Culturally Preconditioned

I’ve never been into anniversaries. Anniversaries are deemed irrelevant by me. I don’t see a point in celebrating anniversaries, which is why I haven’t bothered celebrating my own birthday for over a decade now. Seriously. True story. The only birthdays that I remember are that of my parents, my 4 sisters, my brother, my OJ and my KC. I can’t be arsed to remember others.. not my grandparents, not my aunts or uncles, not my in-laws, not my 15 nephews and nieces, not my colleagues, not my friends.

But it’s no excuse to miss out on August 31st. It sucked that I missed Malaysia’s 50th Independence Day, but it was nice to see fellow Singaporeans and Indonesians wishing me “Merdeka!” while I was attending the Heroes Meet & Greet last Friday down in Singapore. Even though I wasn’t back on my homeland (wah.. bunyi macam ada kat Antartika je), it still gave me warm little fuzzies.

When I got back to my hometown in JB the next day, I was pleasantly surprised when my mother showed me this coffee table book :

Finally, some sort of recognition to Tok Ngah, my grand uncle who created the Malaysian flag back in 1949. I missed all the technical details, but I think this book was published by Kerajaan Johor and some Malaysian historical society. I’m not even sure if this book is available for sale yet. The book contains a lot of interesting tidbits on how the national flag came about, how the Arkib Negara refused to acknowledge who the creator was because of the lack of proof (until they were unearthed just recently), and some background on Tok Ngah, that I myself had not known previously (did you know, he also created the Habhal kicap cap kipas udang logo? among other things, of course )

Apparently, there was a ‘contest’ of some sort, calling out for designs for the Persekutuan Tanah Melayu flag back then, and over 300 designs was accepted. 3 of them were shortlisted (pictures are in the book, I don’t think I could put it on here because of possible copyright issues) and Tok Ngah’s design was ultimately the one chosen (after a few amendments after his discussions with Datuk Onn Jaafar).

I’m glad that some form of recognition has finally been given to Tok Ngah, even though he is now long gone. Major kudos goes to all the journalists and everyone involved in bringing together this missing piece of our national history to be shared with the rest of the nation.