MORE OR LESS CONCLUDING THAT MANY PEOPLE ARE DEFECTIVE

Today: everybody in Marin County is deliriously happy with what they are right now, smokes pot, and is entitled. Everyone else is unworthy.
I am not worthy either, which is why I live in San Francisco.
But enough about Marin, which isn't real.
Where I live is real.

Change the subject.

Friday: lunch with an old friend, then later in the afternoon tea at the New Hollywood while listening in on a Taiwanese couple discussing English classes with a person from Thailand. The subject matter was not nearly as fascinating as the cadences and pronunciation. I would make a lousy spy, as details are less interesting than verbal framework.

Alas, I doubt that any of those three "English speakers" behind me would understand either Monty Python, or Pen Pineapple Apple Pen.
Too serious, too sincere, too uber goober.

Not American-born Canto enough.


Actually, I'm not even sure that most American-born Cantonese have the necessary mental dexterity; it takes a rare breed. The Cantos, mostly, would have to have experienced both Lowell and KQED, and abstained from anything Hello Kitty related, unless exercising a sense of irony and absurdity.

Most of the American Cantonese are too serious, especially if their exposure to non-Canto English-speakers has been somewhat limited. And if they're American-born their familiarity with Cantonese movies, especially the films of Wong Jing (王晶), Michael Hui (許冠文), and Stephen Chow (周星馳), is usually far too scant to appreciate non-sequentiality and composed irrelevance. It's not part of the toolbox.

Eric Tsang (曾志偉), Carol ('Dodo') Cheng (鄭裕玲)?
Karl Maka (麥嘉)? Chris Tucker (傑士德加)?

Nah. I think you have to be very HK to appreciate them.
If not actually HK, then hip, goofy, or Aspergery.
Solemn little droodges just can't cut it.


"a stinking transvestite what should have his face sawn off"


They're good at school however, and make decent engineers, bankers, and office workers. Their more 'badly English speaking' kinfolk often think of them as rather dull, even when they're proud of any achievements.

The ability to appreciate the Holy Grail, famous director Luchino Visconti and mopeds, or English goal keepers moved to poetry by the Yangtse river, river full of fish, is not given to everyone.
It requires English fluency.
Or German.

One out of a thousand, maybe. Logical minds and Montyesquity.
A great package. It's visionary.

[The person with whom I ate lunch yesterday was one out of ten or a hundred thousand, possibly a million. Not Canto, or Anglo. But that is neither here nor there.]



Naturally most other Americans are not as flexible, as witness the current American election, which is nothing if not droll, berserk, and screamingly insane. But they take it so seriously!

Are you scared of clowns? You should be, several of them are running your way. And they don't look like nice people.

My parrot is deceased and I have several jars of honey.
I should have been a lumberjack.



BAD-TEMPERED LITTLE AFTER WORD

This blogger is more likely, MUCH more likely, to enjoy snackies and a hot beverage where the people running the joint speak Cantonese all the time as a first language, and are often hamstrung by English, than at any restaurant which employs the English-semi-fluent American born, who only understand their parents' co-dialecticals well, treat everyone else who speaks Cantonese with bafflement and disdain, and never appreciate that someone so obviously not related to them in any way can actually read all the words on the wall and in the menu, because it would take a literacy that they just don't have to do so.

Like other Americans, their ears are stiff and rigid.
I shall not mention what's between.

蠢材噉！

I'm still somewhat peeved that the waitress several months ago did not know that 苦瓜 ('fu gwa') was identified on her menu as 涼瓜 ('leung gwa'). What I wanted was precisely what it said on the menu: bitter melon and fish over rice (涼瓜斑球飯 'leung gwa pan kau fan').
What I got was two (兩個 'leung go') orders of something random.

There's only ONE of me, I am not huge.
And I'm pointing at the words.
Look at my finger.

Context?

Mm?





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