The modest numbers of Sarawak's South-Asia-descended population mean that Deepavali is much less of a deal here than it was on the Peninsular. We didn't even get today as a public holiday.

That being the case, we were delighted to see that the Padungan Cat, enthusiastic follower of festivals that he is, had donned his Deepavali outfit.


And at the Spring mall, when we popped in on Saturday, people were working on a mandala:



We continued our own little Deepavali celebration in a few different ways:

-- We re-watched Amal, a really lovely movie celebrating honesty and simplicity.

-- We decided that today was a good opportunity to have lunch at Tok Janggut Cafe. (This is one of the relatively small number of South Asian eateries in Kuching, and usefully near our place. I hope our Hindu friends won't take it amiss that we paid our respects to Deepavali at a Muslim eatery, and along with the excellent biriyani, had some excellent beef curry... The basmati rice in the biryani turned out to be not at all a carbohydrate disaster (it's low GI, and we didn't have much). And Tok Janggut, incidentally, is the name of a Kelantanese freedom-fighter, credited with leading the first revolt against the British in the Malay Peninsula in the early years of the 20th century.


-- We rounded off the day by road-testing the happy hour at The Granary. In all honesty this was more to celebrate the end of my root canal treatment than anything else. The wine is not a bad price, as these things go here, and the measure and quality were both very good. So I'm sure we'll be back.

Also happening over the weekend was the Sarawak International Dragon Boat Regatta. We watched some of the racing yesterday. It's impossible not to be impressed by a dragon boat running at full tilt up the river, drum pounding, paddles flashing, prow agape.