Ya see, I am supposed to participate in a focus group discussion. I've been to a few of these and here I am again because 1) I actually believe 'they' really2 consider what the participants say; 2) I am an attention-whore who loves the undivided attention of the discussion moderator; and 3) Once you go to a few of these babies, you'll get hooked somehow and you JUST have to go again and again.
Okay, I lied, the 'token' is RM150. And I get to escape the kids for a few hours (pinch of salt, people, pinch of salt).
Okay, so what's so ignorant about that? Well, for one thing, despite passing by the building for a gajillion time, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get from my office. I literally broke out in a cold sweat, printing oodles of Google map for direction to the damned place. Yes, I don't have a GPS, because I like to rough it up (yeah right).
Another instance of my ignorance is, despite depleting 1/725th of the tropical rainforest in the form of my printed Google map, I still missed the turn that I was supposed to take, the one I have taken a thousand times before, the turn that takes me straight to Mak Ngah's place. If I were made fun of this fact in the future, I shall blame a big-ass bus that seemed stationery right in front of the UN Building, that made me missed the friggin turn (actually, the bus is trying to make the turn I was supposed to make but the road was so congested, making the bus non-moving for a bit).
So I had to make a U-turn, big deal. A huge-ass U-turn, but at least by then I knew for sure which turn I was supposed to go into.
Anyways, long story short, I made it to the focus group discussion venue in one piece. Upon entering the international ad agency that organized the whole she-bang, I was told dinner is served and was taken to the agency's pantry where three lovely ladies (first impression) were sitting. There were O'Brien's Sandwiches which I never had and wasn't all that impressed with anyways; and some coffee or tea.
Okay, so the three lovely ladies, they were birds of a feather (fill in the blanks yourself). I don't mind this, I could easily be in the same situation if it was reversed (as in, me in the a group of three lovely lady birds of the same feather... umm, yeah... and there's another lady bird who's not of the same feather -- what is it with this post and all the sayings!). But thing is, if it was reversed, AT LEAST, the one left out can understand the conversation...
Thing is, the three ladies were speaking in their mother tongue. Me, most of the time, I speak in OUR mother tongue, the MALAYSIAN mother tongue. Bahasa Melayu or the Malay language (and yes, I write in English, this blog is, after all, a release). The three ladies, were carrying on and on and on in their mother tongue. There were only four of us there. I was like *crickets*. What the hell am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to say?
On and on and on they conversed, with the minimal English words peppered here and there (I think I caught 'epidural' at one point, so maybe they were talking about childbirth), so naturally, seeing that the focus group discussion was for mothers, I can totally relate, if I knew the language, that is. So I sat there, kinda dumbly, not knowing what to do...
You see, an ignoramus is someone who is perhaps oblivious to the bloody obvious.These three ladies? You be the judge.
extra prescription. the whole focus group discussion merits another entry on itself, by virtue of being one of the most ridiculous one I've been to... btw, I have quite a high tolerance of ridiculous, so that's saying a lot...
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