MANLY MYSTERIES, AND PORKCHOPS WITH CHEESE

What this city desperately needs is a chachanteng (茶餐廳) with all the delightful ambiance of the emergency room at SF Chinese Hospital. Where the clinic is located at which my regular care physician (whom I'll be seeing in less than a fortnight) works. Comfortable seats, well-lit, no blasted tourists, and cool air-conditioning. Once it heats up in San Francisco in another few weeks I intend to spend a lot of time there because of the air-con. The alternative is ending up there anyhow because my legs crapped out due to the heat and my blood-pressure medications sabotaging me in tandem. That, coupled with arthritis.

Should be educational.

No smoking on the premises.

This came to mind because elsewhere in this country it's hot as blazes, and there is nothing interesting to eat for lunch where I work out in the hinterland of civilization (southern Marin, the suburbs). I make stuff edible with a bottle of hot sauce that I keep in the company refrigerator. It's a vegetable, hot sauce. A man needs a vegetable.

The best that can be said about the place is that there is no monkey infestation.


When I head home for the day I can see the turkey vultures wheeling high above the tidal flats. Clearly they're waiting for us to toss one of the elderly fudgers from the backroom out after he's expired. "I'm not dead yet!" "Shut up you're not fooling anyone!" Eventually they'll be lucky. Hinterland dietary ennui will do at least one of them in soon, I'm counting on it.


Chachanteng chow in a sterile hospital environment -- quiescent old codgers, well behaved little kiddiewinkies, not a single disease-spreading tourist -- would be splendid. I'll just wheel myself out to the alleyway with my bottle of saline for a nice smoke afterwards, thank you.



The other great idea I had today was durian perfume (榴蓮香水 'lau lin heung seui'). Used as a surefire way to keep the tourists at a safe distance so that those maskless cretins cannot infect me with either covid or monkey pox. On the bus. At the beach. While gaily skipping down the street. At Starbucks or Peets. Durian perfume.

It's butch. It's "macho". It's ... tropical fruit.
With a kick-ass attitude.
It's genius.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================