AVERAGE AGE, AND NAME UNKNOWN

Allan is not a man, but either blue or an orchid, lilly, or fragrant throughwort: Ah Lan (阿蘭). A fairly recent addition. As is the little one whose name or appellation I do not know. Whom I'm just guessing may be four years old, and has a tea-time snack there almost daily there with her dad, also unknown. A nice mentally active little child, very neat, very well behaved, and rather pretty. She does not drink tea.

At our table, some of us drank tea. HK milk tea. Strong. The others drank coffee. There were six of us there, because Dennis was in town for a brief visit. He's adapting rather well to living in the barbaric sun-kissed wild lands surrounded by extremely few Chinese Americans, plus cowboys and elderly hippies.

I could not do it. Though white, I need a Chinatown for my sanity. Condiments, ingredients, and people who do not talk excessively loudly when in a group and know how to use the sidewalk without forcing everyone to the curb when there are more than two of them.

The condiments are very important. Hot sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce, red vinegar, fish sauce, baau yü chiap (鮑魚汁), black bean sauce, and shrimp paste. Black bean sauce (豉汁、豆豉) is usually made fresh in the kitchen while the dish is being prepared. There are several others, but you will note that honey barbecue, sweet and sour, orange, and weird yellow mustard are not part of the programme, nor is mayonnaise, which is the favourite smoo of Dutch people, though a distinct second in my estimation to sambal.
Which I can also find there.

So yeah, I could not live in the gun-worshipping outback.
There is nothing there.

We left the United States when I was two, well before cheese sauce and melted cheese on everything had become common. It still had not caught on overseas when I came back, and where we lived, cheese was worshipped. So I was horrified those first few years. There was nothing to eat, and no sambal anywhere. When I moved to the periphery of SF Chinatown, both problems were eliminated. And no one made fun of my accent.

I suspect that the other five gentlemen have had more Mac'n Cheese by a huge margin. Their American experience had no breaks. Cheese glop is the quintessential US food.
And they're all considerably older, too.


All three of the ladies (Ah Lan, the kid, and a woman slightly older than me) may not have experienced it yet. They're in for a shock.


I kind of want to be a fly on the wall when they have their first bacon, cheese, and pickled jalapeño burger. It's one of the best things here.
Maybe blue cheese.



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