Dee-Rob

We’re back on the island of fines and caning and well-ordered Chinese living Lee Kwon Yu style. We landed at Singapore customs just about 8 pm., which was just about right on time for the bus. The bus, the Odyssey, with promised wifi.

Sadly, with satellites and ground cover such as it is in a country that has a lot of trees and whatnot, internet was better than zero in a wifi-covered bus, but certainly not consistent.

Since a four hour bus-ride, dinner and a few cocktails on Clark’s Quay, I’m just about spent. I’m looking forward to sleeping the sleep of the near-dead. (And terminally polite, Singapore style.)

M. reports a great showerhead. Gotta wash some tropical heat and sweat off my brow.

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!

M. and I drove around the island of Penang a bit.

We went to the Penang Butterfly Farm, which had an awesome brochure that was clearly translated from another language into English. Apparently, it’s the world’s first butterfly farm, and the brochure indicated that it was built in the ’80s and “you can imagine how long ago that was.” Yes, yes, I can, oh lost youth.

Coolest part of the butterfly farm was the non-butterfly exhibits, like the insects that camouflage by looking like something else, the scorpion pit and the various meat-eating plants.

We all went to the Penang’s forestry park, which may be the world’s smallest. (They love the superlative tags in this part of the world — first, largest, smallest, tallest.) M. gloried in sun creeping through the jungle, but the monkey count was still low. That is, it was non-existent.

On the drive back by Batu Ferringhi we were rewarded. On a side street off the road, a fine Samaritan was tossing bread into the trees. Suddenly, there was a frenzy of monkey dining!

M. parked the car, and we took a million or so photos. OK, maybe it was a hundred or so. Here’s the thing, though. If you ever find yourself in a monkey-living part of the world, the locals find it pretty stupid if you take that many pictures. I guess it’s kind of like someone coming to my neck of the woods and showing me dozens of squirrel pictures.

In fact, one of M.’s cousins told me how there are extra heavy screens in some parts of Singapore to keep monkeys from reaching their hands into the kitchen window and feasting. I mean how cool would a monkey hand reaching through your
window be? Screens. Bah, I say.

Squirrels don’t have little human faces.

More monkey pics here. A few other pics here.

This morning brought a revelation — WiFi is available poolside where the hotel serves breakfast. Cereal, coffee and email. Wonderful stuff, really.

Last night, we were part of a splinter group of relatives. The rebels split off and had Indian food at a local eatery rather than homemade food at the family’s ancestral headquarters. I felt so reckless.

The downside really was that I missed gambling and drinking Tiger beer. Tiger is a fine, fine beer on a blazing hot, tropical night.

Not much else to report right now. No monkeys (yet).

Later, I plan to write far too much about bathrooms. Toilets truly are that which most moves me (no pun intended) when I travel. Here’s a good hint if you ever find yourself driving from Kuala Lumpur to Malaysia — Caravan with the locals who’ve made the drive previously. They know the stops with the cleaner bathrooms and where to get good pomelos.

All citrus fruit should be as big as your head.

Oh, one last thing. Now that we’ve discovered the interwebs at the hotel, I’ve started uploading pics. Unfortunately, they are raw, unedited and un-sized for good web viewing. Here is my first (partial) upload – last day in Singapore (hanging in Chinatown), driving from KL, our arrival in Penang and the reunion dinner with family (ending in karaoke). I think.

M.’s aunt, uncle and cousin from KL were back in the Bay Area. Whilst here, they stay with a high school friend of the uncle’s, in a typical suburban family house that is much like my big bro’s own playhouse. A drive from the big city, well-stocked, comfy and with all manner of entertainment.

They brought along another couple with whom they are partnering in a business, who hadn’t seen any of the sights.  So, we spent the weekend eating Asian food, talking about the business venture, sight-seeing and eating Asian food.

Here’s me, I believe looking like some kind of famous bridge docent:

M.’s taking the picture.  What this picture really needs is a bit of a visual intro, but I missed the shot while thinking about it rather than taking it.  You see, the Golden Gate bristles with tourists on any given weekend, and a large percentage of them are from areas east of Europe and west of the California cost.  However many countries there are in Asia, they be representing bridge-side.

And, there I was.

While driving up and down, up and down, up and down and over and across the San Francisco Bay quite a few times this weekend, I finally finished my ballot. 

We are heading out and away from the primaries on Friday to the other side of the globe, so we will be absentee voters in this race.  While the polls are reporting and the counting goes on, remember us as they talk about the millions of “absentee ballots,” now re-branded as vote-by-mail, not yet counted in Cali next Tuesday.

(Here, where people make programs and computers for a living, voting by mail is pretty dang popular.  Somewhere, somehow, tucking a piece of cardboard colored in with black or blue pen, licking it shut, stamping and tossing it into a blue box on the corner seems safer than using a newfangled machine that hackers have proved oh-so-compromise-able.)

M. has already been researching how we can tune into the crazy wacky fun of Super Tuesday.  (By the way, note to all TV talkers every-fucking-where, calling it “Super Duper Tuesday” just sounds so fucking indescribably lame. Please stop.)

We should be in Kuala Lumpur, but I’m not sure.  When the last polls close at 8 p.m. PST Tuesday, it should be 12 noon on Wednesday in Malaysia.  I’m confused, as I think we may already be hopping into his aunt and uncle’s minivan and driving from KL to Penang, because Super Tuesday will be Wednesday, the eve of the lunar new year, when the Chinese New Year-ing festivities shall commence.

Starting the new year and trying to monitor the primaries is likely to drive M. to distraction.  To say he’s wrapped up in the race would be an immense understatement.  He’s obsessed.

Somewhere in Malaysia, there will be at least one “Barack Obama ‘08″ t-shirt, and my man will be sporting it on his back.

Cumulatively, we’ve watched days of hours of minutes of eternities of coverage, swapped news links, youtube videos, blog postings, read most major news stories and finally did our ballots yesterday and mailed them off to the county.  I was undecided until minutes before envelope sealing.

In the end, I listened to the fire in the belly of our former president, William Jefferson Clinton.  His passion, his anger, his parsing of words, like “rolling the dice” and “fairy tale.”  And, I voted against his wife.

As much as I want to see a woman get ahead, I am fucking worn out and tired by all of the bullshit and lies and grandstanding.  We’ve been doing that for eight fucking destructive years.  It’s easy to believe that old Bill and Karl Rove are spiritual twins.

Oh, and, ah, feminist-wise, someone relying on both her husband’s old job and his current-day bullying, is, ah, not the kind of chick that does it for me. I mean, Phyllis Schlafly has a following and a career and ovaries, and I wouldn’t give her the time of day.

Like a whole lot of people I want to believe that maybe there is something else.  I want to think change could happen as Barry Crimmins, who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid yet like me, wrote here. Caroline K. helped push me over the edge.  And today her uncle closed it.

I mean holy shit.  Ted Kennedy is speechifying all positive-like and forward thinking and inspirational.  There is something in the air.  Could be political shit, of course, but at the moment it’s smelling sweeter. Check this endorsement from the SF paper.

(Sorry to Dennis Kucinich.  I know you and I are kindred spirits, united on such things as policy and progressive ideals.  We were meant to be together, you and I.  Like a poor girl in a Dickensian drama, I went not with love but with strategy.  Barack has a chance of making history, Dennis, and selfishly I want to be a part.  Maybe we could each send him a pocket Constitution.)

There’s a whole lot of shit I haven’t written out and tried to make all funny haha.  But rest assured there are teeny little glimmers of ideas bouncing in the vast, empty expanse I call my skull.

The best I can do:

 - M. has taken to getting T-shirts altered to his particular likes. 
 - M. makes me laugh.  Very, very much, in fact too much, like myself he struggles with his individuality.  We both think we blend in a very low-key one of the crowd way.  We don’t.
 - It looks like folks from a few jobs ago, and number 2 entry in my spectacularly fired from workplaces trilogy, might show up at the show I’m hosting.
 - Oh yeah, did I mention I’m hosting a show.  Comedy.  Funny.  Come on by.
 - Next week we head to Singapore and Malaysia.  I’m beginning the obsessive compulsive phase of traveling.  It begins with list making in my head.  I also am quite concerned that my underwear is ready for the international challenge.
 - Apropos the item above, my guilt is sinking in.  I mentioned a desire to see the rain forest.  I believe this wish will be met, but that accompanying us will be a subset of M.’s clan.  I had no intention that my whimsy would result in forcing his mother to a long march in the jungle.
 - Since Chinese is way above my intellectual capacity to learn, I thought I’d try Malay.  I have one week to actually take the book off our book shelf and learn a language.  Good planning.
 - Our guide book to Singapore says the slang for white person is “Ang Moh” around that neighborhood.  I think it’s Hokkien.  I asked M. for the word for “fat,” and it sounds something like bu-yo.  I’m going to be listening up for “bu-yo ang moh,” because this visit I’m chubbier and whiter than before.
 - If I hear a universal “Holy Shit” when I get off the plane, I know the prior item is correct.
 - Finally, there’s a whole slew of shit about work I could bitch about.  Suffice it to say — People is C-R-A-Z-Y (and generally, they annoy me.  People, all of them, that is.)