THE TWO DAY FIT

So the computer finally bit the dust on Sunday Morning, and the quick bought replacement machine arrived shortly after lunch today. Honestly, without the internet my sanity is on thin footing. No news for two days.
No contact with friends and acquaintances, or anybody I know. No statistics on Covid19. No Wikipedia. And, crucially, no in-depth dictionaries.

While reading the 明代陶瓷大全 ('ming doi tou chi taai chuen'; "Chinese Ceramics Ming Dynasty") one character kept recurring: 窯 ("kiln"). Which of course I knew the meaning of, but the pronunciation in Cantonese escaped me. Vaguely I remembered yao or you, Mandarin. My handy Cantonese dictionary does not have that character, the smaller dictionary on my bed was as deficient in that regard, and larger dictionaries on the shelf only give Northern pronunciations.


窯 ('yiu'): Kiln, oven. Colloqually: brothel.


Okay ..... darn good thing I didn't stop someone on the street for that; it is doubtful that they would have understood that this particular Caucasian was interested in pottery, rather than singing girls. We kwailos have a reputation for being fixated on coarser things. Cheese burgers, bad beer, and the easiest way to catch venereal diseases.


That's why in Hong Kong all the Australians hang out in Lan Kwai Fong (蘭桂坊). Which is also where more white people get arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct than anywhere else in Asia outside Thailand


For the record, I have never been to Thailand, and have no interest whatsoever in ever going there. Although I do appreciate their cuisine.
I have no desire to associate with sexually deviant expats.



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