Dance like nobody’s watching (but sadly, they are)

I would like to teach everyone 4 Malay words this morning.

“Menari” means “dancing"
“Liar” (pronounced as 2 syllables, “li-ar”) means “wild”
“Di” means the preposition, “in”
“Hutan” means “forest”.

Now that you know the meaning of these 4 Malay words, I can proceed with this blog entry.

So, yesterday, I met up with an old friend of mine from KL for lunch. I knew her back when I was studying/working in KL and we used to party together a lot. Needless to say, our chat topic naturally drifted to the good old days and the crazy things we used to do when she suddenly reminded me that I appeared on the front page of a Malay tabloid newspaper in KL some years ago.

She told me she can remember the words in the headline but she cannot recall the exact placing of 2 words. According to her, the headline was either:

“Menari Liar Di Hutan” or “Menari Di Hutan Liar”.

Now, please refer to the meaning of the 4 Malay words above.

Oh dear, right!??

And underneath the headline was a picture of me and another friend squatting on a boulder in the middle of a forest. Our faces were blurred, like they do to protect the identity of criminals, but anyone who was there (at the forest dance party, I mean) would recognize that it was me. I never kept that newspaper clipping otherwise I would be happy to show it here. It was quite a funny picture.

What a coincidence that my friend reminded me of this a day before my birthday. As this is a time to ponder and reflect on my life, I am thinking back of this incident and while I am a bit shy to admit that I was once caught by the authorities for either “Dancing Wildly In Forest” or “Dancing In Wild Forest”, I have to say that it was a damn good time of my life. Seriously, how many people can say they appeared in newspaper headlines for dancing without a permit, right?

So I would like to wish the older, wiser and MUCH LESS dance-y me, a very happy birthday today and give myself a pat on the back for making it this far. I pray hard that the good times and alibaba adventures will continue to rock on in my later years and the next time I make headlines, let’s hope it will be for something more wholesome like winning awards or making the world a better place

And lastly, I secretly hope the headline was simply “dancing in wild forest” because “dancing wildly” (in the forest or anywhere for that matter) has a huge potential to be an ugly sight. (Elegance, Frou, elegance!) The only dancing wildly I want to do right now, is on the rocks....La la la la...

Here's me in my happy time....