QUIET STEW

Figuring out where to have lunch some days is a bit problematic. Not today -- that's already mapped out -- but specifically Mondays and Thursdays. The problem is that I have certain favourite dishes, and require either sambal or Sriracha. And I'm a cheapskate. Which is a Netherlandish characteristic that despite being an American and having spoken Yankee English all my life I have not shook. I just don't like to waste my money.

Anyhow, Chinatown is only a few blocks away, and I can read the menus.

Many Dutch have a facility for languages.


Given that I also like milk tea, of which a good version is not that easy to find, that rather limits my scope. At one chachanteng on certain afternoons a group of Toishanese old codgers hangs out whose attitudes repell me, and I only go there now at times when I'm reasonably certain that they aren't there. Another chachanteng has a waitress who does not quite understand the dynamic, a third has crowds, at which point something may go slightly haywire. Plus a prosperous middle-aged businessman regular who I sense has a sneer.
At one place a Cantonese speaking Caucasian will get treated like an anomaly.
Which I am, of course, but y'all don't know the half of it.

Like many people who are somewhat on the spectrum I pursue things that interest me to the Nth degree. In consequence, a number of us have knowledge sets that go rather deep, and eventually learn not to talk too much lest we frighten off the neurotypicals who got too close.

Look, we know that we're not entirely normal, okay?

But would you mind terribly not rubbing it in?



Just give me my food and cup of milk tea and let me stew in my corner. Don't forget to say 'hi' if you recognize me, but otherwise go about your business like normal. For the most part, act like I'm the gecko on the wall. Smiling occasionally when licking my eyeball, eating the odd fly, and most of the time keenly observing everything around me.

I tip well. I want to be remembered favourably.
But I might just stop going to a place.
When treated like a freak.




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