Proud to be Malaysian (^_^)

On Wedenesday the 30th May 07 the Malaysian students at the College of St Marks and St Johns (Marjon) held an event called the Malaysian Fest - Gemalai 2007, it was aimed to be an event of sort where we could, basically, show to the people of the South West of the Great Britain, namely Plymouth, about the tiny little country in between mighty Singapore and the infamous Thailand, called Malaysia :)

The Msian Fest starts off with a cultural performances of various dances, of course u must have the always highly regarded "Penchak Silat" as an opening act (i always thought the silat movements as one of the beautiful martial arts ever, but maybe im biased hehehe) followed by Zapin (a fast moving yet graceful dance with a beat that makes u want to join in the dance as well :p), followed by the gorgeous Chinese Fan dance, the heart thumping Indian ones and last but certainly not least is the highly entertaining various dances from the Sarawak and Sabah region, but my own personal favourite is definetely the last bit where they fused all dances together and created an extremely fantastic mix as an ending of the show.

Following the cultural performance are exhibitions of of the various ethnics groups, Malay weddings (complete with "hantaran"!) a Chinese wedding do, where they have a booth that u can get your name written in Chinese caligraphy, an Indian wedding do as well, complete with an option to draw henna on your hand!

okay, enough writing, here are the pictures of the nite :)

classic opening that never fails to amaze audiences..the "Penchak Silat"....

Last bit of the cultural show...i forgot the name of this movement hehehe opps..

my housemate posing the cute girls in the chinese costumes..

The Marjon Peeps...a highly dedicated group of people who worked hard for the event, congrats!

the beautiful Chinese Fan Dance...

they even got souvenirs from Malaysia! mane la diorang dapat nie hehehe..very resourceful!

Henna anyone? :p

gorgeous..they even have the time to do this!

So okay, im not an overly patriotic person, i love my country to bits and even though i have travelled the world (ecewahhh hehe well almost most parts of the world :p) there isnt a single place that i have been that could even compare to the country i called home..but at the risk of sounding a little bit corny, i have never been more happy to be a malaysian until i saw it from a different perspective all together :)

i invited some of my international frends to the Msian Fest as well, and i saw the show through their eyes and as i was explaining about the clothes and the weddings and the ceremonies and the food (which was gooooooooooooddd!!) i started seing it differently too, and i have never appreciated what we have more than i do now, i know it sounds a little bit cliche' but hey, that's just how i feel :p

but seriously, congratulations and a job well done to the malaysian students of the Marjon college, they were so dedicated and hard working and resourceful, and since i saw personally first hand on how hard they practise for the cultural show, working into late hours into the nite, most of them had to learn 5 different types of dances and what with the costume changes (getting the costumes!) they were amazingly fantastic and again, congrats to them!