Istana Tak Budaya

200604 theatre sails
Swiped from superciliousness.

In conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between Japan and Malaysia, The Japan Foundation (JFKL) and Embassy of Japan in Malaysia, in cooperation with Ministry of Culture, Art and Heritage, Istana Budaya, The Asano Foundation for Taiko Cultural Research, Japan Club Kuala Lumpur and JACTIM supported by Hotel Nikko presented a free drum concert by Hono-O-Daiko. It's a renowned Japanese group of women drummers, accompanied by music performers group, Tokyo Dageki Dan. Seeing that it was free, SK, Jack & I decided to try to get advanced tickets from the JFKL office. But since it was located at Menara Citibank, the advance tickets were quickly snapped up by those working in the vicinity. Not all hope was lost, there was still a chance to get tickets just before the concert itself. The website stated that 200 tickets were to be given out at Istana Budaya before the show. So, SK and Jack
went at 10+ am to try their luck. Seems that some kiasu people camped out at the boxoffice since 6.30am!! Apparently word got around that the concert's excellent so everyone was scrambling to secure tickets.

Unfortunately, SK and Jack's efforts were for naught. When boxoffice staff came, a notice was put up saying that only 25 tickets were available. Everyone was flabbergasted. All hell broke loose. Some people were got hot under the collar because they came to line up the day before and was told by JFKL that at least 100 tickets were available. The guards were also very rude and kept on making sarcastic remarks that everyone should leave because it would be impossible to get tickets. Saying that only 17 tickets were left, then 30, then 25-- just disseminating false information. It was weird. Some of the people even confronted the boxoffice staff. It ended with a shouting match:

Nak komplen tu komplen lah. Tak kisah la, Datuk ke, Tan Sri ke. Tiket banyak ni je. Siapa dulu dia dapat. Tak kisah Melayu ke, Cina ke, India ke. Aku tak kisah. Nak beratur ke, tak nak beratur. Aku tak kisah.

Needless to say, many left the place disappointed.
It all reeks of foul play. Obviously some hanky-panky involved and they did not even bother to offer any semblance of an excuse. Kudos to Istana Budaya. I was pissed at JFKL too, so I sent an irate e-mail to them. They actually replied. Cleared the air a bit, or passed the buck, depending on the angle:

Thank you very much for your e-mail and apology for what happened.

We had passed 180 tickets to Istana Budaya on 20th and told them never ever release the tickets until the redemption on the 21st starts. They promised, but when we arrived there that Sunday morning, we were informed that there were only 25 left. We asked for the explanation but they kept saying that the person-in-charge was on leave. We, as well as the people lined up like you, were very angry, upset and disappointed about that. We asked for IB staff to stand at the box office to explain what exactly happened, not to us JFKL but to the people spending their time and effort to line up, but there were nobody in the office. The fact is, the 155 tickets were taken by IB staff.

We are very sorry for what had happened, and will try our best to avoid this kind of problems to happen again.

We sincerely hope to see you at our coming events.

So much for budaya. So much for culture.