PERSIMMONS AND YAUCHOI

During the day it rained, albeit not very long. Which meant trying to find an umbrella. Something I haven't needed in months. Autumn is upon us. Of course in East Asia they're having another typhoon (Toraji), which is their version of Fall weather.
Here, we have sweaters.

At the lunchtime restaurant, two tourist shared a bowl of wonton noodle soup, and tipped like misers. Or like many Chinatown old-timers who complain about the taste of food nowadays, and the prices, and are accustomed to being horrid tippers damn the fact that staff can't live on scraps and tuppence!

The staff there are really hard working, and friendly. Which is probably why they're packed every day, and I don't see many of the sour old local cretins who bellyache about everything. Don't see many outsiders either.
What probably scare away most of the tourists is spaghetti.
HK Chinese also like macaroni, by the way.
And club sandwiches.

Often I have the club sandwich, but today I went for the garlic goo sole and rice (蒜蓉焗龍脷 'suen yong guk lung lei') with rice, and broccoli. Cup of milk tea, bowl of soup. Ate and drank leisurely, left and lit my pipe. By that time the rain had stopped. Did errands and grocery shopped. The lady where I bought my lottery ticket at this point knows that I speak Cantonese and treats me like a fellow resident of the neighborhood.
With a slight edge of anomaly.

Nothing quite heralds the coming of cold better than the deep orange hue of persimmons, which I've rarely enjoyed because there's just something about them. But they are beautiful. So I couldn't resist buying a few, two of which I gave to the Indonesian Chinese woman downstairs along with a bag of yauchoi.

The brined quail eggs (滷水鵪鶉蛋 'lou seui am chuen daan') which I bought on a whim are staying upstairs, however. An elegant snack, or addition to a bowl of noodles.
So beautiful, so beautiful.



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THERAPEUTIC THOUGHTS

Over on Facebook I notice that a friend hopes to be released from hospital soon. The view from his room is boring and industrial. Which is a good reason for wanting to escape.

On the other hand, I enjoyed my week in the ICU five years ago. There was a television with Hong Kong programmes in my room, and I discovered a stock report show featuring a bright young nerdy man with a pressed shirt, tie, and neat conservative blazer, and a fierce looking young lady obviously there for 'visual appeal', which would make it all 'approachable'. In every segment she would start asking him questions which he could not answer (but she could), and at the end of it he'd look deflated and rumpled. It was very entertaining.

[This was at SF Chinese Hospital. So of course cable teevee there would focus on Canto content.]

They released me on a Thursday, but I wanted to stay through Friday, as I looked forward to that young man's misery in the next episode. Couldn't find it on my regular cable at home, and in the year that followed I ceased my subscription because the real housewives of whichever horrible urban conglom are not must-watch entertainment.

Fierce looking missy holding her own and then some in a discussion of a difficult subject, however, totally is a must-watch.

'VISUAL APPEAL'

Many Chinese men assume that since they are men, they must be right. Many Cantonese women have grown up with brothers, and correctly assume that a man will sometimes be a complete idiot, and that there are reasons why a man frequently does stupid things.
And some of them are perfectly willing to explain that to the poor goober.
Patiently, comprehensively and at length, if needed.
It's very sweet of them.


My long-time girlfriend was Cantonese American and had four brothers. She still is Cantonese American, of course. We've remained good friends, to both of our credit.
There is a parity of stubborness in how we get along.


I've probably gotten worse since then.
She's likely gotten better.



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AMBULATORY ENTERTAINMENTS

It happens too often for my liking that someone sees the cane and offers me a seat on the bus. Don't they see my youthful mien and sparkling eyes? Oh, right, I'm wearing a mask. They can't see bupkes.

When I took the bus up to the laundromat, when I headed over the hill for lunch, and in the evening when I headed out for the usual Tuesday night pub crawl.

It should be mentioned that I am not at all an old fart, and in far better condition than I was six years ago. Repeat: Not. An. Old. Fart.

Why , I'm just bursting with piss and vinegar.
I am young and vibrant!

Lunch was the fried noodles I had promised myself yesterday, specifically shrimp sauce and beef over rice vermicelli (蝦醬牛肉炒米粉 'haa jeung ngau yiuk chaau mai fan').
On which I dolloped chili paste like there was no tomorrow morning.
Divine, the very food of the gods, hartversterkend.

Good food for Autumn. An excellent prelude for smoking a pipe while it turns dark and the rats in the park run around under one's gaze. What an odd life, rushing out for dinner in a constant state of wary panic, and fleeing at the first sight of a moving biped, then coming back to shlep the greasy scrap to a safe place in the shadows under the bushes!
So much effort, so little feast.

There were no rats evident later in the evening while I wandered over to the usual place to smoke while waiting for the book seller. Beer was succesfully got at a favourite dive after burgering, but due to insensate yowling from the karaoke joint we decided to head over to our regular back-up boîte. This will be the last such evening in a while, as he is going on vacation (New York City and Baltimore), and won't be back in civilization till December.

We talked briefly about the recent election.
Ellen Lee Zhou only got 2% of the vote.
Gosh darn. How disappointing.
Take the hint, lady.



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RODENT PROBLEMS

My mouse is on the cusp of death. That is to say, the mechanical/electric twiddly thingy I plug into the right side of my computer with which I point, click, paint, draw, and pick my electronic nose. If I get too frustrated with the little bugger I may buy a new one, though it actually might be the connection within the computer, in which case I'll probably simply purchase a new laptop. Repairing would cost too much.


This is a royal pain in the ... mouse.

And, speaking of such things, it seems like there are far fewer rats and mice in the densely packed neighborhood over the hill. I miss the little fellows, and suspect that in order not to freak out the tourists the entire area there has been saturated with poison. Which inevitably travels up the food chain, so in a few months people from Iowa and Detroit will develope tumours and explode. It will be baffling.

One of their noted Republicans will opine that it was vaccines, and demand Ivermectin and choloroquine for his congregation immediately. Whereupon even more of them will croak. Sad, but what can you do?

The painting above was done with a defective mouse. I had to extract and replug it in several times, it would work for a while, hiccough a bit, then fail. Whereupon I'd pull it out, and plug it back in. Repeatedly until the machine stopped making noises of objection and giving me the problem message.

I've stopped getting angry or being frustrated about it. It's like dealing with a special needs adult. He doesn't mean any harm, he's just a little weird. The intensity is greater than the available sensibility.


Similarly, I am no longer angry or frustrated by the election results. Half the country seems to be special needs adults right now, and now that they're in control, it is best to step out of the way and let them crash and burn. There is just so much that can go wrong in the next four years that it is best to simply observe and giggle as the Hindenburg goes up in flames.

Most of the rest of the world is not any better.


Like our judicial system, elections are about telling the most convincing lies. The Democrats failed abysmally. Makes you wonder how they managed to keep the car in the road for four years. They may have been the mythical driver who functioned better drunk than sober.

At this point, I have no respect for our politicians, most of the country, or the talking heads who spout well-thought out nuanced opinions about what went wrong. A pox on them all.
I wish them ill, and hope that their mice die.



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SOUP MAY NOT SOLVE BODY ODOURS

Sometimes my eyes play tricks on me, and cause mental activity which might be odd. The image of someone scrubbing their pits furiously with chicken noodle soup, purely imaginary, is now permanently burned upon my inner retinas. Thank you, advertising department, for unintentionally causing distress. I shan't look at chicken noodle soup the same way ever.

Not your fault.

For some reason I decided not to have wonton noodle soup, but had garlic sauce chicken cutlets and rice (蒜蓉雞扒飯 'suen yung gai paa faan') instead. Which was good, albeit a bit fibrous. Pounded chicken breaded and deepfried, sliced up and served with a bowl of garlic gravy. With two cups of HK milk tea (港式奶茶 'gong sik naai chaa').

Pipe in Waverly afterwards. Where it was cold and gloomy, almost like the industrial area of a European city (Eindhoven) early in Autumn.

People watching both while dining and when smoking was enjoyable.
No, I didn't imagine them all scrubbing themselves.
In the shower, richly reeking of stock.
And covered with noodles.

I am by no means a pervert. I just have an acute and over-active mental eye.
It's like having my own movie theatre in my head at times.


Soup may not solve body odours. But it might disguise them, and make them delicious.
If anyone puts that into practise, I will claim credit while denying responsibility.

My own body odour is a comforting melange of shower soap, aged Virginia tobacco smoke, notes of oak, leather, bookshelves, woodmoss, and fairy dust.
Carotenoids, faintly coloured with terpeneol.
Slight tannic hint.



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KITTY THEORY

It turns out that Hello Kitty is half a century old. Which is remarkable for a British school girl living in London (you already knew that about her, right?), seeing as normally those are eaten by packs of East End slags well before they hit their second decade. With only scraps of ichor-stained school uniforms left as clues to what befell them. The horror, the horror.

British school girls, as is well known, are dense and well-marbled because of a diet rich in oils, such as is available at fish and chip shops, corner convenience stores, the numerous McDonalds, curry shacks run by Sylhetis, and Haggis Huts, that surround nesting grounds.

Note: Allegedly haggis is quite edible if deep-fried, and slathered in curry sauce next to a pile of chips. Good to know if you ever visit Scotland, though why would you?

There are theories that some Bitish school girls eventually turn into slags, but as no one has ever witnessed the transformation, this is still speculative. Attempts to breed them in captivity have failed. The exact details of their life cycle are unknown.

Judging by her excellent taste and comportment, Hello Kitty would never turn into a slag, and might actually be misidentified as a British school girl. Surely there's been some mistake?

Another theory is that when the Hello Kitty matures, she turns into a middle-aged Dutchman and heads down to SF Chinatown for some fried noodles, followed by a smoke with her pipe and twitching grey whiskers underneath an awning -- Jackson Street (昃臣街 'jak san kaai') or Waverly Place (天后廟街 'tin hau miu kaai'), most likely -- while contemplating the evil in the world as well as the millions of soldiers who perished in the Great War.
It being armistice day today. And rather rainy.
Tea-time will be gloomy.


That's not provable one way or either, of course, and I'm not particularly vested in it either, seeing as I wasn't born until centuries after the war ended. My grandfathers were in it.
Both of them survived.

There are indications that Hello Kitty is Dutch-American.
Strong indications. New Amsterdam Dutch.
Believe it, or not.



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JUST CAUSE

Sometimes there are too many shufts in the neighborhood. In this statement, you should recognize a term from Dutch ('schoft'), backformed into an English language cognate. Polite enough to be used in mixed company. It's something I realized when outside having a smoke and noticing the cars parked where they should not have been. Which is a common issue in San Francisco. Where there is no parking. And too many cars.

I myself haven't driven in years.

What disturbs me is that they drove to this particular neck of the woods because of the fabulous drinking opportunities. Yeah, okay, I understand that many twenty-somethings drive better drunk than sober, but still.

There are considerably more bars nearby than coffee shops, and sadly the coffee shops close in early evening.

Far be it from me to speak snidely of inebriative opportunities and enterprises. They are valuable. It keeps most shufts off the street. It would be even better if they could smoke inside their dissipatory environments, as that would lessen their number outdoors and improve the neighborhood at night considerably.

And surely everyone agrees that it is better to have sailors and adventurous young people congregating together safely indoors, in smoke-filled bars and seedy dives, rather than snogging in public view.

Especially now that it's colder outside. We don't want them to catch pneumonia.
In general, sailors being sick in full view is bad for morale.
Irrespective of the actual cause.

Drinking, snogging, or food poisoning.




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NOT A CHRISTIAN IN THE BUNCH

Did you know that there was once a war between the Belgians and the Dutch? The Belgians would have won, because they had way more hand grenades. The Dutch, being monumental cheapskates, had barely bought any at all. So the Belgians lobbed hand grenades at the Dutch, with no end. The problem was that the Dutch kept pulling the pins out and throwing them back.


This illustrates that we Dutch like to control the narrative. For many of my fellow Dutch (including Dutch Americans of generations residence surrounded by Anglos, such as I am), nothing hurts more than losing control of the narrative. Which explains perfectly our pain at the anti-Semitic pogrom recently in Amsterdam. Things got out of hand, we lost control of the narrative, other people started talking louder than us, and with a catch in our collective throat we demonstrated a hithertofore unknown talent for breastbeating and shirt-rending. Thus once again making it all about us. Or at least taking the focus off the victims and perpetrators, who are just incidental in any case.

As a fluent speaker of Dutch, I have a few opinions (it would quite unnatural for a Dutchman NOT to have opininions, some of them incorrect or utterly berserk): 1) A pox on the morons who thought that shipping a whole bunch of Israeli soccer fans to Amsterdam (which is filled with rabid leftwingers) was a good idea at this time. 2) A pox on the Dutch police, who should have ensured this did not happen, and their smirking superiors. 3) A pox on the Moroccans and Turks who were most of the perpetrators. 4) And a pox on all those Netherlanders who will now gleefully point their fingers at their Moroccan and Turkish fellow citizens screaming "see, see, it was them, not us, them! Those people who did not perfectly assimilate! We TOLD you not to allow them in!"

As a follow-up comment to that fourth pox: Combining people from two pissant unpleasant overreacting cultures (Morocco, the Netherlands) leads to people who combine the worst of both worlds. Throw in that typical Dutch characteristic of blaming others, and not seeing one's own flaws: total toxicity.

BTW: I really don't care how crude, provocative, and belligerent, some of those Maccabi supporters were. That cannot justify the horrid behaviour from the Amsterdammers.
Ze kunnen allemaal verrotten.

I should also mention that I am immensely fond of Amsterdam, it's a great city despite some of the residents, of any ethnic background: Dutch, Moroccan, Turk, or even Palestinian.


Final note: It is immensely frikkin' insulting that the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned anti-Arab chants and an attack on the Palestinian flag, calling on the Dutch government to protect Palestinians and Arabs living in the Netherlands. I'm sorry, but having those corrupt murderous hypocrites lecturing anybody just doesn't sit well.

Palestinian Foreign Affairs: Isn't that basically terrorism wearing a Saville Row suit?]

Why the hell is some Arab bureaucrat pissing on my side?
What the blazes is wrong with those people?
Damned goat-abusers.




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REAL JIGGY TUNES OH BOY

The other evening my apartment mate listened to some real old timey music on youtube. Stuff which should be banned. Cowboy yodeling. Stuff which people listened to back in the day because there was nothing else and radio was meant to be frightful. There was no Weird Al then, and people had no taste yet.


"Oh, let's all go down to Santa Fe town to see the big fiesta! Perk-a-deedle dye-del oom tweet tweet! Perk-a-deedle dye-del oom tweet tweet!"


That wasn't it, but as good as. The Santa Fe song was done by Louise Massey And The Westerners. Her song, which she listened to several versions of, all with that bloody awful cowboy yodeling, was in a similar vein. Imagine the whole family sitting around the radio in the evening - maw, paw, junior, missy, grampaw and granmaw, and the dog -- telling each other "my heavens that's some mighty fine music, yessirree" appreciatively.

No wonder people needed pills and psychiatry by the fifties.

It was a kinder gentler time.

Of course, if they lived back then, they'd be dead now. Mostly.

Feel free to blame their frightful music. It probably was a major contributing factor. People live longer now, and the music is better. Q.E.D. Still often half-witted, yes, but no longer inspired by raving idiocy.

Well, other than Nickelback.




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THERE IS NO FREE BEER

One thing which is almost dead certain is that nearly everything will be far more expensive because of ill-considered tariffs next year. Because, as anyone understands, the supply line is heavily reliant on imports. Necessarily, it means that middle-America will lose weight and lead a more healthy life. They will have to drink less beer and eat fewer burgers.

I look forward to seeing thinner trimmer waddly tourists blocking the streets, and fewer of them. And they'll likely leave morbid gran'ma with the mobility scooter back in Alabama.

[They should do that in any case. We have hills here, and there's no telling how many Southerners or Midwesterners with elephantine body parts lost control of their little rascal and went into the bay at high speed. Who keeps track of those things anyway? They're a fact of life, and jolly good riddance. There's more food at the buffet for everyone else.]

Wealthy Marinites might be hard put to find cheap labour, they'll probably have to wield their own leaf blowers, oh the heartache. The building trades will suffer, as English speakers don't apply for those jobs anymore. Car sales will go down, because that too is heavily reliant on imported goods and materials. Walmart prices will go through the roof.
And most Americans will be poorer.

Medical costs will also go up. With fewer programmes to cover the cost. So it's highly likely that caravans of refugees from the red states with diseased and infectious freeloaders will head across the desert. We'll probably have to erect fences to keep them out.

We already took the Okies. And that caused nothing but trouble.

Fried chicken eaters.



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EVOLUTIONARY IMPROVEMENTS

This weekend at some point I'll be in the company of some other middle-aged pipe-smoking gentlemen who all consume tea, Scotch, sherry on occasion, and vote the liberal-humanist ticket. To the best of my knowledge none of them are anti-vaxxers, xenophobes, or small-minded arch-conservative bigots. It will be brief. Maybe only slightly more than two hours. The rest of the time it will be lizards. Having orgasms and soiling their diapers over the election and the ascendancy of slope-browed anti-science blowhards.
Their kind of people! Huzzah!

Plus football.

My work week is short but painful.

One of these days I might bring in a home-cooked meal, rich in the stinky dried fish (鹹魚) or bago'ong department. Seeing as my lunch will be eaten far enough away from the backroom so I can't hear those dreary old bastards and their drunken gibbering.
Too near, and it will spoil my appetite.

I may have lost weight because of them. Working near appetite-suppressing old sods is good for maintaining a girlish figure, who knew? Better than reaching for a Lucky Strike ciggarette instead of a sweet. While draped languorously over the edge of the swimming pool.
Behind your Beverly Hills mansion, per the magazine ad.

Personally, I am overjoyed at the prospect of many folks in the interior soon being able to reject all vaccines for themselves and their children, because it will undoubtedly lead to many more deaths there. For the same reason I shall celebrate the abolishment of FEMA, the EPA, and both school lunches and childhood medical care programmes in those states. As well as all forms of food assistance and the department of education, because those people should live and die in complete freedom, malnourished, uncared for, sick, and ignorant.
As they so deeply desire. It's what they voted for.

Ivermectin is all you need.
No five G, no nano chip.
And it's all-American!


Parts of the country could be very beautiful. If it weren't for flat one horse towns, trailer parks, and endless strip malls with fast-food chains. Plus pools of chemical sludge from America's industries and agriculture. Polka-dotted with small churches where every member of the congregation is related more closely than morality allows.

We've got bears, mountain lions, wolves, rattle snakes, and coyotes out there.
Nature can restore itself, soon there will be many more.
It's a beautiful animal, the coyote!
Nature's poodle.



They used to thunder in vast herds across the prairie.
Getting in the way of trains.




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THE VEGETABLES

All three of them were there, though Steven came later, after answering the phone while he was a block away. Which, because of background noise both where he was and where they were proved quite unintelligible. "Where are you?" "What?" "Where?" "At the office?" "Huh?" And so forth. They're all a little hard of hearing, being in their seventies and eighties.
I am considerably younger. But I was just listening in, not part of it.

In fact, he had been in a place with steam tables and dishes to go.

Teatime was at a familiar place. The daddy and his tyke who live four blocks up hill were there. Kid's getting slightly larger, and speaks in whole sentences. Ah suk, nei hou.
A polite greeting. Little hand wave.

She still isn't drinking a warm caffeinated beverage.
That will come in another few years.

The three older gentlemen do drink caffeinated liquids, but it doesn't have much effect.
It doesn't make them run around in circles screaming "whee, I'm an airplane".
If they ever had that going on, it must have been back in the fifties.

As such things do, conversation veered several directions sideways. We agreed on the Great Highway. But we did manage to baffle each other considerably as to whether the proposition passed, and though they had their cellular devices with them, they didn't think to look up the vote results. I did not bother to suggest it, and as far as I can tell they're still counting.


The vegetables in the title are what I purchased before heading in to tea. Patola (ridged loofah) and bittermelon, most of which I gave to my downstairs neighbor the Indonesian Chinese woman, who locomotes a bit less and worse than I do. And may be somewhat uncomfortable in C'town, because she's as outsider there, and certainly can't read the language. I too am an outsider, but quite insensitive about that.
And I can read the language fairly well.

It had started a few hours earlier with lunch at the usual Wednesday place, followed by a smoke in a shellbriar on the way to the pharmacy. Errands, shops, bakery.
Then a smoke in a Peterson bent bulldog.


Caught the bus back over the hill down in the financial district.



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WHERE SYPHILIS AND ADDERAL REIGN

There are large parts of the United States of America where people are traitorous narrow minded xenophobic cretins and ignoramuses. Places where you do not want to go.
Where the food is mediocre and leads to obesity, sloth, and brain rot.

As you might be aware, I have borrowed a term from Trump to name these places.

The Shithole States.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Junkfood, shitty beer, and lead poisoning.

Amoral, and ethically crippled.

Spitefilled and deranged.



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SENSELESS ACTS

The good news is that we won't have to worry about presidential visits for the next four years. No motorcades, goons with sunglasses, helicopters overhead, closed off areas, inconveniently rerouted traffic.
Also good news: the states most likely to need FEMA will be out of luck next time. And deservedly so. Sometime tomorrow I will be updating my list of garbage states.

Also, with RFK Jr. making decisions about medical matters, the next pandemic should be a real doozy, and more people will die of preventably diseases than ever before, mostly in the red states. I'm not sure if that's good news or not. Still haven't decided. It might just be the silver lining we need.

While smoking my pipe in C'town this evening I noticed that there were fewer people around than usual, despite the balmy weather. They seemed quieter also. Even the tourists. After the burger, bar A and bar B, where I drank tea because even in the darkest hours I abstain from alcohol nowadays -- it might interact with something I'm taking -- there seemed even fewer people out, but they were considerably drunker than normal. Tomorrow should be an interesting day.

Well, as long as that deranged fundy wingnut Ellen Lee Zhou isn't the next mayor of San Francisco, I'm happy. We need a liberal in charge of this town.
Not some batty rightwing psycho.

The pipe was good. Red Virginias with a smidge of Perique. Seemed suitable for a pleasant evening near Jackson Street, where the hip jugend torched a driverless taxi at the beginning of the year. After the fact it was described as an act of defiance.
Resistance against "the man", man.
Down with the Borg.

The flood of expensive multi-colour printed landfill material which had been coming in for three solid months has ended; the only thing in my box yesterday was a grocery flyer.
Today I received the 2025 Social Security handbook.
Discussing Medicare Part A and B.

Quiet has returned.



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IT'S BEIGE!

Years ago on a brief visit to England before heading over to the continent, I got both acid indigestion and blockage at the same time. So when, a few months ago, American people on the internet were reacting with outraged arrogance over English Chinese food, I could sort of understand. They were imagining having to hurry to Walgreens on the double to visit the long aisle with all the American patent remedies for indigestion, constipation, acid reflux, gastric distress and upset, and similar problems. Because Americans really eat very much like the British, except with more electric colouring matter. English Chinese food is beige, American Chinese food is shocking pink, neon orange, brilliant lavender, and blood red. Or mahogany.
And instead of curry sauce on everything, it's either sweet and sour sauce, or General Tzo's. Sometimes it's duck sauce, which is something only found in New York.
To expand the repertoire, add sesame seeds.

If you were to take a slice of New York or Chicago Pizza, chop it into strips, substitute sweet and sour sauce for tomato sauce, and call it "crusty Peking nuggets", the average American wouldn't blink an eye. Add mild curry sauce, and you could serve it to an Englishman.

Deep fry it; it's now "Manchurian tidbit".

Fried rice, chicken balls in sweet and sour sauce, salt and chili fries, almost no vegetables, and everything jumbled together on the plate with "curry" sauce on top. Plus shrimp chips.

It's just as "authentic" as broccoli beef, chicken chow mein, and kung pao.

Lunch today will be at a chachanteng (茶餐廳). Might have spaghetti with a porkchop and melted cheese. Might have something curried. Or I could ask for fried rice or Swiss wings.
It's all good with sambal. And a cup of milk tea.
They also have ice cream there.



That's what English Chinese food needs!
Lots of melted cheese on top!
It's brilliant!



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LOOKS LIKE VICTORY

While heading toward my apartment building I saw and heard a crow happily cawing on the high pole halfway up the block. It seemed postscient. Earlier on the bus an elderly Caucasian female had, for no discernible reason, picked a fight with a Chinese woman and threatened her with her walker while loudly cursing. The Chinese woman, while smaller, was ready to ramp it up to whatever degree necessary, of which I would've approved if it got that far.
The white woman had earlier shown that a few crucial screws were loose.
It had been a loud and interesting bus ride.
Quite educational.

Earlier, while lighting my pipe, I had nearly fallen over four quarrelling unwashed Caucasian nutballs after leaving the place where I had eaten breakfast. Normally I don't have breakfast, and when I do it's rarely right in Chinatown. Two cups of coffee and a pipeful while taking an early walk are enough. But I'd had an early appointment at the eye-doctor's (眼科博士，眼科手術專家 'ngaan fo bok si, ngaan fo sau suet juen gaa') -- the incipient glaucoma in the left eye is marginally worse, and I now need to use latanoprost in the right eye also -- and the place where I went does breakfast till eleven o'clock.
So I seized the opportunity.

One table over four women were having a gabfest while noshing. I've seen them there before. City Canto, though one of them has a somewhat more Northern accent. A few other patrons were examing their cell-phones while eating, a Mandarin speaking couple were having fried noodles, and a few early tourists didn't have a clue what to get.

Perhaps you should order pork liver and lean meat congee, a fried dough stick, and a cup of milk tea (豬肝瘦肉粥，一根油條，同一杯熱奶茶 'chyü gon sau yiuk juk, yat gan yau tiu, tong yat pui yit naai chaa'). Trust me on this, it's what the intelligent kwailo wants. Me.

It's right there on the menu, boys. Go ahead.

Fortunately, glaucoma (青光眼 'ching gwong ngaan') is so slow that with delaying tactics like latanoprost I should be able to look people straight in the face when I finally die of a heart attack thirty or forty years hence. Because that's what everyone needs, right?
The steely glare of a dead man at the end of his life.

The trick will be timing it just right.

I need to work on that.



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IT'S A FACT

Sometimes, before the coffee has hit the medula oblongata, the mind wanders in an odd direction. Not for me, of course, as I am a very normal sane and stable sort. But this morning my apartment mate had a bee in her bonnet while waking up after I returned from my morning walk. And sought reassurance.


"No, I think I would have noticed if there were a corpse on the front steps. I'm fairly certain of that."


Because we live in San Francisco, that might be a thing.
According to the internet it definitely is.

If you watch Fox News, you are undoubtedly convinced that there are corpses lying about all over the city, including our front steps. And that they are here illegally, for voting purposes.
They know that for an absolute fact.

Fox News is responsible for more rancid horsepucky than almost any other organization in the entertainment field. People in the red states suck it up. And consequently know, KNOW, that San Francisco is filled with drug addicted foreign witchcraft practicing transgenders who are demising amidst excrement all over the downtown, actively doomlooping.

My apartment mate does not watch Fox News.
I wonder where she got the idea.

It would be hard to miss.
Trust me.



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DARK SHADOWS

Lunch, because it was in Marin, where decent eating is a disruptive concept, was pretty darn mediocre. Only barely helped by hot sauce. Shortly after that I accidentally overturned the bucket of dog treats and had to pick them up, in consequence of which my fingers smelled like carrion. Dogs, I like. Their gustatory tastes, not so much.

One of the dogs has pegged me as the source of cookies, as well as a soft touch. Having given in several times already I tried staying out of sight of those soulful trusting eyes.
It was painful.

I miss the little dachshund who always regarded me with suspicion.
There seemed to be more of an intellectual challenge there.
Would he take the biscuit? Or hide under the chair?

I am always surprised when unpleasant old men have rather nice dogs. It's almost like the hound is the more human one of the two. Also, dogs seldom spout unprintable and unpalatable political nonsense.

When I return to work in a few days, I fully expect unseemly statements, and reports of natural disasters in consequence of democrats controlling the weather to keep richly deserving rotten pumpkins out of power. Plus wild accusations of evil conspiracies, and microchips. The judicial member in particular seems to be losing it.
Today he whined about Soros and liberal child killers.
Quite the gibbering monkey.


He is also fearfully worried about the future.
I applaud his paranoia. It is deserved.
And I intend to encourage it.



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SPLASH

All over South Asia memos are being circulated reminding the call staff that the Gauras are awake an hour later, do not call about Medicare Part A and B yet, or pretend to be Steve from you neighborhood airduct centre, Marjorie from Debt Advisors, the helpful man from the IRS who needs you to purchase an Amazon or Target gift card.

And Rajesh, Vinod, Prakash, or who ever it is, mentally files this as just one more goofy thing about the Americans whose bank accounts and social security numbers they wish to steal.

They resolve to have another samosa or jalebi in the meantime, and do a three dimensional crossword puzzle. Is there some more chai? Can't outsmart those folks without chai.
The Gaura-log don't have chai.
Secret desi weapon.


Depite not having chai to help me wake up, that extra hour of sleep helped.
I've loaded a short pipe, and will go out for a little bit.
Tobacco will complete the process.

It's already glimmering light in the Western sky, not particularly cold.

My apartment mate is in the kitchen preparing herself a morning wake-up. She had retired to her room early after a busy day, rather than staying up late because of the time change, and is, consequently, out of bed sooner than usual on a Sunday. If you go by the clock. In real terms, it's the same time. There will be some adjustment necessary.

Evidence indicates that she's already fully alert.
Doesn't need as much caffeine as I do.
Faster metabolism.


A walk around the block while smoking will do me good.
Less grumpy, and younger, when I return.



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A MORE INNOCENT AGE.

The last time I crossed an ocean, you could still smoke in many public places and disport yourself with cigarettes, cocktails, and loose people of a suitable gender. Haven't been able to do that in years here. Loose people of several genders abound, but you wouldn't like them. Cocktails now contain curated ingredients and cost sheer buckets because they are carefully constructed using only the finest craft-made ingredients instead of five dollar Bourbon, and smoking in a business establishement will get you blamed for killing the whales, ruining the enviroment, what about my lungs you pig, discrimanation of all kinds, eating gluten, get out.

And let us not forget about kittens.

Smoking is horrifying to felines.

Gives 'em childhood trauma.


I don't miss the cocktails or the disportation. Bourbon, gin, or vodka, with a drop or two of of vermouth, stirred and never shaken, with an apropriate garnish next to a cafe ashtray, looks fine, goes well with Diamond brand Lotus Cigarettes (鑽石牌荷花香煙 'juen sek paai ho faa heung yin') made in Hebei (河北 'ho paak'), OR a Dunhill Shellbriar filled with a fine Virginia flake such as used to be put out by McClelland in Kansas City (which ceased operations in 2018). Or something from Samuel Gawith or Fribourg & Treyer. But a cup of tea is fine.
And civilized people do not imbibe before late afternoon at the earliest.

I've got the Lotus cigarettes, as well as a number of Dunhill Shellbriars, and several tins of Virginia. But an indoor public place of disportation which still has cafe ashtrays and doesn't throw kittens at one for smoking around other people is hard to find anywhere nowadays.

Let's not even think of karaoke joints in foreign locales. Smoke filled yes. Lousy cocktails, and singing whales. Plus patrons whose personal ethics and morals are more than a little dubious. I'd rather have the flung kittens.


Precisely the kind of place where one might find a sleazoid pretentious git with a poncy accent about to start a rumble.


Say, what brand of cigarette does James Bond smoke anyway? Seeing as the Brits have gone to the dogs there probably aren't any decent fags from England anymore.
The poor bastard is probably huffing cheap knock-offs.
Poor show, old chap.



I still have a few packs of Belomorkanal somewhere.
They would probably go well with a martini.
While listening to Hotel California.
Sung off-key by a yuppie.



For some reason, I keep thinking of parsnips. I blame karaoke for that.
And yuppies.




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RABBIT, RABBIT.

Rabbit, rabbit. It is traditional to say "rabbit rabbit" first thing in the morning on the first day of the month. Good luck or something. Don't know. Rabbit rabbit.


Quite likely a friend will post a drawing of a rabbit having coffee.
Two other friends have rabbits as pets. So photos.
My monthly rabbits smoke pipes.

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