Blood relatives started to trickle into my house. The noise built. But I could still hear my Mom. This meant not all of the Tan family were present. Thank God for that.

Food was served and soon everyone was in clusters. I hopped from cluster to cluster, exchanging 3 years of news in 5 minutes.

Oh, and in the three years I was gone, my cousin Gary made an Uncle out of me. Twice. Their names are Natasha and Nathalie.

Hmmmm! Uncle Jeremy. Psychologically, that adds ten years to your age.

I weathered the “Do you have a girlfriend?”, the “How much longer are you going to be there?”, and the “What happened to your hair?” questions. And then they left me alone.

20 hours ago, I stepped onto a plane in LA. I’ve now been standing here for close to an hour and the conveyor belt has yet to convey my luggage.

I now write this from 4 Jalan 7/16. Everything looks a little different from when I left some three years ago. Even the color of the light.

Earlier, after I finally got my luggage at the airport, I darted for the shortest line at the customs. There were 4 malay girls and two Malay guys ahead of me. The customs guy was really friendly and all 6 eased through. And then it was my turn.

“Dari mana?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Buka.”

And so I opened my bag. In my hurried rush to make it to the airport on time, I just mashed my clothes, both dirty and clean into a fabric mosh pit. The two men in blue went at my unappetizing pile of crap like wolves to raw meat, combing every cranny of my bag like a chimps “de-lice-ing” their young. I obediently swallowed my dose of racist reality and at that point knew for sure that I was indeed back home in Malaysia.

I’m threading on two and a half hours of sleep after being on the phone with Hui Chin for almost 9 hours last night. My head feels like its been filled with one part water and one part mercury… except the mercury is floating on top of the water instead of it being the other way around. (See how weird I get when I don’t get my regular dose of Alpha.) What did we talk about for 9 hours? Alien abduction and anal probing of unsuspecting underaged single male sheep in the mid-west.

Debbie offered to give me a test drive in her almost virgin 2000 black Eclipse when I sauntered into the office this morning. So off we went. This car has super pick up and rides smoother than freshly waxed legs. But all joyrides come to an end and now it is back to playing finger footsie on my blueberry semi-transparent Apple keyboard. I’ve got so much doughnut sugar and Honey Wheat Graham crumbs caught behind the keys of my keyboard it sometimes puzzles me that some cockroach, somewhere, hasn’t had the brains to start a family under my keyboard. Maybe they don’t like their sleep disrupted by my typing in the day. But they could live under “Q”. I never use “Q”.

I stepped away from my desk for awhile but now I’m back. Got myself a Pepsi in hope that them caffeine molecules would disrupt the sluggish blood clogging my veins. I’m normally a hardcore Coke person who would rather drink dry cracked mud than be seen in public with a Pepsi in my hand… but I guess I’ve decided to dump that image thing for one morning at least.

Well, I think I’ve written enough shit for one morning. Which brings me actually to yet another snippet of my life I’d like to share with you, the world. I promise I’ll stop after I plug this. I’ve got a sucker fish named after me… a designation so appropriate in my opinion, mostly due to the unfortunate reality of me being so utterly full of shit. The fish’s name was administered, of course, by none other than Hui Chin, who, at the time of the assignment, wanted me to “Go eat shit and die” since we were not too fond of each other. But now that we’re b u d d i e s, Hui Chin has decided to make up for her absolutely unacceptable past decision by naming her plant after me… maybe subconsciously to further suggest that I’m a vegetable and that I’m at the bottom of the food chain. I say this because she chose not to feed Jeremy any sunlight for a week. He is currently hooked to life support and is surrounded by close family members at a nearby hospital after he was ripped from her possession by the RSPCA for plants.

I sure am in a chatty mood this morning. It’s probably the caffeine taking effect. But my high is coming to an end right now and I can see a caffeine crash lurking over the horizon. In fact I can see blur blotches tip toeing inwards from the corner of my eyes and my eyelids are migrating to my feet at the rate of 9.8 meters per second per second. The muscles in my neck are in mutiny and my half mercury half water weighted head is in a dive towards my keyboard. The keyboard is accelerating toward my face. I can see the doughnut sugar and Honey Wheat Graham crumbs more clearly than ever. If I’m going down, I’m taking you bastards with me. QQQQQQQQQQ