I’m sitting here on the terrace of the Eastern & Oriental Hotel in Penang, their trademark drink the E&O Sling in hand, and this is the view:

It’s my night off tonight (hence the E&O Sling) and I’ve come into Georgetown to explore a little, and take some photos. My first stop being the very grand, very colonial E&O Hotel - built in 1884 by the Sarkie brothers, who went on to found the Raffles hotel in Singapore. Apparently Rudyard Kipling, Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham all stayed here; and I doubt it’s changed very much since those times. A cursory glance at the guests who have just dived into the pool seems to show as much: white hair and moustaches are the order of the day (and as for the men… boom boom!). A group of Brits has also just arrived. Looks like we’re still trying to run the joint.

But to last night’s gig - because it really was an utter delight.

The first surprise of the evening came when I went downstairs to the lobby, only to be faced with this:

Caramba!

Unfortunately - or fortunately - the photo doesn’t give you a sense of scale (and I refused to hand over my camera to someone to take a photo of me alongside it) - but this poster is, believe me, taller than me (B: you’ll be pleased to know that your photo looks great blown up this big). I love the way it commands people to LISTEN to me - don’t just HEAR me, goddamit! - and the way I’m “internationally acclaimed”. Hopefully after being in Malaysia, this will be a truer (ac)claim.

The second delight of the evening was meeting the owner of the hotel. Yes, *gulp*, the owner. I had completely forgotten that he was coming to see us - he apparently very rarely makes any trips down here, as he’s based in Singapore/London/New York (as multi-millionaire building magnates often are) - but sure enough, he turned up and introduced himself, and we had really nice chats in the breaks. He took my details, and told me that if I ever wanted to go to Singapore or Bali(!) while I was here, that he would “arrange things” (in the way that only multi-millionaire building magnates can). So yes, true to Lost In Translation form, I have propped up a bar with a rich, older man:

I wasn’t smoking, though.

The third delight was the band, and how it feels like we’re coming together. We’d tried out a few new tunes in the soundcheck/warm-up - I want to use that time every night to do one or two new songs with them - and last night, everything went fine. In a way, they sounded even loungeier and cheesier than ever before in their instrumental numbers; but hey, as long as it’s not like that when I sing with them, that’s absolutely fine by me. What was also hugely lovely to hear was the drummer, L, with a big beam on his face, telling me how much he loves playing the jazz numbers we’re doing, and hearing him tell the hotel owner how much he was enjoying working with me. Bless.

But the final, and truly most wonderful, delight was the audience.

When I suggested in yesterday’s post that I’d felt like a wedding singer - possibly, yes, The Wedding Singer - I didn’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just that what happened last night in the bar was a phenomenon which normally happens at weddings. People danced. And oh, how they danced.

A large group of Penangites in their 20s upwards - who had already requested a couple of songs, which we’d performed for them - got up and danced their hearts out, in a completely unabashed way. I told them that British people only do this at weddings, and I couldn’t stop beaming as I watched them. They were applauding us and blowing me kisses and shouting out “We’re your fan club!” - and when I stepped off stage at the end, was accosted by one of them saying: “Please come and join us for a drink!”. Next thing I know, a glass of whiskey has been shoved in my hand, and people are shouting “Cheers to Andrea!” and “Welcome to Penang!”. I’d heard about the legendary friendliness of the Malaysians, but this was really something. And much as I love my countrymen, I could never imagine a group of Brits being so immediately warm. By the end of the night, we’d arranged for them to take me on a trip up Penang Hill (no, that’s not a euphemism) next Sunday. So sweet.

And that, folks, was my second night.

Mind you, it probably helped that it was a Saturday.

PS. I’ve just finished writing, and the view now looks like this (I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘CS’):

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 7.41pm and is filed under Penang, The actual music stuff, The hotel, The people. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.