Malaysian Night 2008

Yesterday I attended the Malaysian Night organised by the Malaysian and Singaporean students of Reading University. I went with my colleagues, half of whom I only met yesterday. What started off as an after-work chat on Thursday with a colleague ended up with six of us going to the event the next day. Only two of us were Malaysians, the rest were from Hong Kong.

L to R: Diane, Michelle, Tas, Alan, Horace and me

The event started with a nasi lemak dinner. Even though I was used to eating spicy food, the sambal proved too much for my other colleagues. I must attest the spicy-o-meter was actually above average even for Malaysian standards. One of them only ate the rice, and that's for dinner!

..with rendang chicken

Nasi lemak dinner

What damage the dinner has done to my colleagues' taste buds, a performance afterwards sort of made up for it. They told me they enjoyed the performance a lot. The students presented a play entitled "Sepadu" which reenacted the 1969 May 13th racial riots in Malaysia. The show was interjected with dance performance, singing and lots of humour despite presenting a dark spot of the country's history. It was a production well choreographed, I must say. It's no mean feat to produce a 2-hour play and juggle with time to study.

Snapshots of an "uprising"

What I do like seeing Malaysians here is that we do not see each other as a Chinese, Malay or Indian Malaysian. We see ourselves as Malaysians. If only all Malaysians have the chance to see ourselves from outside the country, then I do not see the relevance of having coalition parties that represent each race group. If I can take anything from "Sepadu", it would be "...after all, when we cut ourselves, don't we all bleed red?"