Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Neighbours
1-JUNE-2009:
On Sunday yesterday, a neighbour invited us over for a bbq. I've never really spoken to this neighbour (let's call him S). We just said 'hi' in passing when we see each other occassionally. He's a white British, middle aged, probably around 45 or something. I had assumed that he had kids, especially shortly after we moved in we received an invitation (through our mailbox) to his daughter's birthday party. At the time, we wondered if his daughter was a small kid or a teenager. We never found out because we didn't go to the party. I've seen an African woman coming back to the house - young, around 20-something - and I had assumed that perhaps she was renting a room there. As it turned out, S is married to an African woman and she has a daughter from her previous marriage. Note: The 20-something is not his wife, but his step-daughter.
There were other people there as well - our neighbour upstairs and his girlfriend who came from New Zealand, another neighbour (French woman) who lives down the street and another African friend of S who lives nearby. The French woman was at least 55 years old, I think. After a few glasses of wine, she started calling me 'darling' and stroking my back up and down. Haha! Anyway, I think she was just being nice. She took down our names, address and birth dates so that she can send us birthday cakes, she said. She has the same name as Dominic, although I think hers might be spelled differently. She was the first one to spot my baby bump.
One thing I noticed is that the men can really drink. I only had water and sparkling juice. Saimun had ONE can of beer and he made that last from 2:30pm to 7pm. Impressive, heh? I think someone mentioned that he had never seen one can of beer last so long. :p He is now drinking beer at home in the evening because he said he needs to "practise".
Because of our diversed backgrounds, there were lots to talk about. They wanted to know what food we eat in Malaysia, what languages we speak, what is the religion of the people there and how much English we speak. I still don't like it when people automatically assume that we are Malays when we say we "come from Malaysia". When I met up with my midwife for the first time, she asked where I'm from. "Malaysia", I said thinking she was just making casual conversation. She consulted a list and she said, "That would make you ... is it Asian?". If you're familiar with filling up forms in the UK, you will definitely know that although you're from South East Asia, you're NOT an Asian because you're Chinese. Asians refer to Indians, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indonesians, etc. "Oh no, I'm Chinese", I said, "I was just born in Malaysia", and the midwife put a tick under the "Oriental" category.
