Food for thought
Check out a festival designed to encourage ideas to sprout and discourse to blossom.
FIRST off, an apology to vegetable enthusiasts. There will most probably not be actual cabbages at the Silverfish Festival of Cabbages, unless one of the speakers decides to bring coleslaw for everyone.
This is because the festival is not really a commemoration of a beloved leafy plant. Instead, it is a venue for intellectual discussion and the celebration of ideas.
Festival organizer and Silverfish Books founder Raman Krishnan says he had always wanted to create an event like this.
“One of our reasons for setting up Silverfish many years ago, other than just selling books that would make you think, was to create a meeting place where people can discuss interesting subjects intellectually,” says Raman, during a recent interview at Silverfish Bookstores.
“I mean, look at the level of the intellectual discourse in this country. Does it even exist? We need a place where we can discuss things like science, art, theatre, mathematics, anything! Where intelligent people can meet and talk instead of ranting about politics!”
The first ever Festival of Cabbages, therefore, will be an opportunity for the public to broaden their horizons, and will be held at Silverfish Books in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, on weekends this month and next.
According to Raman, the festival was an offshoot of the Silverfish public talk series, which was introduced around 2013 as a means to get academia closer to “real” people, and discuss “difficult” topics with levity.
So why such an interesting name for the event?
“Why not?” Raman laughs.
“I think we take ourselves too seriously. I mean, just look at the newspapers. Why so serious, lighten up!
“Look around, there are a lot of intelligent people doing intelligent things. And yet we focus on stupid people doing stupid things. Why? So ‘ cabbages’ is just a light- hearted way of being dismissive.”
The event poster also publishes a quote from Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson: “Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”
The festival kicked off on Sunday with world- class Malaysian musician Saidah Rastam giving a talk on Rosalie, her book on the history and origins of Malaysian music.
With so many qualified speakers speaking on such a variety of topics, there’s certainly something there for everyone.
So head on over to the Festival of Cabbages – it certainly can’t be beet! ( Sorry!)
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Fiona Wright, mentor of the English Language Teachers Development Programme at the British Council, will talk about her Storybook Project currently taking place in schools in Sabah and Sarawak.
The project is aimed at collecting and preserving local stories in their original language, promoting enjoyment of reading through story books, and engaging parents and the local community in school activities.
Three picture books comprising folktales from the Rungus of Kudat, Sabah, have been published to date.
New York- based Malaysian playwright Kannan Menon stops by with a few Malaysian actors ( including Mano Maniam, Chako Vadaketh, and Takurdas) to perform staged readings of three plays.
There will be two 10- 15 minute pieces from Lounge Lizards, as well as a scene (“The Driving Lesson”) from the 1997 comedy Haze Fever, which was staged in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and New York to great response.
Heidi Samsuddin, author of a series of children’s books on a variety of Malaysian topics ( The Missing National Anthem, P. Ramlee’s Sarong) will talk about the motivation, inspiration, and research that went into
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writing them.
Author Dina Zaman will speak about “The Influences of Saints and Their Teachings on Faith in Malaysia and Indonesia” as part of her journey exploring saintliness, Wahabbism, history and identity in the two countries.
Author Rumaizah Abu Bakar ( A Call To Travel) will present a talk entitled “Wanderlust: Road to Travel Writing”, which will focus on travel writing in general. She will discuss topics such as finding one’s own voice and the importance of honesty in travel writing, as well as sharing how writing fiction brought her to travel writing.
A session with Light Up Borneo, an NGO that focuses on lighting up interior villages in Borneo. They believe lighting and electricity can help widen access to information and promote better understanding of people’s rights, and are testing out a floating hydro generator in Long Pasia.
Like eating your greens and getting your daily allotment of fibre, well- meaning advice on good writing is as widely available as health tips. How many words should you write a day? Why should you read? Why should you trust your beta reader? Shih- li Kow, acclaimed author of Ripples and Sum Of Our Follies, shares her tips on writing.
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