Sunday 26 May 2013

5 Cities for the Malays

I need names of 5 cities where I want Xlibris to launch my book (Biography of the Early Malay Doctors). Please help me name 5 cities.
  1. Kuala Lumpur
  2. Singapore
  3. Canberra/Melbourne/Sydney/Perth - which one?
  4. Leiden
  5. London
I am advised to avoid Washington DC, Los Angeles, because only political books need to be launched there.

I can't seem to find one US city that is good for this launch. New York would be out.

I haven't included Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo or Manila. 

Singapore is actually a small country and a limited market for books. But who knows?

Did you know that many people have heard about Malaysia and met Malaysians. However, nobody at Xlibris and the international publishing companies I have come to know, ever know or can pronounce the word "Malay" correctly or even heard of it. Which makes me rather sad. We are so proud to be Malays but we are not known to the world at all. Nobody seems to know us at the publishing front, except when my book arrived. They tried very very very hard to pronounce the word "Malay" but it came out as "Maleeeeee", "Maaaallllleeeee", "Maaaaallaaaayyy" and other strange sounding names. I could cry. So I told the people at the other end of the phone, "It is pronounced as Malay and not Maaalleeee or other." Sometimes it makes we wonder, "Is Malaysia really famous?" I don't think so. We still need to let the world know who we are and what we are, and where we are located. 

Singapore may just be a small red dot on the world map but it is well known. Malaysia looks like a shrunken jerkin hanging sideways on the world map and larger than Singapore, don't tell me the world doesn't know we, the Malays, live in Malaysia. Even the Filipino people are more famous than the Malays.

Some people may have other mean ideas of describing Malaysia and Singapore on the world map - like a drop of semen from .... it is only true of West Malaysia. We still have Sabah & Sarawak, just 2 little strips on the west side of Borneo. Borneo is the entire big island shaped like a dog and facing east; most of it is Kalimantan which belongs to Indonesia.

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