Malaysian Night

On Saturday, it was Malaysian Night at Imperial College. I was slightly disappointed because they didn't have currypuffs and that green kuih thing which we had last year. No teh tarik either. Although I must say that the batik cake thing was quite good and the Ladurée macaroons which Ju Ni and Adrian bought for Tao (I stole a few) really did hit the spot as a pre-bedtime snack.

I thought this year's storyline was very different from what I'd seen during previous years and I thought that taking that route was a pretty daring thing to do. The dikir barat was amazing. The backdrop -a beautifully painted scene of a small Malaysian town (think: Ipoh) was extremely impressive.

The theme of the play revolved around superstition and the supernatural: a tok bomoh (Malay witch-doctor), a vampire, one of those jumping Chinese ghost types (played by Nicole's brother, Colin, whom quite a number of people thought was quite cute), there was even this Grim Reaper-type guy who was actually a dead char siew fan (roast pork rice) vendor in disguise.

Does anyone know anything about Indian beliefs in the supernatural? As in: what form do their ghosts take if their culture does allow such superstition. I noticed that they missed out that element in the play so I'm just a little curious.

Another person whom people thought was cute was Hasnain, who played the tok bomoh's grand-uncle. He also played in the band with Qi Zhen. The live music this year was better than last year too.

Rather than putting up a Malaysian cultural show for the international community in London, I have noticed that events such as these are more often than not graced by a majority of Malaysians and a handful of their foreign buddies. Sometimes it may feel like this defeats the purpose of holding such events.

But then again, how much do we, as Malaysians know about our culture anyway? One thing good about Malaysian nights like these is that you get to experience the whole Malaysian cultural package. It's like a 3-hour long cuti-cuti Malaysia advert. It's weird how I've

probably seen more cultural dances and heard more Malaysian music during my three years in London than my 19 years in Malaysia.

I suppose some of us can be foreigners in our own homeland without knowing it.