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)

In case you’re not sure of what I am talking about, here is an excerpt from the MalaysianInsider, where I first read the news:

A group of Malay-Muslim protesters claiming to be residents of Section 23 have threatened bloodshed unless the state government stopped the construction of a Hindu Temple. Amid chants of “Allahuakbar,” the group also left the severed head of a cow at the entrance of the State Secretariat here as a warning to Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim.

This sparked an outrage among Malaysians – living here, and abroad – on social media networks. The anger was understandable. Since then, there has been many more rumours and theories emerging, including that of the fact that some of the protesters do not even live in that area. The Prime Minister has since called for the IGP to take swift action.

The incident also affected me because of the article I wrote for my column in today’s The Bangsar Boy. I talked about race (in the context of Merdeka and the Government’s mulling over whether or not to remove the race category from official forms) and said that I think many young people have moved beyond race, the same way our ancestors have for generations.

Then again, perhaps the problem is not with the common people. Politicians latch on to racial rhetoric because it is such a convenient way of defining their battlegrounds.

But when I hear some of these politicians’ divisive rhetorics, I marvel at our people’s wisdom, tolerance and resilience.

I am not surprised though because I believe that we are good at living together. In me are the genes of eight generations who have been doing just that.

Of course, the incident yesterday made me wonder if I have been living my life through rose-coloured glasses. Was I so sheltered in my own world – protected even – that I didn’t see what everyone else saw? Why is it so hard for people to understand and accept diversity?

I moped for a while at work before heading out to meet some friends to head over to Bangkok Jazz. My friend Tony Leo (an Indian and a bit of Eurasian, as he would explain) was performing alongside the band 2Five1 (consisting of Ee Jeng on Piano and Keys, Wagner Daniel on Drums, Fook on Bass and Faz Aznam on Guitars). I hadn’t heard of the band before so I was surprised to see Fook there, as I had met him several times when I hung out with Rozhan, my childhood friend (who is also my brother-in-law’s brother) married to a Japanese lady.

I had plans to meet my friend Grace Ng, who brought along her secondary school friend Raj (I think that’s his name). As we walked to our seats, I bumped into a group of three girls – all acquaintances and friends I had met separately and wasn’t aware they knew each other – Joanne, Erna and Ash.

Look at the names of all the people up there – surely my eyes don’t lie. It was at that point that I convinced myself that that 50 protesters in Shah Alam are not truly representative of Malaysia, but instead, just a few bad eggs we need to live with (or arrest for being a threat to national security if what they were report of saying was true). In respond to a Tweet last night about how we are close to achieveing 1Malaysia, I replied:

I think we achieved 1Malaysia a long time ago. Along the way, some of us decided we are too good for it.

I am refusing to allow the incident yesterday to bring me down. Whether it was a political ploy, or just ignorance, disrespect and stupidity, I believe that the rest of us are much better than that. The outrage on cyberspace is testament to that (there were also many replies, mine included, to UMNO Youth Chief Khairy Jamaluddin’s statement on the protest. He said that such incidents would anger “orang Hindu”, and we replied, saying that many non-Hindus – Malaysians in general – too were angry).

So call me anything you want but I woke up today more resolute than ever that everything I said in my article stands. I live the life of a Malaysian Malaysian, and I was reminded of it last night … and more so when, immediately after the band ended their set, the DJ played Sudirman’s Merdeka song and everyone – people of all shapes, sizes and colour – started jumping around and singing the song together.

11.13am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)