Why did the chicken cross the road?
To see the teeny tiny Malaysian cat, of course!
I realise that it’s hard to convey its size through a photo, but see above and note its placement by the table leg, plus the fact that I’ve just looked down and taken a photo of it like that, without a zoom lens.
That’s one teeny tiny feline.
I know what you’re thinking: where on earth did you espy such amazing fauna, Andrea? Well, the answer is over lunch today. Which looked something like this:
Ahh, how times have changed since my vegetarian days!
(That’s not a pool of blood, btw).
My lunch companion was J, the DJ at the jazz club, and our mission was not only lunch, but the purchasing of some jazz CDs for him to play in the bar.
J knows pretty much nothing about jazz - which isn’t his fault, but a natural result of playing ‘retro’ (what Malaysians call 80s) music, and suchlike, for local crowds. And a result of the Western Jazz CD Mountain.
The Western Jazz CD Mountain may be a figment of my imagination, but bear with me. I believe it is not unlike the EU Butter Mountain, etc - ie. one quick browse of Malaysian CD shops shows that there is clearly a paucity of jazz albums available in this country, which can only be explained by the overflow of jazz CDs available in, say, the combined branches of Tower Records in New York.
Fortunately the branch of Borders in Queensbay Mall contains the Penang Jazz CD Mountain, so we weren’t too badly off.
J insisted that we bought compilations - of uptempo, and latin, jazz - so we worked our way through the available options, with me enthusiastically explaining what was worth buying and what wasn’t, and trying to marry what I thought he should get with what wouldn’t scare the beejezus out of him. The result was this boxset and two compilations:
…those ‘Bar Jazz’ and ‘Jazz Remixed’ being Verve compilations, so not as dire as they might at first appear. And believe me, this was a lot better than the ‘Piano Moods’ alley J could have misguidedly strayed down.
Thank goodness for the jazz police!*
Together with the mix CDs I’ve made for the club, this should do J nicely for now. The mix CDs - which I fortunately burned before my Mac, and its 5,000 iTunes songs, died on me - contain all manner of upbeat jazz and jazz-related muzak (ie soul and funk), from Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder to Vinicius Cantuaria and Brad Mehldau. I can’t tell you how great it has been to come off stage to hear some brilliant but relatively obscure track by Kate McGarry start up. And so my musical ambassadorship continues…
*speaking of which: who knew?
