I’m writing this post offline, sitting in our accomodation at UNIMAS. We’ve stolen a laptop for working on our presentations and teaching materials for Bario.
Today we did a presentation to four vaguely interested students, one totally disinterested student and a couple of PhD types. The presentation was about our work in Bario, the future of project and how they could get involved with work in UNIMAS.
A few of the students seemed to be interested and listening, but one guy was asleep! I wanted to turn into every lecturer I’ve ever had and make some comment about having something better to do, but I refrained.
A massive downpour this afternoon has meant that all the washing I put out is actually wetter than when it came out of the washing machine. Underwear situation critical.
I’m watching Malaysian TV at the moment. There’s an advert on one of the channels. With the soundtrack building, a series of rousing scenes pass in front of you. There’s a jazz club, with a sexy trumpet player; a man performing gymnastics over a city sunset; a selection of well dressed men laughing and generally have a good time. What’s the advert for? It could be a recent Audi advert, or perhaps an expensive aftershave. Nippon Paint. Paint?
Malaysian TV in general is pretty hilarious. We’ve only got terrestrial, with 4 channels. We go through a routine of flicking on the TV, changing channels for 10 minutes, every now and again hearing an English word. Then a soap opera with English subs will come on, and we’ll watch that for a while. Currently, we’ve managed to work out the plot of one of these “programmes”.
There’s a guy who is blind. The program makes sure you know he’s blind by showing 40 second clips of him struggling to make his way across a room with added bumping sound effects. Then there’s his housekeeper, who he’s in love with. We think she’s a bit keen on him, but with all the acting it’s pretty hard to tell.
But he’s blind because of a motorcycle accident, and there was a flashback to her running over to him at the accident. But she didn’t know it was him, because he had a helmet on. Until she found the helmet at his house. And the bike, that was hidden under a cover. Conveniently.
Anyway, we reckon she caused the accident, and when he has his operation to “cure” his blindness, he’s going to see her and flip out like a ninja.
He’s also a bit of a bastard to her, and she hasn’t had a day off forever, and works 7am to 11pm every day. For some reason, she’s really sorry about this.
It’s a quality program, thoroughly challenging stereotypes about disabilities.
At least it’s one of the better produced programmes. Aside from the background noise being offensively loud during some scenes, at least it’s not like the programme we watched earlier. No idea what it was, but the sound recordist should be shot, and their head hung outside the production offices as a warning to those who are utterly useless at their jobs.
We watched a tearful beach scene, where you couldn’t actually hear a word that was being said because they had the mic down a hole or something.
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