May Day, May Day... Not

May Day, May Day... Not

On 18th May, Bee Li, Siew Lee and Khai Lan were feted to a birthday bash at Hotel California. The usual suspects turned up except for those overseas, MF and PS.

Just happened that it was Siew Lee's maiden visit to the fortress and also the dogs' maiden pot-luck party. And it wasn't half bad, judging by the spread. Even sans rendang, we had way too much to eat and once again, ended up tapau-ing some home. Some say it was better than Hai Peng, Ming Room and even La Bodega. Don't play play.

Sow Pau from Bee Li.
Roast duck and chicken from Jessy.
Yam cake and jelly from Yoke Chen.
Fried beehoon, salad and fruits from Connie.
Tomyam beehoon (the house specialty), fried taufu and sausages from Karen.
"My mum's famous yong tau foo" from Salak South, from Florence.
Tapioca cake from BB.
Cheese cake from me.
A bottle of hard stuff from Mosquito.
Candles and a huge grin from Sensei.

Absentees note: home cooked food does wonders for you. Loaded with unadulterated goodness, it gives you more power to enjoy life than energy bars. Of course antioxidants from the vineyard help in great doses too. And Taiko, our resident bar tender, was liberal in dishing them out.

Turning 50? No way. Not going by the way your birthday girls (ok, two girls and you know who's the quiet one, wink, wink, the one who reads her email at midnight and giggles to herself) sang their hearts out, sashayed, twisted and rock-and-rolled. Taiso even jumped onto a chair and enthralled us with her best moves. And she is a year older than us. Age, what age? Who's aging?

Taiso had so much vitality that when she wasn't cha-cha-ing with Taiko, she was flitting from karaoke room to kitchen to bar to toilet... and even found time to baptize the queen of Chew Hong's heart. Henceforth, people, take note that Goy is now "Queenie". By order of the Top Dog's permaisuri who reigns in Hotel California.

We did miss the presence of our Malay ballads crooner and joget/qigong master. No one else can match him in belting out these sweet sentimentals. Big fine awaits he who didn't answer his calls.

Was it the badminton that kept some of you home? Hey, some of us watched the finals between China and Korea, too. Until the game lost its lustre, that is. For a while, the shouts at the sitting room matched the singing in the karaoke room. But they never drowned out the "happy birthday to you" refrains and the "yam seng". Quite a loooooooong yam seng it was.
No need ginseng lah, this gang.

If it weren't for the fact that our de-facto chauffeur didn't want to risk being locked out at sunrise after returning from Nilai, the party wouldn't have ended at two. Only Cinderella Connie kept to her curfew. Taiso's mum (does that make her the Queen Mother? or Tai Tai So?) outlasted you. This 82 years young hot chick retired only at 12.45. At makan time, she revealed to us her Seven Secrets of Longevity and Happiness:

1. Marry a Hainan
2. Get out of Hainan
3. Eat anything and everything
4. Laugh a lot
5. Talk a lot, especially with dogs.
Street dogs, midnight dogs, gallivanting dogs, sleeping dogs.
And dogs who rock, rattle and roll on their birthdays.
6. Be born in the year of the snake. Not any snake - poisonous snake.
7. Not sure you have eaten? Eat again.

Caveat: some words of wisdom may have got lost in translation. My hainanese is not up to the mark.

But seriously, MaMa was such a sporting lady. She did make us laugh. And helped to clear up a bit of the grub.

So another happy occasion came to pass. With anticipation and, thankfully, a couple of months' rest, we await the next shindig.

Thanks, dogs, for the wild time once again; kudos especially to our generous hosts, Rick and Karen.