My very own sampin and first songkok ever!

So last night, after the cast part for The Swimming Instructor, Davina and I rushed over to JW Mariott in Bukit Bintang for Azmir Abdullah and Nurul Jannah’s wedding reception.

I thought it was quite spectacular, the decoration was beautiful and the bride and groom were both radiant. It was a great chance to meet up with lots of friends as well. I met Azmir when we performed together in A Christmas Carol last year, so many of our fellow castmates – Bella Rahim, Nicole Ann-Thomas, Tony Leo Selvaraj and Johann Lim among others – were there, as were my other theatre friends Gavin Yap, Maybel Chan, Kelvin Wong and Colin Kirton. Jonathan Putra (JP), who emceed Nurul’s reception was also on my table.

My body was shutting down by then, partially from the realisation that two months of rehearsals and performances had come to an end, lack of sleep from a late Friday night and … spending 40 minutes trying to put on my sampin.

I have worn the Baju Melayu previously, but the last time was my second sister ee che’s wedding seven years ago.

This time round, I was wearing a new sampin, one that Azmir and Nurul gave to me as a birthday gift (so that I could wear it to their wedding), and it was a big bigger (just more material) than the one I own so I struggled with it a bit. Nan and some of the guys from klpac had actually helped me to put it on, but we could barely figure it out. But it worked out quite nicely in the end!

Have a look for yourself in the picture below I took with Bella, Nicole and Shahril Abdul Rani (all of us were in A Christmas Carol together).

Funnily enough, Azmir had originally only planned to get me a songkok for my birthday. It was a gift he promised me from the time we were doing the show last December after I told him about an incident that happened to me while I was still in school.

You see, I was in lower secondary one year when my friend came to school wearing a baju melayu with a songkok. It was a Friday. After school, as we were leaving, I wore the songkok just for the fun of it. Our BM teacher (I forgot her name now) took offence to this and scolded me for being disrespectful to other people’s religion.

How?

Anyway, I never dared wear it again for fear of being punished but have never really forgotten the incident (and how angry I was at my teacher for not realising the difference between culture and religion!). See the kinds of things we learned in school.

But yeah, so Azmir – who shared my disdain for the teacher – said he’ll buy me one. Who would have thought that he and Nurul would decide to get married and as such, they threw in a sampin too! I was absolutely stoked.

It was a beautiful sampin and yesterday, as I wore the songkok, I was really happy (thanks Mir) cos it was kind of a “in-your-face cikgu!” moment. Considering it was a gift from a Malay friend, and many other Malay people helped me dress up. Not one was offended!

Still, I could help being cheeky and I got a video taken of me wearing my baju. I was going to put up a video of me wearing the samping (there aren’t many How-To’s for sampin on YouTube) but we struggled so much (and there were some bitching in the background) that the videos went on forever.

I wanted to share this one though, which is me trying on the songkok and deciding how I wanted to wear it!

In your face, cikgu!

8.39pm Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

Tags: A Christmas Carol, azmir abdullah, baju melayu, bella rahim, colin kirton, davina goh, gavin yap, johann lim, Jonathan Putra, jw marriot, kelvin wong, maybel chan, nicole-ann thomas, nurul jannah, sampin, shahril abdul rani, songkok, the swimming instructor, tony leo selvaraj, wedding