After a gap of 12 years Mr Robin has returned, but now it is only going to be part-time. While I was having a meeting in an institution that claims to be The World's Local Bank this afternoon, with Mr Edwin (not our Edwin, although Edwin was secretly quite pleased to find another Edwin), I felt a great sense of homecoming to South East Asia. "Please sign here, Mr Robin," asked the ever polite Mr Edwin. "And next here, Mr Robin," he went on. First names abound and are used more frequently thatn surnames and formalised by the addition of Mr, Mrs or, on occasions Madam. For all of my 2 years in Lao I was Mr Robin and for at least part of my time in Malaysia I will proudly be Mr Robin again.
Clearly students at my school will be used to using Mr Lawrence, although for some of them that will be quite a challenge to say. I can remember setting a speaking exercise for my Lao students based around a girl's journey to work. Naming her Laura, pleasant name, I quickly realised the error of my ways when it became clear that the letter R does not appear in lao and when it is preceeded by the dipthong 'aw' it becomes almost impossible to say. Swift lesson in speech for me.
Today at my school the INSET has mainly been focused around pastoral matters and introducing the new roles of certain staff. The pastoral training involved some startling data taken from a thorough and comprehensve student survey undertaken during the last academic year. 70% of the school were surveyed and when asked about the most important reason for coming to school 2% said the main reason they attended was to be with boyfriends / girlfriends, 23% said it was because of their friends whereas 67% said their main motivation for coming to school was to study. It would be all too easy to say that this was the polar opposite of the British education system although I would be fascinated to look at responses to a similar survey carried out back home.
And so briefly back to Mr Robin again and the tricky world of banking. I received startling news yesterday that Lexi and I's joint bank account had been opened and I was given a bank account number. It only took five working days longer than the promised one. But this is Malaysia and my experiences with banks in Blighty have been similarly frustrating. Mr Edwin, the cheery bank man, asked me to come to the branch after work so that I could collect my ATM card. However it was not that simple. I had to give him certain documents signed by Lexi and I agreeing to various terms and conditions, yet more copies of our passports and a curious letter in which I declared that Lexi and I were married and that we lived at a fixed address in the UK. I duly supplied the necessaries only to discover that Lexi had failed to sign one page of the terms and conditions. Expecting more delays and more fractiousness from my three, growing restless children my heart sank. Never fear, Mr Edwin had a solution. "Just sign both names yourself," he said, "they look alike anyway." Marvellous. I love this kind of banking.
More anon.