I had a lovely day yesterday, with just a couple of exceptions. Spent the morning on the internet (thankfully, Streamyx, my broadband provider, was almost back to normal). Then went out for lunch at 1Utama (a local shopping centre), walked around a bit before being bothered by the lounder than necessary music in the background and the reverberating voices/noises on the harsh stone/marble walls and walkways (these are typical trademarks of Malaysia shopping centres). Of course, once I arrived home I had a slowly developing headache which was fortunately just about under control for the rest of the day.

After a short rest and some telly, left the house again for dinner and theatre with Andrew. We watched a Malaysian play, Spilt Gravy on Rice, which had received numerous accolades. It was an enjoyable evening, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend, or not recommend, the play. I’m beginning to think that there is a stereotype of the Malaysian play and this was one of it - cheap and obvious jibes and jokes, appeal to monologue narratives, use of not always succesful artifices to get the story moving, rather obvious critique of Malaysian society and government (in attempt to emulate Chechov or Solzhenitsyn) which then descends into somewhat patronising moral philosophising. Other than that the performances were good, I’d even say very good at places. The characters were well developed, although selected scenes could have been removed with no damage to either substance or story.

We both arrived home just after midnight and went straight to bed. I thought I was developing a cold towards the end of the evening, but I seem to be alright this morning, although my eye-muscles still seem to be “aching”. I’m not discounting feeling worse this afternoon, especially since it’s house-cleaning day, but only time will tell…

Posted on March 29th, 2003 by jl
Filed under: Notable: Personal