Country Cottage Arts

In conjunction with the coming Deepavali celebrations on Friday, 5 November 2010, RTM 1 came with their crew to do a  Deepavali shooting as part of their Deepavali   programme  on ' Selamat Pagi Malaysia ' yesterday.  

The request for the shooting by RTM came just by chance.  I had dropped by at my friend, Jackie's house,  to pick up some art stuff and met her sister, Maureen Santiago , for the first time. Some of the  readers will remember her career as a well known singer who used to appear regularly on RTM in the 80's .(  This was before pay-tv channels.  )  It was an unexpected meeting.  Having chatted with Maureen, ( she still looks fabulous and has a flawless complexion  ) who had just finished recording at RTM  for  the ' Hello on 2 ' programme,  she offered to mention about me  to them.  I thought nothing about it and left it at that. Actually, my thoughts were like " Ya, right! as if  RTM will really call !

Well, well !  RTM actually did.! They asked me if they could shoot a Deepavali themed interview.  Duh ?  Of course, I said yes, why should I say no ?  They sent me their script with  questions. I  did some research and memorised  my answers.  The only glitch was it was in Bahasa Malaysia. .  Well, I can speak passable colloquial  BM lingo but on national TV?  Crikey!  it brought jitters to me and  that 's when the drama started.......... when the recording did start, instead of the RTM crew telling ' cut', it was me telling ' CUT, CUT, CUT' all throughout !.  What a nightmare.... ...........I  felt as stiff as a ramrod, stammered, stuttered and went blank every few minutes,  fell over in giggles with the crew, my children laughed like laughing jackasses,  the interviewer kept signalling me to look at her and the camera guy told me to keep smiling all the time throughout the ordeal and I went  BLANK ......again................Now I know what Alzheimers  go through , my memory completely failed me ........ when I most needed it (sigh) and that too on my first TV appearance..... soooo dumb la !

So readers, if you do watch the programme, it would be more of a  combination of comedic situation  than a Deepavali  celebration  do. Anyway, it's too late to withdraw now.  Give it a watch if you want to start the day with a laugh since the programme airs at 8.00am on Friday, 5th November.

As for my kids and I, we  are going to squirm like worms and  giggle uncontrollably while watching ourselves making a fool of  ourselves on national TV and that's how we are going to start our Deepavali celebrations! Couldn't ask for a better start to the day than this, can we ? !!!!!

Happy reading and laughing and wishing all Hindus " A VERY HAPPY DEEPAVALI "

Lakshmi