A HAZE IN THE CLASS ROOM

Behind every learning experience is yet another learning experience. It is a never-ending process. Yesterday was truly educational. No, not because my apartment mate and her kinfolk went to the Chinese cemetery to clean the family graves and do other things associated with Chingming (清明節 ching ming jit: clear brightness holiday), but because of my own particular white boy cultural observances. I'm a bachelor; I can do that.
Such as heading over to a place where smoking is permitted after dinner.
Dinner had followed returning from the wilds of Marin.
Where restaurants cater to savages.
From the hinterlands.
Of suburbia.

Yes, you read that right: Marin County is as nearly a culinary wasteland as the East-Bay. Albeit with far more pretensions. Is there even ONE half-assed decent Chinese Restaurant in Marin?

But aside from that.


At the 'Oxxy', English Dave wistfully remarked that the view was good, but in all honesty one did not go to a cigar bar expecting to meet suitable women of the opposite gender. In fact, possible dates should be last on the programme when entering the premises. The idea was forlorn and insanely optimistic.
Indeed, I know how he feels. I've long ago given up on the hope that a cute intelligent Cantonese woman half my age will strike up an animated conversation with me there.

That type probably hates tobacco anyway.


One of the things I learned yesterday was that it's just not good planning to smoke seven pipes, a Nicaraguan double corona, and a gigantic penile cigar in one day. Especially inadvisable if using an excess of hot sauce on baby string beans with pork spare ribs over rice (豆仔排骨飯) is also part of the course load.
Doing so may leave your mouth feeling like stressed shoe-leather at some point. Suggestive, even, that something vicious crawled in there and died a violent death.

It was probably the giant phallic cigar. Upon reflection, I realize that it wasn't perfectly rolled, and consequently burned irregularly. A big ring-gauge on a cigar also means that the outside will lose moisture faster than the core, and perhaps they should have used ligero in the centre for uniformity of burning cone formation. Whatever the details, it started shredding half-way through. By the time I put it down it looked like Vikings had tortured it very fiercely.
It was a pre-lunch smoke, and the day simply got stranger from there.

San Andres wrapper leaf, binder & filler both from Nicaragua. 7x70.


Another thing I learned is that my Saturday routine might need some re-planning. Due to the booming economy, a much younger crowd heads into the cigar bar after dinner. Expensive cigars are the new 'hookah'.
Shallow e-yuppies should probably not smoke at all.
They simply go about it all wrong.
No indoor voices.

By the way: One peculiarity about Chingming is that it means someone (阿華) will sneak into the bathroom just ahead of you the next morning to clean trowels, buckets, and brushes in the bathtub, leaving grit everywhere, quite overlooking the fact that the smoker has a bus to catch.
I barely made it on time.

I would have gotten up earlier, but the e-yuppies kept me awake till far after midnight. Should probably have gone to bed much sooner; I had been determined to outlast them.
They finally left.
Animals.

I've been swilling buckets of tea all weekend; I can outlast any number of juveniles.

In consequence of yesterday's reckless adventurism, I held off on filling a pipe till two PM today.


There's probably no logical connection, but on my way home this evening a pigeon skanked on my head. I am, never-the-less, determined to blame the cheroot-huffing e-yuppies.


AFTERWORD

After finishing my string bean spare rib rice I was asked if, by any chance, there was a Chinese name by which I might be appelled. My white name is a bit hard to pronounce in Chinatown. It took me a moment to remember what Ah-Choi and the gang still call me: Ah-Mak: 阿麥。
A nickname, of course, but it's rather pleasing.
Familiarity breeds conversation.

There was a flock of crows wheeling in the sky above the block when I left the restaurant at twilight. Their cawing made me look up.
I'm taking it as an excellent omen.
Seeing as I like crows.



Final educational item: it is possible to trim one's toenails with a dentist's plaster knife late at night, upon discovering that the aforementioned apartment mate has made the last pair of clippers vanish.
I once bought a dozen of them at Walgreens.
Where are they?




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