THE LAST DECADE

All over the internet people are retrospecting over the past ten years. What they did, what they felt, what they lost or won, and who has gone forever.
Yeah um no. It was interesting, which is all I will say about it.
Instead, let me tell you about the year, and the day.

今年: In the past year I had a coronary stent put in, got on medication for extremely high bloodpressure, and ruptured my appendix. All of which together is like watching 'Cats', I guess.
I haven't seen 'Cats', but after all the reviews describing it as supernaturally batsh*t lousy, just phenomenally bad, downright unbelievably awful, monumentally and epically crap, I feel I should go see it.
What will tip me over that edge is if a charming, sane, kind and intelligent woman offers to see it with me. Something so bad could be "our movie". With many tunes that could be "our song".

If there is ONE movie that will have nearly empty theatres on Valentine's Day, that would be it.


So it's decided then; I'm probably not going to see 'Cats'.


Unless I bring a stuffed animal.


今日: Today was a busy day. Bank, haircut, lunch. One of the other patrons of the lunch place had applied black shoepolish as eye-shadow, and wore form-hugging spandex yoga pants. Many of the other people there kept a wary eye on him, out of the corners of their eyes. Nothing adds zest to a meal more than a possibly dangerous deranged man gustatoriating.
We worried that his fur hat would fall into his soup bowl.
It would have been quite disastrous.


Tea more than two hours later was a place which had two loonies talking loudly into non-existent cellphones immediately behind me, and a gentleman with frozen fingers trembling in front of me.

Which I could very well understand -- having left my little black knit gloves at home, my own fingers were quite blue, and the hot cup took ten minutes to warm them back up to fresh corpse temperature -- and I radiated as much sympathy as I could. Once he saw my digits, he relaxed considerably. He was no longer ashamed of his spasms, or the seemingly neurotic behaviour with his own tea-cup. His fingers were too cold to lift it to his lips.
He bent down to slurp.

The Chinese term for Raynaud's phenomenon is 雷诺氏综合征 (减少的血管血流). 'Leui-nok-si jung-hap-jing (gaam-siu dik huet-gun huet lau)'. Which I should memorize, as doing so would simplify things, especially that last part: 'gaam-siu dik' (lessened, decreased) 'huet-gun' (artery, veins) 'huet lau' (blood flow).

The specific cure for 减少的血流 ('gaam-siu dik huet lau'; decreased circulation) in the fingers and toes is a hot cup of milk tea.
Plus a well-chosen Chinese pastry.
Trust me on this.



So it was a very good last day of the year. I'm probably not going to stay up for any dropping balls, though. Go ahead, party among yourselves.



Oh by the way: I gave the apartment mate a small raccoon today.
Like many 'roomies', he listens to the wrong advice.
There will be NO eating of hamsters!




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