Its Thursday and I get to have lunch with The Kittens. Today we met at Portview and sat at our favourite table overlooking the Brunei river. We had a full quorum and lots of laughs and stories and giggles and relevations over cigs, food and drinks. Deeeee-stress. I promised the girls 'what happens at kitten lunch stays at kitten lunch' but let me tell you girls that I am storing memories in my head so that I can write an expose at the age of 80. I'll even call it The Kitten Tales :)
The 1st of June also marks the end of the paddy harvesting season and the beginning of the new planting season. The Bidayuhs, Ibans, Dusuns and Kedazans the indeginous people of Sabah and Sarawak celebrates the festival by dancing the shemazau and singing and drinking copious amounts of tuak or rice wine in their longhouses:
Through all of this, though, you might well find yourself dancing, as we were, with rice wine flowing: it's sweet, hot taste passing our lips in multiple sips from shot glasses made from hollowed bamboo. It was fuel for the dancers - young, lithe, tawny skinned nubiles whose wide, brown eyes sparkled with laughter at our attempts to bird-dance. It is their Malaysian custom to keep dancing as long as the guests keep smiling, just as it Western custom to keep smiling in appreciation of hospitality and kindness. And so the dance kept going; all smiles and waves, like birds of a feather caught in a never-ending cycle of the padi itself.
Selamat Hari Gawai to our neighbours!
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