THE IMPORTANT STUFF

Having some business in the financial district today, I also went to Chinatown to stock up on the necessities. Which are, in order of importance, hot sauce, coffee, a bag of cane sugar, a box of individually wrapped Happy Moment Choco Pies, a pack of Camel straights, plus freshly made snackipoos from a dim sum place that was still open.

These are survival supplies.
Bare minimum.


SNACKIPOOS!

Steamed riceflour noodle roll with cilantro, pot stickers, shrimp bonnets, and glutinous rice packed around chunks of pork, a salt egg, a slice of sausage for fragrance, and peanuts, wrapped in a bamboo leaf and steamed for several few hours.
Respectively: 芫茜腸粉 ('yuen sai cheung fan'), 鍋貼 ('wo tip'), 蝦餃 ('haa gaau'), and 粽 ('jung').

Because my apartment mate's original ancestral language is Toishanese, she pronounces all of those funny; that last one mentioned (粽), in her parents' native tongue, comes out as 'doooong'.
And she says I sound weird.

One thing I've noticed is that if people were born here and grew up speaking English, they can't understand a thing I say, but if they're immigrants who find English hard, there's no problem whatsoever and dang, I speak good!

The folks who run the dim sum place are Toishanese and understand me perfectly well. But their kids prefer it when I speak English.


When I got home I gave some of the dim sum items to my landlady.
They were very well received.


Normally I'd smoke a pipe after eating in C'town, but it's cold and windy, and kind of depressing these days because so many of my favourite places are closed until life returns to normal -- maybe even forever -- and I just bought stuff, didn't have lunch. So after eating at home I went out for a walk in the area near the apartment. Which is also closed and nearly void of people, but that's much easier to deal with. Smoked one of the pipes I restored a few years ago, which despite the abuse it had received before, turned into a exceptionally decent smoker once it got treated right.

No-name pot

I've mixed up some more of my own tobacco blend to smoke. Should have enough of this to last me till way beyond the time when I'll need to buy hot sauce, coffee, and sugar again. Obviously I'll need dim sum much earlier, as well as those individually wrapped snacks, or an assortment of cookies and dry biscuits, and I'm glad to see that at least three of the stores with fresh vegetables are still open for business.

I miss hanging out in Chinatown on my days off.
Coffee shops, bakeries, chachanteng.
Feisty old men smoking.
Happy noise.

TOBACCO INDEX


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