BOOKED

i thought to myself, whoa, how come i hardly say anything about my own country here? or not that much. i was thinking about this because recently one of my foreign friends told me he saw that tourism advert on astro in the hotel and he asked me what does it really mean? malaysia truly asia. the question stumped me. i can't give any good answer to that. so i thought i'd put down here my thoughts on a few things about my country malaysia. i don't talk much about my own country because well, you hardly notice things that you're familiar with . you just take it for granted. you hardly notice anything in your own backyard so to speak. but i'm going to put things under a microscope . i will pretend that i'm interviewing myself and say what i think about this and that.... my thoughts on a few things about my country...

so what is this place called bangsar then?

oh i dunno... it's a place about ten minutes drive from my work place. used to be very trendy about ten years or so ago. half of the people living there are assholes and the other half are wogs. i hate it.
these days a lot of other areas are aping this place. you know, malaysian population can be divided into...

yes , chinese, malays , and indians (not neccessarily in that order)...

no , i mean to say malaysians can be divided into several kinds of fruits...bananas, coconuts , ubi keling and assorted nuts... racists, fundamentalists ....

ubi keling isn't a fruit surely? but coming back to the three major races...


yes, it is actually a type of tuber with black skin and white flesh. and yes, it's true you know about that joke that goes something like this; if there is one chinese, you see him working hard to make money, but if there are two of them they will start gambling. if there is one indian , you see him drinking toddy, but if there are two of them they will form a debating society. if there is one malay , you see him sleeping, and if there are two of them they will start having a kenduri.

i think that nicely sum up the saliant traits of the three major races in malaysia.and explains the state of the various races in the country right now.

you mean the chinese although a minority is controlling the economy , the indians....

you know what one american collegue of mine once said ? he said if it's not for the chinese the malays will still be living in trees... the fucker is a racist bastard i know- he married a local chinese- but there's a grain of truth to what he says. and lately malays have been grumbling and whinying about how they have been left behind and all that. the malay papers are now full of this whingeing and wringing of hands. malay chauvinist blogs too. one guy by the name of KJ (that is kadir jasin) even penned a poem lamenting the sad plight of the malays in their own land. you can read it for yourself here. i was moved to even post a comment. check it out . you may learn something. (from my comment i mean).

that is interesting. so the malays, when they are down they write poetry? are the malays a very literary people?


well, i was reading the golden chersonese and the way thither by elizabeth l. Bird quite recently. this is quite an interesting book about her travel in the the malay archipelago in the nineteenth century. in her brief introduction to the country and the malays she mentioned that the malays don't really have a literature of their own. she is actually half correct because all the classic malay literatures are basically either derived from hindu mahabarathas or the arabic sources including the one thousand and one nights stories.

but we have a very nice and unique poetry form called pantuns. my home state goes even further. we still have a vibrant dikir barat shows which uses impromptu two line pantun rhyme somewhat akin to rap music of the western world. but it's much more complex and varied than rap. and they think nothing of covering famous songs in dikir barat versions. one of my favorites in the old days was a song called pasar malam. the first lines goes like this...

wa pergi pasar malam
wa beli seluar dalam
lobang lobang....

and it is sung to tom jones she's a lady.
in those days some dikir barat can be very risque or downright pornographic but our great leader tuan guru nik aziz put a stop to all this nonsense. he didn't even need to give out a fatwa but we all listen and obey him whether we like it or not.

that's interesting about nik aziz, but we'll do that one some other time. but how about today? do we have any good literature in malay?

these days like anything else to do with malays, we are fucked. malay kids these days, if they read anything at all, they only read silly malay romance and malay chick lits which are probably ten times worse than sophie fucking kinsella. i may be wrong. i haven't read a malay novel since my school days which seems like a hundred years ago. probably the last malay novel i read was shahnon ahmad's ranjau sepanjang jalan...and i remeber it was a very very intense and boring book. think of some of the worst booker shortlist books and you get the idea.

looks like nothing seems to be right in your view. you remind me of the book a confederacy of dunces and the main character, that fat ignatius reilly....

funny you say that. i read that book about a year ago but half way through i accidentally left the book in the hotel limousine on the way to shanghai airport. and i just bought another copy recently and now resuming from where i left off before. don't call me that or i'll punch you in the nose. i think we should end the conversation here before i get mad....