STARTING THE YEAR OF THE SNAKE WELL

Lunch had been shrimp sauce beef fried rice noodles (蝦醬牛肉炒米粉 'haa cheung ngau yiuk chaau mai fan') in the purely temporary company of an elderly somewhat 'off' white woman who changed seats four times. She could do that, because other than myself and one other customer there was nobody else there. She may have been trying to find the warmest place in the restaurant, or the chair furthest from the sound of explosions.

Afterwards, extracting funds from a nearby bank machine, someone set off a long string of firecrackers very near me. Chinatown during the day was noisy. An even mixture of Chinese and nonsuch, the first mentioned doing some last minute purchasing before new year. When I returned four hours later to wait for the bookseller it sounded like a warzone. Which did not surprise me. If I can easily find my favourite smuggled-in ciggies, you must assume that the last Eastern freighter under the bridge must have had enough explosives to blow a small town off the face of the earth.

The cargo manifest would have been a work of fiction.
And the crew were probably non-smokers.
Very highly insured.

It's going to be two solid weeks of loud noises.

At Grant and Jackson it was jam-packed with people, most of them non-Chinese, no doubt hoping that a robo-taxi would get torched there just like last year, but in the anticipatory hour or so beforehand enjoying the massive explosions. From my pipe-smoking spot a block away it did not seem that any arson or rogue vandalism was occurring, though the smoke clouds were enormous, and there had been much evidence of burnt plastic when I passed that intersection earlier. A phrase that came to mind was 屌，太多鬼佬 ('diu, taai do kwai lo'), followed by 冚家鏟 ('haam ka chaan'). Oh my, so many people. Bless their hearts.
Because I really don't like crowds. At all.
And I cuss in tongues.

Mobs of white jugend with tattoos and piercings always set off my alarm bells.
Two hours later we could see that Grant Avenue was still chaotic.
Though now with cop cars amid the billowing smoke.


While waiting for the bus a firetruck sped past.



新年快樂，歲歲平安，身體健康，年年有餘。
['san nin faai lok, seui seui ping on, san tai kin hong, nin nin yau yü']
May you have a year without arsonistic white vandals.



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