Dee-Rob

Last night had us sitting in the living room of M.’s old partner in crime from high school days. They reminisced about the old neighborhood and old friends, while he plied us with booze and Dunhill Lights.

Out of politeness, I found myself sipping Jack Daniels on the rocks with a splash of Coke.

Yup, so far here in Asia, I’ve danced along with “Achey Breaky Heart,” and I’ve sipped Kentucky bourbon. To say that U.S. cultcha is pervasive is a fucking understatement.

Today’s the last day for a lot of the family in visiting their hometown. We’re caravaning back to Kuala Lumpur, following an aunt and uncle and probably carrying a couple of cousins in the car. We’re the old cousins, almost the ages of the aunts and uncles, but hanging out with the young adults of the generation in which M. is the eldest.

We decided going to the national rainforest in Tamar Negara was a bit too far. Somehow, hiking with two pieces of luggage and the prospect of dubious pleasantries (such as a toilet) seems less fun than it did before we left home.

So, we’re hanging in the big city of KL for a couple of days, before spending our last day(s) in Singapore, at a four-star hotel with WiFi everywhere. Expect many photo uploads!

So far, I have seen the paltry, slight vision of one monkey, off in the distance ambling near the highway ditch, from a speeding, “almost as good as first class” coach.

However, last night was the New Year’s Eve reunion dinner. The first event of a series of eating events, as the family home-for-the-holidays gathering commences. The crowd is indeed a crowd, although it is slightly reduced from what was anticipated because of some sick kids in a family branch.

Dinner was amazing, a huge variety of different dishes for which I don’t know what the names, except for curry chicken, because I know those two words. There was homemade sausage, vegetables, various bowls of Asian-y stew-type things, oh, fried prawns, I recognized those too. There are great cooks in M.’s family.

His uncle joked with me that it was Thanksgiving.

After dinner, as I cradled an icy cold can of Tiger beer, in the combined living room/dining room where all of the furniture had been pushed back and card tables set up to accommodate all of the clan and the huge amount of food, out came the karaoke.

I cannot adequately set the scene. First, imagine any large gathering of family. Now, because a huge percentage of the tiny number of readers of this sad little blog are of the caucasian pallet, imagine that same family gathering with Chinese faces with all the same differences in age from babies to 90+ year olds. And, then there was me, as M.’s aunt called me, Gwailo, essentially “whitey.”

And then, karaoke. I did not sing, despite the admonitions and calls for “American Idol,” which would be me, the American. Singing, I cannot do.

(As a total aside, M.’s family has a spectrum of skin tones from the warmer side of the pallet. Lovely tones suited to the neighborhood and the climate, light browns and tans and such.

I am fair-skinned. When it is hot as a mother-fucker, which it certainly was last night, steamy, fucking hot, and I’ve spent the day in the sun, and I’m eating curries, and I’m drinking beer, I become the classic red-faced and splotchy tones of my potato-eating people. I am Ted Kennedy on a bender with tones of pink, white and red. It is my natural state.

It was hard to convince the folks that I wasn’t about to succumb to tropical heat and perish. Alas. Poor gwailo.)

Perhaps the highlight of the evening just for pure surreal — Was I really thousands of miles from home? — had to be M.’s cousin’s rendition of that Billy Ray Cyrus classic, Achey Breaky Heart. In the background, two of the aunts provided backup with an impromptu Electric Slide. I fear I will not leave this island until Aunt #6 successfully teaches me to line dance.