Lawok. Pelawok. Pok Lawok.

I have not written in this blog for a long time. Ideas dried up. Then, something just came my way. A joke, (satire, comedy call it whatever) on the web, landed one Hasan Skodeng in court. Skodeng is a Terengganu word for peeping, and Hassan may be ‘orang Tranung’ – who else is as ‘bengong’ to claim to be a peeping Tom. Maybe he had spent a fair amount of time on toilet ceiling or on spycam but that was none of our business.

In Terengganu, a joke is a ‘lawok’; to make a joke is to ‘buat lawok’ or ‘wak lawok’ (please don’t mistake it for Wak Seman or Wak Parjo). A joker however is not a ‘pelawok.’ Pelawok to Terengganuan is a liar. Penipu, pembohong, putar alam or as some put it (for this I must profusely apologize to the Indians) ‘Keling’. Now we know exactly why Indians find such term degrading.

When a Terengganuan says to you, ‘Mung ning memang pelawok’ don’t think that he regarded you as a Raja Lawak material. He meant ‘you bloody liar, you!’

A joker to Terenganuan is a Pok Lawok (standard spelling – Pak Lawak).
Terengganuan regards liars and jokers as equal; the same way they regarded most if not all ‘ahli politik’. But if you know Terengganuan well (I’d be more comfortable to call them and myself ‘orang Tranung’), you know they are easy going and humorous. Maybe that is the reason why they equate one with the other. They laugh at and never believe any of them anyway.