Years before my book Look Who’s Morphing was published, I wrote a piece called “AIYO!!! An evil group of ninjas is entering and destroying a call centre!!!”
Written in Manglish (Malaysian English), the piece was included in my fiction collection Look Who’s Morphing, but I always envisioned that it would work equally well, if not better, on the stage than on the page. A few years later, I finally had an opportunity to have this piece recorded for Australian literary journal Going Down Swinging, which at the time was producing a spoken word CD with each issue of its print journal.
When I originally wrote the piece, an artist and friend Janette Hoe, who is of Malaysian background, became my ‘Manglish advisor’ for the piece. Janette performed the piece for this recording:
[Note: Audio player not working? Download the mp3 instead.]
Years later, Janette taught me to perform the piece myself.
Story: Tom Cho
Voice: Janette Hoe
Producer: Archie Cuthbertson for Going Down Swinging. Recorded at 3RRR Studios, 2004
