SAFELY DAEMONIC DUDE

One of the things that astounds me is that people actually seem to like me. This is peculiar, because I am a sour and unpleasant person, profoundly anti-social, grouchy, and with a horrid attitude toward one and all.
Well, except little well-behaved children.
Those folks are okay.

Mr. Siew wants me to drink wine. He was walking his dog when I arrived back at my street, his wife is in Hong Kong for two months, and it was a beautiful foggy night. The fog horns sounded in the distance, the further trees showed black in the silver of the street lights, and the few inebriants staggering home after bar closing seemed rather pleasant, though young.
And possibly randy, but they expressed affection toward each other in a non-hormonal way. Hugs, no groping.

It is quite possible that these people have shared apartments, and cannot plan any wild shenanigans at the spur of the moment. Schedule naughty business in advance, when everybody will be out for at least two hours.
Instead of wide awake in their rooms playing WoW or Battleship®.



Mr. Siew is probably a decade older. Retired, and not strictly Hong Kong.
There's a 'Portuguese' element there from Macao. His daughter-in-law has been an acquaintance for more than a decade. She's fully Cantonese, but, naturally, very familiar with the Kwailo world.

Three hours earlier I woke up from my nap, drank a cup of coffee, and wandered down Polk Street in the mist towards a familiar watering hole, where I am a hero for helping the owner recently clean up puke after someone borked on the door (from the inside, nota bene) a few days ago. Honestly, I did not smell it, I just felt that it needed to be done.
Apparently that's saintly behaviour.


Damned good day. In the afternoon I had gone into Chinatown for shopping (yay, dumplings!), and then dined on roast goose over rice. The waitress who came on shift after I was almost done with my meal greeted me ("what, no use chopsticks?"), and brought me some watermelon afterwards, the grouchy maitre d' was friendly, and later while smoking a pipe near the park several passers-by recognized me and said hello. Now, all of this is unusual. Because in addition to sour, unpleasant, and rabid, I am distant, a pissant, and probably smell bad.


It must be my battle-aura. While puffing on some six year old Old Gowrie (Rattrays, a tangy broken flake, very nice) on Walter Lum Place, the wind quieted down a bit. Earlier on Beckett and Wentworth it had been brisk and bitter, and I protected my bowl from the worst of it while grumbling. Right in the centre of each block it's bearable, but it comes over the hill and slams against the buildings, spreading out. Little children going past are bundled up, pink and red and purple, looking cute and almost roly-poly from the insulation against the late afternoon arctic chill.

Old folks wearing three (!) shirts under their coats.
Tourists freezing their dingles off.
Crazy man in tutu.



In complete contrast to a previous evening with Charles Rattray's fine Virginias, there were no crazy people tossing the contents of a municipal garbage receptacle all over the side walk, no drunken frat-boys yelling at their friends right next to them, no random creapazoids staggering in the direction of single women, and no elderly weirdoes trying to strike up conversations that go nowhere, slowly.

Good tobacco smells like nobody's elderly grampa.
There isn't that horrid vanilla odour.
I do not look avuncular.



Regretfully, I told Mr. Siew that I had to go home and get some sleep.
One of these days I'll take him up on his kind offer.
We'll smoke ciggies, and drink.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================