MALAYSIA - Tanah Air Ku

Monday 31 August 2009
Malaysia celebrated her 52nd Birthday today! In the Star, Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad splashed out a full page advertisement, wishing all Malaysians A Happy 52nd Merdeka. The advert carried a beautiful image of 3 little chidren brandishing the Jalur Gemilang, against the background of an oil palm plantation. I thought this is a very symbolic image of the future of Malaysia - One Nation. One Dream.
The night before on Astro, I was attracted to the Cerita Anak Malaysia (CAM), featuring Chef Wan, the No I in the World Celebrity Chef. I did not know that Chef Wan grew up in the midst of the oil palm in a
FELDA Scheme in the sixties. He seemed nostalgic in the episode which was shot at his kampung, reminded him how he toiled the land with his father and brothers, performed the assisted pollination, carried the big Fresh Fruit Bunches(FFB), cried out for his father when he saw snakes sliding through the palms in the late evenings before going back home.Definitely, Chef Wan is a second generation FELDA settler, and a very succesful one at that. Congratulations to him, with his passion for cooking and a dtermination to be successful, he travelled around the world, but never forgetting his roots. A true Malaysian!
P/S I remembered Chef Wan well when we invited him over to Rumah PUSPANITA in the late 1990s to grace the occassion of A Cooking Demo using Palm Oil. Of course, the ladies enjoyed his joke here and there....macam mak nenek!