COLD WEATHER NOODLES

You cannot add hot sauce to noodle soup unless you are a white guy eating phở, and this wasn't that. White guy. Check. Eating. Check. Phở. No check. At around teatime I stepped out for a bite to eat, and seeing as I have a nose cold, hot soup seemed like the best idea. Pickled mustard and pork shreds with narrow rice noodles in broth (榨菜肉絲米粉 'jaa choi yiuk si mai fan').

Yes, there was hot sauce on the premises, and I often claim that everything no exceptions tastes better with sambal, but never-the-less.


I did not get where I am today by being a white guy adding Sriracha to his phở.
That is to say, I have indeed done so, fairly often.
But it did not contribute.


Afterwards I went outside to smoke my pipe for half an hour or so, and also gave directions to a Cantonese woman who was wondering where Temple Street (Waverly Place) was (天后廟街係嗰邊 'tin haau miu kaai hai go pin'), wandered around a bit, before heading home to putz on the computer and doomscroll for an hour.

The pipe in question is exactly the same shape as the one which Clark Gable was sporting in a number of publicity photos, looking pensive and intellectual because he also had a book.
I do not think it made me Gable-esque, but that was probably because I looked between grumpy and snarky, and lacked a book. A squat bulldog shape by Comoy.

So naturally a likely woman did not approach me and say something to the effect of "I think you look amazingly dashing AND intellectual, and I would like to drink tea while listening to you waffle on about stuff, I think that would be quite heavenly!"


我覺得你好氣派同埋有智慧，而我想一邊飲茶一邊聽你講事，我諗噉樣會幾天堂！
['Ngo gok dak nei hou hei paai tung maai yau ji wai，yi ngo seung yat bin yam chaa yat bin teng nei gong si，ngo lam gam yeung wui gei tin tong!']


Besides, I was smoking the wrong tobacco for that. Clark Gable liked medium Balkan blends, just like William Faulkner, whereas what I was puffing was a rubbed out flake much like Tolkien and Bertrand Russell, neither of whom were particularly hot or glamorous.
Very very not sexy. Darn.


It remains a fond fantasy. A man can dream.
But about as likely as pigs flying.



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