BUTTERFLY FLAKY

Today someone offered/threatened to set me up with a nice girlfriend. I had incautiously recommended the large palmiers (蝴蝶酥 'wu dip sou') to her and her friend while both of them were inspecting the baked goods and couldn't make up their minds. f course this meant conversation. And a certain amount of flabbergastity too, as it quickly became evident to them that I spoke Cantonese. Which I don't look like I should be able to do, given that I am unmistakably from somewhere filled with Caucasians and almost nobody else.

My ancestry is mostly Dutch, with a few globs of Scottish Presbyterian thrown in for bad measure. At one point the only non-whites in the Netherlands were some Ghanaians in Friesland (long story), and a few run-away Iberians (another long story).

And obviously a white man should be fixed up.
We're unpredictable when we're still wild.
Someone needs to settle us down.


At least, I think that's the dynamic. White people are, generally speaking, unpredictable anyway, maybe when we can speak Cantonese we're pleasingly less so?

During my recent workweek I had to use Cantonese and Mandarin a number of times. Which one might expect. Today I used Cantonese to score some black market smokes, as well as a very satisfying lunch plus hot milk tea.

You know, the matchmaking urge occasionally crops up in my wider social environment. But seeing as I do not enjoy long walks on the beach in moonlight and am not likely to raft the Amazon or hike the Himalyas, and do not have a golden retriever OR French bulldog, it never goes anywhere. I am just not romantic material.

By the way: 'Butterfly flaky' is the literal translation of the Cantonese term for a palmier cookie (蝴蝶酥). Hence the title of this scribble. Chinese bakeries have a number of things which are delicious; I still miss the 荷花酥 ('ho faa sou') which haven't been available at bakeries nearby since the pandemic. Quite splendid, very old-fashioned.


Tonight's pub crawl was much as it usually is. We avoided the place with people committing mayhem by karaoke as well as the hipster beer joint, and went straight to the one place where white conventioneers and tourists are a rarity, though not entirely absent.
Tat Yee was there, as I suspected he would be.

There had been six skeevy types dossed down between where the bus had dropped me off and where I waited for the bookseller while smoking a pipe. Four of them were familiar faces, the other two looked like insane people who won't be tolerated by the neighborhood for very long. There is just something about loud wild people that doesn't inculcate any great tolerance. Of course the city has plenty of those.

For some reason we talked about Lord Drummond. He's much older now, and apparently looks quite fragile. But he's still kicking, and living a good life. Which is excellent.



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