in my youth, managed to wrest the trophy from our traditional rivals Swinburne University of Technology and University Malaysia Sarawak. Even the second team, made up of three girls, managed a quarter final place. I am so happy for them!!

So you can imagine that these six young debaters and myself are feeling somewhat damn pleased with ourselves at the moment!

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!!!!