ON THE RECORD

Apparently some Chinese people have seen me on TikTok. This is something about which I do not know what to think. Ain't gonna dig into it, though, because TikTok is a warren of rabbit holes down which I do not wish to go. Equally apparently, I was talking a lot. So they may be confusing me with some other kwailo. Languages in which I do not talk a lot are all of them.

Although it may have been last Friday when two Toishanese gentlemen came walzing in before the doors had well and truly opened and the only people there were two sentient folks I tolerate early. That's always a pleasant thing. You're sentient? You're sober? You're upright and in control of your faculties, and not saying stupid crap like all the usuals? Welcome!

It probably wasn't down at the hospital. I do speak more there, but I'm fairly sure none of it is taped. And it probably wasn't at any of the places where I haven't been in a while.
That's almost a guarantee.


There are TWO things which I am glad were never recorded. The time when I sang a Teresa Teng song at karaoke, and a Gangnam style dance off which I won.
But it was Gangnam style. So errm.


It will be ages before anyone ever sees me doing stuff like that again.

The visual record for the past several years is mostly static. There are no videos of me pursued by bears, or lovingly interacting with large careless wild animals in Africa. I am not doing the hip, hop, hip hip hop to any infernal disco. Or speechifying eloquently about the dearly departed at a funeral.


Lunch today was at the Tuesday place, tea, milk tea, and something over rice made zesty with dabs of hot sauce. Not many people there. One old fellow who went out for a cigarette a few times, two ladies who didn't know what they wanted. Something savoury, perhaps with salt fish (鹹魚haam yu) or fermented black beans (豆豉tau si). And noodles. And a hot lemon tea (熱檸檬茶 'yit ning mung chaa'). It was very peaceful. I barely said anything.

Smoked a pipe afterwards. It's a shape-variant that they don't make anymore. For various reasons it reminds me of the Oranje Nassau Straat in Valkeswaard, and the area near where Willem 2 Cigars had their brandnew office building on the Eidhovensche Weg.
Which was torn down a quarter of a century ago.

I had borrowed it from my father's desk drawer while he was in London.



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