PTK 3

Dear Jue,

Thanks for your vote of confidence in me to excel in my PTK3.

To tell you the truth - I've felt a bit uncomfortable on the first day of the course since I could not detect even one familiar face from our batch. The participants were mostly from 2004 batch - and that somehow made me feel a bit old... (Later, I found out that the most senior among us was a guy from 1996 batch. He joked that while his friends had already sat for PTK4, he had taken PTK (1) 4 times) Anyway, me being the extrovert me, I've felt better and already made some new friends by the end of the first day.

Public speaking - as you had guessed - was not a big problem for me. I think I did okay in both BM and English sessions. Not great - just okay. But that's okay with me, given that I only woke up at 4 a.m. on the morning of the BM public speaking session day and 3 a.m. on the English public speaking session day to prepare my speech. FYI, I chose to talk about healthcare for pregnant mothers in BM, and homestay and strenghtening cultural identity was the topic for my English public speaking. Out of 10, I guess I would self-rate myself to be around 7 - 8. Not great, but not too bad, right?

I was among the few in my group to finish my individual presentation - on Malaysia's challenges and strategies to become a global halal hub - within the 10 minutes allocated for us. In fact, I was the first in my group to do that. I guess that explained why the panelist didn't complain too much about my simple slides - since one of them had just commented on how we should keep to the given 10 minutes not too long before I started mine. I would self-rate my presentation to be around 7 - 7.5. My slides were not wordy - I presented valid points, gave a lot of explanation, but my slides were not self-explanatory. And you know how some panelist prefer slides to be self-explanatory...

I think my group didn't do too bad for group presentation. And in a way, I'm glad that we were not bombarded with lots and lots of questions from the panelist. Some groups had to stand up for ages - to answer queries from the panelists until the panelists were satisfied with the answers given. What with my current state of fatness, I must admit that I could not afford to stand up for too long. (Good thing that the organizer took this into consideration and let the 3 preggie mommies to sit together with other panelist, penghulu and group leaders when we took the group photo).

It might sound like all okay - but Jue, I honestly think I did poorly for the exam. Yes, I managed to answer 5 questions in the exam, but I am not confident of making good marks in even one of the questions. It was THAT bad.

Still, I hope and I pray that I will pass the exam. It would be a hassle to sit for the exam again. Thanks for your vote of confidence in me anyway - and I hope your prayer that I will pass this PTK will come true, insya Allah