documentation workshop

it seemed that the documentation workshop i attended in ipoh was actually for the religious only but i was sent by my office anyway. so there i was, the only lay person among the 8 nuns there.

the workshop was held at the la salle centre in ipoh, which is just next to the st michael’s institution (SMI), and it was facilitated by br. vincent corkery, who is an expert in minutes/notes taking.
above pictue shows the front porch of the la salle centre. it is a very ‘green’ place, with lots of plants surrounding it and beautiful landscape. it has a fish pond too, and 3 fish aquariums.

well, it was an interesting workshop as i get to do lots of practical work. everday it was writing, writing, and more writing. this was the first workshop/seminar i attended that i used up almost 50 pages of paper! (A4 size, examination pad paper). well, only at one time i managed to use a laptop to take notes… not mine of course.
me at the workshop, pretending to be hard-working at the laptop — >

we were taught on how to take notes from different style of presentations. like day one, when br. vincent read a story, we had to jot down what we heard, then later on write out the story based on the notes we jotted down. then there was also notes taking from video clips, powerpoint presentation with a speaker, participants relating experiences/sharing, forum and of course meeting. yes, there was one day focused entirely on how to take effective minutes.

i like taking notes from stories because it was very easy to write out the stories based on the notes, wheras to write out report based on what a speaker present or on the going-ons in a forum, was more difficult.

at many of the exercises, br. vincent checked our work individually. this is the time that we were glad that we were a small group!

br. vincent also read to us a few poems, the reason he said to reveal to us the ‘effective use of language in poems’. language in poems is very rich, he said. and he also said that we don’t have to understand some poems. some poems are meant not to be understood, and it’s ok! i was surprised by this revealation. no wonder i did wonder to myself why some of the poems i came across sound so confusing.

one poem that he read over and over again (throughout the 5 days) and in a most wonderful poetic manner was the poem ‘tarantella’. it was a beautiful poem (but can’t understand it!) especially if read correctly. have a look at the poem, and notice the ‘hip! hop! hap!’ and the ‘chancing, glancing, dancing’ and the ‘ting, tong, tang!’. if read in a nice poetic way, it sound oh so nice.

for 2 days, we went over to the SMI canteen (they actually call it foodcourt) for our lunch and i must say i was pretty impressed with the canteen. indeed it should be named as foodcourt, as it is huge and it has 16 stalls! 16 mind you, which include all ethnic food, and where they have almost anything you can find in foodcourt/hawkers’ centre. wow! the school i was in had only 5 stalls. perhaps it is because SMI is a established big well known school, thus the canteen too has to be such.