At The Stroke Of Midnight

I initially planned for this post to celebrate both our nation's 50th year of independence and this blog's 100th post but it looks like that's no longer possible.

Why?

Because that would take way too long, and I feel like posting something now.

How is it that I can go for weeks without writing a thing when everyone's poking and nudging me about it, and at the same time decide to stay up late and blog when people are telling me to forget it and concentrate on studies?

I'm a rebel without a clue.

When just about every other sane person decided to sleep in on Merdeka, I woke up early and headed down to the Dataran to catch the parade. Well, it was really Li Wen's idea.

His reasoning? Well, that fact is most of us have probably never seen the parade up close our entire lives (and never will). I know my parents haven't. And since it was our 50th Merdeka - surviving the half century mark is meant to be an achievement of significance - he decided that it was now or never.

This made sense to me.

But I would have slept through it if Li Wen didn't call at 6.30 am.

Anyway!

On to the parade. I took like two hundred pictures while I was there. Some of these are displayed below, with commentary.

We arrived at around 7.30. By this time, the stands were packed almost to capacity, but we still managed to get some really good positions, almost directly opposite the grandstand.

Yeah. The government provided monkey bars.

I was the first one to go up, and I stayed there until we left. You could see practically anything, it was just a question of how far up you were willing to climb.

This guy here? Doesn't look that high up, does he? But he was camped on the bar above my head (you can see it in the previous picture). The entire structure was actually more than two storeys tall but no one was fool enough to climb that high.

At the parade, we met AZA and Miss Leong. Apparently, they came for the celebrations the night before, and didn't go home. They spent the night in McDonald's, open 24 hours a day.

I think I might try that some day. Sounds crazy enough to work.

Here's Peako, looking at a poster reproduction of an old Berita Harian.

And here's Li Wen from my point of view. Doesn't he look like an orphan?

About the festivities... well, some of it was kinda like Hari Patriotisme, with the singing of patriotic songs and pembacaan ikrar. But Hari Patriotisme on steroids. The guy they got to recite the ikrar sounded like he could have given King Leonidas a run for his money. I kept expecting him to suddenly whip out a keris and scream MALAM INI KITA BERSANTAP DI NERAKA or something.

Didn't happen, though.

The parade itself was pretty good, I guess. There were lots of groups I didn't really care about. Some secondary schools sent marching bands. I think this one is from Catholic High School. Could be mistaken about that.

Check out their uniforms! Kinda like that dance from concert. I think it was... Texas?

I wasn't really paying attention to these guys, until I noticed they were holding up replicas of Malaysian coins and stuff. I think they're bank employees.

Jun Ian: Fifty cents!
Li Wen: What where?
Jun Ian: There!
Li Wen: I thought you meant the rapper!

Yeah right. Just try imagine 50 Cent hanging around the Dataran.

Hell, why imagine? There he is.

Look closely dammit.

There were plenty of floats, but this one caught my eye. It was releasing bubbles.

Looks like a scene out of a love story, doesn't it? See... boy meets girl, girl meets boy. They fall in love, but they're at a parade and the girl is on a float.

You should know these guys from your textbooks. They're the survivors of Force 136, a volunteer army who fought the against Japanese during the occupation. And there are like seven of them left. They're like superheroes.

They trotted out lots of war machinery at the parade. These ordinary look trucks were probably... missile trucks.

More military stuff. Kept me thinking about National Service.

The planes were awesome. There was this one jet that flew skywards, then killed its engines and dropped like a stone right above our heads. Before it hit the ground, it fired up again and zoomed off. You don't see that kind of thing much out of the movies.

Transformer babies aside, there were dogs at the parade. I guess the four major races in Malaysia are Malay, Chinese, Indian and Dog.

Horses too. Well I don't really know what to say about them... they were well behaved and didn't poop on the roads?

Later that day, I went to watch the fireworks with my cousins. We got a pretty good spot, wasn't too crowded or anything.

To pass the time, I played some saxophone for everyone within earshot. This instrument is just awesome.

Still waiting for fireworks to start. There's no point to this picture being here, but I like it a lot.

I hope you appreciate how hard it is to get good pictures of fireworks, especially if you're a novice with a shaky hand.

When we went again on Sunday, we got stuck in traffic trying to leave for two hours, but that's another story.

All in all it was a pretty good Merdeka.

Did it succeed in making me patriotic? Well... yeah, kinda. A lot of people think being patriotic's kinda like making a commitment to the country, and they don't wanna do that when the country in question is less than perfect.

Well I've got news for you, my friends. So is everything else.

I'm not going to tell you that this is about as good as it gets, cause I seriously doubt that. But it's still pretty good. Ignore the fact that the government will make sure the bumiputera will screw you over in just about every deal you can imagine business-wise. Disregard for a minute how our entire education system is screaming for change from the top down. Forget everything you know about Malaysian time, Malaysian traffic, manners, efficiency, censorship and all that.

Then step back and take a deep breath. Looks good, doesn't it?

No? Well, I love piracy okay. I love how you can just walk out to the stores and pick up a new movie for five bucks. Slightly more these days, but that's just inflation for you. Or how you can drive down to Petaling Street and get a new rolex or a pair of superstars without having to crack the bank open. This is very important to people like me who never have any money. And the jerseys in that stall outside KL Sentral are almost indistinguishable from the originals.

I also love corruption. I don't think I have to explain this. Here's a bit of wisdom I got from a taxi driver three years ago, when I was fourteen.

Taxi Driver: In this country you can do anything if you have money la. If you have money you can even fuck the King's wife.

And there were five of us in that cab and we were all looking at each other like (o_O) he did not just say that. But it's true. Many of the things we take for granted wouldn't have been possible without bribes!

I love our malls. Who doesn't? We have so many! And I heard from my cousin Joo Lee, that on the eve of the Merdeka celebrations a whole section of 1 Utama blacked out for half an hour. People started stealing things. How awesome is that? Imagine what you could do if you were in a mall plunged into total darkness for thirty whole minutes. If only I'd been there, I'd have a PS3 sitting in my den, three iPods in my pocket, new threads and five different perfumes on all the time.

How does one make a mall black out?

I love our food. I'm sure you love our food. Everyone loves our food.

Even our weather is edible.

Well this has been a great patriotic essay, but I'm starting to feel really guilty about neglecting my homework for so long. So I'm off to do that.

My next post, this blog's 101st, will be some time in coming (I got trials). Doesn't mean you should stop visiting though.

Jun Ian loves Malaysia. And hell, it's about time.