Sleeping Lessons

There's someting about a heavy dose of MSG that keeps me very sedated and horizontal. So very often I find myself that way after and during large chinese banquets - like weddings and granpeople's birthdays and in particular Chinese new year. This lunar golden-pig new-chinese -year was no exception.

I'm woken sometime early in the morning after a rather saucy and marathon evening on Friday, by two very hyperactive little boys, who don't hesitate to pounce on my bed and then clobber me with their Nintendo DSses. 'Pokemon!' one yells, between several well placed thumps on my skull; mum stands in the doorway laughing.

Before long I'm plunged into a drowsy decathalon of eating events and family photo-taking sessions; often listening to big serious poeple making small cracks about how fat they'd all be getting.

My fingers smell like an odd combination of scented paper and snack-related grease.

For many many moments over ther next few days of I slouch around feeling like a hemmed up woolly mammoth, stuffed with MSG and tossed chinese salad, constantly being irritated by the little spears and prods of loved ones proposing visits, long distance phone calls, my smelly fingers and the consatnt (and very very annoying) sound of what I can only describe as mechanized oriental ringtones from these plastic chimey things that come with newyear hampers - what's more they have motion sensors !

In one weekend my house had turned into a very juvenille Myspace homepage.

I guess there is alot to whine about when its hot and you're sleepy and feeling fat; but it all came together one night, when for first time in a long time I found myself sitting on the garden porch.

Somewhere behind me a group of men and women usually too busy to get off their mobiles while they peckyouoneithercheek had gathered on the floor infront of the television to battle it out over sing-star. While infront of me, 6 toddlers had transformed the garden into a carnival of catch and grass stains. We all stand/sit/chase/laugh/cry there for a good 2 or 3 hours; thawed for the first time this year by the jarring noise of a karaoke machine, 6 screaming toddlers, mechanized oriental motion-sensor-chimes and the banter of 25 un-primmed adultswho'd jsut stopped complaining about how fat they'd be getting, and had started to realize for the first time that night just how little night there was left.