« so enough about me.... wish you were here » so, enough about me you want to know about the food the people well fuck you i mean fine what can i tell you? it's all about me right? like it's all about you okay your kids your husbands, wives, mothers, fathers your job your country, investments your home, hearts, lungs, kidneys, backs same fucking thing but you insist you want to know what's behind these smiling brown faces their inherent modesty their endearing but evasive self consciousness why do they look to the west? well, there's this one dude who works at the university he's my colleague so to speak maybe he's just a staff member but i walk into the office one morning the common space area and smiling at me from this dude's screen saver in 2 dimensional pixellated harmony who should it be? that's right that scruffy, charismatic and lovable osama bin laden osama bin fucking laden so i walk over to the dude and ask him why he has a picture of bin laden on his computer this causes a stir amongst all the worker bees hush hush chitter chatter and the dude who doesn't speak english too well but seemingly understands me fine tries to gesture "no harm, no foul" but i persist and ask again and the dude says he has osama's pic on his screensaver because "he's the top man in the world" i don't flinch or raise my voice i mean i'm this understanding, anti-american ex- patriate cat myself but i ask him again what he means and he goes into his apologetic i don't understand gestural mode but i persist and ask him if he thinks osama was responsible for september 11th or if he personally is in favor of terrorism and so many innocent people dying and isn't islam a peaceful, all-accepting religion etc etc but the dude really doesn't answer me any more the chorus of worker bees just smile and chitter chatter and i walk out of the common office space to by own big unused office space and i have to admit i'm perturbed i'm upset i mean i guess i'm really not a big fan of osama's either when it comes down to it when i see him smiling at me from t-shirts and screen savers all over kota kinabalu here in east malaysia knowing that he's really a hero to many people in this part of the world to teenagers and their parents and muslims all over the world i mean this "top cat" is the only dude in recent world history who stood up to and hurt goliath america this i understand too but as i spend more time here and feel more and more insulated i can't help thinking that there's something about me that's not liked or foreign and that it's under the surface and beneath the smiling words and maybe i'm right or maybe i'm wrong but that's what i think when i think about my colleagues and their talking behind my back about the woman i'm living with the one i now call "my wife" but who they know is not really my wife when that's simply not acceptable in this part of the world even though muslim men can have 4 wives each and more or less abandon their 1st 3 marriage's offspring and cover up their women and not let them out of site or be seen by other men but have affairs with whomever whenever they can but this is not written in the koran so you want to know about the people, the food enough about me well look at the photos the indigenous people are beautiful simple they smile easily and laugh a lot and want to touch you and talk to you and invite you into their homes they have 8 and 10 children each and know nothing about or ignore any safe sex practices they'll drink with you all night long "tapai" 'til the wee hours of dawn home brewed rice wine 40% in "recycled" brown beer bottles five at a time all night long in their long houses traditional kampong style catering to and dependent on tourists like me admitting they too know about september 11th in fact the whole world seems to know and yes, their business is bad has fallen off and they Love America and hush hush don't tell anyone they really don't like the muslim powers that be that want the entire country to be muslim too and have little tolerence or understanding for these converted christians who as recently as 60 years ago were animists and worshiped the sky and the trees and the animal spirits like i told you before kooooo-dat kudat that's the name of the place in the northeast far reaches of borneo where the rungus tribe has been instructed by the islamic government to rebuild their native longhouses for the tourists and for keeping history alive and for the money where anggong and his son adrian work so hard to please we tourists and genuinely seem to love doing it and whose cousins and sisters and aunts and uncles dance for us "boom boom chak boom boom chak" the rhythm like "we will we will rock you" quickstepping over clacking together long bamboo poles boom boom chak book chak drinking with us laughing with us getting drunk with us but then going home not sleeping with us except for one rungus girl she's going to marry a love-struck young brit he's coming back to marry her and i'm invited to the wedding boom boom chak the stars are millions the night black as pitch diamonds dazzling the eyes giant green banana leaves dwarf you as you cut your way through them to the old rubber plantation now dried up and abandoned for more modern production methods and world trade agreements deciding who can sell what where too bad for the indigenous people with the natural resources the food you say the food well wati can walk the streets and eat anything she sees malay, thai, chinese, indian it's all here a full meal for 3 ringit 75 cents marinated chicken, beef, sometimes pork eggplant, green beans, bean curd, tofu rice rice rice fresh mango, kiwi, watermelon, papaya juice for 2 ringit everything grows here it's the "throw and grow" method of agriculture but me me with the delicate, fucked up bowel me who fears "menjeret", the malayu's monctezuma's revenge like the plague only a few steps up or down the fear scale depending on how you look at it from malaria or dengue fever me? i eat nasi goreng – fried rice fried noodles bland plain barbecued ayam – chicken no hot sauce no curry i watch the others eat swearing not to stoop to the all too prevalent and pernicious colonel sanders, pizza hut ....coffee bean i soak in the hot natural sulfur baths at poring hot springs built by the japanese during world war 2 when they all but devoured the smiling and benevolent borneans until a few hunted heads later hiroshima & nagasaki sent them home i soak up the sulfur and the humidity and the heat and walk through skies of jungle ceilings over a hanging network of brilliant canopy walks strung together with rope and silicon and dreams of profit i drive through checkerboards of small villages over broken roads under drenching rains and gobble up miles and miles of east malaysia sweating and laughing and complaining and loving it all wish you were here