No, i'm not referring to the MSO's Malam Kenduri in Bruce just the other nite. I'm talking about my 10 hour slow cooked
herbal chicken (pic) which tastes like it was meant to be. But enough about that. Lets get to the juicy details of last nights "flagship event"...
..which was what the emcee called it. MSO's flagship event. Dictionary.com's defination of flagship is
the best or important one of a group or system. ok. Now. bearing in mind that I have friends in all places I'll try to keep the review as err, neutral as possible. and no names =P.
The event started late this year, as usual, at 8 pm. Call me a non-conformist, but i'll break tradition and still love any committee that can start on time =) The theme this year was Wild West, which was nicely spelled out on a board on the stage. A little into the malam a letter fell off to imply something more obscene, but i dont think anyone noticed. Anyway, there were lots of people in checkered shirts, bandanas, cowboy hats, and of course, the props. I think we were all getting a little too violent (and obscene) with all the guns and sabres
=)
Not to mention a special horse in a special place!
My friend commented that we all looked like different clans, cos everyone was predictably checkered blue, checkered red, brown, etc.
Now, the food! Oh the food MUST be good! For me an event can have the appeal of 3 hour tutorials, but if the food is good, it saves the day. Now, what do you think when you see this:
No, that brown thing isn't cooked grass, its minced rendang. There was tomato rice, 2 types of chicken (the reason why the malam cost FIVE dollars, instead of four from last year, or so a committee member told me), cabbage, papadam, ONE popiah the size of a Faber-Castel eraser, fruits, and juice and water which they named cactus juice and err.. some venom or poison thingy. Creative names, but it tasted EXACTLY like how it looked. even my macro shots couldn't up (or lower!) the appeal. I liked: the red chicken, and the small popiah. Cabbage and rice i ate out of necessity (veggies!), but i think they overdid it with the rendang. My ex ex ex MSO president told me that the greatest challenge is to provide warm food. But factoring that out, i still saw whole tables with the grass, i mean, rendang and red rice untouched. hmm.. they dont like Malaysian style grass/chicken maybe?
I did like the decorations of the event, especially the stylish booklet each table got. Plus there was this nice pebble and candle centrpiece for each table =) I also give kudos to fast service of liquids, cutlery, and fruits!You can see them rushing about in the background, serving all 250+ of us. Well done!
Moving on to the presentations. First was the Talentime finalists. which was a bit deceiving because everyone sang. croaked. warbled. with a guitar. variety - because a talent shows implies variety -
zero. Talent? err, lets not go there. Emcee jokingly explained that they called it
Talentime because of discontinuation of Malaysian Idol in Malaysia. hmm. will there be a discontinuation of Talentime in the future? But. Congratulations to the winner =) Her rendition of Zombie (The Cranberries) succeded in sounding excatly like its namsake!
And who can forget (for better or worse) the music of Viva La Vida (Coldplay) and Mr. Brightside (The
Killers
) being so disdainfully chopped up, mangled, and thrown back to the audience? Their reactions can be seen at right. Some people wondered if it was a parody of the songs. Yes. "Death of music" and "Ruined dinner, bleeding ears" come to mind. And I will not go into how the person holding the drumsticks (I shall not call him a drummer, because he certainly isn't) totally murdered Coldplay. Blame it on Bruce's lack of a professional sound system (It's BRUCE not Llewellyn watdidyouexpect?) and tone deafness, but i personally its a lack of i donno, an actual singer?
The sketch was as usual, nobody past the front tables giving a damn wat was going on when there was food to be eaten. I personally think there were promoting carpets or something. And as usual everyone gave the token applause. On the bright side, I like our new Malaysian High Commissioner (second from left). Mr. N (no names, remember?) seems like a really jolly fellow and not to uptight or anything. He gave a really short speech (I like!) and actually thrwew his hat to the audience! I look forward to seeing what he can do =)
Next was the raffles prize! Most of it went to three tables who between them bought nearly $500 worth of tickets. They must really want that Nitendo DS =P. As for myself i swear to never buy raffles tickets just for the heck of it cos its a waste of money. Yes, this is me being jealous of the winners - who wouldn't be - but congrats =)
Lastly for the guests who did take the initiative and dress up in all weird and wacky ways there were prizes! And i think they looked really cool too (in a wild western sort of way).
Which brings me to the end of my *extensive* review. Sure, some ppl say that at the end of the day what matters most is that people had fun. And its true, in a friendship-experience-with-friends sort of way. I know i had fun =) Only please don't use that as an excuse for sub-par or mediocre quality, especially at a flagship event. As one of my friends told me "I hope people didn't think the same thing about our last years malam!"
Group photo
time~
Signing off,
7.30 pm,Sunday, 23 May 09 .
