Malaysian Students' Society of Manchester Night 2006

Oh my I'm in a poetry mood again... Think my tastes go around in a very erratic - I'd like to think eclectic - circle. One month it's classic Russian Bulgakov, the next - Rembrandt in Amsterdam, then ballet, followed by full-out Rachmaninov and John Donne's poetry (blame Tristan + Isolde for citing his The Good Morrow), swapping over to "father of New Age" David Lanz's iconic first album Heartsounds, and now easy, languid poems. In the coming months I'll have Mozart's Marriage of Figaro @ The Lowry, Rachmaninov's Suite No.2 for 2 pianos, his 2nd and 4th Piano Concertos, hopefully the performances of Bobby Chen and Krystian Zimmerman with the MPO, and maybe Sarawak's Rainforest Festival. Me and the arts would be like Shahril and his bands, though he'd probably proclaim that his music is the true art of all hahaha.

Saturday saw us all getting dressed up for the MSSM event of the year - M Night 2006! Preparations began early afternoon, with Li Ying, Enn Swan, and Wan Phing trooping over to my little room in various states of (un)dress. 5pm onwards saw two wonderfully patient guys, namely Enn Yong & Shyan waiting in the common room and occasionally glancing at their hypothetical watches. Takes time to curl hair, make up and get zipped into our glamourous gowns, dears. Besides, us girls do it for the benefit of you guys =P. Made a rather head-turning crowd as we tottered and sauntered respectively up Oxford Road from Whitworth Park Hall to Whitworth Hall. At the entrance there was of course the necessary quarter of an hour spent camwhoring, and by the time we waltzed to our table we were so late it wasn't even fashionable heehee.

The lengluis: WanPhing, EnnSwan, me, LiYing =P

The lengzhais? : Shyan, Roy, EnnYong, JJ

Food was biasa-lah, catered by Jati, slightly deviating from the planned menu: prawn keropok, some weird prawn rolls, swimming achar, diluted air bandung, not bad nasi minyak, spicy beef rendang (not!), lousy ayam merah, dodgy sour green grapes, nice watermelon and sweet honeydew. There was a guy all dressed up in matching suit and leather shoes but totally sockless!! (see left for evidence.) Hilarious. After a break camwhoring with Sam & Nic on the stairs outside the hall we took the shuttle mini-van to the Dancehouse Theatre for the "cultural performance" titled Chrysalis. (According to JJ the sign was destroyed by a bus ploughing into the front of the building!) On the way Miss "future-flatemate" Lim happily oggled the fit Malay boys in our van, whereas our own guys followed behind, alone in their own van because apparently no girls wanted to get in with them! Teeheehee...

Phing & I fooling around with my flower while queueing to go in for the performance.

Chrysalis featured two lousy MCs, an ok script with its cliched predictable plot but some hilarious moments, mixed standards of acting, and peppered throughout with "cultural Malaysian" dancing. Highlights include seeing Nunie in both the traditional Malay and Chinese fan dances (really she looks soo Chinese!), QiLian & MingWei looking gorgeous and graceful with their Chinese ribbon dance, the pretty darn good Bollywood dance, and the amusing roles of Shahrin our president. Interval and post-performance saw more mingling and camwhoring.












L: Malaysian Bollywood R: Nunie in the fan dance - she's the one in specs

Instead of joining the horde of Malaysians @ Zoomroom which had been rented by the MSSM for the night, we decided to troop down the road to Revolution - never been to this one, only the Fallowfield branch. No need to comment that our "decent, well-brought up Malaysian students" behaviour degenerated from there =P.