LITTLE CHICKEN PIE

Some conversations are just impossible. Meaning I could have said something, but wisely I refrained. Largely because any conversation with a random stranger that starts with "excuse me miss, your ... is visible" cannot end well. So I just pretended I didn't see that, and looked somewhere else. A large part of the problem was that, IF that sentence had been truly necessary, I didn't know in what language to say it in.

Cantonese, or English? What is a polite euphemism for ... in Cantonese? If English, do I know that she will understand? She was there with her Mom, who was buying pastries at the counter. She herself looked to be in her mid-twenties, but didn't say much. I was at the table enjoying a small chicken pie and a hot beverage (HK milk tea), which put me on eye level with very clean very stressed jeans which were far too baggy for so elfin a figure... and when she turned just ever so, I could tell that she was going commando.

So if I had said anything at all, it would've come out through a mouthful of pastry. Which is not a euphemism for anything at all.

It was a very good pastry.
Delicious!

...

Maybe she had chosen those pants deliberately?

Without knowing that the stressed part revealed quite so much. And a frontal view in the mirror would not have informed her of that. Clearly her mother had no clue either.

It could have been far worse. She looked like the type who would stand up on the bus and let some old person have a seat. You know, sitting on the bus is over-rated; it puts you on face level with any number of things. On a crowded bus I prefer to stand.


If she was unaware entirely, saying anything would have embarrassed her considerably. Even if, actually ESPECIALLY if, one had discretely taken her aside and whispered it in her ear.
Which ab initio would've looked skeevy and suspicious. "What did that kwailo want?"
"He told my that my ... was visible from certain angles." Yeah, um, no.


The Hong Kong style chicken pot pie is a lovely edible, and was an easy choice to make when I looked at the space where they normally keep their egg tarts and noticed that they had run out. Gong sik kai pai tong yat pui naai chaa (港式雞批同一杯奶茶).

The young woman and her mom wanted egg tarts. Having been assured that a new batch would come out of the oven soon, they waited. That bakery does very good egg tarts.

Ten minutes.

Uncle Stinky-Old-White-Guy is a consumate diplomat. He'll just compulsively read and re-read the little signs on the display case telling him what all those goodies are. Oooh, I haven't had a pork floss bun (肉鬆飽 'yiuk sung baau') in a while ... maybe next time.

That's not a euphemism either.



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