IT SMELLS LIKE ROSES!

My apartment mate broke a bottle of rose-scented liquid yesterday evening while abluting. As long as I've known her, she's liked the smell of roses. In consequence of that little accident, the bathroom now reeks like a florists. Which is somewhat surreal. There you are, scroping your chin, and there are roses. You take a leak, roses. Hack up a hairball, roses.
Proper toe-care? Roses.

The kitchen of course pongs like me. Or, more precisely, the aromas of my curries and hot beverages, which cleverly mask the odour of cigarillos.
A major incentive to eat well is that I must disguise the smell of smoke. Especially during cold weather, when I don't feel like going outside.


Despite the sub-tropic antecedents of her people she is entirely a temperate zone person, whereas I, though of distant Northern European ancestry and partial more recent background (I lived there as a child, my parents moved there when I was two), prefer warmer weather. I would have done very well in Hong Kong if there had not been so many Englishmen there. Now of course the dominant Caucasian element is Australians, who are drunk, disorderly, and damned well unintelligible, rife near Lan Kwai Fong where all the western bars, sex-crazed Europeans, and rugby fiends are.

English and Aussies tend toward "loud" behaviours.


Here in SF both of those cultural groups are in short supply, which probably explains why people sometimes guess that I am either of those.
When they don't presume Irish or Bostonian.
Faint accent, good diction.


Or, in the case of a waitress at a chachanteng, referring to me as a fake barbarian, because even though I have that barbarian skin and barbarian hair, I don't sound like one of them. We Dutch are very good at picking up languages, and as a Dutch American striving to remain true to my heritage and our reputation, I made myself become good at linguistic shiznit, and learned several Asian tongues.

Another waitress thought for years that I had grown up in Hong Kong.

No, I just went to movie theatres and saw every film in Cantonese produced between the late seventies and the early nineties. The period when Andy Lau (劉德華) was still a good actor rather than a goofy stage performer, and Chow Yunfat (周潤發) did the gallant underworld hero on screen so well.



高血壓，血管成形術，闌尾手術，腹膜炎，敗血症。

All of that provided the discordant note a year ago, when I stumbled into the clinic on the bottom floor of Chinese Hospital (東華醫院) more dead than alive. I had chosen them as my primary care providers when signing up for insurance, figuring that if any one was good at dealing with stubborn old coots who swear in foreign languages and don't happily follow their doctors' orders, well, that described a large part of their patient demographic very precisely, and when my insurance kicked in, I toddled over there and got the medical attention I needed. Freaked out little nurse Mak by having sky high blood pressure and being on the cusp of insane.

A few hours later I left with two prescribed medicines, and an appointment for tests later in the month, had a procedure done shortly thereafter, and later in the year they did emergency surgery on a ruptured appendix.
Little nurse Mak probably still thinks I'm goofy.
But I'm much saner now.


If Miss Mak hadn't been weirded out by a delirious Caucasian speaking lousy Cantonese, I would be dead now. So I am quite appreciative.


Did I mention that I'm much saner too? Not being dead and getting expert medical attention does remarkable things for a man's mental state.


Everything is coming up roses.





EXPLICATA

假鬼佬 ('gaa kwai lo'): fake foreigner; possibly an Englishman on vacation. There are other meanings.
亂噏 ('luen ngaap'): to prattle nonsense, to talk deliriously.
神經病的 ('san ging ping dik'): crazy, insane.
荷蘭裔美國人 ('ho laan yeui mei kwok yan'): Dutch-descended American person. An American of Netherlandish ancestry. A civilized beast.
黐線佬 ('chi sin lou'): a right freak, weirdo.
高血壓 ('gou huet ngaat'): high blood pressure, hypertension.
血管成形術 ('huet gun sing ying seut'): installing a stent; it improves circulation and one's mood immensely.
闌尾手術 ('laan mei sau seut'): appendectomy.
腹膜炎 ('fuk mou yim'): peritonitis.
敗血症 ('paai huet jing'): sepsis.




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