Feeling Nostalgic

Tell you what…to be honest though I always keep my face calm and cool, deep down I do feel the intense feeling of longing towards my alma mater, Warwick University. Whatmore if I have been reading blog posts of others who used to study overseas. Thus, that aching feeling revisits.

Cherry blossoms in front of the Humanities building

Despite that, I kinda regret for not updating many things about my life when I was in the UK. It’s either I was too preoccupied with my jobs as temps or I was just plain lazy to write about it (which of course the case whenever winter came. Come on…with duvet, hot choc and your favourite shows on your bed. I can lie down on my bed like that forever. Weeuuuweuuu).

One of the things that I was so into back then was the Warwick Malaysian Night (WMN). This WMN will be held annually and it’s like a tradition that Malaysians in my university will participate in this extravagant event to bring out what’s best from our dearest cultural melting pot country.

During my first year, I was made as one of the scriptwriters to the play of the night. It was called “May I”. It’s one of the toughest thing to do at the moment for the last play I had helped to script write was the Shakespeare’s play “Merchant of Venice” – easy peasy lemon squeezy since all I was required to do was to render the unabridged original script into the current English version. Meanwhile, for this WMN’s play I needed to write the script with zero knowledge of anything. It was difficult as the plot will be centralised about the 13 May tragedy – racial conflict that’s taboo in Malaysia.

Welp with much difficulty and the additional tension from my first coursework, the script was done and the play was staged. I wasn’t that proud about the play in actuality (honestly T.T) and I chose to be an absentee during the big event. Aher aher. But the wushu vs. silat part of the play was amazing (heard from the audience’s feedback).

Yearly, WMN will be held in the famous Warwick Arts Centre’s Butterworth Hall. So let’s see…I missed the first year but I was the scriptwriter. During the second year I was one of the audience and during my final year I was the steward for the event (and part of the job as a steward is to watch events at the Warwick Arts Centre for free).

What’s famous for WMN is…(duhhh, of course not the play) the Dikir Barat. We’re so proud of it and took pride in it as whenever our university’s name is mention across the UK for Malaysian Night, people will immediately make connection to the Dikir Barat. You wanna know how cool it is? Checkidout…

Look at how energetic they were and yes, this was a minor portion of the total Malaysians in Coventry, West Midlands.