KL Open: Where are the Malaysians?

Someone commented that there are only four Malaysian players registered as of yesterday for the KL Open 2009. I checked out the list at chess results. True enough there are only four names, Edward Lee, recently our fifth board at the Dresden Olympiad, Wong Jianwen who managed to defeat IM Tan Lian Ann at the DATMO 2009, Haslindah Ruslan (!) and Abdul Haq. Malaysians like to do things at the last minute so there should be more registrations over the next two days.

But I still find it surprising, given the number of IMs and GMs taking part,the possibilities of norms are very good. If you look at DATMO over the years, there were so many Filipinos, Indonesians, Vietnames, Indians etc who spend a lot of money on airfare and hotel rooms to compete over here. The tournament is in our own backyard. So where are the Malaysians?

Tournaments like this costs a lot of money to run. And it looks like it is going to benefit other nations rather than ourselves.