AND ALSO THOSE PUFFY FRIED SHRIMP

A friend mentioned on Facebook that he enjoyed lunch at Kedai Tjikini in Menteng, followed by coffee and a cigar. You can still smoke indoors there, and it's ventilated enough.
High ceilings and louvers above the windows for air circulation.
This time of year Jakarta is mid-eighties.
Here the temperature was twenty five degrees less than that, we have almost no traditional Indonesian food, and you cannot smoke indoors except at a place that many local politicians dislike for doctrinaire reasons, where children are not allowed.

Ventilation louvers are not standard here.
They are, in old buildings in Jakarta.

My lunch was dumplings in Chinatown at a place where they know me and always address me in Cantonese. But I have to remind them to bring the hot sauce. Pursuant which, it looks like there is going to be another Sriracha crisis, but this time oh boy am I prepared! I bought six large bottles of Huy Fong. Which should generously carry me into the next year.

Went out to purchase sauce and have lunch after posting a sneering comment on a science page anent an anti-masker and doing my laundry. I'd rather trust the doctors I deal with, the professionals at the hospitals that I deal with, and the critical reading I've done, than some paranoid anti-mask rando nutball on the internet. But I sympathize with his immense suffering and the heartache that the masks caused him. Poor baby.

Lunch was perfect for people watching. One table over a young lady with her boyfriend and her parents were enjoying several dishes together. She made sure he got plenty of the fried shrimp, he then placed several of them on her plate -- well-mannered Chinese people serve the person next to them, which both of them did by doing that, and her parents avoided the fried shrimp because, and this is just a theory, such thing are not quite so appealing to the un-Americanized older generation. It's very Canto-American suburban restaurant style in a way. And they were all speaking Mandarin, so there is probably a long history of despairing over the Chinese food in America there.

She was a round-faced bright-eyed young lady, he was an angular intellectual looking fellow, and they seem perfect together. But I suspect that there is a height difference, which was not quite evident while they were seated.

At a table opposite three younger people were enjoying different soups and shared small dishes. I could only really see the square-faced girl with the specs; a very readable face.
One table over from them a birdlike middle-aged woman and her husband or lover were having siu lung baau (小籠包) and noodles. They happily took photos of their food and the menu for their social media posts. That, too, is a very Chinese thing.


"Hi, we ate at Dingbats, here are three pictures of our food plus thirty more."


By the way: the reason I'm writing this in the middle of the night is because I woke up after taking a nap. It's presently under fifty Fahrenheit. Terlalu dingin sekali! This does not feel like spring weather at all. It may be time for another angry letter to the editor.
Must be climate change. Darn younger generation!

Lunch was 白菜豬肉水餃 (white cabbage and pork dumplings).
They were delicious with dabs of hot sauce.
An excellent meal.



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