BEGINNING THE DAY WITH HOT BLACK GOO

Mordechai posits that the American breakfast is sugar, cereal, and with the addition of dairy, damned close to dessert. Several readers throw variations on that theme into the mix. And, nutritionally, they are indeed on the right track. Except, of course, for the pesky little fact that American cereals are absolutely disgusting, and the very idea of eating that crap would send me screaming out of the house into the rain storm.

Froooooooooooooooot. Loooooooooooooooops.

The ideal breakfast, as everyone knows, wakes you up without stressing you out, and renders you calm, rational, even keeled, and ready to courageously face the day.


Two cups of coffee, cigarillos, and bleakness.


The English, I believe (and it has also been my experience, so it is more than just a figment of faith) have various substances seethed in bacon fat, including sliced tomato, and the Dutch eat bread and cheese or smoked meats. The rest of Western Europe indulges in fresh rolls and Hero-brand jam, with your choice of coffee or chocolate. And maybe a hard-boiled egg, for the adventurous and lower class.


Two cups of coffee, cigarillos, and bleakness.


Many Chinese have jook (rice porridge), with or without fried dough, and soy milk. The soy milk upsets the stomach, the jook (which only the Cantonese know how to make properly) then soothes the aggravated membranes.
Jook is light lunch or midnight snack food anyhow.

Sometimes the Cantonese have lots of little snackies and a huge amount of tea. Which shows that they aren't committed to morning suffering, and explains why a dim sum teahouse is, at the best of times, bedlam.
They're wired to the gills, and in flavour country!

There you are, stumbling about after your two cups of coffee, cigarillos, and bleakness, when you come across a popping establishment filled with many excited people in the middle of Ngau Tau Kok (牛頭角).
You decide what the heck why not baptism by fire.

Perhaps an hour later you leave, belching, and contemplating the first pipe of the day. You are happier than you have been since dawn, your ears are ringing, you have had a vibrant discussion with four complete strangers about Hollywood movies that provided startling insights, and now some Rattray's Old Gowrie, fully rubbed out, in the Peterson bent bulldog, seems like a dang good idea. You light up behind a row of bins (yellow for drink cans, red for glass and plastic bottles, and blue for paper).


You wonder what's for lunch, in about six hours.


Life is good.




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