The latest season of Atas Heights 2 has resulted in a deeply polarizing effect on our Suria-watching community – viewers have either loved it to bits or they’ve hated it a vengeance. As much as I’d typically enjoy being a hater (it fills my soul with exciting murder-suicide scenarios and stimulating debates with fictitious characters in my head) I couldn’t help falling in love with this crazy little comedy.

Maybe it was the ridiculousness that surrounded these ladies like an invisible electric fence to their cavalcade of mental-hospital issues, or maybe I’m just a sucker for talented veteran actresses with perfect comic timing – whatever it was, I could not stop watching. Now while I’m fully aware that this show was mostly parody, I’m also willing to bet that some of the eccentricities on display did reflect the actual madcap adventures of real life Datin-wannabes.

So here’s your guide to spotting (or even transforming yourself into) a real Datin-housewife of Atas Heights 2.

Hair There Everywhere!

Big hair is the first step to officially trademarking yourself as a glamorous Datin. This guarantees your instant status as the centre of attention simply by blocking out everyone else around you with your gigantic poof. I’m really not exaggerating – most of these ladies look like they spend every morning in front of the vanity mirror throwing tiny little grenades into their hair. When they come together, it’s like a coniferous forest canopy – you know they’ve just finished throwing a garden party when you look at the garden and all the grass has died from lack of sunlight and photosynthesis.

Nobody really knows why big hair is so important in the life of an Atas Heights Datin. I could swing some guesses – perhaps it’s simply an evolutionary tool in the face of potential nuclear hazards. If a nuclear power plant was to explode somewhere nearby, it would take approximately 5 hours for the radiation to penetrate that thick head of hair and possibly even thicker skull.

Perhaps big hair is simply more efficient for keeping up with the times – quite literally. Who needs watches to tell the time when you can just run out to your front lawn and calculate the angle of the sun by observing the shadow cast from your humongous head?

“I bukan nak cakap besar lah kan..”

When you’re about to boast about something in your life, always preface it with a contradictory proclamation such as “I bukan nak cakap besar lah kan..” or “I bukan kaya sangat lah kan..” which is basically code for “I’m about to boast now, please summon up all of your strength and energy into maintaining your smile and focusing your eyeballs to the centre of your eye sockets so that they don’t roll round and round even though that will be their natural instinctive reaction towards the random facts of my magnificent life that I’m about to regale you with.”

Because it’s not polite to tattoo the words “I’M BETTER THAN YOU” directly on your forehead for all to see – a little subtlety makes all the difference.

Battle of the Bling

I remember one hilarious scene where the Datins were seated around a table and all I could see were giant, heavy earrings peeking out from various megalithic hairdos. If violent earthquakes were to rock that area in that exact moment, I’ll bet the most common casualty report would have been a case of sprained earlobes.

One of the ladies coiled so many pearls around her neck and wrists that it looked like she was interviewing for a job as a full-time oyster. I could imagine mother nature herself appearing right in front of her and giving her the official certificate for first woman on earth to change species from human to seafood.

Colour-Code Yourselves

Being the ladies of the Datin world means heralding the call of girl power via simple colour tools that first made the Spice Girls so famous. Spices came from the east after all – so by default, the Melayu Datin is the original Ratu Rempah! What better way to permanently burn the image of your individual faces into the minds of everyone you encounter than by each wearing a distinct bright colour every time you go out together?

This also makes it easier for people to tell the ladies apart since they all seem to employ the same exact make-up template featuring post-fire-trauma-stress-disorder smoky eyes and ongoing-fire-trauma-stress-disorder burning red lips.

I don’t know what the punishment for disobeying this rule is, but it must be pretty severe because nobody ever dares to break it – each Datin never ever appears in the same colour scheme as another Datin. Remember how, in the movie Shanghai Noon, Jacky Chan was banished from his tribe simply by having his ponytail hacked off? Perhaps the Datin underworld operates in similar brutal fashion – but instead of using scissors or knives, their torture chamber features hair flatteners and re-bonding kits. “Your hair no longer meets the minimum required circumference – you are now exiled from Atas Heights to Bawah Bottoms!”

Besides color-coding themselves, Datins also prefer flowy dresses that they can daintily pick up with their fingertips as they walk around the house while entertaining guests – not because they are modest, but because they like to float everywhere together like a pastel pontianak brigade. Whenever they sashay from one place to another, it’s almost like a textile convention moving house.

Viva La Passport

This is one rule that every self-respecting Datin must learn to adhere to. Everything you own must have, at some point in it’s life history, passed through international customs. Sure, you can make your scones using flour from Sheng Shiong and walnuts from Mustafa, as long as the recipe was dutifully wrestled from the hands of a British chef on one of your travel conquests.

Your antique clock may not be able to tell the time anymore, but the important thing is that it came from a different time zone and a different era. Even better if it travelled from the future to arrive in your living room one day while you were casually sitting on your Persian rug reading postcards from your Mayan friends on how the 2012 doomsday prophecy actually begins with you and your undying mission to become a black hole for trinkets from every possible continent. By December 2012, your bungalow will have inevitably swallowed up our entire solar system.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my simple tutorial on how to live the life of an Atas Heights Datin-wannabe. You can still catch every episode of Atas Heights 2 on XIN MSN Catch-Up TV. Please note that I have absolutely no affiliation with Suria or Atas Heights 2.

So what else did you love or hate about this series? Tell me down below in the comments!

Rafiq Jalil
Rafiq is the resident funny guy at Muzlimbuzz.sg. A big fan of movies and television, he is a freelance writer who blogs at www.omgsianz.org