Where's Scott?

I wake and the family’s madly cooking for Mabel’s birthday party. The spread looks crazy, there are close to 100 little styrofoam boxes being filled with an assortment of snack bites in one corner, a massive pile of diced, spiced pork being rolled in rice tortillas into tiny logs and fried in another, and a group out on the porch weaving strips of coconut leaves into a tiny triangular containers and filling them with raw rice (to be cooked later). The house is a zoo of people working, and there’s a large group of kids gathering outside in anticipation of something.

Seb’s planned ahead, and has several bags of small hard candies on hand. Once the throng of kids has reached about 50, he and Mabel make for the upstairs deck. From there, they start tossing candies down as the screaming kids leap over each other trying to catch them (with some adults even catching a few).

After the candy supply is exhausted, some form of filtering process is started, with kids with some (shirt-tail?) relation to Mabel being invited in the house, and the rest lined up outside – this must be a regular birthday routine, as all the kids are well behaved, and know exactly what’s going down; I, on the other hand, am clueless.

Once the outside gang is sorted, a few family members start handing out small bags (oddly condom shaped) of orange Tang. As each kid receives their juice-bag, they bite in professionally and start to drain them dry, and then wander off into the twilight; apparently, their party is over.

Inside, there’s a huge commotion (40 odd people in a confined place), but there’s order in the chaos, and the styrofoam boxes are being portioned out to each of the kids, and they too begin to filter out into the twilight – clearly, there’s a well defined, multi-level pecking order, and everyone knows where they stand.

Next it’s time for the adults to chow down. There’s usually a strict order to the eating: nobody eats until Seb, Mabel and I have finished (as guests, and well, the money) – we’ve been bitten by this by not eating until late not realizing that it makes everyone else wait to eat, but they are too shy to say anything about it! (It also means we always eat as a threesome, and never with the family). Tonight however, there’s no waiting, and everyone digs into the variety of pork, fried rice, veg mixes and “specials” like chicken feet and chicken _heads_ on a stick. I opt to try the heads, and they’re delicious – they’ve been sliced in half, skewered, and deep fried, and taste rich and buttery, with just the beak being inedible. Seb, on the other hand, “chickens out” (although gets a great pic apparently licking one 😉

The party then turns disco, with a monster stereo (borrowed from a family member) setup outside on the porch, cranked loud enough to wake the dead (and much to Seb’s delight, piss off any living neighbors!). One 5 year old is a killer dancer, and we urge him to “get down and boogie” and he doesn’t disappoint! The dancing is a bit odd though, with the women dancing together, and the men, if they dance, dancing with the other men! I try to spur things on by getting each of the women to go fetch a man to dance with, but it doesn’t last, and as soon as the songs end, they split back into same-sex groups. I ask Mabel about it, and again it’s a “they’re too shy” thing – can’t change it, at least not without some serious Tanduay!