THE NEXT TIME A CHINESE WOMAN OFFERS TO PLAY DICE WITH YOU, DO SO!

After a night of carousing I returned home with a damp bottom and soggy feet. I had been out dancing in the rain, and because that hill is immense, especially late at night, I needed to rest by perching on numerous fire hydrants on the way home. Which were wet. Because of the rain.
The city is extraordinarily beautiful in the rain.
Perhaps my bottom not.

I no longer bound up steep streets with the vim of a gazelle.
I am getting older.


Cantonese opera. A small midnight meal. Half a pint of good beer. A little whiskey. As carousing goes, extremely temperate.

Some of the other patrons at the bar were examples of excess, probably before we even arrived.


In particular a blonde woman who believed she could sing. That bar has made a lot of money off people like her, which keeps it generously afloat. So it has survived well for several years, which we certainly appreciate in a city where landlord corporations gouge and e-commerce yuppies ruin everything, so I shan't complain .....

But please don't sing.


It's a Chinese bar. None of the Chinese sang. Instead, they ate.

Cantonese love late night dining (消夜) more than Remy Martin.


And while they find Caucasians making spectacles of themselves quite entertaining, because they love street theatre and a free show, especially when its ridiculous bad behaviour by white people, the sheer repetitiveness and predictability of loud off-key renditions of mediocre songs which were almost forgotten -- deservedly so! -- palls very fast. The sheer ego and sense of specialness evinced by the performers do not appeal for long.
Not everyone has the charm and spirit to be Florence Foster Jennings.
It is very sad. But duck, a bottle of Sriracha, and this savoury noodle soup, now that's good. Infinitely engaging! Here, have a dumpling. Rice porridge, fried yautiu, roast meats, concubine chicken ..... yummy!

The spirited and curvaceous young lady from Hunan offered to teach the blonde and her drunken companions liars dice, which would have been quite an improvement over the yowling, but they would not listen, because they were too far gone.


Instead of pop songs from the seventies, the next time I should prefer an endless parade of chicken wings, fried noodles, shrimp, rice porridge, tea eggs, peanuts and pistachios, soy sauce meats, steamed buns .....

The way to my ear goes through my stomach.


Hunter S. Thompson would have shot the karaoke machine.

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