Clouds of smokes filled the morning, as early as 9 a.m. In that smoke, a familiar smell clogged my senses, a smell of charcoal, barbequed meat. As I trace the source, I found out that it was the ‘satay’ a famous Malaysian cuisine, patiently grilled by a fine gentleman. “Aah, home alas!” Not quite. Banners with the names of countries from all over the world stood out from the clusters of tents laid out in the small lane besides Bongji fountain. Countries ranging from Russia to Brunei, and from Pakistan to the home nation Korea. At that time, it was apparent that the participants for this event was very busy, a smile was hardly seen as everyone was busy preparing to promote their countries in the best way possible, by foods.
    Before the participants even get to represent their countries, the drizzling rain intervened the occasion. A sign of things to come. The minor interruption, however, did not dampen the participants’ spirits, if anything, the rain came with a flood of interested buyers from all over the university, mostly local students who just got out of their respective classes. A key moment of that day was seeing people from Indonesia, Malaysia, India each donning their own respective sarees, baju melayus, kebayas and batiks respectively. Not forgetting people from Vietnam and Brunei showcasing their model of traditional wear outside their booths to attract customers, despite the rain.
    Each booth tried their absolute best to promote their culture and country through food. As I recall, almost all booth demonstrated ‘live cooking’ by their so-called chefs. Notably, the people from China cooked their pancake in front of the customers, so does the Russians, demonstrated their skills to produce the ‘bliny’, Mongolian chefs cooking their lamb salad, the people in Pakistan’s booth even got ‘professional’ as everyone was uniformly dressed in green and so on and so forth. At times, I was personally impressed, because all these ‘chefs’ are CNU’s very own students. These people, who wielded their spatulas, flipped pans, avidly controlled the heat of each cooking, they are all at CNU, studying!
    There was no doubting that the food was the main attraction that day. Inherently, the free samples were the best part of the event! From Malaysia to Japan and Pakistan to Russia, there was a non-stop supply of bite sized samples. International students did not waste their chance as some of them did not even spend a dime but ends up full from tasting the varieties of food. Who could blame them? As foods ranging from ‘Passembor’, Korean, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese types of pancakes, roti kaya, keria, Vietnamese spring rolls, to the chicken ‘adobos’ were up for interested buyer’s tasting.
    Even though food was the main attraction on that day, the people, buyers, sellers, passesr-by, organizers and whomever that made the day possible, caught my attention the most. It was spectacular to see how that narrow street, on any other day, would be dull and forgotten transformed into such an inviting place with people from all over the world. Even the ever iconic, the Bongji was eclipsed by the long, narrow road. Like the rain, people flood the area at irregular intervals. Nevertheless, on that day alone, I met people from Brazil to the people from Mongolia, discovered all the booths with a friend from Gabon, explained about Malaysian food to my friends from all over Europe. I was overwhelmed with happiness to see the smiles, laughters, bargains and commotions shared by everyone on that lane, that day. The world, on a narrow street. Surely, that day was one, not to be missed.
    Back home, a tragedy struck as a twin otter commercial plane crashed in Kudat, leaving a few casualties. Among them, Marc Joel, the co-pilot, still in his tender youth, a 22 year old, like me. Despite never being an acquaintance of the victim, his passing somehow made me reflect on the ‘global street’, the event that just took place. Life is short. Regardless of our age, we should be wise to grab any opportunity possible to foster great relationships with all sorts of people from the furthest stretch of the world. Enjoy every smiles, laughters, share from awkward to funny jokes and time we have with each other, as time is irreplaceable. R.I.P. Marc Joel.

By Rizal Rozhan, Exchange Student, University of Malaya