What a wonderful day!

The sun was out but so was the bitterly cold wind that went right through our paper thin kebayas and baju kurung as we stood outside the bride’s house waiting for the arrival of the groom and his entourage. It was a short walk but for the groom, who had just arrived from warmer climes, it must have been the longest ever, for even the best man, born and bred in London, stood shivering in his black baju Melayu.

Passengers on the red double decker peered out to look at the riot of colours outside the north London semi D and passers-by on that serene Sunday afternoon, looked on curiously as two boys carrying the bunga manggar led the entourage to the doorstep. All that was missing was the kompang beat and the berbalas pantun.

Inside, the bride sat patiently on the pelamin decorated by friends the day before. If not for the cold air that kept rushing in every time someone opened the door, one could easily think this was somewhere in Malaysia.

For the bride and groom, the event in London was a repeat performance for friends and relatives who couldn’t make it to the wedding proper in Melaka last December. Besides, a traditional Malay wedding is not something that we see everyday, so everyone got excited and wanted to be involved. I gave up the opportunity to see the famous Shahrukh Khan so that I could make myself busy the day before the kenduri. And what a wise decision that turned out to be.

With Nina the wedding planner making sure that everything runs smoothly, everyone did their bit.

Khalid, Diba and Dila ceated a simple yet beautiful pelamin, before doing the sirih junjung. Zu and Ida and Rehana, As and Mi cried their eyes oput peeling and slicing onions. Nazir and Kasubi did the tent and Tok Din did what Tok Din always does best – cook.

The bride’s mum was busy making sure that everyone else was busy.

We gave the tepak sireh and dulangs a good polish with brasso, the whiff of which transported me back to the days of kenduri galore in the kampong.

Others were busy making bunga rampai and then I decided to try a hand at henna painting. It was fun once you get the hang of it and the patterns sort of flows but the initial problem was making the henna stain brighter. Some suggested lime, while others via sms suggested minyak cap kapak. We tried all.

My creations

Nona proved to be a naturale and soon became a hit with not only the bride but the kids.

Nona's creations

Rehana did the hair, creating an Amy Winehouse bouffant before putting the tiara and the veil, while Lisa did the make up.

We ended the day with karaoke - Parents Not Allowed vs Teenagers Very Loud. You can't get more Malaysian than that, especially on a bitterly cold day!

It was a lovely day, even if it was cold. It is on days like this, when the community gets together, you do not feel so much the pangs of homesickness. And what a lovely way to welcome the groom into our close-knit community.

Happy Deepavali and RIP my dear friend

To all my friends, readers, and bloggers celebrating this joyous occasion, have a wonderful day!

But on this day of the Festival of Lights, my thoughts are with the family of a very dear old friend, Datuk S.P Annamalai who was stabbed to death in Penang yesterday.

When I started life as a journalist, the courts were our training grounds. I was posted to Penang and the Penang magistrates court, (a stone's throw away from our office), was my haunt everyday. In Annamalai, I found a friend. One who explained patiently to a young cub reporter the workings of a case, the do's and don'ts in court reporting. I tagged along with him and Karpal and even Shafie, trying to sniff out important and headline grabbing cases. He was then Karpal's legal assistant. He even consoled me when I sobbed after heart wrenching cases. I followed him around from canteen to court room, covering criminal and sometimes brutal murder cases. And yesterday, Annamalai, my friend, became a victim of one. Everyday, there are stories of murder and violence. I didn't think that one day, I'd be reading about you. How sad. How very sad.

Rest in peace, my dear friend. My condolence to the family.

This is the full story from The Star:

PENANG: A well-known civil lawyer died shortly after a man stabbed him on the back with a long knife in Green Hall.

Datuk S.P. Annamalai (pic), 59, was walking back to his car with clerk S. Nalaaini, 20, when a man suddenly walked up from behind and stabbed him at 6.35pm yesterday.

Nalaaini, when met at Gleneagles Medical Centre (GMC), said the dark-complexioned man shouted as he stabbed Annamalai.

“I was so stunned that I dropped the files I was carrying. The man then took the blood-soaked knife and swung it at me but missed.

“My boss’ blood splattered all over my blouse. He also swung the knife at another lawyer who happened to be at the car park, but missed before fleeing on a motorcycle ridden by an accomplice,” she said.

She said several lawyers from the Bar Council Legal Aid Centre heard her screams and ran out of the office.

“One of them then helped my boss to his car and rushed him to the GMC,” she said.

Annamalai died at about 8pm. Forensic pathologist Datuk Dr Bhupinder Singh will conduct a post-mortem today.

Another clerk, G. Selvi, 36, said she was walking to a nearby bus stop when one of the staff at the office alerted her on what had just occurred.

“I believe the assailant was lying in wait for him. I do not know who would want to do this to him as he only handled civil cases. He had not been handling criminal cases for some time.

“He was in a good mood the whole day. He even bought my daughter, seven, a Deepavali dress. This was the first time he had done such a thing in my 16 years of working for him,” she said.

Selvi said her boss’ wife, who was in India to visit relatives, had been informed of his death, adding that she was expected to return to Penang this morning.

Annamalai, the current deputy president of Ramakrishna Ashrama, leaves behind a daughter who is a lawyer in Australia, and two sons who are working in Kuala Lumpur.

Today is the day...

...that history is made as the uncharted path of cyberworld and everything that goes with it, is tested. And the person to tread this uncharted path, on his way to the High Court this very moment is Ahiruddin Attan, or better known as Rocky the blogger of Rocky Bru. The legal suit brought against him by his former employer, the NST and four individuals in the newspaper group, is clearly a case of alternative media vs mainstream media.

In the next few days, blogger Jeff Ooi will walk the same path as Rocky.

A lot has been written about this here , here and here and everywhere else. So at this moment, I just want to reflect back on the Rocky that I know.

It was in the nineties that I first met Rocky, a giant of a man who came to be the London correspondent of the NST. As usual, the London group of correspondents from Utusan, Berita Harian, the Star, Bernama and TV3 would get together for a welcoming party to this new member of our group and say goodbye to one going back.

As someone who remain in London, I welcome these young breed of journalists and embrace them as my brothers and sisters. Throughout the late eighties and nineties, there was a stream of correspondents: Zamzam, Azizi, Azman, Rahim, Hj Shahrum, Ali Mansur, Fauzi Omar, Baidura, Karim, Selvi, Danial, Padma, Tony Emmanuel and Saiful to name a few from the NSTP group and others like the late Tan Kah Peng and Ho Bang Kee from the Star, Baharom, Abdullah Hassan and Hamzah of Utusan.

We worked together and we had fun together. We shared stories and scooped each other, but then that is the name of the game.

Rocky is a tough, hard core journalist who enjoyed his work and certainly his stint in London.

We covered stories together in the continent, the All England Badminton and many more. And when we were not working, we played scrabble till the early hours of the morning. The NST apartment, where we once lived, became a meeting place for the others as well.

On days that Rocky bought Haagen Daz ice cream, I’d receive a phone call that it was time for a session of scrabble. And, of course, he’d add, “It would be really nice if there’s bubur pulut hitam.”. That was the cue for me. For some strange reason, he enjoys Haagen Daz, chocolate flavour with bubur pulut hitam.

For all the tough looking guy that he is, Rocky is a gentle giant who dotes on my children, who carried little Taufiq on his shoulders as we wandered around the streets of Birmingham in between games of badminton, while covering the All England. He bought Taufiq his first Barcelona strip and won over Taufiq as his ally for ever.

All too soon, Rocky went back. And the rest is history.

This case is pulling me in all directions. This case of NST vs Rocky. My former workplace which I still have a lot of love for vs a friend, a brother, for whom I have a lot of affection.

Readers of this little blog will have noticed that whenever I wrote about Jalan Riong, it is with great affection and fond memories that I had done so. It is after all the place that had given me the best training in journalism, and we were proud to announce at any event, that we represented it. It is after all the place where I met my soul mate and fell in love and the place where I met many wonderful and talented people who I admire and love to this day.

At this moment, at 0231 in the morning, while the temperature outside dips to minus zero and there’s snow flurries falling on the ground for the second day, my heart is heavy with sadness as I write this.

Yesterday, I was at the press conference when the Prime Minister was asked to comment about this first test case. As a blogger myself, I am very interested and very concerned. Datuk Seri Abdullah said, ”the government is not going to censor what is on the internet.”

I have transcribed the reply below:

"We do not censor what is on the internet. But you must understand that there are laws, undang-undang on defamation, on sedition. There are laws enforceable.... so they must bear in mind they cannot hide, they cannot take advantage of doing something that is against the law and it is in that context that perhaps the newspaper is taking action against them. Undang-undang...ada undang-undang. They must know. They cannot hope to be protected from some kind of cover whatever they think they have.

Duty and responsibility go together and if you want freedom, what is freedom without responsibility. Freedom without responsibility is anarchy. Actually it becomes irresponsible."

PS.
Bearing in mind that the case is still going on, please be very careful with your comments. Thank you.

Back to school.....

The last few days have been really hectic. Ask anyone who has started school again, and they will tell the same story. Not that I have to wash and ‘kapur’ my shoes or sharpen my pencils- but I had to gather my thoughts (again!) and psyche myself up for the term and the year ahead. I think last year, I did very well, considering that I had not been a student for the past what…30 years? I remember sitting on the steps of the uni, biting my fingernails, not unlike my first day at primary one. The only difference was that, I haven’t got with me the tupperware tumbler with ice tea, wrapped up with tea towel, held together with a rubber band. Mak used to remind me to bring this.

Anyway, a year had passed and what a challenging year that was. I had classmates who were as young as my children but were very, very nice – never once asked my age and always included me in their activities. One professor is even younger than me. And needless to say, I felt so young again – a new lease of life.

This second and final year is a bit of a drag but a challenge nevertheless. I have older classmates and thus wiser and much more experienced and very well read and well informed in their area of studies. And apart from that I am left very much on my own to prepare for my dissertation. The last few days, I have reacquainted myself with Syair Dang Sirat, an old unpublished syair that I found at the British Library. And believe me, I sleep, talk and dream in old Malay Syaer! Last year I did Hikayat Indraputra and Syaer Bidasari. Go to Hkt Indraputra for the finest art of flirting and get two boxes of tissue before Reading the plight of Bidasari!

And yes, I have had to learn the Jawi text all over again. Learning Jawi is one thing, but learning old Jawi scripts is quite different - for me at least. But I am plodding along.

I can’t explain my fascination with these old Malay texts. When I told friends that I am going back to uni, the reaction was a mixture of encouragement, envy and downright insults, such as : “Are you maaaaaad???” Well, there were times when I thought I was. But I have had the most enriching year as I had spent a lot of my waking hours in the library – looking up old manuscripts and hikayats. I’d be quite happy with a sleeping bag and a flask of coffee between shelves H-J, cos these are where some old Malay books are kept. My uni is one of the oldest centre for Malay studies outside the Malay region and indeed it has some of the most respected authorities on the subject – and they are not even Malay. The year has also been most fruitful as I had attended some conferences in Leiden and Paris where I met more great minds on the subject that I am working on.

I believe being away for so long has made me go reverse in motion, if that is possible. I look back and I realised that most of the things that I have dabbled in involved going back to my roots, to the Malayness of my being. I have tracked down old Malay sailors who ventured out to sea in the forties to document their expeience at sea, I have documented old Malay letters that our Sultans wrote to Raffles and Light and from them to our Sultans and now I am devouring old Malay manuscripts as if there’s no tomorrow.

I feel so priviledged to be able to see (and even handle) original manuscripts such as the one written by Sultan Ahmad of Terengganu to Baron Van der Capellan, written in 1824 and now kept in a museum in Berlin. This is considered one of the most beautiful Malay manuscripts, with its fine decorations and even finer language. There are other letters, funny and interesting ones in reply to Raffles’ requests for help to drive the Dutch out of Batavia.

These replies reflect how diplomatic our rulers were even then. Rather than give an outright rejection, some of the most original excuses were conjured. One request for food was met with something along the lines: Ayam, kambing dan lembu semuanya terkena penyakit”. So, there!

Francis Light once wrote to a Perak Sultan, asking Perak to be an ally of the British. But Perak was already then an ally of the Dutch, known to be quite possesive and ruthless when dealing with straying partners. Thus this reply from Perak: Kami bagaikan perempuan yang cantik, tapi sudah ada suami yang sangat cemburu!”

Oh, I can tell these stories until the cows come home – and it is now 06:28 and I need to get ready to go to school. More later.