A VERY ENGLISH TEA TIME

Always when I head to work after a few days off I worry about the gibbering which I shall hear from the senescent monkeys in the backroom. After a full week of Republican Victory™ after Republican Victory™ (tarriffs on, tarriffs off, tarriffs on, tarriffs off) there's no telling what they'll say. Except, of course, that somehow it's all the fault of Canada and the liberals. Which these days are conflated in their heads. Indeed, there is quite an overlap; Canadian society is not nearly as nuts as our own country, and seems to have a more even keel than us.
For one thing, they don't have berserk Nazis representing them.
They aren't Alabama, Georgia, or Colorado.

But honestly, I need not worry. Whatever those oafs say won't be any less off-kilter than some of the stuff I hear here in San Francisco. One of the old fellows at the bakery recently wished me to know that the Portuguese were vastly better than the Dutch, because we (the Dutch) never took Macau despite waging war for over a generation -- even though we did kick those greasy sardines out of Formosa, Ceylon, and Malacca -- and the city peacefully rejoined the glorious motherland (in 1999) over a decade after the British had been finally forced to relinquish Hong Kong. He had seen a youtube. So he freshly knew.

Umm. Macau became Chinese again only two years after Hong Kong.
Not over a decade. Two years.

Anyhow, his point was that the lease was up, so get your limey posteriors out, and good riddance, and the Dutch were a bunch of losers. Those other places don't count anyhow.

PINEAPPLE BUN WITH RED BEAN PASTE FILLING

The conversation had been about kumquats (金橘), of which I had recently given a bagful to the Indonesian Chinese lady downstairs, along with some apples. It had within barely one minute veered into Macau. Which is as far away from kumquats as pussy cats to nuclear fission, if you ask me, but I'm not ninety plus years old and my mind isn't as agile.

So the hot cup of Hong Kong milk tea and the pineapple bun were very enjoyable indeed, the conversation slightly less so. And when the gentleman with hearing and attention span issues joined us it headed south.

Good thing we didn't talk about political events.
I would have been screaming.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================