Colours of Malaysia 2008

Saturday, 15th March 2008

Colours of Malaysia, the successful event by the Edinburgh Malaysian Student's Association was held in the Southside Community Centre last Saturday.

Having arrived back from Malaysia just 2 weeks ago, my nights were immediately filled with dance practices as Iris called me and said, 'Rachel, be in the Zapin and Joget dance ok?'
And obviously being the one who constantly aims to look and act younger than I actually am, I agreed.

My daily schedule for the last week was roughly 9-12pm dermatology clinics, 1.20-5pm laboratory work in the hospital and 8-10pm practices. Yes. I had hardly anytime to sit down and watch my tvb series.

Since I wasn't the organiser this time around, I was relieved of the immense work load compared to last year when Faizi and I nearly died doing all the different things that were required.
Still, with a schedule like that everyday, for 2 weeks, to my standards of 'selamba-ness', that was practically kamikaze.

Of course, I turned up to all classes and practices eating cheese sandwiches in between. I still got my 8 hours of sleep every night and with food and sleep balanced into that equation, my brain went into overdrive when I had to practice emceeing with Faizi after the emcee that was approached before pulled out. Or had problems. Whatever, in the end I emceed.But all for the better good.

Colours of Malaysia was ah-mah-zing (can someone tell me why I am blogging about this event and not last year's Malaysia Makan Mania when I was the organiser?? I know. Because last year I did not have any photos as I was too busy jumping up and down on that day, hitting my respiratory books after the event as I had an exam the following Friday and was almost zombie-fied for a month after the event, having worked my brain and bones to the ground. By then, the M3 fever had passed and I was back to your everyday Jane)

Never mind, I enjoyed every minute of this year's event.


1st up was Joget to Hati Kama sung by Datuk Siti Nurhaliza. Do you see me kneeling on the floor? That was totally unfair to my botched up knee. But self sacrifice is good sacrifice so I did it anyway.

The next performances were all chinese, indian and sumazau dances. Thank God for sending Meryl and Mitchel to Edinburgh. Without them, who is going to represent Sabah and Sarawak?

And then there were the juniors who had ballet dancing background. So the chinese fan dancers were as graceful as swans.

Wah, to put my knee through such torture would be a nightmare. But I think before I can adopt that pose, I would've fallen flat on my face.

There were a few solo singing by the talented individuals here too. However, my favourite was Meryl's Sabahan song 'Kosorou Ko Po Nangku Doho'. I've never heard the song before, but it was so touching, it made me cry.

Meryl singing. She did it so well. NOT FAIR.

Of course, we had our fair share of mishaps. Just at the very beginning of the night, someone kicked the wire connecting the computer to the projector. The video that Tourism Malaysia gave us to put up got cut off halfway.
Not that it was a bad thing (considering the video was pretty darn boring) but it was a problem and that was when Faizi and I had to use contingency plan number 1.
So we jumped in and started explaining about the different races in Malaysia. And when we finished, the computer still hadn't started up. So we jumped into contingency plan number 2. Not. Didn't have one. Oh well. We just waited it out.

Then throughout the night, our microphones died a few times and we had to resort to just shouting. But luckily, the microphones worked again and that was absolutely fine.

And I also had the random proposal. Which I definitely said yes to as Mitchel is very sweet.
But not without the 2 carat ring.

Before the night started, I did not even have my own Baju Kebaya's or Kurung's and not even a CheongSam!!! So I borrowed. It was a good thing that I could fit into Fara's clothing. If not I would have to wear my birthday suit.

And that will not be very nice.

Still, I was pretty impressed by the level of effort put into the dances by everyone as there was hardly a mistake anywhere.

Once again, there was ample food leftover which was promptly consumed by us after the event and the food eating went all the way on to 5.30am the next day.

The team that made it happen.

I'm glad to say that I am still young.

But also facing reality, it IS time to grow up.