for Miss Leow

Miss Leow's in the centre

Sorry for the late post. This should probably go up latest by late last month, but the lazy me was just too lazy to write about it. So here it goes:

On October 22, 2007, the whole community of Institut Perguruan Bahasa-bahasa Antarabangsa celebrated a retirement ceremony of Miss Leow Lee Lin. Serving in this college since 1st December 2001, she has touched the heart of many students, colleagues and people. And i was one of them.

And her departure from IPBA is a lost to many who need her.

I knew her because she was my Language Description (LDS) lecturer during the Foundation. And the I was ignorant then, never cared much about what i studied because learning LDS is about the learning and understanding of grammar rules. For rules are unbreakable, they bored me.

But something about Miss Leow is that she managed to catch my attention when she taught. Sharing stories is one of the things she liked doing. She would share with us how her life when studying abroad, where she comes from, how to survive when going to 'ang moh(orang putih)' tempat, the culture overseas. This small little things that she did every once a while were what i was looking for to listen.

And this time round, I was asked to produce a video for her in conjunction of her retirement. It was not easy in retrospect. I wanted the video to be lively, enjoyable and more importantly integrate elements of students who are now in overseas. So, i approached my friends there to offer a hand. Thanks to Jarod who was the first to agree, later came Guna (from UOA) and Shim (from MacQ).

On my part, my team and i had to chase after some lecturers and students for their thoughts on her. Despite some problems faced dued to the dawning of Hari Raya Aidilfitri, I managed to gather all the neccesary information.

On the night before the Monday of her retirement, all committee members gathered round and share their product. Mine was in too. All of them were quite excited and positive about it, except the element of music which was a little saddening for which Miss Leow did not like. Furthermore, the draft which embedded with Jarod's song was too lengthy (more than 10 mins).

After a long discussion with Allen, who was the representative for Miss Leow's retirement, we decided to break the video into 2: one which is of production by me, and one which is a special message for Miss Leow from students of VUW.

The day came and the ceremony began. We have performances from the group of French students, Japanese students and German students. Too bad, i was in charge of the technical part, so couldnt get the chance to shoot photos of them all.

OURS 1 was a blast, cos what we did (includes the singing of 'You raised me up by Westlife' by all Cohort1) really made her tears dropped. And the video and music video (by Jarod&team) really impressed her.

In her speech, she thanked us for all the things we did for her. She said that in her life, she has gone through the good times and not-so-good times. She won't call the latter bad because that's what taught her later in life. One thing i liked about her speech was when she shared with us her experience once with a taxi driver. The taxi driver once said that dalam dunia ini, kita ade suka dengan duka. kita tak boleh ambik suka kemudian buang duka, atau ambik duka buang suka. kita mesti buka kepada kedua-dua.

To me, apart from telling us that we need both happy and not-so-happy moments in our life for which we have to face, I think what she's trying to say was that in the line of government service, there are times when we don't like what we are asked to do, or when our opinions are halted or when we don't agree with our orang atasan, we have to be patient and opened to what they said. And it is when we are opened in our mindset that new understanding and wisdom can fall in. How meaningful was her speech.

So, to Miss Leow, you are one of the greatest teachers I'd met in my life.

Our Cohort 1 raptai performance on 'You raised me up'

That's Faisal and Hani (MC for the day), Faisal, Anas and me (Technical)