An Afternoon Matinee with Shafiq & Lat.....on April 3, 2011

On Sunday, 3rd April, we (Hau Kiang, Kat and I) went to see the 3 p.m. matinee show of Lat Kampong Boy the Musical the Istana Budaya, KL. It was indeed a very enjoyable show and the production and choreography was really superb in depicting the various scenes of Malaysian life in Ipoh and KL.


When we visited Mohd Shafiq on March 17th….he told us that he was looking forwarding to meeting Dato’ Lat the next week as his aunty Roslini had bought tickets for him, his mum and sister to see the evening show. However Roslini later informed Kat that they did not make it to the show because Shafiq was very ill that day and was practically writhing in pain. As at that point we have not purchased tickets for ourselves, we decided to sponsor the tickets for three of them (Shafiq,sister and mother) for the Sunday matinee. Fortunately by that time he was already out of his pain zone and he has been off the morphine patch for the past four days. He was his usual cheeky self when he arrived and had the opportunity to pose for pictures with Lat’s cartoon characters on exhibition at the foyer, before going into the theatre. Coincidentally HH the Sultan of Selangor came to see the matinee show and Shafiq had the honour to sit in the same row as the royal guest.

Needless to say Shafiq enjoyed the show thoroughly and to top it all, he was later taken to meet Dato’ Lat himself. Kat had emailed Dato’ Lat earlier on to inform him of our Project Shafiq and he obliged by spending quite a lot of time talking to Shafiq, signing his autograph, drawing a cartoon and posing for photographs with him. Awie, who played Lat, spoke to him and Shafiq sang to him a few lines from the title song “Kampong Boy”. The rest of the cast, ensemble as well the crew came around to talk to him. There was Atilia (as Faezah @ Mrs Lat), Sandra Sodhy (as Mrs Hew, the fierce English teacher), Daniel (as the young Lat), and many others whose faces are familiar to him as they frequently appear on TV. Shafiq was also introduced to Harith Iskandar (one of theDirectors) who signed his book. He told Harith that he was once bald too, like him and Harith replied that “at least your hair can grow back, mine can’t”. The real Mrs Hew who was teaching in Sekolah Menengah Rendah Pasir Puteh, was also a guest of honour. She confirmed that she had a bee-hive hairdo in those days but was not able to tease her hair up for the show, probably, she mused, because there is not enough hair for that anymore.

After having a great time at Istana Budaya, we finally said goodbye to each other at about 7.00pm


Salam,


Sek Yee and Kat