Saturday, October 30, 2010

No Shoes? No problem.

Occasionally I get comments from readers who do appear to be interested in what life is like in Malaysia.  Any of us, truly, have interesting lives, to someone else!  Yesterday I gave an exam to 45 of my students and since I had no tasks to do while invigilating (overseeing the exam; 'proctoring' in US-jargon), I decided to take a few photos.

You might notice that the tables were scattered about, but I was in limited space and had to fit 35 desks into this particular room, and provide separation.  You will also notice the shoes under their chairs.

Girls especially, kick their shoes and sandals off immediately after sitting down.  I find this quite amusing since I come from a culture and climate where people have to wear shoes all of the time.  Sometimes I go around the room and select the prettiest shoe and take a photo (with permission, of course).  For this exam day, the Shoe-of-the-Day was a pretty brown pump with glitter on the toe end.

Shoe of the Day

4 comments:

  1. Yeah.. you are right we do kick our shoes and sandals off after sitting down.. may be it is out of "inherited practices" our ancestor used to sit cross-legged on the floor..which mean we need to kick off our shoes to enable us to sit like that..
    May be it is just the weather.. and our culture.. we were used to "terompah" (wooden sandal) and slippers.. culture-wise we need to wash our feet to enter the house.. now!.. there is something for you to find out.. there are still Malays out there who put our water container "tempayan" and "gayong or pencedok" for visitors to wash their feet before coming to their houses..

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  2. Hi,
    Found your blog recently while doing some research about Kuantan..I'm from Kuantan myself,has been living in Australia for almost 6 years..Keep on writing nice stuffs like these!

    Maybe we can meet up when I am back in town sometimes..Would also like to link your blog to mine if I have the permission..:-)Cheers~

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  3. I *love* going barefoot.

    Azrul, what is your blog link? I would be interested in reading how an orang Kuantan experiences Australia. If in Malay, okay, I can read.

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  4. Feel free to visit..Nothing much about Australia though..:-)..It's a mix of everything..Nice meeting you..a Kuantanese now perhaps?;-)..I've linked your blog to mine..Cheers!

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