IMPORTANT LOCAL COLOUR

Are you beset by spam-callers? When you're at home recovering from minor surgery, do irritating subcontinental individuals call you about accidents you have not been in involving a vehicle you never had with another vehicle that also probably did not exist? In the last two years? For which you were not at fault, and you haven't received a pay out yet?
Steve and Cedric: very fine Tamilian gentlemen oh yes.

喂，死印度人，邊個想聽你嘅廢話？

If so, you too need to learn to speak Cantonese. Cedric hung up as soon as I spoke.
Of course, I could have reverted to English, and asked him or Steve why my groin was orange and prickly. For which the answer would have been that that is where they cut me open to insert a device to root out the plaque in my femoral artery (on the right side). Shaving and painting with a disinfectant was required. Unlike the coronary stent, they didn't fill me to the rafters with blood thinners, so there is no bruising where the medical grade rotorooter rested on my pelvis (unless that orange is minor bruising, but I doubt it).
And I did not wake up next to the moaning woman's room.

[The femoral artery (股動脈 'gu dong mak') runs from the upper thigh down past the knee, where it branches into the tibial arteries (脛骨脈 'ging gwat mak') providing oxygen and building blocks to the calves and feet. It is hugely important, and when not in prime condition can be a royal pain in the dotdotdot. Angioplasty: 血管成形術 ('huet gun sing jing sut').]

So I did not get to watch Animal Planet for seven and a half hours throughout the night.
Yes, I feel somewhat cheated. Hyenas and their breakfast are almost an essential part of the experience. That's what the moaning woman next door is for. Geek chorus (stet).
Apropriately miserable background noises.

The illustration above is NOT the vast African veld, there are no zebras being assaulted by hyenas or lions robbing the latter of their prey. It's a memory picture of what the Malpy Fens look like south of Valkenswaard.

It's a nature reserve. Bleak and scenic. Birds. No flying zebras.

A desolate expanse of heather, reeds, small dirt hillocks, tall grasses, quicksand, marsh fowl. Weasels. There are also lizards there, and small snakes. Plus feral natives. Hunting is not permitted; the hyenas are out of luck.


The advice after an angioplasty is to spend most of the two or three days afterwards resting, don't exert yourself much, keep your leg elevated, and abstain from smoking. And ignore the orange in your crotch. So yesterday I got dressed, fixed myself fried rice with small meat chunks and bittermelon, plus coffee or tea periodically.

What I wanted to do was head across the hill to smoke my pipe after a fatty lunch, but eh, no smoking. And I was not fit to deal with people, having been instructed to postpone showering or changing the dressing on the three new holes in my body till Saturday (today) at the earliest. I did not feel clean enough for the public street. Not grungy, mind you.


Six years ago I asked the nurse who came by at daybreak what was with that moaning next door. "Oh, that's just a demented woman". Well, why is she moaning? "she doesn't like being here. And she's demented".

No hospital visit is complete without a demented person.
I feel strongly about that. This is San Francisco.
We have standards to uphold here.

Alas, no hyenas.



AFTERWORD

My landlady dropped by yesterday with two kinds of jook (粥), an oil strip for dipping (油條), and some dimsummy items. So the invalid is recovering nicely. This was very kind of her.



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