OLD MEN DANCING WITH FISH

Unregretfully I realize that after tea time and the relaxed enjoyment of a pipeful of tobacco which follows, I am far less tolerant of tourists and white office droogs than at any other time of day. That's primarily because the Muni bus back across the hill is packet to the skylight with them, and none of the intercoursers are wearing masks. Don't get on, auntie, the bus is filled, none of them are covering their breathing tubes, and half of them probably have asymptomiatic Covid and are spreading it. This vehicle is a floating petri dish.

Auntie is extremely lucky that the bus did not stop anywhere in Chinatown. What with being filled beyond capacity. With mostly maskless Caucasians.

If you stand well in, everybody else is your airbag when the vehicle crashes.
Got a safe impact zone all around me.

Tea time was extremely enjoyable. A woman of indeterminate Asian origin was picking up a birthday cake with durian in it, which totally guarantees that there will be enough left over to take to work the next day. A gentleman whose thick Toishanese patois is nearly unintelligible distributed fish to several of the staff from a bucket at his feet. An older fellow informed me that the pork floss buns used to be a buck fifty, now they're two dollars. Several of the other older gentlemen there finished their coffee and drifted out, leaving a clean silence.
And bakery employees members carried out several beds.

I am unclear why a bakery stocks beds.
Actual beds. Sleeping equipment.
Or why there were fish.

Yeah, okay, I speak Chinese and read it pretty well. That does not mentally prepare me for the sometimes goofy shiznit to which I am exposed. Not always. Yesterday there was an abandoned sewing machine table in the middle of an intersection in Chinatown, today there were beds and fish in a bakery. As well as a durian birthday cake. Who does that? And why? That's a birthday party massacre in the making. Memorable in any case. Durian.

Cheesie ham bun (芝士火腿包 'ji si fo teui baau'), Hong Kong milk tea, pork floss bun (肉鬆包 'yiuk sung baau'). Plus a durian cake 榴蓮蛋糕 'lau lin daan gou'). Mattresses.
And, inscrutably, bafflingly, a bucket of fish.

I bet this kinda stuff goes on all the time in Hong Kong. Where the airport used to be right in the middle of the harbour, the army headquarters are in an upside down gin bottle, there are restaurants with Japanese cartoon character themes and cute desserts, there's a biblical amusement park, a rabbit cafe, and an all Indian and Pakistani 'national' cricket squad.

There's also spam curry won ton soup. Available at some chachantengs and very many late night noodle shops near your lodgings. Where it is always time for tea.


Oddness. Eccentricity. Exotic foreign unusuality.
So many things that cannot be understood.
Royal Pink Regiment sweatshirts.


Unlike dumb white people on the number one California busline spreading disease without a care in the world, because, you know, that's what white people do. Totally understandable.
Especially office worker yuppies.


The milk tea and baked snackies were excellent. So was the pipe afterwards. If you walk through the alleys instead of on the main street, you can avoid the maskless white people.



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