OUR KIDS' CHARITY BAZAAR AND THE FILM INDUSTRY DINNER WITH A DASH OF GOLF ON THE SIDE

It's been a busy couple of days for the family, especially the wife and kids. On Saturday, Iliya's and Dylla's school, APIIT, in Subang, is hosting the annual Charity Bazaar and they were busy preparing for it.
Puteh especially has been extremely busy bringing little pots of herbs and plants to the school as she had planned to set up a small stall selling the stuff. In a week, she sent more than two dozen pots an the stall became a small shop.

All sort of herbs (the ones she grows in our garden - which will be soon declared a national forest reserve) - were there for sale. She was herself quite excited as it would be her first time selling her much loved herbs. All the proceeds from the sale of her herbs went to charity.

Iliya or Yaya (or Adi as his friends call him) was also busy preparing with his classmates his version of an Egyptian maze. I believe he would be a successful businessman as he knew the value of using pretty girls to market his product (see pic below). Too bad his target audience - which were primary school aged kids - couldn't care less. Nevertheless, the girls who were wearing Egyptian togas did their job quite well.


Dylla (below) took the easy way out during the bazaar by volunteering to man the Playroom for young kids.

Hadi, my number two son, who is on a semester break in UIA, helped out his mom along with our Indonesian maid.
I went for a while to lend my support but had to leave around noon to go and participate in the Hari Seniman Golf Tournament organised by Papita and Finas held at the Nilai Springs Golf Culb in Negri Sembilan. I shouldn't have because I played a horrendous game of golf and ended up carding 113 strokes and propped up the rest of the field.
It was my worst outing ever and I didn't stay on for the dinner because I wasn't very well going to stay to receive the wooden spoon award! Anyway, playing in my flight were Tengku Dato' Annuar, Harun Salim Bachik and Zulkifli Azahari (or Ijoi). Other familiar names that participated in the tournament were Ahmad Idham (director of Jangan Pandang Belakang), Ahmad Tarmimi Siregar, Dato Malek Redzuan, Thorpe Ali and actor Zul Yahya.
Anyway, the night before, I attended a dinner organised by Finas, as they do annually, to celebrate the participants of the film industry. The dinner was held at the One World Hotel in Bandar Utama. (Surprisingly for a new hotel, One World seem to be getting a lot of government dinners, events and functions).
Anyway, the dinner was also held to pass cheques to producers whose films receive tax rebates and also launch four books published by Finas (including my father's book Tiada Kata Secantik Bahasa which contains most of the lyrics he wrote over a long period of time).
I also planned to give a copy of my father's latest autobiography (published by DBP and not the one published by Finas) to the Culture Minister - YB Dato Safie Apdal, but he couldn't make it (according to Finas Chairman Tan Sri Dato Dr Jins Shamsudin, Shafie had to attend to more important things - which means that the dinner to 'meraikan industri filem' wasn't really that important).
So whilst the Finas Chairman continued putting his foot into his mouth, which he is already acclaimed for, we were waiting for the Chinese eight course dinner to start.
I think, someone should advise organisers of government dinners a little something about dinner music.
Music over dinner should be light - to allow diners to savour their meal and hold conversations. Unfortunately, organisers for most government dinners, especially in the creative and entertainment industry, deem it an apt time to deafen the ears with loud and blaring music.Imagine, the first course is accompanied by a dance performance to loud pop music. And what's worse, for a dinner celebrating local culture and arts, the dancers were dressed in western outfits and BLONDE wigs!!! (see pic above) Couldn't they instead perform an elegant local Malay dance? Guess
And then, dinner was further enhanced by the presence of a local band which at best match the standard of a typical Malay kampung wedding. Wow! The music they played was quite excellent to start indigestion. To make things worse, in their first set, they performed a bad version of a Santana song and a couple of Indonesian pop songs. I guess the musicians haven't heard of the genres called Keroncong or Asli.
To take the cake, they were dressed as rock stars - no suits or batik - just jeans, shirts, tee-shirts and most probably Dr Cardin shoes. And later that night (maybe they heard my mind thinking about them not performing Malay songs) - the lead singer, complete with dreadlocks, did sing a Malay asli number. Talk about jarring images.
Anyway, most of the diners (the guys mostly) took time between courses to leave the hall and have a puff outside and away from the dreadful music.
The traumatic experience lasted about two hours. We shall see what awaits us next year.