Wak Long & Pak Dogol in Paris

(Shadow play, pic courtesy of All Malaysia). We acquire and keep words, names and meanings as we go through life. The term "wayang kulit", made up of usually unconnected words may not mean much to those who have not seen Wak Long and Pak Dogol in action. It's amazing, names like Wak Long and Pak Dogol can be retained and recalled with ease. Although we are used to names such as Ali, Abu and Ahmad, we can also retain a long list of alien words such as chateaubriand steak, chicken cordon bleu casserole, haathi mere saathi, kuch kuch hota hai, Al Pacino, Luciano Pavrotti, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Schumacher, Bayern Munich, Ronaldinho, Maria Sharapova, Mary Poppins and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. So we sent Wak Long and Pak Dogol to Paris by kapa trebe to give the French a different flavour of les guignols and puppet shows, and to see if they can remember the names of the 2 clowning court jesters.