Speech! Speech!

Unbeknownst to many, I made a speech yesterday, haha.

We had this big lucky draw thing every year and yesterday was the lucky draw ceremony. My boss supposed to fly in for the draw and he was supposed to give the speech. But unfortunately all flights to Phnom Penh were fully booked so I have to stand in.

Writing the speech was easy, since the contents are the same corporate crap. The only difference was that instead of hearing it, it's actually coming out from my mouth.

The problem is the language. The speech is in English. The locals attending the ceremony do not know English. My staff/emcee is supposed to translate my speech to them in Khmer. I was supposed to say a few lines, she say it in Khmer, then repeat again until speech ends.

Relatively simple process, rite? Wrong.

I went up, smiled, started the speech. First few lines went off brilliantly, watever I said, she translated. Then after I finished next paragraph, she turned to me and asked me,

Emcee: Is that new?
Me: Huh?
Emcee: I can't find it.
Me: Did you translate? You did, rite?
Emcee: Yeah, already but I can't find it.
Me: I'm here. This paragraph.
Emcee: But I can't find it. Where is it?

She showed me a crumpled, dog-earred paper with messy Khmer words. I shot her my "WTF?!?! Is that my problem?" look. I dont read Khmer! How am I supposed to know where it is? Apparently it was my problem, cos crowd was starting to snicker and we are looking seriously silly on stage. I guess it's just naivety on my part to believe she could do a relatively simple job like translate my speech, arrange her translated Khmer text nicely on a piece of paper and just follow my lead...Anyways, we were standing up on stage, looking like idiots, looking totally unprofessional but the show must go on. So..

Me: Ok, nevermind. I'm at the 2nd paragraph, just continue and translate on-the-spot if you can't find it.

She barely made it thru the impromptu translation, then she manage to locate the next few paragraphs on her paper and we ended the speech without any problems.

After the lucky draw, the ppl attacked the food. The sandwiches were gone in 2 minutes. No kidding. They must have been real hungry. Checkout the photos below:


"food....where's the food...." - Hungry Hordes of Phnom Penh


cool guy in front


"i can't find it" emcee & "the partially blocked" me