She speaks. Or rather, she writes.

We start the day with lunch with Mr president of Drury University. Boring routine stuff : Tell them about your country; tell them your opinions; have fake promises of we should do this together/ we should do that someday.. The usual. Food somewhat decent, conversations Very Fake and speeches that lasts forever. Then it’s over! Time to leave for Arkansas!

We arrive at 5, check into the hotel, then leave for some centre to have fun! We skated and some jumped into the pool, all with a full stomachs of pizzas. (When you have 18 friends with you on the ice skating ring, it is fun no matter what). Then we had a game of broomball, where you use brooms to hit balls, while wearing shoes on the ring. It was just some if the fun activities the centre had for the kids there; most of them coming from a low income family and all. Something Malaysia should have, stop complaining about the lepakking budaya and actually do something about it.

The next morning, at a very reasonable hour (530 in the morn) we all woke up and got ready to go to Walmarts Saturday Morning Meeting! (Amazingly creative name wouldn’t you say?? Haha) which started at 7am. All hyped up, complete with cheers and hoo haas about the company. You know the drill ~ make everyone feel as though the people at the top cares- and that we are all a big happy family.

Which personally, I don’t buy into. Its amazing how, being in an organisation that supports free enterprise (SIFE- Students in Free Enterprise) we ourselves are drawn into the idea of being part of a big successful company. Which is good thinking - as long as you see yourselves as owners, not workers. If not it just defies the whole concept of being independant, not having your fate being decided by someone higher ranked than you.

Which I think a lot of us, even me, missed the whole point of the visit/honour of being in the meeting. We should be thinking about other creative ways to instill such worker loyalty, and how will we motivate the people under us, or our own original version of Walmart’s Saturday Morning Meeting (with a waaaay better name for starters!). But it is hard, even for me, to think in that mind frame; it’s just so much easier to be a follower than to spend time thinking about what we really want and how are we going to set out towards achieving it.

Something to definately ponder on.

Later that day we all headed down to Jack Shewmaker’s house. He is one of the BOD of Walmart, BOD of SIFE, owns/ founded J- com and a whole lot more. The first thing we did was to tour his 300++ cars.. WooooooooHooooooooooooooooo..  To one day be that rich!! And he had stories for each and every car, some funny, others poignant, and others that were just unbelievable! That took an hour or more.. Then we sat and had lemonade and cookies in his house!! State of the art house I’d have to say.. Technologically and architectually << If there exists such a word

Just arrived at Shewmaker’s house

This is one out of 6 cabins, I think. Lost count after the first few

And later came what was most valuable.. Advice and success stories of a person who once had nothing. And now, by the looks of a naked eye, has everything. Yet he continues on, relentless in his believes and mindless to the fact that most 72 year olds are kicking back and slowing down.

One thing he reminded us was to always see the good side of your enemies, don’t bother with what they do bad, focus on what they do better than you. And another was to always take every opportunity to improve on our communications skills, and at the end of every meeting/seminar always ask yourselves : what have you learnt?? Never come out of a meeting and say : that was a waste of my time. Because that will set a presedence on the way you think, and it trains the mind to work in such ways. Hmm. Advice is a form of nostalgia- Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling for more than it’s worth. Maybe when I’m 72 I’d wish I paid more attention to all that people tell me.

His house

His home theather system

need to run off - work starts in 5 mins