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I recently had the opportunity to attend Toyota’s pre-race “Rev Party” at Bar Med in Sri Hartamas. As usual, it provided an excellent window for people watching, and I arrived at one conclusion:

ORDINARY MALAYSIANS WHUP FEAR FACTOR CHAMPIONS ANYTIME!

For a start, Toyota were generously giving away 500 goodie bags for the first 500 people (Duh!!) who turned up at 6:00pm. Well, the queue started at 5:00pm and swelled to quite a sizeable number by the time the security opened the doors at 6:00pm sharp.

Here’s the rub – roughly 30% of the crowd waited patiently in line for an hour, exclusive invitation ready in hand. They inched their way towards the entrance, had their invitation collected, had the numbered lucky draw perforated corner torn off and returned to them, collected 2 free drink coupons, had their wrist tagged with the “Toyota Rev Party” band (for re-entry, if necessary), got their mitts on the precious goodie bag, pushed/jostled/bulldozed their way past the overcrowded drink and food counters into the outlet, only to emerge with a wide grin from the side exit and head towards the carpark behind.


Smart people, I thought. They’re gonna stash the goodies in their cars before returning to the party. I watched and waited. They didn’t come back. Apparently they had successfully achieved their objective.

Meanwhile, things were getting very crowded at the party, as the entrance corridor was used not only for processing invited guests but also for dispensing drinks and food. A group of us journalists were jammed into a corner next to the drink counter (strangely, my esteemed peers seemed to have an endless supply of chilled Carls bottled beer despite only having two coupons each!).

This is where the realization hit me as I looked around the chaos – Malaysians do extremely well when there’s free stuff for the taking. I observed that on the whole, the female of the species was the aggressor, merrily going back and forth against the human tide in the overcrowded corridor, with the practiced ease of an “orang minyak”, collecting drinks and mounds of food while their male partners protected their postage stamp “territory”.

To say that they had excellent juggling and balancing skills would be an understatement. To say that some of them were also talking or sms-ing on their mobiles while simultaneously carrying the drinks and food will be risking being accused of smoking bad weed. Except that I was solidly sober. Have been since the 3rd of November 2003.

However, the guy that took the cake for multi-tasking was inside, standing right next to 9 huge bass bins piled on top of each other beside the stage. He was swigging from 2 (yeah, 2) Carls beer bottles held tightly together at the neck by the fingers of his right hand, eating a hot dog with his left, and regularly swerving violently to avoid the emissions from the smoke machine. Oh, did I mention he was on the phone too? On the handsfree, no doubt, but carrying on a conversation all the same, with the booming bass from Outkast’s Grammy Award winning “Hey Ya” blasting into his ear.

Fear Factor, you’re a walk in the park for us Malaysians. Brings a tear to my eye and rousing cries of Malaysia Boleh! in my ears.

Or is that the blasted smoke machine and Outkast on the infernal bass again?

Dave