spectating is a spectator sport

eh? you must be wondering.

I've recently realised that I've taken people-watching to a new level. It borders on spectator sport for me- a form of great entertainment, amusement and speculation.

While drunk friends have always amused me (especially when I'm stone cold sober), watching them get pissed is now a fine art.

I've realised not only do I like watching alchies on binges, I like to simply watch things happen around me.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that I'm too tired to do much else given the crazy job, but I still gain huge satisfaction by watching people merely walk past me.

***

The family is in town. I now have 2 cousins in Melbourne with me, and 1 of them is my neighbour back home. I grew up with him, knocked my front teeth out on a chair of his while playing with him, got into numerous scrapes with him, beheaded his GI Joe dolls with him, watched Transformer, Bionic 6, Fantastic 7, Gummi Bears, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Muppets with him, I believe we used to curse our Chinese (Mandarin) tuition teacher together. We drifted apart in out teenage years, but he's now in town undertaking a degree in commerce.

I guess we're growing a mini-Peranakan community of our very own here. His mum kept bringing buah keluak up just to piss me off I swear! They know I have a fondness for buah keluak, a very very Peranakan dish that seems to be an acquired taste along the lines of durians, duck foetuses and pig offal. It's nothing so rancid though, it's just minced pork or chicken stuffed with the flesh of a nut that's toxic unless you soak it in water for 3 days. *wry look* But seriously, if you like it, it can't be all that good for you.

Coffee, chocolate, fried chicken, chips, full clotted cream, cake,cocaine, acid, whiskey, beer, nicotine, happy pills (no wait that's Prozac- I mean like Ecstacy or whatever newfangled stuff they take nowadays), buah keluak. MMMMMMMMMMM.***

Uncle and Aunt took me for dinner today, with my aunt's brother in-law and they spent the entire dinner talking about really really conservative traditional things and views. I really got pissed off however, when they started grilling me about why I don't have said boyfriend, and whether I would accept other races.

I was like "well I have to like them 1st" in a futile attempt at dodging the question.

Driven into a corner a full 2 seconds later I said "yeah" to "would you ever date a white boy?"

then the brother in law thought he was cracking a joke when he said this:


"I tell you what you do, ah. You ring your mum and dad right, and say 'mummy daddy, I have something to tell you. I'm dating someone. He's NEGRO' then you wait for them to scold you. Then you can say 'I'm only joking. He's white'"

He proceeds to laugh uproariously. I exchange glances with my cousin. He's not batting an eyelid. I'm slightly disturbed. I try to steer the conversation away.

"But some AFRICANS are hot. I mean look at Beyonce"

"Is she considered NEGRO?"

"She's AFRICAN-AMERICAN"

(please note that we're both emphasising the descriptors)

"Yeah. Then I suppose lah. You think they're good loking? No lah. Some of them are so BLACK. Like Indians also."

I feel like telling him

"Oh my gosh. look at you. You're so YELLOW"

I change the subject again

"Yeah. I just came back from a North Indian engagment actually." I turn my palms up, revealing the mendhi

"North Indians are really fair. And they have brown blue green or grey eyes"

Everyone expresses surprise. My irritation has grown into an itch. My cousin had just told me he'd made some Zimbabwean friends. He was NOT helping me.

"yeah. and I think some Africans and Indians are really good looking. "

The uncle gets the message and changes tack. Starting on his "prep talk" with his son about how he could be gay because he hadn't brought home a girl at 23. OOOOHHHH DEJA-VU.

I. Give. Up.

I'm definitely joining the PR or Ad industries when I go home. I think I'd simply die if I were to work anywhere else.