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The B-Side is the new monthly culture magazine for the tablet medium by Kuala Lumpur-based BFM Media. Its inaugural issue explores the themes of sex, politics and religion, and education. The B-Side attempts to capture something about the complexity of being human, from a Malaysian perspective. So, you can look forward, beyond frivolous matters, to where the really fun mishmash lives. This is a magazine made for fellow travellers of all persuasions, to convey a sense of provenance that is of the country and yet cosmopolitan; here, there and everywhere.
Rehearsals at CHAI, Petaling Jaya. filmed by The B-Side in April 2013. The Ribena Berry Cabarette performed the piece at the Kakiseni Festival. This video appears in the May issue of The B-Side.
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The sun peeks over the horizon. Animals stir and prep for their day ahead. Some leave nests to hunt for prey, others for mates or new habitats. Everybody’s a contender.
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Dusk. The long day ends, the fight is over. The animals who won return home triumphant. The losers slink to the back of the pack, tails between legs, some never to be seen again.
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In the animal kingdom, failure is insufferable. It means going without food and being shoved from the best seat at the watering hole. It means losing alpha status, one’s mate, or one’s life.
Human beings may be the only species that is able to justify failure and live with defeat (at least, for five year periods at a time). That’s lucky, because as the sun sets on election day, May 5, there will be many losers, both candidates and voters.
Neuroscientists studying biochemical responses in animals and humans have found that many areas of the brain, especially those involved in stress response, are more active when we’re faced with defeat.
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An excerpt from “The jungle is not neutral”, by Tee Shiao Eek, illustrated by Jun Kit. Download the May issue of The B-Side to read the full article!
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Public sentiment is pregnant with expectation of victory. Neither side expects to lose; both feel entitled to their irrefutable sense of expectation.
What happens then, after the die is cast? So much rides on the legitimacy of the polling process, and whether and how the result is accepted.
May 5 is frontier land; it will test the mettle of the nebulous Malaysian public more that that of its recalcitrant leaders – of our better judgments, and better natures.
It is a huge ask.
Happy voting. We’ll be updating this issue of the magazine after the results are in. – Jason Tan
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I want people to accept that this is a multiracial country, so all kinds of culture, language and religion can grow in this country. But the reality is not like that. So I stopped singing in Mandarin.
— Tatmo, member of the punk rock band Nao.
My friends asked, ‘Are you leaving Islamic struggle?’ I gave them a simple answer: ‘You say [DAP] is anti-Islam. If DAP is anti-Islam because they have a lot of non-Muslims [in its membership], then let Muslims [join it to] explain things.’ To others, I would say I did not find any evidence of them being anti-Islam.
— Tajuddin Rasdi, academic; with wife Norhayati Yusof, retired teacher.
My wife supports me quietly. We don’t want it to affect her job. Only in Malaysia it becomes a problem who you support. In other countries, there’s no problem, people can choose who they like to support. ‘If you don’t like it…’
— Tajul, lead singer of thrash metal band FTG.
I’ve put my Facebook status before: ‘I tak sokong hijau tapi I hormat Tok Guru’ (I don’t support green, but I respect Tok Guru Nik Aziz). Why? He’s good; I hear these stories that he doesn’t live in a big house, half his salary goes to social welfare. He doesn’t use a big car. Humble. But Pas is too extreme Islam. I’m Umno.
— Bunge, accountant.
Election fever! ‘Suay’ by Ribena Berry’s Cabarette. See them live at the Kakiseni Festival on Sunday April 28th (11am), and Monday April 29th (9:15pm). Look out for the full monty in the next issue of The B-Side!
Shieko’s election poster for The B-Side. Also read ‘Tales from the cities – Imagining the revolutionary suburbs of liberal Malaysia’ in the current issue. Here’s an excerpt:
DJ is the ’burbs; its many people have suburban values that the bright and the beautiful find so tedious. It’s populated by more than its fair share of cantankerous or plain ignorant aunty and uncle types that have benighted Malaysia’s middle-class with their lack of cultural and political sophistication.
But damn it, I grew up there and it made me what I am. My memories mean more than your prejudices or Monocle’s criteria for a great city.
There’s a lyrical beauty to the place. Walk the streets after rain in the evening; turn off your smartphones or tablets and spend an afternoon in a deserted park.
Damansara, like nearby Bangsar and Kuala Lumpur, is the nucleus of the demographic, political and social changes now rocking Malaysia.
.. because of the social complexity that is the nation’s historical legacy, the generation of consent and the maintenance of widely-based public political confidence are even more important in Malaysia than is often the case elsewhere …
Umno and BN may decide yet again to seek renewal of their mandate and legitimacy through the electoral process. That is how it has managed and succeeded in the past. But, under changed and still changing circumstances, that choice, if it is to deliver what is expected of it, will require that Malaysian elections be held upon an even more ‘un-level playing field’ … In the short run this may work, perhaps once or twice more. But not for long. If they remain unreformed, Umno’s and BN’s terminal electoral crisis would be imminent. Even their next election might well prove their ‘last hurrah’.
Domestically, that course would soon aggravate, not solve, the BN’s underlying political problem. Winning would require recourse to measures that would be ever more widely seen as improper – to expedients that would prove ever more unpopular and resented. So while winning might still be possible, it would be a pointless, even destructive, exercise.
— Excerpt from ‘Can BN Win Again’ by Clive Kessler in the April issue.
The Secret of Jalan Yew
The early bird gets the kuih. Hosted by Hishamuddin Rais.
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This video is from The B-Side: sexy ideas for a better Malaysia. Download BFM’s FREE monthly digital magazine now from Apple’s App Store or Google Play. Visit thebside.my.
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There are fireworks, and there is kuih-muih. As much as ‘the Chinese’ can be said to be defined by their love of things that go BOOM in the sky and at the stockmarket, ‘the Malays’ (meriam buluh and missing digits during Hari Raya nothwithstanding), they have their kuih, and they can eat it too. These best of these morsels are akin to dessert dim sum, only better. The best and probably most authentic are a fine balance of distinctively local flavours, textures and colours, the last only ever drawn from a readily available garden cornucopia (flowers and leaves lah). You eat them, and you know that life is gracious and sweet — sweet, not like proliferating mass-produced cake made with fake butter and cream, but as a genuine rival to, and peerless relative of, la dolce vita. In The B-Side feature, tap the icons for the map to kuih-muih and the only primer you will ever need, presented by the irrepressible Hisham Rais.
Illustration by Jun Kit.
Bonus election material for the April issue! KJ and Tony Pua in conversation about the post-May 5 Islamic secular country. Download now! We promise it won’t take long…
You wake up feeling bitter. Angry. Where was it written it would come to this? The Egyptian cotton sheets chafe your neck. Your silk pyjamas with the teddy bear logo are dank with sweat. You tug the tasselled bell, which summons bed tea, toast and bitter orange marmalade. You were born to this. And now, what? Comets, popes deposing themselves, natives uprising.
Your driver tells you not to worry. He’s a good man, loyal. But you could have sworn he was scanning the classifieds when you came out of the Men’s Room at the Hotel Imperial yesterday. Your wife had taken you there to cheer you up – just you and a small entourage of 40. (Was it your imagination or has your entourage shrunk?) The food was delicious, two Michelins, but it tasted like mud and ash, like sackcloth and ashes. How to go back to ikan kembong when you have feasted on caviar? When you have eaten sushi off the bodies of translucent girls. How to go back?
— An excerpt from ‘The Morning After’ by Jo Kukathas. Read all about it in the April issue of The B-Side. Illustration by Jun Kit.
