Kam Raslan's right. In the preface for his new book, Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures he writes that we've known Dato' Hamid all our lives. Seeing as my own dad is an old boy of MCKK, the people I get to meet when he drags me to an Old Boy function and the people he tells me of, reflect the characters found in Kam's book. It really does feel like I've known Dato' Hamid all my life. Dato' Hamid is a civil servant of the Tunku Abdul Rahman generation. He is the sort of person you rarely see nowadays, a fine example of the anachronistic Malay. This generation, groomed in the ways of the colonial British would be out of place not just in 21st century Malaysia, but in Britain too. And yet, Dato' Hamid, in all his snobbishness and patronising ways, is essentially a Malaysian. Without people like him, our country would probably never exist at all. At least not like we know it now. I'm glad that Kam Raslan decided to capture this ...
glad about this ted and will come. it's a great list
ReplyDeleteam worried still about there being too many live lit events on the calendar and lit fatigue setting in.
if raja ahmad is holding this regularly then perhaps i need to scale back readings@seksans.(which i already was thinking of with the poetry slam starting up) can you let me know what the year's calendar is likely to look like?
tried to get to raja ahmad's gallery yesterday to see the malay college exhibition but after an hour and a half in a traffic jam i had to turn back. please let RA and your dad know that at least we tried.
hell btw is not full of flames, it is a bumper to bumper crawl on jalan ampang with a car nearly out of petrol, four fed-up passengers, and a bursting bladder - for all eternity!
Now I use google map-it is much better than before.
ReplyDeleteSharon: Raja Ahmad is planning for this to be a monthly event, but I think it would be a shame for the Seksan Readings to be scaled down...
ReplyDeleteBerisman: Wow! I didn't know they updated Google Maps! That is very useful, thank you for notifying me.
hi ted,
ReplyDeletei have mailed you about your story.
thanks
syarafuddin sulaiman
have emailed you back! check your inbox.
ReplyDelete