A load of crowd-pleasers, a few numbers which they don’t know here (but do now! ha!) and, yes, A MICHAEL BUBLE SONG. (No, wait. It’s not just ‘a Michael Buble song’. See what I’ve done? I’ve fallen into the same trap as everyone over here! Imagine!) Mind you, the following is bound to change anyway, if requests start coming in:

Set 1
Summertime
And I Love Him
Softly As In A Morning Sunrise
Georgia
Agua De Beber
You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To

Set 2
Night And Day
Fever
Cry Me A River
It Might As Well Be Spring
Call Me
Sunny

Set 3
Autumn Leaves
Besame Mucho
Cheek To Cheek
Sway
Unforgettable
Bye Bye Blackbird

Fresh fish and vegetables, cooked to perfection. I have effectively dined out for every meal, every day, for two months. Next thing you know, I’ll be saying that I don’t do stairs.

OK, so I’m not in denial anymore:

The concierge just came up to collect those DHL boxes; and I answered the door to him wearing a Chinese silk dressing gown and a headband. I swear I’m turning into an ageing diva; all that was missing was the smudged mascara and bottle of gin.

(The other two being this one and this one).

I was handed this last night while I was on stage:

Is this a request for a Norah Jones song, or an invitation?

There was no phone number, so unfortunately I can only assume the former.

As I was here - take a look at this video of Ella Fitzgerald performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1969:

Ella was a precursor to Crazy Frog! Who knew?!

Actually, at around 3:26 Ella is also a precursor to Rolf Harris. But stick with it, because it gets even better. And there’s not a duff note in all amazing 6 minutes and 35 seconds of it.

Lunch today was with M, the pianist/singer who I was put in touch with before I came out here. As I told him today, planning to meet up with someone, only to do it two months later, is very ‘London’. Who knew that life in sleepy Penang could be so similar?

M took me to a place in Georgetown which is a sort of souped-up (as it were) hawkers’ foodstall gathering. A cross between this place and a food court, I guess:

I ate great veggie curry, a pancake with peanuts, syrup and sweetcorn inside it - which tasted not unlike like Snickers, with sweetcorn - and ice kachang (sp?), a dessert which seems to consist of water, ice, milk and kidney beans (no, really) and which tastes of bubblegum. And which looks like this.

My favourite dish’s name - by which I mean favourite name, as opposed to favourite dish - in Malaysia remains this, however:

Although this comes a close second:

So that was lunch.

The gig tonight was… surprisingly low-key, in many ways. The band has an energy about them, and tonight it was… well, yes, low-key. Nothing very wrong with that; but I think I’ll do a different setlist for tomorrow night and make sure it’s pretty uptempo all the way.

The bar was half-full (as opposed to half-empty: that’s the kind of gal I am) and CC turned up with R, the jazz singer he performs with at another restaurant - who’s probably sixtysomething, and very glamorous, and sounds like Nancy Wilson. Not to talk to, you understand, but to hear sing (CC once played me a live recording of her at the Penang Jazz Festival). It was lovely to meet her, and a discussion on the Great American Songbook writers led to me lending her my book on the subject.

T2 and HH also came along tonight; as did T and C and E. As with me, they had picked E up at KL (OK, now this initial thing is getting *really* silly) and had driven her up here. It was really good to meet her, and she seems very nice. She quizzed me about how things were, and I filled her in, before she retired to bed; she’d barely slept on the flight. I told her about the benefits of remaining in jetlag, because it seamlessly becomes musicians’ hours, but she didn’t seem very convinced. And she also told me that she (and her boyfriend) had been reading my blog every day. So if you’re reading this back in Austria: gruess Gott! Sie ist sicher angekommen. (Can you tell my degree is in German?)

(The funny thing is, E even looks like me. Someone pointed her out, and there she was, a pale-skinned, dark pony-tailed, sweeping-fringed woman in the bar.)

As you can tell by the time this will be posted, I stayed up late after the gig. T had brought a couple of guys with him to do some filming; so they were shooting during the gig and afterwards interviewing me (on film) downstairs in the lobby. This ultimately led to being the place where we night owls hung out; and ultimately led to a big argument-slash-discussion on morals and rights and wrongs and, well… I won’t bore you with it here. Suffice it to say: I wish I’d had you with me, Peter or B or Rachel or Sarah, to back up my views against a vociferous Malaysian male ;-).

So now it’s 6am, I’ve just heard a Muslim prayer calling outside my window, and that must surely mean it’s time for bed. Not that I think that’s what they’re praying about… but hey, it works for me. Once again: night night, all.