BUS. RAIN. DRIED FISH.

Lunch and shopping in C'town, followed by teatime at a bakery where Russell, Stephen, and Robert also were. As well as several familiar faces spanning the linguistic spectrum from Mandarin and Cantonese through Toisanwa, Burmese, English, and Spanish. The three named gentlemen speak English and Cantonese, and are a bit older than myself.
And they grew up here.

Most of the afternoon I didn't need English except to cuss. When employing unprintable language, it is always best if, even doing so under one's breath, one does not employ a tongue that others understand. Dutch, Tagalog, and Hindustani are all excellent in that regard. Cantonese when at work in Marin.

Dutch is not so good in Chinatown; the visiting Germans might understand it.
Or the Hakkas who came here from Suriname to study.

For some reason we ended up talking about salt fish (鹹魚 'haam yü'). Not the UNdelicacy so beloved by Hong Kongers and C'town folks that's great with ground pork or simple stirfried veggies, nor the key ingredient essential for Hang Zhou's famous steamed fatty duck (鹹魚白切鴨 'haam yü paak chit ngaap'), but the old ladies who block the bus doors by clustering right there with their wheeled shopping bags, and fail to understand that they and their crap are a nuisance and in the way. Especially when the bus is full and people want to get home. During rush hour most nights.

They're about four foot tall, tough as nails, don't speak English, and stubbornly unyielding. You want to get on it, they want to stand there. Have you considered walking instead?

It's pointless trying courtesy and gentle persuasion with someone older than Moses who doesn't understand what you are saying in whatever language, and if she actually grasps that you are speaking Cantonese will exclaim how unusually smart you are, why, it's remakable that a kwailo learned how to talk, and will obdurately still refuse to budge. Not. An. Inch.
I've considered lifting them up bodily and plonking them in a vacant seat.
If I do it fast enough, she won't have a chance to squawk.
She'd probably hit me with her shopping bag.
Wheels, and metal frame.
Sharp corners.


By the way: 鹹魚白菜 (haam yu paak choi') is a host's euphemism for a humble meal, really not worth serving to you, I ashamed of this poor stuff at my table. It's just salt fish and plain bokchoi, merely 垃圾嘢 really. Sorry!


Russell is quite irritated at those 鹹魚婆 on the bus. Whereas I regard them as considerably less objectionable than the Yuppies and Karens, and when I've reached that painfully brittle stage of ancient decrepitude, I too will not budge. My feet are cold, the weather is nasty, this isn't the world I expected, and all of you young people are deficient in multiple ways!
And now that I'm on the damned bus, I'm not moving, dammit.

Consider my immovabilty a form of silent protest.
An angry screech, as it were.



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