Si Mamat strip published in 1972. Malaysia was facing a shortage of qualified physical education teachers then, and such duties were often placed on the shoulders of teachers of other faculties. Lat illustrated an obese teacher who conducted a physical education session to his eventual collapse. Muliyadi suggested that the cartoon could be interpreted as a simple tease of the teacher's plight, a suggestion to examine the curriculum taught (change physical education to an informal session), a remark on the shortage of teachers, or more extremely, a criticism of the government's failure to prevent the situation from happening. The narration of Lat's early cartoons, such as Tiga Sekawan and Keluarga Si Mamat, was in Malay. His later works, however, were mostly in English; Scenes of Malaysian Life ran only in the English-language New Straits Times. The English idiom in his works reflects the local pidgin form—"Malglish"—containing smatterings of Malay words and a simpler grammatical structure. After a string of successful English publications, Lat worried he had neglected Malaysians who were not proficient in English. He drew Mat Som, a story of a kampung boy who moved to the city to work as a writer and courted a pretty city girl. The comic was in Malay and a commercial hit; its first print of 30,000 copies sold out in three months. Far Eastern Economic Review journalist Suhaini Aznam remarked that Lat's strength was his ability to portray the plight of the common man in a satiric light without any form of bias. Early style Lat's artistic skills were cultivated from youth and self-taught. The cartoonist believes he inherited the talent and interest from his father, who doodled as a hobby and was notorious for his sense of humour as the "village jester". Lat says his siblings were also gifted in drawing, but they never bothered to develop their talents. His parents actively encouraged him to develop his artistic skills, although his father occasionally told him not to make a career of it. He also received encouragement from outside his family; Lat's primary school teacher Mrs Moira Hew (the inspiration for one of his characters, the Butterfly-Glassed Lady), helped nurture his gift, frequently asking him to illustrate lessons in class. Her teachings expanded Lat's mind and made him more receptive to ideas that looked beyond his kampung. The early influences on his art style were from the West. Like most of the