Guess what people, I don’t know if you know it yet, but we’ll be celebrating ‘Malaysia Day’ this 16th of September. What’s it all about, you ask? It’s about commemorating the establishment of the Federation of Malaysia which consisted of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore back in 1963. But get this, we only started celebrating this in 2010.
It’s like someone woke up 47 years later and said “Hey you know what, that was actually an important day, Dude. Hey Sabah & Sarawak, sorry we didn’t throw a welcoming party back then and treated you just as a major natural resource all these years with no regards to your indigenous tribes and holding back on a lot of citizenship issues. And hey Singapore, you’re not invited to this par-tay any more coz you left, suckaaa!”
Aside from that, there’s really nothing much to look forward to this month. Raya has passed for the Malays and we’ve had enough of rendangs and ketupats and lemangs. We would’ve been too traumatised by that last 18 hour traffic jam crawl from Butterworth to Gombak to do anything else. The Indians have to wait until the end of next month to get their groove on for Deepavali. It’s business as usual. And boy, do Malaysians hate business as usual.
Technically in Malaysia we’re celebrating something every month. Work is what happens in between bursts of desperate escapisms. We constantly need to get away, go somewhere, make the most of what little time that we have, or have been given.
It doesn’t matter if that upcoming 3 day weekend was to celebrate a day of remembrance for fallen heroes. As long as Hard Rock Hotel doesn’t charge school holiday rates, you should be fine with whatever.
It doesn’t matter if that mid week break was to pay homage to the King’s birthday, to you it would mean finally going head on, on a ladies’ night and not having to worry about a hangover the next day.
Have we lost the sense of meaning, or the ability to appreciate something for what it is, rather than what it allows us to do. Sort of like immortalising the bong rather than the chronic itself. Like keeping trophies of empty exotic beer bottles when you’ve pissed out the good stuff on the floor next to the urinal instead of in it. Like watching Vanessa Hudgens going ape shit on a 50 calibre wearing tight spandex and ghetto hair, in fishnets and ripping bullets through a chasing dragon. Okay, that last bit was out of topic, but Thank God For Sucker Punch.
Case in point Malaysia, it doesn’t take too much to stop for a moment and listen to the sounds of the past. Trust me you’ll feel a lot more wholesome and patriotic while you lounge about near the pool bar on your next mini break.
In the meantime, I feel like a reminiscing some scenes from Sucker Punch myself….
